History VideoGame / TheEvilWithin

** Juli's boss fight against Haunted Joseph in ''The Consequence'' bears resemblance to the fight against Puppet Cybil in ''{{VideoGame/Silent Hill 1}}''. In both cases, the bosses are possessed police officers who attack their respective protagonists using their handguns.

* ActionizedSequel: Inverted with ''The Assignment'' and ''The Consequence'', which have relatively little combat and a much larger focus on stealth and interactive story sequences. Instead, Kidman gets far less weapons, an EnemyDetectingRadar, and a TakeCover mechanic.

* AllJustADream: According to [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lEpDAbKYxI Shinji Mikami himself]], the game takes place within the mind of an insane individual, if not several. [[spoiler: This is because of a simulated reality LotusEaterMachine sort of system called STEM, which simulates a reality within the consciousnesses of those hooked up to it. Ruvik acts as the MindHive for the system, called the "Core", which allows him to dramatically alter the landscape at his whims.]]
** [[spoiler:Even worse: Sebastian and his friends may have been in a dreamworld even before you drive to the hospital at the start of the game; unless Ruvik was somehow able to kill people as a mental projection from a brain in a jar in the real world, he couldn't have killed all those people in the lobby. This is also supported by the radio in their police car going haywire and emitting the same BrownNote screech that plagues the group while they're in the dreamworld. Which means you're in some sort of [[DreamWithinADream layered reality]]: first you're in Real-ish World, get sucked into Ruvik's mind via a STEM system within the Real-ish world, then get sucked into a further iteration later (we see Sebastian wake himself up from being connected to a STEM ''twice''). MindScrew does not even begin to describe it. The latter can be explained away as Juli putting Sebastian back into the tub after he destroys Ruvik's brain and faints in order to trick her colleagues into thinking he died in the simulation (allowing him to sneak away and go free later on). This is supported by the fact that Sebastian doesn't have the connecting wire attached to his spine the second time he wakes up. However, there is still no explanation as to how Ruvik could kill people in the real world if they weren't attached to the STEM machine.]]
** [[spoiler: ''The Consequence'' sheds a little more light on this. It's revealed that the STEM system in the hospital is operated by wireless transmission. Jimenez activated the STEM just as Sebastian and Co were on their way to the hospital (Signified by the squealing noise they heard on the radio), pulling them into the STEM system and into Ruvik's reality.]]
** The tl;dr version: [[spoiler: yes]].
*** Additionally, in the DLC: [[spoiler: The Administrator may never have been real. Late in ''The Consequence'' we find a file where Juli gets injected and hypnotized by a female agent, not the Administrator as we saw. The Torn Letter for ''Consequence'', from Ruvik, indicates a "man from Mobius" once tried to connect himself to STEM and got that weird mark burned on him. The Administrator seems to be partly a memory of a person who may have once existed, and also the personification of some sort of drug or conditioning meant to keep Kidman in line while she's inside STEM. Then again, at the very end of the game, Myra tells Kidman that 'he' is waiting for a full debriefing...]]
*** [[spoiler:Partially debunked in the sequel, in which The Administrator is shown to be as real as anyone else in MOBIUS. However, they do not seem to be aware of any of the confrontations in STEM with Kidman, meaning that the Administrator in STEM was likely not the real one.]]

* AmbiguousEnding: The main game suffers from this, raising questions like: [[spoiler: is Ruvik in Leslie's body? Did he die before being successfully transported into the machine? Did Sebastian even ''see'' Leslie or was it his imagination? Where is Joseph? Is Sebastian awake, or just in a another dream layer?]] ''The Assignment'' and ''The Consequence'' help clear most of it up.

* AttackOfThe50FootWhatever: Heresy and [[spoiler:Ruvik]].

* BearTrap: Some of the traps encountered in the game. The game seems to love hiding them in tall grass and under grimy water, too.
* BigBad: Ruvik, the enigmatic hooded man responsible for pulling you into his twisted world.

* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler: Sebastian manages to escape from the machine (and possibly destroy Ruvik's brain), exposing the operation to the masses. Unfortunately, it's highly likely that Ruvik managed to escape from the machine into Leslie's body, and is now free to roam the city. Alongside this, Joseph is nowhere to be found and Kidman's goals remain unknown.]]

** Further still, at the end of The Consequence, [[spoiler:Kidman ends up with a strange mark on her arm (which Ruvik may have put there) and no memory of how she got outside of the STEM. We hear The Administrator's voice over her's one final time, implying she might not have escaped after all. Also, Kidman saves Sebastian by declaring him dead, but we can see the organisation carrying away Joseph in the background. He's thus probably alive, but now at the mercy of Mobius.]]
* BodyHorror

** ControllableHelplessness: And at one point, said monster slices your leg pretty badly, forcing you to limp around as he pursues you.
* CheckpointStarvation: It's really not as bad as most sources would say, but yeah, checkpoints generally only happen after you've made a significant amount of progress in the game or before a boss fight.

* EasterEgg: In ''The Consequence'', [[spoiler: Kidman can stumble upon a hidden room where Spotlight and some Haunted are dancing, re-creating a scene from the music video for World Order's "Have a Nice Day"]].

* FanDisservice: Reborn Laura is completely naked ([[BarbieDollAnatomy not that anything is visible]]) aside from a pair of shoes. She's also [[BodyHorror covered in burn scars and pulsating flesh]] and [[MultiArmedAndDangerous has four arms with huge clawed hands]].

* FinalBoss: [[spoiler:The [[MonsterSuit Amalgam]], driven by Ruvik.]]

* GuideDangIt:

* HoistByHisOwnPetard: Examples aplenty.

* MenuTimeLockout: Averted, but also downplayed. Time does not freeze when you access your inventory ring, but it does slow down drastically, giving you enough time to do what you need so long as an enemy wasn't charging towards you at that moment.

* MysteriousBacker: [[spoiler:Mobius]] is this in "The Assignment" for [[spoiler:Juli Kidman]]. Also an AmbiguouslyEvil NebulousEvilOrganization.
* MysteriousWatcher: In chapter 9, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jt_olqlMG6g a man can be seen watching Sebastian through one of the library windows of Ruvik's mansion.]] It's notable that no reference to this man is ever made in official game material and he is not commented on by Sebastian - he just watches you until you get too close, and then walks away and disappears, [[SequelHook marking his first and last appearance in the game.]] A body wearing the same shirt can be found near where the man stood watching Sebastian, but upon a more detailed inspection it's easy to see that [[RedHerring the body doesn't belong to the man who was watching you.]]
** [[spoiler:[[http://nimsies.tumblr.com/post/105621573956/oh-boy-oh-boy-i-just-made-one-hell-of-a-discovery It just so turns out that we do see him again]] [[SequelHook in a way that obviously implies that he is, or will be, an important character.]]]]
** [[spoiler: He pops up again in The Assignment. As a corpse. Just after the second boss fight with Spotlight. If you walk around the room you will find him lying there. If he is either an important character for say a prequel or just another aspect of the whole MindScrew is hard to tell.]]
* NeverBringAKnifeToAGunFight: Averted. The first time you actually fight The Sadist, he is a DamageSpongeBoss who will likely leave you without ammo when not playing smartly against him. But using a Flash Bolt when he has absorbed enough bullets: will render him temporarily open for a [[BackStab stealth kill]], thus earning you a [[DeathByIrony "Knife Beats Chainsaw"]] achievement.

* ScarsAreForever: Played with with Ruvik. Although he ends up heavily scarred from being set on fire, he did have the option of having skin-regeneration treatments, but chose not to.

* ShoutOut: Oh, so many:

* TrailersAlwaysSpoil: Averted pretty hard; many of the trailers can easily be used as a walkthrough for your first few encounters with the Haunted, but most of the scenes in the trailers (with the big exception being The Keeper, who's built up beforehand in the game anyways) are either presented with little context or occur within the first three or four chapters.

* UselessUsefulStealth: Averted to the point of inversion. If you're smart with your upgrades, your life won't be quite as dependent on the stealth mechanics as it was early in the game and you can stand your ground in fights more easily, but you'll still want to use sneak kills as much as possible because they save ammo and are cool as hell to successfully pull off.

* DropTheHammer: The Keeper's weapon of choice is a massive hammer. You'll learn to fear it.

''The Evil Within'' (''Psycho Break'' in Japan) is a 2014 SurvivalHorror game developed by Tango Gameworks, directed by Creator/ShinjiMikami, and published by Creator/{{Bethesda}}.

** Happens to Ruvik himself near the the end of the game, where Sebastian smashes a lantern into his face, resulting with him dropping Sebastian and catching on fire. Thanks to Ruvik's fear of fire, things start going south for him rapidly.

* EvilIsVisceral: The game frequently focuses on how badly warped the monsters are, and the horrific results of the experiments that created them.

*** [[spoiler:Debunked in the sequel, in which The Administrator is shown to be as real as anyone else in MOBIUS.]]

''The Evil Within'' (''Psycho Break'' in Japan) is a 2014 SurvivalHorror game developed by Tango Gameworks, directed by Creator/ShinjiMikami, and published by Bethesda.