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"This world is a machine! A machine for pigs! Fit only for the slaughtering of pigs!"

"He who makes a beast of himself removes himself from the pain of being human."

Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs is the second entry in the Amnesia series, developed by The Chinese Room (best known for Dear Esther) and published by Frictional Games (also known for the Penumbra series) on September 10, 2013. It is an indirect sequel to Amnesia: The Dark Descent, originally started as a small mod before both companies saw potential that would be fulfilled with a larger game.

Taking place in the same universe as The Dark Descent, A Machine for Pigs is set sixty years later, in Victorian London, on New Years Eve, 1899. Wealthy industrialist Oswald Mandus has just awoken from a fevered comatose state that lasted him several months, haunted by nightmares of a vicious, dark, elaborate machine of mysterious purpose. And much more to his worry, as he stumbles around his estate, he finds that it appears to be completely empty, as his young sons Edwin and Enoch are strangely absent. Mandus must trace his life back to find out what happened during his months of unconsciousness, discover the whereabouts of his missing sons, and figure out what happened during his ill-fated trip to Mexico that immediately preceded it...

But mostly, he finds nothing...

Nothing but the twisted monstrosities that stalk the halls, and the cogs and gears of the great machine that whirs to life beneath him.

Character tropes go on to the Characters Sheet.


This video game provides examples of:

  • Absurdly-Spacious Sewer: Justified, as they were designed to accommodate all the biological waste from the "products" stored above, then use the methane from it to further fuel the machine.
  • Alternate Reality Game: The title, tagline, a release window, two pieces of artwork and hints of The Chinese Room's involvement were all revealed through various fake websites.
  • Amnesiac Dissonance: The moment when Mandus discovers a note that reveals before his memory loss, he used to send child laborers into the pipes of his factory to clean them and then send more in to clean up the mess caused by the children being boiled alive by the extreme heat that traveled through the pipes, followed by letting the manpigs eat the children alive to keep the factory a secret.
  • And Show It to You: When you finally find your children, they tear out their own hearts to show you. And do it again in subsequent meetings.
  • Animal Motifs: Diary entries repeatedly use Pigs heavily to represent people.
  • Apocalypse How: The Engineer/The Machine plans a planetary class 3 type. Mandus witnesses the near destruction of London towards the end of the game.
    • It is heavily hinted however that the Engineer plans an Earth-Shattering Kaboom type apocalypse with its promise to "split the atom and the egg" (the world's core had been repeatedly referred to as a "metal/stone egg") using the power gained by the slaughter of London's population.
  • Apocalyptic Log: Mandus' final journal entry:
    "I doubt I will ever be found, yet I leave you this, scrawled in the malodorous half-light, whilst my tormentor shuffles below, my fellow prisoners keen and squeal in the gloam, and where I wait for the knocking upon my cage that signifies it is, finally, my turn to make that dark journey into the interior."
  • Applied Phlebotinum: The mysterious Compound X that powers the Machine and allows humans and pigs to be spliced together without killing them. It appears to have supernatural effects, up and including unhinging the subjects from reality, making them flicker back and forth from existence.
    • Considering that the Machine and the manpigs were derived from studying what was left of Castle Brennenburg, and that the Machine draws its power from processing human bodies, its heavily implied that Compound X is related to vitae.
  • Artistic License – History: The story takes place in the last hours of the 19th century, on the 31st of December 1899. Problem is, the Victorians were more careful with their calendar than our generation, and celebrated the turn of the 20th century when it actually happened, at midnight on January 1, 1901.
  • Avoiding the Great War: Played with. The Machine was built by Mandus, and is revealed to be his attempt to stop future wars from taking place after he had a prophetic vision of the horrors of the World Wars, including his children dying in the trenches. The machine ends up inheriting a piece of Mandus' soul, achieving sentience and carrying out horrific acts of its own in an attempt to fulfil its purpose, and Mandus ultimately decides to sacrifice himself in order to sabotage it, even though it means allowing the Wars to happen in the near future.
  • Birth-Death Juxtaposition: Mandus' epic closing lines about his and the machine's death at the beginning of the 20th century.
    "And as the dust settled on my open eyes and we lay together embraced forever, I heard miles above us, the sounds of the city turning over in its sleep. A church bell ringing out. And in that moment, the new century was born."
  • Bittersweet Ending: The Machine is destroyed and London is saved from its wrath, but Mandus sacrifices his life in the process. And of course, the horrors of the 20th century are still to come.
  • Blackout Basement: In some areas the lights will flicker and go out, leaving Mandus to navigate only by his own lantern. This actually has an in story explanation. The Wretches' bodies contain the mystical Compound X that reacts to light in strange ways. On its own it simply becomes incredibly corrosive, but inside living bodies it produces stranger effects, apparently including electrical disturbances.
  • Blood Magic: Used to bring a new god into being who would save humanity from itself. But to do this requires vast quantities of blood sacrifices, thus the Machine was built to facilitate mass-production of such sacrifices.
  • Body Motifs: Hearts. Mentioned in plenty of conversations, frequent references to the "heart" of the machine (which has a literal heart suspended in it) and Mandus' means to turn off the machine is to have it rip his heart out.
  • Bookcase Passage: Plenty in Mandus' mansion. There are several hidden doors, leading to narrow passages inside of thick walls, with one-way mirrors for spying on people in rooms. At least one of these doors is behind a bathtub, the entirety of which rotates along with the floor and adjacent wall to expose the passage.
  • Building of Adventure: Most of the story takes place inside Mandus' meat factory.
  • Call-Back: There are plenty of references to the original Amnesia, even if it is an indirect sequel.
    • Mandus is well aware of the castle from the last game as well as the residents there, which is critical to the plot as he uses the remains of a Servant Grunt as a partial blueprint for his Manpigs, and further refining the use of Vitae to twist captured humans into said manpigs.
    • There is a shattered Orb in the Aztec Temple which has been integrated into the machine.
    • There are repeated references to "his great uncle's experiments" which implies that either Daniel or Alexander was his great uncle.
    • The Water Monsters reappear as some of Mandus' "failed test subjects" and haunt the sewers of the factory.
    • One note explains that Compound X is partly made of a formula created by Alexander, quite possibly vitae, the stuff of human pain and suffering.
  • Camera Abuse: There is blood smeared all over the screen when Mandus takes hits by the Manpigs.
  • Collapsing Lair: Due to Mandus' sabotaging, parts of the machinery collapse at the end.
  • Concealing Canvas: There is a lever behind a painting in one of the bathrooms that opens a secret door.
  • Crapsack World: Victorian London wasn't a happy place, but it's actually a vision of the 20th century that affects Oswald so deeply it makes him construct a vast, demonic Machine beneath the ground with intention of slaughtering the entire human race like pigs.
  • Creepy Cathedral: The chapel near Mandus' home, with windows are stained with the blood of pigs and their mutilated corpses piled atop the altar. In the notes it is revealed this was a key source of "raw material" for the Manpigs, abducting entire congregations and sending them to the machine through a hidden passage.
  • Creepy Twins: Oswald keeps catching glimpses of his ghostly looking, English-accented children running throughout the manor. Exaggerated after he is tricked into turning the machine back on, where they appear right before the camera pale as corpses and covered in blood and ripping their own hearts out their chests.
  • Darker and Edgier: A Machine for Pigs drops the lighter gothic horror of Dark Descent for Industrialized Evil and even more grotesque Body Horror. Similarly, the abstract Cosmic Horror story of Dark Descent is replaced with a more personal and tragic tale of a father's love for his children causing him to do horrific things.
    • The enemy hunting you goes from shadows and mutilated undead humans to even more twisted manpig monsters that are still human.
    • Daniel tortured dozens or possibly hundreds of strangers to death out of selfishness. Mandus mutilated and lobotomised thousands to "save them" from their own humanity. And murdered his own children to spare them a more horrific death.
    • The villain is not some alien abomination from another realm but a piece of Mandus' damaged soul given life.
  • Double-Meaning Title: "A Machine for Pigs" has dual meanings. It refers both to Mandus' meat factory, and Mandus' personal metaphor for the coming industrialization of tyranny and war in the 20th century: a world-spanning machine that turns all of humanity into pigs for the slaughter.
  • Down the Drain: A particularly disgusting example. Mandus must venture into the Absurdly-Spacious Sewer beneath his meat factory. The corners of the walls are all caked in feces, and opaque chunky water fills the channels.
  • Eat the Rich: While under the Orb's influence, Mandus eventually directed his general anger and disgust at the state of the world towards of his fellow wealthy socialites and industrialists, seeing them as carrying a large part of the responsibly for the future horrors he had been witness to. As such, he invites them to lavish parties, getting them full of food and massively drunk — then using traps in their bedrooms to feed the sods into the Machine, harvesting their vitae and butchering them up for product.
  • Eldritch Location: It seems impossible that something as massive and bizarre as the depths of the Machine could be built under London by any normal means. Mandus even speculates that he is the first human ever to walk in those halls, even though the Machine is his own creation.
    • Near the end of the game, it becomes difficult to tell which parts of the factory are real and which parts are the product of Mandus' unraveling mind.
  • Enemy Without: The Engineer is a part of Mandus' own soul embedded within the Machine, representing his mad wish to prevent his visions of war and bloodshed in the 20th century.
  • Eternal Engine: A horror version. Oswald's factory is an industrialized meat factory filled with corpses and blood that goes miles upon miles underground. It was created to harvest vitae on an industrial scale.
  • Even Evil Has Loved Ones: A note in the very beginning of the game reveals Jack the Ripper had two children that he appeared to care about. After Jack is turned into a manpig/experimented upon by Mandus, Oswald had to keep them locked in a room with reinforced windows to stop them from taking revenge and/or telling the police about what he had done to their father.
    • Given what is later found in the manpig nest, it's likely that a far worse fate befell them than mere imprisonment.
  • Fade to White: The screen fades to white when you die.
  • Fed to Pigs: This is the Machine's plan for humanity, both literally and figuratively. A diary entry also references Mandus murdering orphans he took in to work as cleaners by feeding them to the pigs stored in the factory.
  • Genius Loci: The Machine hosts a piece of Mandus' own, broken soul. It is both sentient and completely insane.
  • Go Mad from the Revelation: After witnessing the horrors of the 20th century, from the trenches of World War I to the bombing of Hiroshima to the Cambodian killing fields, Mandus is so desperate to avert it he murders thousands of innocent people, including his own children, and turns hundreds more into the tortured manpigs.
  • Gory Discretion Shot: The player stops the Machine by sitting in a chair and flipping a switch, which brings out several needles aiming straight for Oswald's heart. The screen goes black right when the needles jut in.
  • The Grotesque: Considering it's set in the same universe as Amnesia: Dark Descent, it's no surprise the game is filled with Body Horror-like squealing Pig Man creatures and rivers of blood.
  • Haunted Technology: Mandus' meat factory almost seems to be alive, sputtering in and out of life on its own. It actually is haunted by the Engineer, a piece of Mandus' own soul.
  • Hazardous Water: Sections of the machine are flooded, and Mandus must activate the bilges and release valves to get the water level low enough to pass. However, strange electrical disturbances in the water indicate the presence of something unseen wading through it.
  • Heroic Sacrifice: Mandus shuts down the Machine and saves London at the cost of his life.
  • Human Sacrifice: Mandus, pre-amnesia, thought that the Aztecs' beliefs in human sacrifice having the power to prevent their civilization's own destruction were not wrong, they simply couldn't do so on the scale required. However, modern industrialization gives other methods to achieve those same ends with much greater efficiency.
  • Humans Are Bastards: The Engineer is a manifestation of Mandus' desire to slaughter all of humanity like pigs... out of shock and disgust at the horrors he knows they'll beget in the 20th century.
  • Industrialized Evil: A major motif.
    • A large part of the game takes place in a uncomfortably cramped, blood-stained meat factory.
    • Experiments of combining animals or humans with machines are discussed.
    • Mandus was driven insane by visions of the evils brought about by the industrialization of tyranny and war in the 20th century.
    • The Machine was designed to manufacture vitae - an arcane substance derived from human pain and suffering - on an industrial scale.
  • Interface Screw: While the eye-bending screen filters from Dark Descent at low sanity aren't here, there are still some subtle changes in clarity and field of view.
  • It Will Never Catch On: One diary note discusses Mandus' mocking Charles Babbage for predicting a "machine that can think like a man." Doubly ironic, as Mandus later creates the Machine, which - thanks to a shard of his own soul - possesses all of his intellect and insanity.
  • Jack the Ripper: Referenced in Mandus' journals. The professor who visits him is even said to have performed autopsies on the Ripper's various female victims. It is also implied that Jack may have become one of the manpigs or another of Mandus' experiments.
    • Similarly the factory seems to be at least partially located in some of the Ripper's old haunts like Bucks Row or Hansbury Street.
  • Kill the Poor: Mandus and the Engineer murdered thousands of the destitute to grow the Engineer's power, seeing it as a better alternative to dying at the hands of shrapnel and mustard gas in the coming decades. Particular groups Mandus abducted to further his dark research are the homeless, disposable sex workers and innocent orphans. Eventually, however, he comes to do the same to the rich.
  • Laser-Guided Amnesia: Mandus begins the game with no knowledge of the last few months, and immediately sets out trying to find his children, worried about what might have happened to them. The revelation of what truly happened to his children, and the reason why he killed them, also plays into this: he sacrificed them to to spare them from a more horrifying death in World War I.
  • Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Oswald's last journal, which stands in for an objective: "I search for instructions, for advice, for help in my goals, but in return the system mocks me. Simpleton, it says, you must find your own answers now."
  • Lightning Reveal: Certain rooms late game will go suddenly and inexplicably dark, and Mandus will be stalked by a manpig who fades in-and-out of reality, only revealed by crackling arks of electricity that pour off the metallic implants jutting through its skin every time it becomes visible.
  • Love Makes You Evil: Mandus murdered his own children to spare them an even more grisly death at the Battle of Somme years later.
  • Meaningful Name: Oswald Mandus is a play on Ozymandias, referencing his obsession with making his factory the "great work of the industrial age".
  • Mechanical Abomination: The eponymous Machine is an artificial replacement for God created by the main character to prevent the horrors of the 20th century, sustained by human sacrifice on a literally industrial scale, but it instead creates the pig monsters and plans to destroy/consume humanity. It's a cross between an Eternal Engine and Eldritch Location that has developed into a Mad God.
  • Mercy Kill: Mandus believed he killed his children out of mercy, considering their fates in the coming century, and the Engineer wishes to apply the same logic to all of humanity.
  • Mission-Pack Sequel: Averted. Was intended to be a small Gaiden Game with some experimental gameplay set in the Amnesia universe. However, as the writing for the project grew, the developers realized that the game had to grow along with it. The result is something closer in breadth of scope to the original game.
  • Mobile Maze: Some of the architecture changes as Mandus moves through the corridors of the machine. He might go into a small side area, only to turn around and have a much longer backtrack through a series of unfamiliar halls, or going into a small cul-de-sac might have a different exit when he turns back around.
  • A Million Is a Statistic: During his Motive Rant, the Engineer contrasts the general horrors of World War I's trench warfare with Edwin and Enoch's fated deaths at the Battle of the Somme, a much more up-close and very personal horror scenario for Mandus.
  • Motive Rant: The Engineer combines this with a surprisingly poignant Villainous Breakdown:
  • My God, What Have I Done?: Said nearly verbatim by Mandus when he returns to the streets of London after reactivating the machine and unknowingly releasing the manpigs onto the unsuspecting populous.
    Mandus: ''Oh no, oh God no. What have I done?"
  • No Canon for the Wicked: Several notes imply that either Alexander or Daniel was Oswald's great-uncle, and that he based his work on their experiments and the Servant bodies found in the castle. Given that Alexander wasn't human or had a sister, it certainly rules him out, leaving Daniel as the uncle, as he is British, like Mandus, and has a sister. Since Daniel's sister Hazel only survives and lives past fifteen in the case that Daniel takes Agrippa's head, and in the only other ending where Daniel lives the castle of Brennenburg is destroyed by the Shadow, it's heavily implied that the Good Ending to The Dark Descent is canon.
  • Nonstandard Game Over: If you enter a section of the machine after the attack on London before neutralizing the manpig in there, you are treated to a short cutscene of said manpig killing you before you can react. Justified since you have to complete a puzzle in there and you can't run back to where you came from, so the game just shoves you back to the previous checkpoint.
  • Nothing Is Scarier: Much like the first game, in the first hour you don't come into full physical contact with the monsters at all, and instead you hear and see them as they stalk you and begin to get closer and closer to you.
    • Type III is used majorly throughout all of the outdoors segments. You're all alone on the deserted streets of the London, with less that one tenth of it's population today, and even though you can't see them, you know the manpigs are watching, but instead of attacking, they just watch your every move.
  • Nursery Rhyme: Mandus' dialogue in one of his flashbacks alludes to a particular nursery rhyme. Which one? "This Little Piggy", of course. Though evidently, having roast beef wasn't one of his options:
    Mandus: I am off to market. I will cry all the way home. I will have none, I will have none at all.
  • Oddly Named Sequel 2: Electric Boogaloo: The developers freely admit that A Machine for Pigs was an odd name for a sequel to a horror game, but the more they thought about it, the more that they liked it. They kept the name in part because it was so odd, that it would stick out in people's minds, and not fit into a neatly defined category for what people expect.
  • Offing the Offspring: After seeing his children would die horrifically in World War I, Mandus cut out their hearts as a ritual sacrifice in hopes of creating a god who could save the world from the horrors of the 20th century.
  • Paint the Town Red: After the manpigs go on their rampage through London's streets, Mandus must venture back down into the machine, passing the "Tripery" on the way. This is the place where all the blood runoff from bleeding out the "products" being processed gets run through. He passes pipes gushing with outflows of blood, through channels of rushing blood, and finally wading through what amounts to a small lake's worth of blood to exit. All this goes to show just how many people have been "processed" in the last few minutes.
  • Pig Man: The monsters chasing the protagonist, which angrily squeal as they batter down doors. Mandus even refers to them as manpigs.
  • Post-Historical Trauma: Experiencing this is what drove Mandus over the edge.
  • Powered by a Forsaken Child:
    • The Machine is powered by Compound X, which is heavily implied to be vitae, a supernatural substance derived from human pain and suffering. To keep up with its copious energy demands, the Machine was designed to manufacture Compound X on an industrial scale, which is why the Machine unleashes the manpigs on London towards the climax, to collect as many living people as possible to be tortured to death and drained of vitae.
    • Children have proven indispensable for maintenance work in the pipe system. Mandus regularly sends down orphaned children into the steam pipes to clean them up. They often get scalded to death in the process.
  • Psychological Horror: Like the first game, but more so. The survival elements are downplayed this time around, while the psychological elements are played up. This was in part to play to The Chinese Room's strengths telling interactive narratives, and in part because they wanted to distinguish it from the original game, saying that making the gameplay too familiar would just make the player more comfortable and undercut the horror.
  • Psychological Torment Zone: Mandus occasionally finds areas covered with children's wooden building blocks and teddy bears. Time often slows down here, and Mandus laments for what might have happened to his children.
  • Purple Prose: Oswald seems to enjoy writing like this, as it is seem both in the pages he does not remember writing and in his in-game journal.
  • Rage Against the Heavens: While not his sole motivation, Oswald Mandus blamed God for his wife's death and wanted to create a new god to replace him.
  • Redemption Equals Death: To protect all of London from becoming sacrifices to the Engineer, Mandus re-merges with his creation, killing them both.
  • Resources Management Gameplay: Averted, unlike the original game, as there is no inventory, no tinderboxes, no oil limits on your lantern this time around. The developers have said that as a Survival Horror game, they are easing up a bit on the "survival" elements to shift more of their creative attention to the "horror" elements.
  • Restart the World: This is the motivation of The Engineer. He saw horrific visions of the 20th century, which included the Holocaust and the two World Wars (in which Mandus' children die), and came to the conclusion that the best way to prevent it from happening was to destroy humanity and start over.
  • Screw Destiny: Mandus and the Engineer's original goal was to avert the horrifying wars and genocides of the coming century.
  • The Secret of Long Pork Pies: As Mandus' diary entries first hint at and then ultimately confirm, the Machine is processing human flesh which Mandus is then distributing as pork. It's unclear if all the meat he produced was human, or if he was offering a mixture of human flesh and real pork. Several late-game diary notes reveal that Mandus took a particular cruel delight in first feeding human meat to oblivious wealthy individuals at parties held at his estate, and then abducting as many of those people as he could without generating panic to feed them to the next party's guests.
    Professor: My dear Mr. Mandus, I admire your vision, I truly do—but there are surely not enough pigs in the whole of London to feed the appetite of such a machine.
    Mandus: That all rather depends, Professor, on what one considers to be a pig.
  • Sensory Abuse: Done by creating music that is intentionally dissonant. "Mors Praematura"note  in particular uses dissonant arrangements of opera, low winds, and strings to make the player uncomfortable.
  • Serial Killer: Mandus' first sanity effect comes from finding the teeth of several victims of what is implied to be a serial killer. A few hours later Mandus finds out it was he himself.
  • Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: Mandus, the Professor, and The Machine are all very fond of using big words.
  • Shout-Out: Early on in the game there's a room full of hunting trophies and you can find a spider that looks suspiciously like the ones from Penumbra in a display case. It's also sort of an in-joke or Call-Back because Amnesia is Penumbra's Spiritual Successor and Dark Descent was developed by the same team even though A Machine for Pigs wasn't.
  • Sickening Slaughterhouse: Mandus' meat factory, which is full of blood and guts, and filled with terrifying pig monsters.
  • Soundtrack Dissonance: Female-voiced soft opera music will often play over scenes of squalor and slaughter. Justified via Source Music, as the music is played over speakers in the machine as part of the process of soothing the "products" and keeping them calm as they traverse down the pigline.
  • Start X to Stop X: Kill millions to stop millions from dying in the coming decades. Though of course, Mandus was completely out of his mind when he came up with this plan.
  • Steampunk: The visuals of the game use a lot of gears and cogs. They are even present in Frictional Games' logo.
  • Story Breadcrumbs: The backstory unfolds as we discover Oswald's journal entries, which are received through the course of the whole game.
  • Suspiciously Similar Substitute: The manpigs share many physical similarities to the grunts of Amnesia: The Dark Descent. This is not a coincidence; the manpigs were explicitly based on grunt corpses and the remains of Alexander's vitae research that Mandus found in the ruins of Castle Brennenburg.
  • Talking Is a Free Action: Or, at least, writing in your journal. Whilst pumping some gas, there's a Jump Scare from the resident evil-demon-creature-things, and any sane player will finish the pumping, grab the gas can and haul ass. Mandus, on the other hand, takes the time to write in his journal!
    Dear sweet Lord of all that is good and holy! I must make my escape, grasp this container and its putrid contents and flee this place for that creature, that nearly-man returns. I will head for the church, surely such an abomination could not follow onto hallowed ground!
  • Title Drop: The game's subtitle comes up in one of Mandus' journals, and is a running phrase through the entire story.
    Mandus: This world is a machine. A machine for pigs. Fit only for the slaughtering of pigs.
    • The Engineer drops this line in-game during a bit of Evil Gloating, after tricking Mandus into releasing the manpigs to slaughter the people of London.
  • Trophy Room: Full of preserved large game, such as a bear, a hippo, and a large anteater, contained in glass displays. Mandus appears to have been a Great White Hunter in his past.
  • Uncanny Valley: The manpigs invoke this trope, not so much by their appearance, but by the way they move. When you see one for the first time, its stooped, three-legged gait makes it hard to tell if it's an animal that has been turned monstrous or a person that has been turned animalistic. It's a minor Wham Moment when you see one standing up for the first time, revealing that they are indeed fully humanoid.
  • Victorian London: The setting for the game is New Years Eve in London, 1899. While London has always been important to the main character of all previous Frictional Games, this is the first one to feature it as a setting. Unlike the Closed Circle of Castle Brennenburg in the first game, this location will have the player venture outside of a single building and explore the fog-shrouded streets, implying a somewhat wider circle.
    Dan Pinchbeck: We're going full on Victoriana.
  • The Voice: "The Engineer", a mysterious presence who contacts Mandus via telephone lines set about the environment, urging him onward.
  • Well-Intentioned Extremist: The Engineer and formerly Oswald genuinely believe the horrifying sacrifices made were necessary to protect mankind from an even worse fate, the unspeakable carnage of the 20th century's countless wars and genocides.
    Engineer: Mandus, please. I am no more evil than you. We sought the same thing, to save humanity, ridding them of their painful, stupid, pointless lives.
  • Wham Line:
    • The end of this letter from an orphanage matron to Mandus, thanking him for providing her starving children with food.
      Matron: I hope you will find our children full of promise. They will, I assure you sir, make the most wonderful additions to your product line.
    • When the Halloween trailer was released, the last exchange in it was a Wham Line at the time.
      Professor: My dear Mr. Mandus, I admire your vision, I truly do— but there are surely not enough pigs in the whole of London to feed the appetite of such a machine.
      Mandus: That all rather depends, Professor, on what one considers to be a pig.
  • Willing Suspension of Disbelief: Unlike the more subtle Dark Descent and Justine, which chooses their surreal-horror settings in more remote locals, Machine for Pigs ups-the-stakes to an almost absurd degree by having it based in London of all places, yet Mandus' factory and sinister plot therein is never uncovered until an Apocalypse How happens.
  • You Wake Up in a Room: The story begins with Mandus waking up in a room not remembering more than his name, and that his children need him, which he immediately sets off to search for.

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