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"Things are never quite what they seem. We think we understand the world around us, but we really only see the outside, what it seems to be. My name is Lucas Kane. My story is the one where an ordinary guy has something extraordinary happen to him. Maybe it was supposed to happen, maybe it was my destiny, or my karma or whatever. I know one thing for sure: Nothing's ever going to be the same again."

Lucas Kane is an ordinary New York City IT administrator until he murders a total stranger in a possessed trance and flees the crime scene. From there on, he becomes a fugitive from the law, relentlessly chased by police officers Carla Valenti and Tyler Miles. But those two become the least of his concerns when he unexpectedly gains superpowers and becomes the target of an Ancient Conspiracy that initially manipulated him into committing murder in the first place... And that all happens on the backdrop of global cooling around ten degrees Celsius every day.

Fahrenheit is a highly cinematic Action-Adventure game developed by Quantic Dream and written by David Cage in 2005. It was redubbed to Indigo Prophecy for American release to avoid confusion with Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11. A later US re-release under the Fahrenheit name popped up, containing scenes cut from IP that were present in the European version of the game and an appropriately higher age rating. The game was re-released again on computers and iOS with improved textures and full controller support under the combined name Fahrenheit: Indigo Prophecy Remastered in late January 2015, again uncut and uncensored.

One of the most prominent gameplay features of the game was so-called "physical challenges", which required the player to press several buttons in close succession or just hit left and right very, very fast. These were used to lend a sense of physical urgency to the game's more fast-paced scenes.

There is also a Spiritual Successor. See Heavy Rain.

Not to be confused with Fahrenheit 451, or the fire rescue FMV game called Fahrenheit.


The game contains examples of:

  • 20 Minutes into the Future: Set four years after the game’s release, the only difference in technology being more advanced looking computers.
  • Accent Upon The Wrong Syllable: You'll hear a lot of it from your guide, David Cage himself, in the tutorial. "Action see-qwensis" indeed.
  • Action Commands: These pretty much are the combat system, and a lot of non-combat events are handled this way as well.
  • Advertised Extra: Markus. He's called the fourth protagonist by promotional material and GOG's description for the game, but you only play as him during two brief scenes, and whether or not he dies is entirely irrelevant to the overall plot - he'll appear again during a sequence later to say some encouraging words before dropping out of the story altogether.
  • After the End: If you mess up during the Purple Clan fight, this is what you get. The temperature continues to drop around the world and humanity's population drops by 75%, with the rest being hunted down. Not that the "happy" ending is all sunshine and rainbows, mind.
  • All Just a Dream: The Oracle initially masks his attacks as such.
  • Anachronism Stew: Lucas is a young man and the present day in the game is 2009. However, flashbacks to his childhood seem to take place in the 1940s or 1950s.
  • Big Applesauce: Set in NYC. Invoked in Lucas's opening narration.
    Lucas: It all started right here. Where else could it happen? New York City, capital of the universe, the chessboard destiny chose for the last big game.
  • Badass Bookworm: Lucas is an IT administrator and reads Nietzsche in his free time, but also uses the Power of Rock to seduce ladies and practices taekwondo.
  • Bad Job, Worse Uniform: The outfit regular police officers have to wear is pretty garish, and it can't be fun patrolling the streets in such bad weather conditions either.
  • Barbie Doll Anatomy: Some versions. To get a less restrictive rating, some regions vastly edited the sexual content of the game. One such casualty was the final sex scene between Carla and Lucas. While the sex scene remains in the game, it was severely cut down, with any shots showing naughty bits removed. However, one shot remains where you can see Carla's breast in full - except in this version of the game she has no nipples.
  • Big Bad Ensemble: The Orange and Purple Clan, two separate entities at each other's throats over receiving the Indigo Child's message and accessing her power.
  • Bittersweet Ending: The Orange Clan ending. The Oracle manages to access Jade's power, but Lucas and Carla are allowed to live and the new ice age is stopped. Life basically goes on as it does usually, but Lucas thinks that, one day, the Orange Clan will reveal their true plan for the world, whatever that may be.
  • "Blackmail" Is Such an Ugly Word: Lucas realizes that he is manipulated by Agatha, whom the Cyborg disguised as, but she claims that he is guided.
  • Bloodstained Glass Windows: In Markus' church, and set against angel statues to boot.
  • Bookmark Clue: The two detectives Carla and Tyler find a copy of The Tempest in a crime scene, at the table that Lucas (the killer) was sitting at. Tyler finds a piece of scrap paper inside that Lucas was using as a bookmark, and a friend of Carla's identifies the scrap paper as a printout from a financial institution, enabling the detectives to track down Lucas to his office.
  • But Thou Must!: Lucas stresses how important it is that he covers his tracks as much as possible, lest he get arrested. You can do a good job of that while playing as him and have Carla and Tyler be as incompetent as the game allows all you want, but there is ultimately no way to avoid leaving enough of a trail for Carla to be able to point to Lucas as the killer.
  • Claustrophobia: Carla is severely claustrophobic for reasons she's never understood. This actually factors into gameplay, such as during a chapter where she has to keep it under control while searching for files on the case, or when the power goes out in the narrow corridors of a sanitarium ward. If the player can't keep it in check in the former chapter, they can have her give up and get Tyler to do it instead at the cost of some sanity points.
  • Come Back to Bed, Honey: Tyler does this to his girlfriend Sam: she's seducing him on their anniversary when the phone rings regarding the murder case he's working on. You can optionally have Tyler make love to her, but the game won't continue until you answer the phone and leave for work.
  • Consulting a Convicted Killer: After Carla discovers similarities between Lucas' case and past murders, she visits Janos, the culprit of those past murders, at Bellevue Asylum in order to find out the link both cases.
  • Continue Your Mission, Dammit!: If you don't make progress in certain sections for some time, something minor happens that drops your character's Sanity Meter as an incentive to hurry up. Mess around for too long as Carla at the police station and, depending on where you're at in the story, she'll either impatiently look at her watch and remind the player to call Tyler or she'll let out a yawn as she connects the evidence together. Both of which decreases your sanity, which can lead to a game over.
  • Cosmic Deadline: Failure to find the Indigo Child = ice age.
  • Creator Cameo:
    • David Cage, the game's lead director and writer, appears as the guide in the tutorial and in a few bonus videos. His photo appears in an advertisement on the in-game internet. There's a poster for a movie named Citizen Cage. One of the books in Takeo's store is written by De Gruttola (Cage's real last name).
    • An in-game spam email for antivirus software comes from Quantic Dream Software.
  • Creator's Culture Carryover: Carla is occasionally addressed as "Inspector" early on, which, in the NYPD, would put her two grades above Captain Jones in real life. It's far more likely they were referring to the rank in some European countries that's roughly equivalent to Lieutenant in the U.S. Strangely enough, the sign on the door of her and Tyler's office does list her rank as Lieutenant.
  • Death of a Child: Used at every opportunity. In the park scene, if you fail while trying to save the kid who fell under the ice or don't even attempt to, he dies. In a flashback section, one, two or three kids will die if you don't find them in time. And, whatever ending you get, Jade dies.
  • Destroying a Punching Bag: An optional sequence has the protagonist working out with a punching bag. Because of his newfound supernatural strength, he kicks it so hard that it flies off its chain and lands on the other side of the room.
  • Developer's Foresight: Some game over scenes are made even in circumstances rarely encountered by the player. Leave the bathroom while bloody as Lucas when the officer is too close to the door (requiring the player to basically wait for around 2 minutes)? Stay in the bathroom after only hiding the body and/or cleaning yourself up, while not mopping up the bloody trail? There's a unique cutscene for it.
  • Divine Chessboard: With Lucas right in the middle, and the evil priest controlled by another faction. Lucas even lampshades this in the introduction to the game, where he refers to New York as “the chessboard destiny chose for the last big game.”
  • Do Well, But Not Perfect: When Carla/Tyler is questioning Lucas in his office. Failing the Quick Time Events which appear alongside a bunch of green insects is actually beneficial — rather than tanking your mood and ending your game the way it would elsewhere, it prevents Lucas from reacting to them and appearing hysterical to the questioner. Naturally the game isn't going to tell you this.
    • In the same chapter (and also in the very first chapter, in fact), it's usually easier if you leave valuable evidence out in the open when playing as Lucas (such as the table knife he's made to use as a murder weapon, or the objects on his office desk) so Tyler and Carla can collect it later with no problems. If you do try and hide the clues, Lucas will do so off-screen, which forces the player to search for them when controlling the cops, sometimes within a time limit.
  • Downer Beginning: Here's your player character — he just brutally murdered someone, he doesn't know why, and there's a cop in the restaurant outside. And... action!
  • The Dragon: The Oracle, to the Orange Clan.
  • Dueling Player Characters: In addition to the whole "one character leaves clues, the two others find them" mechanic, there is an episode where Carla and Tyler spar at the police gym. Notably, not only can you decide whom to control during the sparring, but you can also lose (even on purpose), which is helpful because the winner gets a boost to their Sanity Meter (which Carla usually needs more than Tyler).
  • Elective Broken Language: A Japanese-American bookstore owner named Takeo speaks in stereotypical Asian Speekee Engrish fashion. If Tyler finds the owner's book, it's revealed that he does it merely because customers like "that wise old Japanese master stuff", and he was actually born in the US.
  • Endless Winter: The plot takes place against the backdrop of an unnaturally long and harsh winter, which is eventually revealed to be supernatural. Even though the villains didn't cause it, one of them chooses not to stop it in the ending where he wins, destroying humanity.
  • Everything Trying to Kill You: Some of the action sequences feature all parts of the environment conspiring to destroy Lucas.
  • Exactly What It Says on the Tin: The mission "Captain Jones is Really Upset".
  • Exposed to the Elements: Played with. While people are normally aware of the cold and try to dress accordingly, especially as the temperature continues to fall, other characters don't seem to notice at times. Lucas apparently likes to sleep during winter with the window open when he only has one blanket. Tyler and Jeffrey's basketball game has them wearing shortsleeved jerseys and shorts while playing outside while the temperature reading states that it's -12 degrees Celsius.note  They don't even complain about the chill.
  • Eye Take: Various different characters widen their eyes in disbelief throughout the first two-thirds of the story. By the time everyone has stopped doing that in the third act, the audience is more than willing to take over.
  • Facial Composite Failure: The player can do this to varying degrees when Tyler has the waitress using a Super Identikit to reconstruct Lucas's face.
  • Faction-Specific Endings: The game has the Orange Clan ending, the Purple Clan ending, and the Invisibles ending (which feels a lot like a Lone Wolf one). Notably, the first two endings are cleared not by allying yourself with the respective faction but by losing to their representative in the Final Battle.
  • Fake Longevity: The dialogue choice system, especially near the end. It doesn't really affect the course of the game, it just limits the pieces of super-critical exposition you can question others about. At one point, if you want to know what Chroma is while also wanting to know about the Purple Clan, you have to restart the chapter.
  • Fanservice: Plenty of it. Most notable is the chapter where Carla is roaming her apartment in her underwear right after a gratuitous Shower Scene.
  • Fission Mailed: You are unavoidably surrounded by police at one point, and Lucas even begins to recite a variant of his game over monologue. Then his powers kick in....
    Lucas: Damn, the police. They already found me. I'll spend the rest of my days rotting in prison, and I'll never find out what really happened-...No, it's not gonna happen like that.
  • Foreshadowing:
    • In the early scenes, you clearly see Bogart, the crow and the Oracle although you don't know their significance. Hell, you even see Jade "The Indigo Child" rendered in a blue tint as part of the restaurant murder cutscene. Which makes the ending all the more conspicuous.
    • There's even foreshadowing in the tutorial of all places - next to the blue screen, you can see a giant mite hanging from a wire.
  • "Friends" Rent Control: Even though Lucas makes IT Administrator money, an apartment the size of his would not only cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in New York, the interior size of his place is far too big to fit, considering the spacing of apartment doors in the run-down hallway outside. Carla and Tyler both own similarly huge studio apartments as well, with Tyler's being, ironically enough, the smallest despite the fact that he lives with Sam.
  • Funny Foreigner: Takeo, who pretends to be an Old Master Obfuscating Stupidity though he was born in and never left Brooklyn, and only pretended as such for the customers' sake. He's more American than Tyler is!
  • Gameplay and Story Segregation: Whenever Lucas stops to investigate something, he engages in an unskippable bit of internal monologue. This does not stop the clock, which is bad during Timed Missions. Which is, of course, basically all of them.
  • Genre-Busting: Some elements of Monkey Island style adventuring, God of War-esque action button minigames, the odd piece of stealth, a grainy cinematic sheen to the whole package... ambitious is not the word.
  • Godhood Seeker: This is the main reason why the Orange Clan wants the Indigo Child even if they already controlled everything.
  • Guide Dang It!: Many players get stumped at the scene where Tyler/Carla is questioning Lucas, Lucas starts hallucinating spectral green insects (again) and the game enters an action sequence. The solution is to ignore the minigame, as successfully playing it will cause Lucas to react to the insects, and Tyler/Carla gets more and more suspicious at Lucas freaking out and eventually arrests him. This is the only sequence in the game where succeeding in a QTE will cause a negative result, hence players' confusion.
  • Halfway Plot Switch: Infamously so. With the story going from a gritty murder mystery about a man who supposedly killed someone but doesn't remember it, to a Matrix-inspired, supernatural story featuring Mayan cults, giant ghost fleas, ghost angels, an oracle with manipulation powers, magical and sentient beings, and kung-fu. This comes almost completely out of nowhere and was barely hinted at in the story.
  • Hallucinations: The Oracle causes Lucas to have intense, nightmarish visions as he comes into his new powers, several of which are traumatic enough to potentially kill him or drive him to insanity.
  • Hot Coffee Minigame: There are three opportunities, one is story mandated the other two (which both come before it) are optional. The optional ones are Sex Starts, Story Stops: The first one being an optional encounter where, if you play your cards just right when your ex-girlfriend drops by at your apartment (play your guitar for her and then kiss her), she and Lucas will have a playable sex scene together with the player having too press the analog stick to thrust.... Yeah. The second one, however, is much more egregious: Right before the very finale of the game, Lucas and Carla lie on a mattress together for what could very well be how their last night together before the Earth becomes covered with ice, while Carla wishes the two could have met under better circumstances... and then Carla decides that she loves Lucas and they fuck (Even though the temperature is below freezing). Yes, the previous sentence is basically the only indication that the two have any sort of sexual tension between one another. Also, Lucas is technically dead during the second one and his girlfriend only died the previous day. Carla even mentions how cold his skin is shortly beforehand.
  • Idiosyncratic Menu Labels: Apt for a highly cinematic game, the "new game" function is retitled as "New Movie", and level select as "Chapters".
  • I Just Knew: Likely a consequence of the cut content, if Carla asks how he knows everything in the cementary, Lucas says he just knows and what's more important is if she believes him or not.
  • I Know Karate: Every main character demonstrates an impressive amount of unarmed combat skill, but Lucas takes the cake as he eventually starts doing Wire Fu as well. Justified by Lucas training regularly in private (evident in the presence of a boxing bag in his apartment) and by Tyler and Carla sparring regularly (indicated by a playable chapter in the game).
  • "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight: If Lucas is possessed by the Cyborg, Carla can take control to snap him out of it. The Cyborg will foil it by knocking her out of the way. Of course, seeing her hurt gets Lucas to snap out of its control.
  • Impairment Shot: When Lucas wakes up the morning after the first murder all covered in blood, his POV shot is distorted and shaky.
  • Inspector Javert: Carla and Tyler, two police detectives investigating Lucas' murder in the restaurant. While Lucas did commit the murder, it was while he was under the Oracle's mind control, something that Carla and Tyler obviously aren't going to believe.
  • I Never Said It Was Poison: While Lucas is being questioned by Carla, if you have him state that he never was in the restaurant, Carla will point out she never mentioned the restaurant, which ultimately ends in a game over where Lucas is taken for further questioning and likely arrested.
  • Ironic Echo: "As long as you do what you think is right, you can't go too wrong." Tyler says this to Carla if she tells him the truth of Lucas' innocence, and she says it back to him when Tyler is either leaving Florida with Sam or helping Jeffrey and Doug with the population of New York.
  • Just Before the End: The whole game, really. While it seems like nothing's out of the ordinary for anybody who isn't Lucas at first, the temperature is slowly falling over the course of the game, eventually putting humanity in danger as it drops as low as -60 degrees Celsiusnote . It goes one of two ways in the ending: either the temperature is restored to normal levels or it continues to drop, the latter of which firmly moves it to After the End.
  • Karma Houdini: The Orange and Purple Clan. Even in the best ending where Lucas wins, it's stated that the Oraclenote  and the Orange Clan just went back to their places of power in the secret government of the world and the Purple Clan went back to haunting the internet. No mention is made of them potentially becoming a threat again, especially with the latter wanting to exterminate humanity.
  • Letter Motif: The connection Tyler or Carla establish between Markus and Lucas, via a book and/or photo.
  • Magical Homeless Person: The Invisible are a secret society posing as homeless people who, while never demonstrating supernatural powers themselves, are aware of other supernatural factions and even mentor the protagonist in the use of his own awakening powers when he meets them.
  • Male Gaze: Unsurprisingly, Carla, but best illustrated by the warm-up sequences before Tyler and Carla's boxing match. Tyler's warm-ups show him at a slight distance from the camera, and it tends to focus on his face or whatever he's working on. For Carla, the camera goes straight for her cleavage. The match itself opens with the camera zoomed in on her butt.
  • Malt Shop: The story opens with a murder taking place in the bathroom of a New York diner.
  • Man Behind the Man: The Oracle actually serves the Orange Clan, a council of the most powerful humans on Earth.
  • The Magic Versus Technology War: The Orange Clan, a cult trying to perform magical rituals via mind control, versus The Purple Clan, an AI construct. Downplayed as it’s not a literal war, but it is a conflict fought in the shadows.
  • Mayincatec: The Oracle is a Mayan priest who performed human sacrifice, magically living on into the present day.
  • Medium Awareness: Tyler. After being set an improbable task by Takeo, his closing internal monologue line is "What am I, in a video game?"
  • Mirror Scare: After Lucas bandages his arms in his apartment, he closes his bathroom mirror and sees a figure behind him in the reflection. Of course, when he spins around, it's gone.
  • Ms. Fanservice: Carla. One chapter starts with her in the shower, then spending a couple of minutes of gameplay guiding her around her apartment in her underwear. And then there's the sex scene...
    • But singularly highlighted by the fact that the game producers actually released a buck-naked image of her, playfully dangling her cuffs, for publication in an adult magazine.
    • Sam. The first time (out of three) we see her, she walks around with only a shirt on. The second time, she wears a really skimpy dress to celebrate her and Tyler's anniversary. The first unlockable bonus scene features her and, let's just say it's the most NSFW thing about the game.
  • Multiple Endings: You can change the story at pretty much every chapter, right up to and including the end. Failure doesn't always result in a game over, although you might want to invoke them specifically to watch all the game content. At the end, there's three endings, depending on who gets the Indigo Child; one unambiguously bad, and two which are somewhat arguable.
  • Name of Cain: Lucas Kane. Subverted since he's one of the heroes; he can just act a bit like a Jerkass at worst (if the player decides to do so, that is.)
  • Never My Fault: According to Professor Kuriakin, the Oracle must never taint himself with the blood of another. This is why he chooses to possess anyone to murder that victim.
  • Never One Murder: Which leads Carla to believe she's chasing the wrong man, eventually. Tyler believes that since Lucas has killed once, will kill again.
  • Next Sunday A.D.: Released in 2005, set in 2009.
  • Nipple and Dimed: In the censored versions of the game, Carla's skin texture does not include nipples at all. You get to see her entire breast surface - but where the nipples are supposed to be there's just regular flesh tone.
  • Nonstandard Game Over: Every single chapter of the game has its own game over screen if you fail any objective, with a monologue by the dead character usually starting with the phrase "...and that's how my story ends". That's right: the game has so many different Game Overs that literally every Game Over is a Nonstandard Game Over.
  • No Time to Explain: Both Lucas and Carla pull this one. In the case of the former, picking that dialogue option ultimately saves Markus from being killed by the Oracle.
  • Oh, Crap!: The Oracle has this expression when Lucas manages to counter his telekinesis. Notable, since the Oracle only has two other expression (completely neutral and Slasher Smile).
  • Optional Sexual Encounter: Two, in addition to a mandatory one; see the article for a detailed entry.
  • Pet Homosexual: Carla's neighbor Tommy certainly isn't flaming, but he has elements of this nevertheless.
  • Pet the Dog: In the Orange Clan ending, despite being a thorn in his side for the entire game the Oracle spares Lucas and Carla in the end, content with accessing Jade's knowledge.
  • Plucky Comic Relief: Tyler, Tyler, Tyler. In a world where most of the characters are moody and overwrought, having a cool guy like him around can lighten the mood quite a bit.
  • Plotline Death:
    • Simultaneously played straight with Tiffany and subverted with Lucas, who is revived by the AI to fight the Oracle.
    • Depending on the player's actions (or the lack thereof), Lucas' brother Markus can suffer one of these, too.
    • Also Agatha.
  • Police Are Useless: Not so much. You can still miss obvious things when playing as Carla and Tyler, but the supporting officers are astute and good at their jobs regardless.
  • Press X to Die: One power that Lucas gains is the power of premonition, allowing him to see what happens a few minutes into the future or what happens if he does a certain action. When he's visiting Tiffany's apartment, he gets a vision that the police are staking the place and he'll be arrested if he tries entering the front door. Guess what happens if you try going in through the front door.
  • Private Eye Monologue: All three main characters pull it off at least once, but especially Lucas... funny seeing how he is the only main character who isn't a detective.
  • Prophet Eyes: Cryptic old woman Agatha has these. But that's okay, because eyes aren't the only way to see.
  • Put on a Bus: The late game offers a choice for Tyler to stay and finish the case or go to Florida with Sam, but either way it's his final appearance.
  • "Ray of Hope" Ending: The Purple Clan ending is this. Most of humanity dies in the new ice age, and the rest (including Lucas and Carla) are being hunted down and killed, and although they do manage to fight them due to Lucas' powers, their chance of victory is small. There is a small glimmer of hope in that Lucas and Carla's child is the new Indigo Child and savior of humanity according to Lucas' dreams.
  • Right Through His Pants: Conspicuously Inverted. Despite the fact that it is repeatedly stated that the temperature is well below freezing, and the fact that everyone around is rugged up in numerous layers, Carla and Lucas strip down to bare skin to have sex, in their unfurnished, unheated box car hideout.
  • Ripped from the Headlines: One of the news articles you can look at on Lucas's computer is about the aftermath of two teens shooting up a Chicago high school. Unsurprisingly, video games are to blame.
  • Same Content, Different Rating: Inverted with the remastered version, which was rated M despite being based on the uncensored version that was originally rated AO.
  • Sanity Meter: When the meter is full, it reads NEUTRAL rather than WELL or GOOD etc. Yeah... it's that sort of game.
    • Should it drop to zero, depending on what chapter you're on, Lucas will either kill himself or turn himself in to an insane asylum or the police. Tyler and Carla will quit the force with Tyler leaving for Florida with Sam and Carla going to live with her father. However, you usually have some control over the meter, with only two decisions (Tyler staying in New York, rather than leaving with Samantha, and Lucas choosing to let the boy drown rather than save him in the park) causing it to plummet precipitously.
    • There is no gameplay difference between high and low sanity; characters remain the same until they reach zero. This can lead to situations where minor events that should only annoy someone slightly can suddenly result in suicide or completely giving up, a particular example at the very start can result in Lucas being reminded of his bill if you try to leave without paying after draining his mental state resulting in an abrupt jumpcut to Lucas completely insane in an Asylum. In Carla and Tyler's case, yawning too much when the player takes too long in certain sections causes them to quit the force.
  • Schrödinger's Gun: Carla's Tarot reading. Pick a card, any card. Story dictates that you'll always draw the same ones in the same order.
  • Shout-Out: Several.
    • While looking at Takeo, Tyler compares him to a character from Gremlins.
    • The episode at the medical hospital is a Whole-Plot Reference to The Silence of the Lambs. The orderly is a clone of Barney and recites some of his originator's dialogue word-for-word. (Of course, then the power goes out and the movie goes Off the Rails.)
    • During the Stern Chase, Lucas needs a place to hide so he goes to see his old girlfriend. Long story short, he ends up having Breakfast at Tiffany's.
    • The professor who is an expert in Mayan societies is called Kuriyakin, which is very similar to Ilya Kuryakin.
    • Lucas poses as a reporter named John Cunningham. Several people bearing this name are writers of one sort or another.
    • In one of the childhood flashback scenes, Lucas must scale a telephone pole in Wishita, which makes him a "Wishita Lineman."
    • The use of Bullet Time and Wire Fu during the apartment escape, made more obvious when the scene involves hanging from a helicopter then backflipping near a subway train. Then there's the fight between Lucas and the Oracle which evokes the final fight in The Matrix Revolutions.
    • Several of the camera angles and character poses when a character is possessed resemble the Redemption in the Rain pose from The Shawshank Redemption.
    • Chroma is pretty much an obvious nod to Star Wars. At one point near the end a character even says to Lucas that it's "a force in you". No force lightning analogue, though...
    • Technically there's a shout out to the whole video game medium several times, courtesy of Detective Miles.
    • Lucas is shown reading an assortment of books, whether it's Shakespeare's The Tempest (which forms a small part of the plot) or Nietzche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
    • Lucas and Carla briefly take refuge with a secret network of homeless people who are aware of the battle for humanity, and oppose both the Orange Clan and Purple Clan. And they call themselves The Invisibles.
    • The Purple Clan ending, where the various AI machines lord over the surface of the earth while what's left of humanity fights back from underground is a pretty clear reference to the Skynet-controlled future seen in The Terminator. Lucas even ends up playing a role similar to that of John Connor due to his Chroma powers, and there are also some similarities between him and Kyle Reese; his and Carla's child is said to be the one who will finally save humanity.
  • Sex for Solace: When Carla starts thinking about the sadness of armageddon, she finds comfort with having sex with Lucas.
  • 6 Is 9: Carla and Tyler are trying to find Lucas in apartment 369, but the first "room 369" you enter has someone else inside; the lettering on the door un-sticks and swivels to reveal that they're actually at room 366. The mistake gives Lucas just enough time to get his own objective done and hide.
  • Soul Brotha: Tyler. If the fact that his apartment looks like it came right out of The '70s wasn't a big enough clue, he is constantly accompanied by a sleazy funk soundtrack wherever he goes. Every scene that the player controls him in has "Hang It Up" by Patrice Rushen, where it's playing basketball for $200 dollars to searching for clues this song will grind itself into your ears.
  • Story to Gameplay Ratio: The balance of story and gameplay is pretty much 50/50.
  • Summon Bigger Fish: The Purple Clan resurrecting Lucas, in a rare case of the PC being that bigger fish. He's not their ally by any means, but at the point where they bring him back, the Orange Clan is on the verge of winning; Lucas coming back represents their last chance to complete the Prophecy. And if Lucas comes out on top and gets the Indigo Child, they're far better off than if the Oracle gets it, since Lucas has no clue what the hell he's doing with the power of the Chroma and they can run back to the Net, while the Orange Clan will destroy them for good if they win. They really can't lose.
  • Suspiciously Apropos Music: Most of the music on Lucas's stereo is oddly appropriate to this particular situation. Notably, the second time you get a chance to play it is right before his estranged girlfriend Tiffany stops by to pick up her things, and the second song queued up is Theory of a Deadman's "Santa Monica", which is about a guy's girlfriend having left him.
  • Take My Hand!: Markus pulling Lucas onto the balcony after the Oracle's attack in his apartment.
  • Tarot Troubles: Tommy offers to give Carla a Tarot reading. She flips over four pairs of cards (from what appears to be a full deck) and gets nothing but major arcana, and they all predict negativity and gloom.
  • This Is Reality: Tyler muses on how going and finding one book in a huge bookstore is like a video game fetch quest. "What is this, a video game?"
  • Two First Names: The Kane brothers (Lucas and Markus) and Tyler Miles.
  • Uncle Tomfoolery: Tyler is a professional, sure, but a lot of his observations are darkly humorous and he is most definitely streetwise, having grown up around gangs in the Bronx before becoming a cop. Overlaps with Plucky Comic Relief.
  • Unexpected Genre Change:
    • The shooting gallery and stealth portions qualify, as do the basketball/gym scenes in terms of gameplay.
    • Plot-wise, the increasingly fantastic plot elements start to look like this after a relatively gritty and grounded start.
  • Unintentionally Unwinnable: The PC version suffered from a timing bug in the Press X to Not Die sequences. Depending on your system config, the time when you could enter commands could be as low as a quarter of the time that the game indicated to you. This wasn't too bad in the early sequences, but later in the game the puzzles became impossible to complete, because the game would decide to make you die before it even showed you the full sequence you had to enter. This same bug can also turn up in a few places in the PS2 version (at least the PAL release), notably in the final section, sometimes making it impossible to defeat the AI, and therefore making it impossible to get one of the endings.
  • Unwitting Pawn: Lucas has been manipulated by the AI disguised as Agatha.
  • Villainous Rescue: At the end of the game, if Lucas is tricked into giving the Indigo Child to the Purple Clan, then later loses the final fight against the A.I. at Wishita, the Oracle will show up to fight the A.I. for the Indigo Child, which buys Carla just enough time to run inside and free Lucas from the A.I.'s control.
  • Visual Pun: If, as Tyler, you decide to have sex with Sam instead of going to the police station, the game will cut back to Carla in their office with the camera looking through Tyler's basketball hoop. Meaning, Tyler scored.
  • Wet Blanket Wife: Sam is unhappy that Tyler's on the police force, and all her scenes end with her getting angry when he has to leave to work on the case. This culminates in her leaving for Florida and asking Tyler to come with her. If he says yes, then he disappears from the rest of the story; if he says no, his sanity drops all the way down to Wrecked and it's implied that he kills himself.
  • What Happened to the Mouse?: Given the "happiest" of the three endings, what exactly does Lucas mean when he says that the Purple Clan "went back to haunting us on the net"? Just one of the many factors which make the conclusion less than satisfying, unless he was implying that the Purple clan are Anonymous.
  • Xtreme Kool Letterz: There is a general preference of "K" over "C" in many names. It's almost surprising two of the protagonists aren't titled Lukas Kane and Karla Valenti, but one suspects David Cage was conscious of overkill.
  • Zeerust: Averted? It might be too early to say, but judging by the use of technology throughout the game chances are it'll still look pretty current in a decade or so. Hell, all the talk of the Pakistani Ultimatum, and the Chinese involvement in it make it seem like this could be happening today, even though the game technically takes place in the (not too distant) past at this point (the game came out in 2005 and takes place in 2009).

Alternative Title(s): Indigo Prophecy

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