Video Game / Outlast

This time, being afraid of the dark is not irrational. Be prepared — to run. Hide. Or die.

God help me, I think I've seen the Walrider.

— Entry in the journal of Miles Upshur

Outlast is a Survival Horror game released for Steam on September 4, 2013 with a version for the PlayStation 4 released on February 5, 2014, and an Xbox One version released on June 26, 2014.

You control independent journalist Miles Upshur, who breaks into Mount Massive Asylum for the Criminally Insane, which had been recently reopened by the transnational Murkoff Corporation, after receiving information from an inside source. Expecting a controversial scoop, Miles soon finds himself inside a horrible nightmare he could never imagine.

The gameplay largely revolves around Miles being a Non-Action Guy, with no combat options aside the ability to parkour his way over obstacles, hide in lockers and under beds, and cut off pursuers amongst the decrepit hallways of the facility. As an added mechanic, he has a camcorder with a Night-Vision Goggles mode, which is useful in the asylum's many pitch-black sections but requires batteries to operate.

An expansion pack, Whistleblower, was released on April 6, 2014. It follows Waylon Park, the inside source that tells Miles about Mount Massive, and takes place during the takeover of the asylum and after the events of the main game. Like Upshur, Park isn't physically equipped to handle the inmates and must run and hide while using a camcorder to see in the dark.

The game was followed by:

• Outlast: The Murkoff Account (2016) - A comic book series expanding on the games' universe.
• Outlast II (April, 2017) - A sequel, this time set in an Arizona cult town rather than the asylum.
• The Outlast Trials (May 18, 2023) - A co-op multiplayer game set in the Cold War.

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The game provides examples of:

Outlast

• Abandoned Hospital: Sort of. Miles notes that Mount Massive was shut down in the 1970s due to corruption and abuse of patients, but was reopened by Murkoff in 2009. The poor condition of the facility and a recent inmate riot that slaughtered much of the staff gives the impression of abandonment. However, Mount Massive hasn't housed female patients for a long time, so the entire female ward is falling apart and is the most decrepit area in the game.
• Abandoned Laboratory: The very last level of the main game is a military facility where the Murkoff Corporation conducted their experiments on the asylum patients. It's also where the player comes in contact with the Walrider itself.
• Absurdly Spacious Sewer: You spend a little time in one and it is huge.
• Acrofatic: Chris Walker is one of the fastest enemies in the game. He's also the biggest.
• Alas, Poor Villain: Surprisingly, Miles's reaction to Chris Walker's death is this to some degree. It may have helped that Chris was a war veteran with PTSD and Miles's assumption was that, based on Chris' own ramblings, Chris was trying to contain the horrors of the facility, albeit in his own, insane way.
  Miles Upshur: You've escaped one Hell, Chris Walker. God help me but I somehow hope you didn't find another.
• Alone with the Psycho: There's multiple times in the game where you end up alone and trapped with a hostile inmate. You won't be walking away from one of them in one piece.
• Always a Bigger Fish: You finally encounter the Walrider in the last area of the game. One of its first acts is to messily kill Chris Walker, the Implacable Man giant inmate that has been pursuing you throughout the entire game.
• Ambiguously Gay: Rudolf Wernicke worked with Alan Turing, a scientist who laid the foundation for modern computing and was found guilty of being homosexual, tortured with hormone therapy, and committed suicide due to it in the 50s. When reminiscing about his work with him, Wernicke talks about him and regards him like the love of his life. You can also find a document that implies that Wernicke was going to be sent to a concentration camp for his implied homosexual relationship with Turing, before the Nazis decided to force him to work for them.
• Anachronism Stew: Miles' notes mention Mount Massive Asylum was built in The '50s and closed in the 70s, yet it doesn't look like anything from the 1950s. It's closer to a 19th century Kirkbridge Plan asylum, which fell out of fashion in the late 19th century with the last of them being built in 1913.
• Anti-Villain: Chris Walker is trying to stop the Walrider outbreak... by killing everyone involved. Given what most of the people in this Asylum are, we can't say we blame him. Guess what? Ultimately, the crazily insane, gigantic nut-job is right.
• Artistic License – Anatomy: Leaving aside the monumental amounts of Body Horror that no human being should be able to survive being put through, one glaring factor of all of the Variants is their eyeshine when viewed through the night-vision filter on the camera. Eyeshine is caused by light reflecting off of an animal's tapetum lucidum, a reflective layer of tissue in the eye that allows for light to be amplified in dim settings and giving effective night vision. Humans do not have a tapetum lucidum, and thus do not have eyeshine since our eyes are designed to absorb more light rather than reflect it^note Though exceptionally bright sources of light like a camera flash can cause temporary eyeshine by illuminating the interior of the eye, which is why you sometimes see red eyes in photos where the flash was used.
• The Atoner: By the end, Rudolf Wernicke realizes that he played God too much, so he asks Miles to kill Billy. Then when Wernicke sends officers to kill Miles, not realizing that Miles was the new host for the Walrider.
• The Bad Guy Wins: Miles kills Billy Hope, who was projecting the Walrider, only to get possessed by it and then gunned down by Wernicke's hired soldiers, which in turn, released the Walrider once again to terrorize the world... at least, it seemed this way until the DLC was released.
• Bedlam House: Mount Massive Asylum is not a place of healing. It turns out that this is entirely intentional, even critical to the plot: The Morphogenic Engine only kicks in when used on subjects who have experienced/are experiencing extreme emotions only found in horrible living conditions (which is why its first successful use was in the heart of Nazi Germany). Wernicke says it's a way to force the human body to assemble molecules on demand — human-created nanotechnology. Either that or the patients are right and the Walrider is Made of Evil and only manifests in extremely evil conditions. The two theories are not mutually exclusive. Additionally, the Morphogenic Engine seems to run on ''memes" as much as anything. Patients yell cryptic stuff that is surprisingly accurate, like how "THIS is the experiment!" or "What kind of experiment would the dead perform on the living? I'll give you a hint: it's happening right now!" By continuing to do horrible things to each other, and to their former captors, the patients are "spreading" the experiment around. That's why you meet several executives who are just as crazy and mutated as the patients, including Trager and one of his victims. Kind of makes Martin's goal of wanting you to spread the truth all the more sinister, huh?
• Big Bad Ensemble: The main antagonists are Chris Walker, the hulking monstrosity who chases you down at every opportunity; Richard Trager, who captures and tortures you halfway through the game; and the Walrider, the ghostly apparition that everyone fears. The Twins are part of the ensemble to a lesser extent, as they still attack you even though their boss says otherwise. In the final level, it is revealed the Greater-Scope Villain is Dr. Wernicke, the one who created Walrider.
• Body Horror: Many of the surviving inmates are rather grotesquely deformed and multilated, all of which were visibly made by the doctors of the asylum.
• Character Development: Happens throughout the various notes by Upshur the player collects. Miles starts out as resolute in investigating the asylum, and is shaken, but brave against most of the things he sees in the beginning. By the middle, he is more unhinged and aggressive towards the enemies he faces, and at the end he's been driven nearly insane by the things he has seen, and is content with his belief that he will die soon.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Inverted. Almost everyone Miles runs into that aren't already trying to kill him either do nothing to help him at all (Father Martin) or they just screw him over and make things worse for him (again, Father Martin, and Richard Trager). Hell, Rudolf Wernicke, the one person who actually tells Miles the truth and helps him to the best of his ability actually sends a team of soldiers to kill him! Though this last one could just be that Miles is basically dead anyway and Wernicke is just finishing him off.
• Clarke's Third Law: One of the variants can be heard talking aloud to himself and reminiscing that one of the doctors once told him that, to cavemen, science would look like magic, and modern men, magic would look like science.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: Many of the victims of the mental hospital look to be victims of this. Miles eventually becomes one himself.
• Contrived Coincidence: The asylum is littered with batteries that just so happen to be a match for Miles' camera.
• Controllable Helplessness: First, when Miles is captured by Trager, who wheels him through the asylum while you can only look around, then tortures him; second, when Miles loses his camcorder. You'll realize how powerless he is without it when you can't see a couple of feet in front of yourself and several patients lurk at you in the dark.
• Corporate Conspiracy: The Murkoff Corporation, which is viewed as a charitable corporation by the public, is actually a highly unethical Research, Inc., reopening the Mount Massive Asylum as a research facility with the inmates serving as guinea pigs for the Walrider Project.
• Crazy Sane: Arguably, Miles is this by the end. Even up to the last moment, he retains his faculties and remains somewhat coherent and empathic even to Chris' death, not unlike someone who just ran through a war zone. Chris Walker is implied to be this trope - he is sane enough to know how to stop the Walrider, but he is committing murder.
• Creepy Twins: You encounter a pair of twin brothers who calmly discuss killing and eating you while you're right in front of them. Later, they actually attempt to do so. Oh, and they're naked the entire time.
• The Cuckoolander Was Right: Richard Trager's monologue seems like the usual mad ramblings of the Asylum's inhabitants, but everything he says is actually true (albeit filtered through a fractured mind). His talk about how money has evolved from something solid, like the gold standard, to "an article of faith" does reflect the current state of modern economics (as the mortgage collapse easily attests), and his talk of "turning the consumer into the means of production" is a succinct description of Dr. Wernicke's research, which alters the cells of a human being's body to becoming nanite factories.
• Darkness Equals Death: Mostly inverted — dark areas are common, not necessarily locations with enemies, and always to your advantage, since you have a camera with an infrared flashlight and lens, while your enemies have to use their eyes. The one time you lose the camera, you discover that the darkness you've been having to avoid is full of enemies the moment you regain it.
• Deadpan Snarker: Miles, in his notes, becomes a bit of this as the game goes on. Such as mocking the Cruel And Unusual Deaths suffered by Dr. Trager and Fr. Martin.
• Demonic Possession: Just as Billy's about to die, the Walrider grabs Miles and possesses him, thus making him the new host.
• Developer's Foresight:
  • The first time Chris Walker stalks you, you need to hide in a pair of lockers to avoid him. He always checks the locker you didn't hide in, then turns his back on you before leaving. If you switch lockers while his back is turned, he'll turn back around and search the locker you just left. This makes you feel really clever, but actually isn't necessary since he doesn't do this if you don't switch lockers. Later in the game, he will search multiple lockers, though.
  • Late in the game, as you're about to enter the chapel, the two naked Twins will be standing there (they're hostile no more at that point). Until you leave the chapel, you cannot crouch - so you won't even be tempted to look straight into their crotches.
  • When you encounter the Walrider for the first time, you can shut the door in its face as it comes towards you, should you have quick reflexes. The Walrider proceeds to phase through the door and disappear after it gets close to you.
  • When you recover your lost camera, the enemies you suddenly find yourself surrounded by give you enough of a head start that you can shut a door in front of them.
• Diabolus ex Machina:
  • The only way to explain how Chris Walker keeps finding you, despite navigating through obstacles he physically cannot get through.
  • During the Trager section specifically; when you grab the elevator keys, Trager appears out of nowhere to cut down the door despite him having no reason to know where you are.
  • The ending. Miles is finally about to escape (albeit he's been possessed), and then an entire team of heavily armed guards randomly appear and apparently shoot him dead.
• Dissonant Serenity: Used with most of the people Miles encounters, for creepy effect. Notably the two naked inmates you encounter who calmly discuss that they are going to give you a running start before they tear you limb from limb.
• Door to Before: Played with. You never truly get the ability to backtrack, but you often find your way to places that are really close to where you were once before. The game has very good location-continuity. Several times you find yourself tantalizingly close to the lobby at the start of the game.
• Downer Ending: Miles manages to kill the Walrider's host, and starts to make his way out of the base before being stopped by a squad of soldiers, who shoot him. As the game cuts to black, it's revealed that the Walrider has possessed Miles, who then murders the squad and is implied to begin The End of the World as We Know It. Fortunately, the DLC slightly changes this to instead make a Bittersweet Ending.
• The Dreaded: The mysterious Walrider, who is talked about throughout the game, is described as this or worshiped.
• Driven to Suicide: You encounter an inmate who is sitting in a burning room, who, while coherent, miserably rants to you about what Rudolf Wernicke did to the inmates as he clearly waits to be burned to death. Once you turn on the sprinklers to stop the fire, he attacks you. Father Martin also has his followers burn him alive on a crucifix in a ritual sacrifice.
• Elaborate Underground Base: What lies beneath the Asylum is a laboratory which is where the Murkoff staff conducted the experiments that many in the Asylum have been subjected to.
• Everything Trying to Kill You: Surprisingly averted. Not all the inmates are violent, and even a few of the violent ones will show no interest in pursuing you. This actually makes exploring the asylum more tense, as it makes dealing with the inmates unpredictable since you never know whether they're going to attack or not.
• Evil, Inc.: The Murkoff Corporation. It's implied that basically every higher-up executive is evil by default, and any of their lower employees who grow a conscious are quickly dealt with through a combination of massive legal suits and/or just being outright killed.
• Extremely Short Timespan: The entire game takes place over a single night - the DLC expands on this and reveals that it occur over a period of less than twelve hours. If you look at the clock in the room where you obtain the Variant Postmortem document, you can see it is 03:53am. The clock in the very first room you arrive in says 8:55pm. By the time you die, it's presumably just around 4 am. You're only in the Asylum, as Miles at least, for just over eight hours!
• The Extremist Was Right: Given what the Walrider does to him at the end of the game, Chris Walker does actually have a point in murdering everyone: their bodies are being primed to produce the nanites that make up the Walrider's form. Not only that, it's hinted that the infection can spread through simple knowledge of the Walrider's existence.
• The Faceless: Miles Upshur's face is never shown, and any attempts to look in mirrors are heavily distorted. Even in promotional art, he's shown only from the neck down. The 3D model of Miles even goes as far as render him to appear headless◊.
• Facial Horror: There are dozens of people who have horribly mutilated or decaying faces.
• Fan Disservice:
  • Chris Walker is shirtless and musclebound - hideously so. His muscles are so huge they've deformed his body, and his face has been ruined and seems to be locked in a permanent Slasher Smile on top of it. That's Chris looming behind the game's title in the page image, for reference.
  • The Twins, the infamous machete-wielding naked men you run into who long to kill you slowly and eat your organs.
  • In the asylum, you'll run into a man who has no deformities on his body whatsoever having sex. With a headless cadaver.
  • Shortly before Doctor Trager cuts off two of your fingers, you get a full shot of his bare ass.
• Faux Affably Evil:
  • Richard Trager, after saving you, punches you out, ties you up to a chair, and jokes around, even when he is chopping a couple of your fingers off.
  • There's also the Twins Miles encounters in the asylum ward, both of whom nonchalantly talk about how they'd love to kill and eat Miles's organs while he's standing right in front of them.
• Final Death Mode: Insane Mode, which, in addition to sending you to the start of the game if you die, ramps up the AI difficulty and only allows you to carry two batteries. Beating the game on this mode will grant you a special achievement.
• Fingore: The insane Doctor Trager cuts off Miles's left ring finger and right index finger.
• First-Person Ghost: Averted quite strongly: not only can you see your body and shadow, but your hands frequently visibly interact with the scenery.
• Foreshadowing
  • The "Total Security" note obtained when Chris Walker appears in the Prison Block leaves Miles wondering "I hear him muttering about security protocols, containment. What if he's not the problem? What if he's trying to fix it?". We later learn that Chris is just trying to contain a bigger problem in the asylum by attempting to eliminate all the other possible hosts of the Walrider.
  • Father Martin is about the only real figure in the asylum who seems somewhat affable and wanting to help Miles, but him preventing the latter's escape early in the game is a good indication that he never intended to let Miles leave under any kind of "normal" circumstance, instead helping to make him the Walrider's new vessel.
• Fragile Speedster: Miles can sprint reasonably fast and vault over waist-high objects with relative ease. He's also unable to take more than a few hits from hostiles - especially when it comes to the likes of Chris Walker and Richard Trager.
• Freudian Excuse: A majority of the Variants were originally committed to the asylum for treatment for their psychological disorders (such as Dennis who may have been committed to the asylum for treatment for his Dissociative Identity disorder) while others were employees tortured by the Murkoff Corporation for attempting to report their experiments to the authorities. Due to the torturous experiments a majority of the Variants developed permanent deformities and their psychological disorders were made worse to a point of some Variants barely recognising the difference between reality and fantasy.
• Foreboding Architecture: This along with Suspicious Video-Game Generosity are entirely averted. Just as you don't know which inmates are docile and which will attack, a locker or a bed nearby is no indication you'll actually need it. It again adds to the tension since it doesn't work as a tell to when a murderous lunatic is going to come after you.
• Found Footage Films: Gives off this vibe, since you'll spend a good chunk of the game looking through your camcorder. It helps that everything you'd expect from a camera like that — the amount of time you've spent recording, a little flashing "REC" icon, a battery readout, and so on — appears somewhere on the screen. You can even crack it.
• Full-Frontal Assault: The machete brothers again. This naturally adds to the terror of getting chased by two cannibals.
• Gameplay and Story Integration: Miles is recording everything along his journey, so every time you bring the camera up, the recording timer continues from where you left off.
• Gainax Ending: See Downer Ending for more details on the explained parts of the ending. A squad of soldiers suddenly appears to kill Miles in the end, with Doctor Rudolf Wernicke leading them. This is never explained, nor the fact that Wernicke is still living after his nano machines are taken offline.
• Gender-Restricted Ability: Only males are suitable to control the Walrider via the Morphogenic Engine as the machine causes phantom pregnancies in females that almost always resulted in their deaths.
• Greater-Scope Villain: The Murkoff Corporation is responsible for all the suffering both you and the patients endure throughout the course of the game, even though the most you ever come into contact with them professionally is Miles being shot to death by the guards before the credits. This also applies to the second game.
• Hand Sliding Down the Glass: In the Whistleblower DLC, a variant is trapped in one of the decontamination chambers and suffocates on the gas flooding it. You arrive just as he leans on the glass and slides down, succumbing to the gas.
• Harder Than Hard: There's Normal, Hard and Nightmare difficulties in the original release of the game. The patch for the Whistleblower DLC adds an even harder difficulty setting, Insane, which is just as hard as Nightmare plus you have to play the entire game over again from the beginning if you die at any point.
• Heroic Mime: Played straight in the original game and Whistleblower (the most sounds they make are screams, grunts, and heavy breathing), but averted in the sequel.
• Hope Spot: The game is full of these.
  • "Okay, I'm at Security Control, and am ordering it to unlock the front door so I can get the hell out of here—wait, why's the priest guy pulling the lever on the power switch? DAMN IT" shortly followed by "Good, now I've got power again and can open the front doors at Security Contr—FUCK! Now he's stealth-tranquilizing me and putting me in a cell! What the hell, man!?"
  • Doctor Trager saves Miles from two inmates only to torture him by himself.
  • "Father Martin finally helped me and now I can get out of this god-forsaken building! Wait, why aren't the elevator doors opening? Why's the elevator going further down?! Damn you, Father Martin!"
  • "Hey, I can see an open door in a cargo hanger with a parked car through this window—and daylight outside! YES! Let me just round the corner and—DAMN IT! Walrider trying to kill me and it tripped the quarantine doors! ARGH!"
  • "Great Miles, you managed to kill the Walrider's host and become the new host, allowing you to escape and preventing it from running amok. Oh hi guards, what are you doing with those guns?"
  • The entire plot is a Hope Spot in retrospect. Miles's main goal is to find a way out of the asylum, but it's revealed in the final level that Billy uses the Walrider to kill anyone trying to escape, so even if he had immediately backtracked and gotten the hell out, he would have probably died anyway... and the only way he does escape is with the Walrider in tow.
• Human Resources: The mutations of the inmates are the result of the Morphogenic Engine modifying their cells to generate nanites.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: One of the SWAT officers is shown impaled from anus to collar bone by what looks to be a giant hook. He lasts long enough to tell Miles to run like hell before he dies from his injuries.
• Implacable Man: Chris Walker serves as this throughout the game.
• Insane Equals Violent: Zig-Zagged Trope. Justified in that Mount Massive is for the criminally insane, however most of the inmates don't attack you and it's implied in "Whistleblower" that the ones who do turn violent were so warped by the time Murkoff's experiments were done with them.
• Interface Screw:
  • Getting scared causes the screen to blur in at the edges.
  • Late in the game, Miles loses his camera and when he retrieves it, the screen is cracked, and static sometimes covers the screen. Naturally right when you pick it up, a group of enemies chase after you.
• Intrepid Reporter: Miles Upshur, breaking into a mental hospital chasing a tip about a corporate scandal.
• It Only Works Once: Doors are probably the best defense against enemies; since enemies can't physically open them for some reason and have to break them down, giving you good enough time to hide or escape. Sadly, when an enemy breaks it down, you can't use the door again. Some of the special enemies later on in the game can open doors though. While this means that they can still be used, it also gives you less time to escape.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Trager's speech about money and people turning to god in harsh times are true. The fact that he's also chopping up executives is entirely justified too — they didn't stop Jeremy from shoving him into the Morphogenic Engine, so he's just taking revenge; it's Disproportionate Retribution... but he does have a leg to stand on.
• Jump Scare: There are quite a few, some of which aren't so harmless.
  • The very first you'll encounter is when you first head the library; open the door and you'll immediately be greeted by a headless corpse hanging from the ceiling.
  • Early in the game, you're crawling in-between a small passage and Chris Walker grabs you by the arm, pulls you out of the passage, and throws you to the ground floor of the asylum.
  • After Miles messes up his camcorder, his recording will sometimes distort the screen with red and green lines and play a jarring noise of static.
  • When you activate the sprinklers to extingiush the fires blocking your progress, you are suddenly ambushed by the Pyromaniac.
• I Love the Dead: When Miles is in the asylum, he'll encounter a person doing...things to a headless corpse. And then he'll call Miles a sicko for watching.
• Herr Doktor: Dr. Wernicke, the chief scientist behind Murkoff's Mt. Massive project, is a Nazi scientist that was co-opted by the U.S. Government after the war for his expertise. Given the game takes place in the present day, he is ancient. His continued survival is explained by him to be the Walrider-possessed Billy refusing to let him die.
• Invincible Boogeymen: The game leaves the player at the mercy of opponents who cannot be fought, only evaded; as the intro reminds you, you're not a fighter - and the fact that many of your opponents are unnaturally strong or heavily armed doesn't help. Chris Walker and the Walrider are arguably the purest examples.
• Just Hit Him: Several encounters with Chris Walker have him throwing Miles across the room. While no doubt painful, this is infinitely preferable to him ripping his gizzard out.
• Laser-Guided Karma: The major enemies who try to kill the player character via cutscene are usually killed because of their own actions (or lack of actions because they're so intent on killing the player character). You could argue that most of the Murkoff staff suffer from this trope as well (particularly the "executive" in Trager's Ward who tries to get you captured and killed after motioning you to come towards him).
• Late to the Tragedy: The Mount Massive Slaughter has already taken place by the time Miles has arrived.
• Leitmotif:
  • A faint yet ominous horn plays whenever Chris Walker is nearby, and is usually heard before you know he's around. A more frantic theme plays when he chases after Miles.
  • Trager has his own distinctive themes for when he's stalking Miles, and for when he's alerted to his presence.
  • The Twins also have a distinctive theme that plays when they're in the vicinity.
• Le Parkour: Downplayed. While you won't do any Mirror's Edge-esque platforming, Miles can vault over low obstacles while being chased — even with his camera out — and shimmy around on ledges.
• Ludicrous Gibs: From the moment the protagonist sets foot in Mt. Massive Asylum, there are puddles of blood and random body parts strewn about. There's also a moment in the game when the protagonist lands on a pile of assorted guts and bones.
• Mad Doctor: Dr. Trager, actually a Murkoff R&D employee, as revealed in a document where he orders a former orderly permanently detained as a patient when the poor man tried to speak to the press of the deplorable conditions of the hospital. His work alone indicates the man isn't accredited.
• Made of Iron: Miles survives getting thrown out of a glass window (with cracked ribs as a result), being tossed out of another glass window by an explosion, having two fingers crudely chopped off, and falling ten to twenty feet to a hard concrete floor twice within a few minutes. Even in the end he manages to survive the process of being possessed by the Walrider and only dies (possibly) after being shot point blank by several heavily armed commandos.
• Male Frontal Nudity: The Twins are seen to be fully nude with visible genitalia.
• The Many Deaths of You: Some of the enemies in the game can kill you in special ways. Such as Chris Walker grabbing you and ripping your head off. Also an inmate in one of the basement areas that is staring at a wall. Approach him and he'll attack you with his machete, instantly killing you.
• Militaries Are Useless: Early in the game, the player learns that SWAT teams came to the asylum but, as the impaled SWAT soldier in the second-floor library illustrates, were unable to handle the situation. Later on, video footage shows the soldiers being brutally assaulted by the Walrider as they enter the basement.
• Mountaintop Healthcare: The game is set in the Mount Massive Asylum, and though you don't get much of an external view of the surrounding area, documents confirm that this is indeed a mountain. Plus, the facility was meant to take full advantage of the isolation an alpine locale could offer - which naturally backfires when the inmates break out.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Miles killing Billy ultimately led to him getting possessed.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: On the other hand, Wernicke exhorts Miles to kill Billy and thus destroy the Walrider, while planning on having the military force kill all witnesses afterwards and thus clean up the loose ends for Murkoff. This sequence of events instead leads the Walrider to possess Miles, who subsequently slaughters everyone and leaves to publicly wreak havoc on Murkoff.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: When Miles shuts down the failsafe to Billy's machine, the Walrider brutally hurls him around the room, only stopping once Billy's finally dead. Afterwards, Miles can barely stand.
• Non-Action Guy: Miles can't fight off enemies; the most he can muster is an aggressive push, which, due to a patch that removes all of the quick time events, he can't even do in the current game. He can run quite quickly though, and the night vision on his camera lets him have an advantage over all of the inmates he faces. Miles' inability to fight back is actually explained by a document found later in the game, explaining that even in subjects who are not capable of becoming hosts for the Walrider, exposure to the morphogenic engine causes a surge in human growth hormone as well as other hormones; every psycho you encounter is effectively on a heavy steroid cycle, and so far from normal mental processes that they are probably using a LOT more than the normal 50% of their muscle strength that a human is normally capable of employing.
• Nothing Is Scarier: Largely the reason the game is so frightening is that you'll often be walking through dark hallways with no lighting, and only a tiny bit of clarity. This means enemies can, and will, randomly pop up.
• Off with His Head!: Chris Walker, the large burly inmate, is shown to do so with his bare hands. Trager has the ability to snip off Miles' head with his bone shears. There are many headless corpses found in the asylum. You can find a room with racks of heads, all neatly lined up.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • Miles has several audible moments where he gasps or screams in shock at what happens, but the most notable example is when you recover the camcorder. Miles grabs his camcorder, slightly cracked and the display messed up, but no worse for wear considering what happened to it... Then you turn around to look in the darkness with the camera, only to be greeted by three disfigured inmates with knives. Combine the jumpscare with an almost immediate chase scene, being stalked by the inmates, and the chances that they were right behind you, watching and waiting for you to come to them for nearly half an hour, and you get one of the worst scares of the entire game.
  • At the end of the game:
    Dr. Wernicke: Gott in Himmel...You have become the host. (cue Sound-Only Death)
• One-Hit Kill:
  • Chris Walker has the ability to randomly grab Miles and and pulls his body away from it.
  • The Twins are carrying machetes and will not hesitate to stab Miles in the gut/back with them, which will kill him instantly.
  • Richard Trager is wielding a pair of bone shears and has the ability to either a) cut off Miles' head with them, or b) impale him through the chest/back with them.
  • The Walrider has the ability to possess Miles and make his entire body explode.
  • Also, don't approach the creepy guy standing in the corner of the room and staring at a wall. He doesn't like being disturbed.
  • In the Normal and Hard difficulties, Miles can take multiple hits from Walker and Trager. In the Nightmare and Insane difficulties, however, being attacked by either of them, even once, is instant death.
• Only a Flesh Wound: The loss of one finger of each hand does nothing to stop Miles. After he goes through the first bout of excrutiating pain, he acts 100% normal, probably because he's running on pure adrenaline. He doesn't have time to think on anything or process it at all; he's trying not to die!
• One-Man Army: Chris Walker is essentially tearing through Mount Massive's large population like the Doom Marine. You see piles and piles of his work at a few points in the game.
• Peek-a-Boo Corpse: When you open the door to the Library you are suddenly greeted by a hanging corpse.
• "Psycho" Strings: Prominently incorporated into abundant parts of the soundtrack, especially when gore are involved. Trager's and Eddie's respective theme tracks make especially prominent use of them.
• Real Is Brown: The game carries a color scheme that is a mixture of gray, brown, orange, and red, reflecting the unsettling and putrid nature of the asylum. Subverted by the time you reach the labs, which are brightly lit and comparatively more colorful than the rest of the asylum.
• Reconstruction: Of Insane Equals Violent; every living person in Mount Massive, be they former inmate or former staff, is irretrievably insane, and while the asylum was a home for the "criminally insane" the amount of dangerous nutjobs running loose does beggar believability at certain points. Then you find the lab under the asylum, uncover Murkoff's experiments with the Morphogenic Engine, and discover the walking abomination that is the Walrider, and suddenly it all clicks into place. The asylum was chosen as a testing population for the experiments because none of its inmates would be missed by society at large and the process of trying to create a host for the Walrider involves exposing the victim to such pure, unfiltered horror and evil that it drives anyone exposed to the Morphogenic Engine homicidally insane. Of the many, many patients and former staff who try to murder you in incredibly nasty ways, only three of them (Walker, Trager, and Gluskin from Whistleblower) are confirmed to have had any actual violent tendencies before the experiments drove them over the deep end, justifying why all of the Variants are so keen to commit atrocity after atrocity; after what they've been exposed to and the sheer sanity-blasting horror of the Morphogenic Engine and the Walrider, they can't really be any different.
• Recurring Boss: Chris Walker, the very large inmate who can rip people's heads off. And yours, if you're not careful.
• Regenerating Health: Stay quiet and well-hidden, and you'll be able to withstand a few more nasty slams.
• Religion of Evil: Implied. It seems that the pastor and a few of the inmates refer to the Walrider like it's a god. Namely the second coming of Christ, since the pastor quotes from The Bible. A good portion of the inmate population listens to the Pastor. Even the Twins acknowledge that the Father said Upshur was not to be killed. Granted, they don't obey that command for long but do give Upshur a "head start".
• Resignations Not Accepted: One orderly attempted to resign from Mount Massive Asylum when he became suspicious of shady activity going on there, according to an e-mail. He was later institutionalized by Doctor Trager as a permanent patient for supposedly having "persecutorial delusions". A similar thing happens to Waylon in the DLC.
• Resources Management Gameplay: You need to scavenge batteries from the asylum with which to power your camera's night-vision mode. You can only carry a limited number of them, and if you run out, you can't see in the dark.
• Rewatch Bonus: A lot of the ambient dialogue spoken by the inmates makes a lot more sense once the player views the projector film in the penultimate area of the game.
• Run or Die: Before you even begin playing the actual game, you get a bit of expository text at the beginning, telling you, amongst other things, that Miles cannot physically fight back against anyone and that running and hiding are your only methods of survival. This is also true for Waylon in Whistleblower.
  "You are not a fighter; to navigate the horrors of Mount Massive and expose the truth, your only choices are to run, hide, or die."
  • The most straightforward example is the Male Ward chase, where Miles is being pursued by multiple crazed patients who are dead-set on killing and eating him. Though some lockers are available, you cannot use strategy from other levels and try to hide — you must keep sprinting to escape.
• Safely Secluded Science Center: Situated atop a mountain in a rural area of Colorado and populated mainly by patients nobody cares about, secrecy at Mount Massive Asylum is all but guaranteed. Unfortunately, the isolation of the facility works against it, so when they finally achieve a breakthrough that bites them in the ass, they find themselves trapped, miles from safety and with only one radio able to contact local police.
• Sanity Slippage: Miles has this start to happen to him a few hours into the game, and by the end he is starting to have the same effects that it took months for already psychotic patients to develop.
• Scare Chord: Happens when you'd expect it to, and when you pick up any document. Seeing as Mr. Upshur is at the asylum to find the truth, get used to the noise.
• Scenery Porn: The setting and the characters are very well rendered. Unfortunately, being in a Bedlam House leads to much Scenery Gorn.
• Schmuck Bait: The Content Warnings reads, "Outlast contains intense violence, gore, graphic sexual content, and strong language. Please enjoy."
• Shell-Shocked Veteran:
  • According to the in-universe documents, Chris Walker was originally an ex-military police who spent time in Afghanistan. It's implied that the reason for his being at Mount Asylum to begin with was due to PTSD from his experiences.
  • After his night in Mount Massive, Miles may well be suffering from Acute Stress Disorder, a precursor to PTSD. His Sanity Slippage can be followed by the notes he records over the course of the game.
• Shout-Out: Might be unintentional, but Chris Walker's background (a soldier who has served multiple tours in Afghanistan and suffers heavily from PTSD) and name sounds like a Shout-Out to Chris Kyle and Martin Walker.
• Stupid Jetpack Hitler: The Walrider was first created and successfully tested in Nazi Germany.
• Super-Strength: It's implied the inmates are stronger and tougher than a normal human, due to their cells being altered by Dr. Wernicke's nanotech experiments. They can still be killed, apparently, you just lack the means to do so. In Whistleblower, the second tactical team sent in by Murkoff is able to wipe out the patients fairly easily, so it seems the first team just didn't bring enough firepower.
• Too Dumb to Live: Miles deciding to investigate an insane asylum with questionable practices in the middle of the night all by himself with nothing but a camcorder and a notepad. However, he had no idea that the asylum had become a slaughterhouse, even noting that he would have ran like hell if he came across the blood, gore, and bodies strewn about sooner.
• Tragic Monster: The insane, inhuman patients were all once just normal psychiatric patients (many of whom were nonviolent and some of whom weren't even real patients at all, but rather staff members and civilians who found out too much and were forcibly institutionalized by Murkoff to silence them). It was Murkoff's research that transformed them into what they are now.
• Unbroken First-Person Perspective: Consistently from the perspective of Miles, including cutscenes.
• Universal Ammo: Well, batteries. Every single battery you find lying around is the kind your camera can use. Convenient!
• Villainous Rescue: Once you enter the laboratory near the end of the game, Chris Walker (naturally) finds you again and prepares to kill you. Then the Walrider comes out of nowhere, slams him against a few walls, and then violently sucks him through the grate of an air vent. At the end, the Walrider saves him again as the tactical team shoots Miles — naturally, because Miles is the new host.
• Vomit Indiscretion Shot: The main character vomits after getting two of his fingers cut off by Doctor Trager.
• Wandering Walk of Madness: One of the many patients loose in Mount Massive Asylum does nothing but wander back and forth across his cellblock, repeatedly bashing his head against one of the columns (which can be easily recognized by the distinctive bloodstain the guy's left on it by now). On the upside, at least he doesn't hurt anyone.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Chris Walker, the giant inmate, is actually hunting down and killing all the other inmates in an attempt to "contain" the Walrider outbreak. Unfortunately, this includes you.
• The Worm That Walks: The Walrider is apparently a Hive Mind of advanced, self-aware nanomachines. It also wasn't a fan of being repeatedly poked by Murkoff.
• Who Wants to Live Forever?: Wernicke is being kept alive by nano machines, and believes it is A Fate Worse Than Death.
• Yank the Dog's Chain: With Walker dead, and the Walrider's host seconds away from death, Miles is finally ready to escape before he loses what amount of sanity he has left. Then Murkoff's tactical force appears with guns drawn, prepared to kill him to cover up the incident. "Fortunately," the Walrider has chosen him as it new host, and the DLC shows that he does indeed escape..

Whistleblower DLC

• Alone with the Psycho: One of the last sections of the DLC has Waylon trapped in the bowels of Mount Massive with Eddie Gluskin pursuing him.
• Another Side, Another Story: This DLC shows the events near the beginning of the story from the point-of-view of a different person named Waylon Park and his journey through the events of the asylum outbreak.
• Apocalyptic Log: The reason Waylon picks up the camera in the first place. He doesn't think he'll escape the asylum alive, so he decides to film as much as he can in the hope that someone can use it to destroy Murkoff's reputation. Ultimately subverted; he survives.
• Asshole Victim: The DLC shows that the Murkoff staff (or at least those directly involved with Project Walrider) all essentially had the mentality and the methods of Nazi concentration camp doctors and guards. One of the guards almost draws his weapon on Waylon simply because he reacted to one of the patients begging him for mercy. The patients, as insane as they are, do have legitimate reasons for completely tearing them apart once they get loose.
• Artistic License – Biology: An In-Universe example: Eddie Gluskin believes he can make his male victims into women - and able to bear children, at that - by crudely cutting off their genitals.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Jeremy Blaire writes in a note that he's gone to visit Waylon's family to tell them what's happened to Waylon. Lisa's response is to say "uncharitable things" about him and Murkoff. "Uncharitable things" is implied to be a nice way of saying she told him to "fuck off".
• Big Bad Ensemble: Jeremy Blaire, the Corrupt Corporate Executive in charge of the insane asylum, is the primary motherfucker responsible for the situation due to his experiments. That said, he's encountered very rarely, so much of the game is spent running away from Eddie Gluskin (the Groom) and Frank Manera (the Cannibal), both of whom give Waylon hell and then some.
• Big Damn Heroes:
  • Gluskin has you tied down and is moments away from dragging your groin into a buzzsaw, but the friendly patient you met before encountering Dennis appears from out of nowhere and tackles him, giving you enough time to break out of the rig he has you tied to and escape.
  • Soon after, Jeremy Blaire has stabbed you in the back (well, stomach) and is about to kill you, mere feet away from the exit to the asylum. Enter the Walrider.
• Bittersweet Ending: Blaire is brutally killed by the Walrider. Waylon successfully escapes and receives medical treatment, and gets protection from the authorities. Some time later, he is preparing to upload his video of what Murkoff has been doing to the public, but his mysterious benefactor (an Expy of WikiLeaks) warns him that once he uploads the video, Murkoff will bring their full wrath down upon him, the life he has will be over, and his loved ones will suffer for it. He still chooses to upload the evidence of everything that happened to the internet, irrevocably damaging the company responsible. However, the people looking after him make it clear that they won't be able to protect him and his family from the company's full wrath, and you know that Miles's story comes next. Also, as Miles is not only still alive, but has escaped the asylum, the Walrider is now loose upon the world, with all the apocalyptic consequences that suggests. Though, the ending also implies that, as savagely violent as it was, the Walrider ultimately wasn't interested in causing The End of the World as We Know It or anything of that nature. This may have to do with it merging with Miles Upshur, as indicated by his brief appearance during Waylon's escape.
• Blood-Splattered Innocents: Waylon gets absolutely drenched with Blaire's blood after the Walrider rips him apart.
• Book Ends:
  • The final section of the game is the very first area Miles went through in the original game. To top it off, Waylon escapes the prison by taking Miles' car.
  • Also, the story begins and ends with Waylon using a laptop; both times, what he's sending won't come without consequences.
• The Cameo: Father Martin makes a brief appearance during Waylon's escape, Chris Walker makes a couple appearances to chase Waylon, and the naked twins may stab you in some area if you don't leave it quickly enough. A Walrider-possessed Miles appears at the very end to see you out as well, immediately after pulling a Big Damn Heroes.
• Chainsaw Good: A half-naked, malnourished-looking patient armed with a circular saw, Frank Manera (aka the Cannibal), is the first of two new unique stalkers that appear in Whistleblower. He's introduced in a scene showing him to be a Humanitarian.
• Chromosome Casting: While a "Helen Granat" is mentioned in both games as a member of Murkoff's legal department, there are no on-screen women. It's justified in-game with files explaining the Walrider Project caused terminal phantom pregnancies in both female patients and staff, resulting in a nasty lawsuit, and as a result all women were removed from the project. A note from Blaire to Trager implies that had the Walrider not broken out when it did, they were going to resume experiments on women, as Blaire saw their extremely powerful reactions to being near the Engine as an opportunity for profit and eye-candy.
• Continuity Nod:
  • Dr. Trager's corpse is seen outside the elevator door where he was crushed along with Murkoff troopers that just pulled him out. Also, you will get a glimpse of the chapel that is burning from Father Martin's self-immolation.
  • Waylon escapes in Miles' jeep, which is still sitting outside the asylum gates.
  • As you get close to the exit, you can hear officers downstairs radioing about being under attack with casualties, indicating that Miles has been possessed by the Walrider and is ripping through the cleanup crews.
• Create Your Own Villain: Sort of. Eddie Gluskin, a.k.a. the Groom, the unique stalker who you have to deal with in the final section of the DLC, is actually the patient who was begging you for help at the beginning of the game before being dragged off, put into the Engine, and turned into an insane monster. To be fair, if you had tried to intervene at that point, the only thing you'd have accomplished would have been taking a bullet to the back of the head. Downplayed in that he barely remembers where and when he saw you and just brushes it off as just another memory before 'waking up'. On top of that, the Morphogenic Engine did little to change his M.O. (the mutilation and murder of women), it just gave him a delusion that caused him to see Waylon (and every other male unfortunate enough to come into contact with him) as a potential bride.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Explained through patient reports scattered throughout the asylum, Gluskin's Freudian Excuse for being the insane, misogynistic, mutilating, homicidal maniac that he is is due to him being sexually abused by his father and uncle when he was child. During his ramblings, he at one point says that he wants to be "the father [he] never had."
• Deus ex Machina: Quite a few. When Blaire is on the verge of killing Waylon in the prison, Walker comes out of nowhere and unintentionally stops the murder. At the end of the game, Blaire's murder of Waylon is interrupted again, this time intentionally and fatally, by the Walrider. Beforehand, when Gluskin's buzz-saw is a hair away from castrating a bed-restrained Waylon, a random variant punches Gluskin and sends the bed flying out of the saw's path. Before any of this, Waylon is able to escape from meeting a fiery death at the hands of Frank because the wall was just weak enough for him to kick a hole through.
• Diabolus ex Machina: Waylon is denied freedom a mockingly large amount of times. The most notable ones include when he is cut off from contacting 911 in the prison by Blaire (thankfully a Deus ex Machina saves Waylon), when he falls into the Vocational Block, and when he is dragged back into the very same block by Gluskin right after finding the key to the male ward.
• Disney Death: Miles appears to have survived being shot and taken full control over the Walrider, as his figure is seen in the ending when Waylon is leaving Mount Massive Asylum.
• Dehumanization: All the abuse against the patients aside, one guard upon seeing Waylon runs into a door, locks it behind him, exclaiming "it isn't even human anymore!".
• Depraved Bisexual: Averted. Gluskin goes after male victims, but he sees them as women (referring to his victims as "the fairer sex," using misogynistic slurs, and telling one patient that he's "like a little girl again" after shaving him) and attempts to force them to have his children. He's still lucid enough to realize there are certain obstacles to his intentions, but he has a straightforwardly "cutting" solution to that.
• Dramatic Irony: Towards the end of the game, Waylon looks out a window and sees a burning church. After all the other disturbing things that happened that night, he simply reacts with resignation. The player, however, knows that the church was set on fire towards the end of the base game. Translation: it won't be long before the asylum is swarming with paramilitary soldiers and Miles fuses with the Walrider.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Two of the scientists talk about how they haven't seen their loved ones for so long one of them can't even remember the last time he saw her.
• Even the Guys Want Him: Waylon can't catch a breath in regards to this. The doctor at the beginning cops a feel, he gets freed by an inmate that wants to make him "purr", gets complimented by multiple inmates as pretty, Gluskin mentions that he is one of the prettiest "girls". While we never saw what Waylon looks like, he might be a Bishōnen, resulting in every second inmate being sexually attracted to him.
• Expy: Eddie Gluskin can be considered the DLC's answer to Dr. Trager. He shares the same tendency of speaking in a polite tone to the protagonist, complete with an inappropriately affectionate nickname. He also mutilates other patients and captures the protagonist in a Controllable Helplessness sequence. Gluskin also tells Park that he's "heavier than you look", much like Trager. Finally he receives a Karmic Death while trying to finish off Park; the notebook says he's "trying not to laugh" at how Gluskin died, similiarly to Miles' dark joke upon Trager's death.
• Fan Disservice:
  • Anyone into men can normally find a man in a tux appealing... but not when said man is covered in scars and blood coupled with that nasty habit of executing a Groin Attack while shouting misogynistic slurs at his (male) victims.
  • Waylon himself is seen fully in the nude... while Eddie is trying to castrate him with a buzzsaw.
• Faux Affably Evil: Mr. Gluskin seems to be Whistleblower's equivalent of Dr. Trager from the main game. He has a "gentlemanly" demeanor but the behavior of a lunatic, and also quickly turns abusive when he feels thwarted. Like Trager, he calmly opens doors instead of bashing them down.
• Foreshadowing: Waylon noticeably has a twitch in his right leg in the beginning. This is the same leg that later gets splintered when Waylon takes a fall.
• Freudian Excuse: While he's undoubtedly horrific, Eddie's backstory, full of pedophilia and both physical and sexual abuse, garners a bit of pity.
• Gameplay and Story Integration: The DLC ends with Waylon uploading a video to the Internet to destroy Murkoff's reputation — the video you just spent the entire DLC filming.
• Groin Attack: The Groom's MO.
• Harder Than Hard: The difficulty options are Normal, Hard, Nightmare, and Insane. Insane is the same difficulty level as Nightmare, but forces you to restart if you die at any point.
• I Have a Family: Waylon has a wife and two sons. Jeremy Blaire, the Murkoff executive managing Mount Massive, actually gleefully looks forward to destroying them financially, legally, and possibly even physically should they continue to seek answers regarding Waylon's involuntary commitment to the asylum. Lisa is noted to have said several "uncharitable things" about Jeremy and Murkoff. Seems Waylon married a woman just as likely to survive as he is!
• I Love the Dead: In one area, you come across an inmate masturbating over a large pile of bodies.
• Hate Sink: Jeremy Blaire, the slimy corporate dog-kicker, is the closest thing the game really has to a Big Bad, and only ever shows up to make Waylon's night even worse. The variants at least have insanity as an excuse for their homicidal actions, but Blaire? Completely sane, just a repulsive bastard, through and through.
• Hoist by His Own Petard:
  • The camera Waylon Park uses to expose the Murkoff Corporation is a camera they use to film their prisoners during experiments.
  • Gluskin is killed using the rope and pulley system he uses to hang his victims.
• I'm a Humanitarian: Frank Manera, a.k.a. 'The Cannibal.' Before first laying eyes upon Manera, himself, Waylon is treated to the sight of a soup pot of human limbs boiling in blood, before turning the corner, and seeing Frank digging ravenously into a whole human. If the player chooses to look closer in on what he's doing, they can see him biting the corpse and drawing blood.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: How Gluskin meets his end.
• Karma Houdini: Both the Twins and Frank Manera remain at large in the ending.
• Karmic Death: Gluskin meets his end by being both hung by the ropes he used to hang his victims and impaled by a metal bar. Jeremy Blaire also gets his comeuppance for all the terrible things he did by getting torn apart by the Walrider.
• Killed Mid-Sentence: Well, Jeremy Blaire is actually killed in mid-scream but still.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Similar to the original game, there are several conversations which question whether what's happening at Mount Massive is the result of technology, or paranormal events being mistaken for technology. Clarke's Third Law is even paraphrased by a patient.
• Madness Mantra: "Feed me! Feed me! Feed me! Feed me! FEED ME!"
• Magic Pants: Averted in the scene where Gluskin has you tied down and is preparing to castrate you with a buzzsaw. However, after you are freed from the rig he has you tied to, you suddenly have your clothes back on again even though logically you wouldn't have the time to put them back on considering Gluskin is still nearby.
• Male Frontal Nudity: Waylon's genitals are fully visible when Eddie strips and attempts to mutilate him.
• Meat Grinder Surgery: Eddie's attempts at creating "brides" involve mutilating his male victims by cutting off their genitals (either with a knife or a buzzsaw), and stuffing their chests in order to resemble breasts.
• Murder by Cremation: Frank Manera tries to kill the player character Waylon like this to cook him up. Waylon has to escape by breaking a weak point of the wall down to get out.
• Naked Nutter: Several demonstrably-insane patients go about their day in various states of undress: Chris Walker is a Walking Shirtless Scene, a few NPCs are missing shirts or trousers, quirky psychopath "Dr" Rick Trager dresses only in an apron, cannibal Frank Manera is permanently stripped down to his undies, and the cold-hearted Twins casually wander around wearing nothing whatsoever.
• Oh, Crap!: Blaire is horrified when he realises that the Walrider is loose, shortly before it gives him exactly what he deserves and tears him apart.
• One-Hit Kill:
  • In the Normal and Hard difficulties, Waylon is able to take multiple hits from Eddie Gluskin. In the Nightmare and Insane difficulties? Gluskin kills him in one attack.
  • As with the main game, Chris Walker is able to tear off Waylon's head if he catches up to him.
• One-Man Army: The Groom seems to have several dozen kills to his name; between him, Chris Walker, and to a lesser extent Dr. Trager and the Cannibal, it looks like the four of them took care of the majority of the patients and staff running around Mount Massive, leaving a lot less work for the Murkoff hit squad/cleanup team. Manera also seems to have slaughtered quite a few people, given the bodies hanging in the kitchen.
• Pro-Human Transhuman: More specifically anyone who isn't pro-Murkoff, Miles Upshur becomes this after being possessed by the Walrider. He happily exacts revenge on all of the Murkoff security teams and staff, as both overheard via radio chatter and seeing him personally rip Jeremy Blaire to shreds in order to save you. Also, while it's only implied, it's possible that he helped Waylon pull off the sharp O-turn on his truck when he was escaping the asylum.
• Rape as Drama: An aversion of Double Standard: Rape, Male on Male. Eddie Gluskin not only plans to forcibly cut off Waylon's genitals, he also makes it very clear that he plans on consummating the relationship and having children with him. Or, well, try.
• Serial Killer: The Groom and Chris Walker slaughter an incredible amount of inmates and patients, with Dr. Trager having a respectable bodycount as well.
  • This is also part of the Eddie Gluskin's backstory, having killed and mutilated multiple women prior to his institutionalization.
  • The Murkoff Account reveals that Chris Walker murdered 4 inmates and kept their heads as trophies before he was captured and subjected to the Morphogenic Engine.
• Sequel Hook:
  • The last few Murkoff memos found in the game indicate that they have another project which is even more dangerous than the Walrider, being worked on at a separate site.
  • The future of Waylon and his family.
  • Miles Upshur is alive, and now possessed by an all-powerful demon who took apart an entire military facility. The last we see is him raging into the world just as Waylon makes his escape.
• Severed Head Sports: A section of the map includes a basketball game with the eponymous ball being a severed head.
• Shout-Out: Jeremy Blaire's last name is one to The Blair Witch Project, the film that popularized the found footage film genre that the Outlast games are modeled after.
• Slasher Smile: Gluskin provides you with one, with the disturbingly affectionate whisper of "Darling."
• Took A Short Cut: It's not really clear how Jeremy Blaire managed to survive through the entire Mount Massive incident while all the other staff besides Dr. Wernicke (who was under the Walrider's protection) ended up being massacred. Especially when you consider Blaire was there at the very beginning of the incident, was running around the place and even ended up confronting Waylon at a couple points, and managed to live up until the very end where he and Waylon are the only two living people left standing.
• Unbroken First-Person Perspective: Consistently from the perspective of Waylon, including cutscenes.
• Undressing the Unconscious: Waylon is knocked unconscious by Gluskin who has him stripped and Strapped to an Operating Table, planning to castrate him with a buzzsaw.
• Villainous Rescue:
  • Chris Walker doesn't directly save Waylon from Jeremy Blaire, but his sudden presence nearby is enough to scare Blaire off before he can finish choking Waylon to death.
  • A random patient saves Waylon at the last moment from the Groom, who was a second away from chopping off his genitals to make him his bride. If it was the same patient who warned you about the Groom in the first place, then it's just a typical rescue.
  • At the very end of the game, the Walrider appears to save Waylon from Corrupt Corporate Executive Jeremy Blaire, who was about to kill Waylon to prevent the truth about the asylum from coming out. However, given that Miles is still alive and may actually be controlling the Walrider, this could also be a Big Damn Heroes moment.
• Wham Shot:
  • The game starts out from the perspective of the man who sent Miles the original e-mail in the original game, and gives us a first hand look at the outbreak. Later, a 12 hour transition occurs when Waylon is captured and put to sleep by the Groom. After Waylon escapes him, looking out a window in the next hallway shows the burning church where Father Martin set himself on fire—showing that what started out as a prequel is now taking place concurrently with the ending of the original game. Time to run. Very quickly.
  • During the ending, Waylon spots a dark shape in the distance and uses the camera to zoom in... revealing Miles, not dead after all, and now fused with the Walrider.
• Yandere: Eddie fucking Gluskin, aka "the Groom". He's psychopathic killer who believes Waylon is his wife to be and future mother of his children, at least after he hacks off Waylon's genitals. Most of the time he engages in sweet talk, but when Waylon is able to escape, his true psychotic nature reveals itself.
  Gluskin: You'd rather die than be with me? Then die.

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You made the right choice here, buddy.

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