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What will you do with power from beyond?

Beyond: Two Souls is the third installment in Quantic Dream's "interactive movie" game series, following their Fahrenheit (Indigo Prophecy in some countries) and Heavy Rain. Its story, covering the span of sixteen years (and wholly unrelated to the two aforementioned games), centers on a young woman named Jodie Holmes (portrayed by Elliot Pagenote ) who tries to uncover the mystery of a strange poltergeist-like presence serving as her protector. Willem Dafoe stars as Nathan Dawkins, a researcher who serves as Jodie's surrogate father. The central topic of the game is what happens to one after death. Like its immediate predecessor, Beyond: Two Souls used to be a PlayStation 3 exclusive, though it received an Updated Re-release for PlayStation 4 in November 2015 and a release for PC in July 2019.

See also KARA for the tech demo produced in preparation for this game.


Beyond: Two Souls provides examples of:

  • Ad Dissonance: When Jodie steps out from under the bridge in "Homeless", there is a huge billboard across the road advertising luxurious buildings in a summerly scenery with the slogan "Your New Home Is Here" which stands in harsh contrast to Jodie's situation out there in the cold.
  • African Terrorists: During her time with the CIA, Jodie goes on a mission into Somalia to assassinate a local warlord to stop the latest insurgency. Subverted when she discovers that she actually killed the democratically-elected President of the country, and her superiors lied to her.
  • Age-Gap Romance: There's an optional romantic encounter between the protagonist Jodie Holmes and her CIA handler Ryan Clayton, who are respectively 24 and 38 by the end of the game. Notably, they first meet when she's seventeen years old and he's already a high-ranking agent.
  • Agents Dating: Jodie and Ryan fall in love while working for the CIA and go on a date in "The Dinner". Their relationship falls apart after she discovers that he lied to her about her mission in Somalia, and she behaves icily towards him when they're forced to work together again. However, she also has the option to forgive him, and one of the Multiple Endings has them rekindle their relationship.
  • Almost Dead Guy: In "The Condenser", Jodie meets a wounded soldier who warns her not to go any further before he dies.
  • Anachronic Order: The narrative is presented this way, with Jodie attempting to recall her memories in the proper order. The epilogue justifies this: when Jodie briefly enters the Infraworld in "Black Sun" and loses her tether to Aiden, her memories are scrambled. In the endings where Jodie is alive, she is inspired to write her story on paper to preserve her memories. If Jodie is dead, her soul shares her memories with Zoey in order to prepare her for the future. The PS4 and PC versions give the player the option to play the game in a mostly chronological order.
  • And I Must Scream:
    • Jodie discovers that the CIA did this to her real mother, Norah Gray. After Jodie's birth, the CIA wanted to silence her, so they injected her with drugs to put her into a permanent catatonic state. General McGrath later attempts to do the same thing to Jodie, since he fears what someone with her powers could do in the afterlife.
    • Nathan builds a machine that traps his deceased wife and daughter's souls between worlds until he can find a way to communicate with them again. When Jodie channels Helen at his insistence, she discovers that their souls are in constant pain, with Helen pleading for Nathan to release them. Nathan refuses to believe her and claims that Jodie is lying to him.
    • In the worst of the Multiple Endings, achieved by letting Jodie die before the Black Sun condenser is shut down, this happens to not only Jodie, but all of humanity. The Infraworld has overwhelmed the world of the living, and all life has been extinguished. Jodie and all other humans are left as disembodied souls drifting alone and aimlessly in a cold, lightless, endless quasi-hell for all eternity. The despondent tone in which she narrates her horrible fate will make you regret triggering this ending because it's all your fault.
  • And Now for Someone Completely Different: The player is able to switch between controlling Jodie and Aiden.
  • Animal Motifs: Jodie describes Aiden as 'like a lion in a cage.'
  • Apocalypse How: And all because the military wanted a new toy...
    • One of Jodie's premonitions heavily implies at least a Class 2. someone (presumably the CIA) continued to experiment with condenser technology and opened a giant portal to the Infraworld, resulting in the world being overrun by hostile entities. Jodie and/or Zoey are seen preparing to battle the ghostly invaders.
    • Failing the final QTE sequence in "Black Sun" results in an outright Class X. With Jodie dead and the condenser still active, the Infraworld overwhelms the physical world. The realms of life and death are merged into one unrecognizable hellscape where the tortured souls of humanity (including Jodie's) wander alone for eternity. Depending on how encompassing the Infraworld is, this might even escalate all the way to Class X-4 or more.
  • Arab Oil Sheikh: One of Jodie's early missions with the CIA involves spying on several classified documents belonging to an arab sheik. It's even possible for Aiden to mind control the sheik himself.
  • Artistic License – Geography:
    • The section in Somalia has everyone speaking Persian, which is not spoken anywhere in Africa.
    • The game's paper-thin proxy of China, where people still speak Mandarin, is called the Republic of Kazirstan, seemingly identifying it as one of the Central Asian Republics. A map shown when Jodie is briefed on her mission to destroy the Kazirstan condenser shows that it is actually in Heilongjiang, a real province in China.
  • Attempted Rape: Jodie can be the victim of attempted rape twice throughout the story, depending on her choices.
    • In "Like Other Girls," if she manages to make it to the bar and does not leave before she's approached to play pool, the patrons will attempt to gang rape her. The bartender does nothing to intervene, leaving it up to Aiden to stop them.
    • When she's homeless, she can contemplate giving a man oral sex in exchange for money... but then she backs down, at which point the would-be John attempts to take what he wants by force. Aiden wouldn't have it.
  • Aura Vision: Aiden can see glowing auras around people. They are color-coded, indicating how Aiden can affect them. Additionally, the bonuses that can be found throughout the game appear as glowing blue wisps. In one of the endings, Zoey also mentions having this ability.
  • Back-to-Back Badasses: Jodie and Ryan get a moment of this facing off against entities in "Black Sun" provided Ryan is still alive.
  • Bad Future:
    • After falling into a coma, Jodie has a brief premonition of herself standing alone in the ruins of a city. The epilogues show the vision a second time, but with more context: a massive portal has been opened to the other side and dark entities are pouring out, and only Jodie and/or Zoey can stop it.
    • Failing the final QTE sequence near the Black Sun leads to a far worse one: Jodie dies, the Infraworld overwhelms and annihilates the physical world including everyone in it, and Jodie is left as a tortured soul in a hellish purgatory, alone and haunted by her failure to save the world for all eternity.
  • Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Averted. Jodie suffers quite a few injuries throughout the game and spends more than one level covered in cuts and bruises. By the end, she sports several thin scars on her face.
  • Be Careful What You Wish For: Jodie always wanted to be free of Aiden and be normal. If one chooses the "Life" ending, she gets her wish, and realizes that she is completely miserable and lost without him, feeling as though a part of her has been cut away. Ultimately subverted in three versions of the ending: for the "Ryan" choice, while Jodie is relaxing on the beach Aiden rolls a coconut over to her and scribbles the message "Still Here" in the sand; for the "Jay" choice, while Jodie is checking the mirror after making love to Jay, Aiden fogs the mirror and writes "Still Here"; and for the "Alone" choice, while Jodie sits in a hotel room watching T.V. Aiden turns off the lights, statics the T.V., fogs it and writes "Still Here".
  • Better to Die than Be Killed: Jodie can attempt this via self-inflicted Boom, Headshot! when she's cornered by pissed-off African militias. She explicitly invokes this to an equally pissed-off Aiden when he stops her.
    Jodie: Do you have any idea what they'll do to me if they catch me?
  • Bilingual Bonus: If you happen to know Persian, Chinese or Navajo, then you'll understand a good portion of what some characters are saying.
  • Black-Tie Infiltration: Jodie's first field assignment with the CIA has her visiting a Middle-Eastern sheik's mansion during a formal dinner, pretending to be Ryan's assistant. While Ryan mingles with the crowd, Jodie excuses herself to the restroom and is required to use Aiden's powers to break into the sheik's office undetected.
  • Blank White Eyes: A sign of Aiden's possession, although it might just be Aiden's target's eyes rolling up in the back of their head. Also, Jodie gains Prophet Eyes when she channels a spirit to let them communicate with the living.
  • Blessed with Suck: What Jodie views her connection to Aiden as. Even though he protects her, he tends to lash out violently at potential threats, causing people around her to fear her because they think she's responsible for the resulting destruction.
  • Body Surf: One of Aiden's abilities. He can overtake the mind of a nearby human, using their body to more directly interact with the world around him.
  • Bottomless Magazines: Salim's dad sprays well in excess of 60 rounds out of an AK-47 with what seems to be a regular 30-round curved box magazine.
  • Bound and Gagged: If you mess up in some segments of "The Mission," Jodie will be knocked out and captured by the militia. She awakens in a room, with her hands tied behind her back and being watched over by a guard. Aiden's help is the only way she can cut the ropes. Something similar happens if Jodie is arrested in "Hunted."
  • Bratty Teenage Daughter: Jodie develops into one in "Like Other Girls." She wants to go out with friends on a Saturday night but is grounded by Nathan. She proceeds to throw a tantrum, play loud guitar music to annoy Cole, and use Aiden to break stuff. When that fails, she decides to use Aiden to possess Cole and have him sneak her out of the facility.
  • Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu: Deactivating the Black Sun requires Jodie to go into the Infraworld for a few minutes, which messes up her memories to the point where she begins to lose them. She manages to recuperate by piecing the story of her life back together, fragment by fragment, and writing it all down (which incidentally forms the Framing Device for the game).
  • Brought Down to Badass: Jodie is cut off from Aiden in the epilogue, but is still a highly trained former CIA agent and has her own supernatural abilities. In the Bad Future, she faces down a rift to the Infraworld armed with an assault rifle.
  • Bullying a Dragon: An example with literal bullies: The kids at the party apparently decide that assaulting a girl who personally demonstrated her connection to a powerful spirit was a brilliant idea. Jodie can choose to let Aiden demonstrate why this is not a brilliant idea.
  • Burn the Witch!: A young Jodie is accused of being a witch by a young boy whom Aiden attacks during a snowball fight. The teens at the party also drop this line when they find out about Jodie's powers.
  • But Thou Must!: Due to the "interactive story" nature of the game, some situations always play out the same:
    • "The Experiment" always ends up in a panicked Cooldown Hug from Nathan, no matter how obediently you try to play Aiden. This was fixed in the PS4 version, with Kathleen being much less shaken and Cole simply telling Jodie that the experiment is over, although Jodie's "It'll never be over" line remains.
    • "The Party" will have Jodie locked under the stairs in the end, no matter your choices. The optional element is whether or not Jodie decides to get revenge on her bullies.
    • In "Like Other Girls", Jodie must always possess Cole to escape from her confinement. However, she can fail to sneak out of the facility afterwards.
    • In "Hunted", it doesn't matter if Jodie is arrested, even if she gets caught multiple times. She'll always end up stealing a motorcycle to get through a police roadblock, and driving the stolen motorcycle into a town. The only difference is that Aiden will have to help her break free if she gets caught.
    • In "Homeless," Jodie will always end up in a coma and be separated from the homeless group.
    • "Black Sun" has Jodie unable to refuse to be a conduit for Nathan's family again. Even if she tells Nathan that she refuses, Nathan pleads with her and she reluctantly agrees.
  • Cardboard Box Home: Played straight during the chapter "Homeless," though it's clear that this is not ideal. When a woman needs to give birth, they move her to an abandoned building for better shelter.
  • Chekhov's Skill: Played with. If the game is played in Anachronic Order, Jodie's guitar skill in "Homeless" seems to come out of nowhere if she chooses to play the guitar to earn money. In chapters that chronologically take place earlier in the story, however, Jodie can practice her guitar in her room.
  • Cigarette Burns: The cruel teens at the birthday party burn Jodie with a cigarette.
  • Cluster F-Bomb: Jodie and Ryan tend to carpet-bomb the scenery in Fs whenever things get really messy. It's especially noticeable during "The Mission" when Jodie has to escape from vengeful African militias and said soldiers hose the building she just sought shelter in with automatic weapons.
  • Coincidental Broadcast: When Jodie turns on the TV after completing the mission in Somalia, there's a news report revealing that the killed dictator was actually the democratically elected president.
  • Cold-Blooded Torture: The Chinese base commander tortures Jodie and Ryan for information after he discovers they've infiltrated the base. If Jodie refuses to talk, Ryan loses an eye. Both of them have to be healed by Aiden once freed, but he's unable to do anything to restore Ryan's lost eye.
  • Collapsing Lair: The Kazirstan base and The DPA headquarters once their containment fields are deactivated.
  • Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Aiden's Aura Vision is color-coded. People with blue auras—the standard color—cannot be affected directly. Orange means the person can be possessed, and red means they can be strangled. Green indicates a sickness or injury that can be healed. Purple is reserved for Jodie herself.
  • Coming of Age Story: Most of the game's plot follows Jodie growing up, coming to terms with being different from others, and deciding where to go from there—of her own volition.
  • Containment Field:
    • The Chinese underwater base has an energy field around the interdimensional portal to contain the entities surrounding it. Unfortunately for the protagonists, this also has the effect of keeping Aiden out, and causing Jodie to lose her mind control over the base commander.
    • The Black Sun condenser has a larger containment field. When Nathan deactivates it, the entire facility becomes a hunting ground for hostile entities.
    • By the time of "Black Sun," the DPA has also developed containment field belts. When worn, the belts generate an energy field around the wearer, protecting them from entity attacks. However, the belts don't make the wearers invulnerable to the entities, and they aren't immune to malfunctioning; Cole is severely injured and may be killed, and Jodie's belt shorts out after she and Ryan are attacked. In the future, Jodie and/or Zoey are shown wearing containment field belts, indicating the technology has improved and become more common.
  • Content Warnings: For "Allusions to Sexual Violence" when two drunks try and rape Jodie.
  • Contrived Coincidence: Jodie slips into a coma and lies in hospital for a couple of months. Exactly at the time of her revival, the CIA agents manage to get hold of her location and are about to recapture her.
  • Convection Shmonvection: Subverted. Aiden rolling a fire extinguisher to Jodie through some flames during "The Condenser" makes it hot enough that she goes "Ow!" when she tries to use it.
  • Convenient Coma: In "Homeless," Jodie slips into a coma and is unconscious for three months. Depending on whether she escaped the burning building in time or not, she's knocked unconscious by a falling girder or beaten by a thug and left bleeding in the snow.
  • Conveniently Placed Sharp Thing: Downplayed. The only way Jodie can get rid of her bindings if she gets captured during "The Mission" is by using a piece of glass from a broken bottle lying next to her to cut the ropes. However, she needs Aiden to break the bottle in order to do so, something the guard watching over her conveniently doesn't hear...
  • Creator Thumbprint:
    • The female main character (Jodie) having at least one fanservicey Shower Scene. However, Jodie's shower scenes are much less exposed than previous examples.
    • A friendly black orderly type character similar to Barney from The Silence of the Lambs (Cole).
    • Flashbacks to childhood that reveal important plot points and character motivations.
    • Main characters have sex in questionable circumstances.
  • Creepy Basement: Well, garage, but it fits. When Jodie's mother asks her to get oil from the garage, an entity appears from the darkness if Jodie takes too long, frightening her.
  • Crucified Hero Shot: After her Heroic Fire Rescue, Jodie gets beaten over the head with a steel bat by the bullies and lies motionless in the snow in a symbolic position as the camera zooms out from the scene.
  • Cutscene Power to the Max: To the point that David Cage even admitted that the strength and effectiveness of Aiden's powers changes based on the plot's needs:
    • During "The Dinner", Aiden shows considerably more finesse in manipulating objects than when the player controls him. This includes neatly stacking chairs on top of a table and pouring wine into a glass.
    • When Jodie is drugged by the CIA, Aiden is able to travel a much further distance away from her than he demonstrates being able to normally, with no apparent effect on Jodie. It could be that the drugs are preventing Jodie from feeling the pain she normally would when Aiden is farther away.
  • Dashed Plot Line: The story consists of scenes from three main periods of Jodie's life: her troubled childhood, rebellious teen years, and her work for the CIA as an adult. The latter part takes up most of the game, but there are smaller Time Skips between scenes in it, such as the three months Jodie spends in a coma and, judging by her respective hair lengths, at least a year between her escape from the CIA and the reunion with Cole. The game also features a Distant Finale in the form of a vision Jodie has, which she claims will come to pass in a number of years.
  • Deflector Shields: Aiden can form a barrier around Jodie or others to deflect bullets, protect them from flames, or cushion the impact of falls. However, he doesn't use them in close-quarters combat situations.
  • Demonic Head Shake: The possessed bodies in "The Condenser" shake their heads in a jittery and unsettling manner.
  • Demonic Possession:
    • Aiden and other entities can enter the minds of people and control their bodies.
    • This can be inverted as well, though it only happens once. In "The Dinner", Jodie gets pissed enough with Aiden's obstruction (locking her out of their apartment) that she possesses him to make him open the door.
  • Despair Event Horizon: Nathan, should he come back to his senses in "Black Sun". He then shoots himself.
  • Destroy the Security Camera: When Jodie and Stan break into the supermarket to get stuff for Tuesday's birth-giving, Aiden first has to smash the store's video camera in order to avoid premature detection.
  • Diagnosis: Knowing Too Much: After Jodie's birth, the CIA wanted to silence her mother Norah Gray, so they injected her with drugs to put her into a permanent catatonic state.
  • Ding-Dong-Ditch Distraction: Aiden does this to aggravate Jodie in "The Dinner," ringing the doorbell so that she panics and assumes Ryan is early. If Jodie steps outside even after seeing the hall is empty, he slams the door and locks it behind her, which forces her to use her own psychic abilities to unlock it again.
  • Disproportionate Retribution:
    • The kids at the birthday party turn on Jodie and lock her in the closet simply because she brought an Edgar Allan Poe book as a gift. Even if the gift idea demonstrates how out of touch Nathan is with kids Jodie's age, the book is very rare and, if nothing else, was probably worth a lot of money.
      • In retaliation, Jodie is able to kill them all by setting the house on fire which seems a bit harsh considering they only bullied her.
    • While living on the streets, Jodie can beat up a bunch of thugs that are beating up Stan. They respond later by burning down the building that the group of hobos are staying in. If Jodie escapes the building, the thugs return and hit her twice in the back of the head with a steel bat, putting her into a coma.
  • Double-Meaning Title: "Two Souls" refers to Jodie and Aiden. It can also refer to the ending of the game, where Jodie can face the apocalypse with Zoey, either as Zoey's Guardian Entity or physically alongside her.
  • Downloadable Content: "Advanced Experiments", a bonus chapter set during Jodie's CIA training which provides an additional obstacle course for her to traverse with Aiden within thirty minutes while under Nick Vang's supervision. Later releases of the game include it by default. There were also plans for a bonus chapter showing an infant Jodie interacting with Aiden for the first time.
  • Dreaming of Things to Come:
    • In the "Homeless" chapter, Jodie has a nightmare about the building fire that happens later on.
    • After being put into a coma, Jodie has a dream about herself standing on a cliffside, looking ahead. This dream is shown again in the epilogue, revealing it to be a vision of an impending End of the World as We Know It caused by another reckless use of condenser technology. If Jodie is dead, Zoey has the same vision in the epilogue, implying that Jodie (as her Guardian Entity is sharing it with her to better prepare her for the future.
  • Dreaming of Times Gone By: In "Homeless" while in a coma, Jodie has a dream about her biological mother giving birth to her.
  • Dressing as the Enemy: Jodie and Ryan infiltrate the Kazirstan underwater base dressed up in stolen uniforms. Since the uniforms feature heavy coats and hats, their deception looks convincing enough to get them inside the base... at least until Jodie collapses after Aiden hits the containment field.
  • Driven to Suicide:
    • Jodie can attempt this twice, once in "The Mission" and again in "Homeless". The first time it's a case of Better to Die than Be Killed, but the second time, she's heavily depressed and exhausted. Both times, Aiden uses his powers to stop her.
    • This can also happen to Nathan if you successfully talk him down. He realizes what he's done and kills himself to be reunited with his family.
  • Driving Question: "What lies beyond?"
  • Dull Surprise: Lt. Sherman, the sheriff who interrogates Jodie at the beginning of the game, is rather nonchalant about standing in the middle of his HQ with the CIA task force sent to detain Jodie slaughtered. Given the fact he's the sole survivor of an obviously incredibly brutal assault by a seemingly harmless young woman and a ghostly entity, he's probably suffering from a severe case of shock.
  • Dying Declaration of Love: If Ryan gets fatally wounded by Nathan in "The Black Sun", Jodie leans over his dying body and weepingly declares her love to him.
  • Eagleland: Type 2, considering how the CIA is portrayed in-game.
  • Easter Egg:
    • You can find a newspaper that mentions the Origami Killer in one of the levels.
    • One of Jodie's childhood stuffed animals is Totoro.
  • Eldritch Abomination: The dark entities. All that's known about them is that they come from deep within the Infraworld, and that there's different types. The weakest variety resemble living shadows with Combat Tentacles, but some have more unique appearances and abilities: Ye'iitsoh can create sandstorms and looks like a monstrous, legless skeleton with a fanged mouth, claws, and glowing yellow eyes.
  • Eldritch Location: The Black Sun's chamber is much, much larger when it is on than when it is off, and the Black Sun itself always seems to be the same distance away no matter where one is inside it. The Infraworld itself, when seen in the worst ending, is a dark void with glittering "stars" that may actually be disembodied souls.
  • Electromagnetic Ghosts: Entities can cause significant interference with electrical devices, making lights flicker and screens display strange images. Aiden can use this to his advantage whenever there's a technological obstacle, like distracting guards or even hacking into the DPA's systems to change someone's security clearance.
  • Evil Is Not a Toy:
    • The CIA repeatedly attempts to open rifts to the Infraworld in order to harness the power of the dark entities for military purposes. Each time, it backfires horribly and Jodie has to step in to stop it. Judging by Jodie's premonitions in the Distant Finale, they still haven't learned.
    • The Navajo ancestors summoned a hostile spirit to kill the white men. After it was done with them, the spirit turned against its summoners.
  • Exact Words: To keep Jodie's life a secret, the DPA declared that she was stillborn. The "stillborn" part is half-correct; they were actually talking about Aiden. Jodie's birth was never officially recorded so that her mother wouldn't be able to track her down.
  • Expository Hairstyle Change: Used extensively for Jodie who changes from long to short hair depending on the time period. It's particularly useful, given the non-linear timeline.
  • Eye Scream: If you refuse to talk when captured by the Kazirstani military, the Torture Technician cuts out Ryan's left eye and threatens to do the same to Jodie before being called off. Ryan later tells Jodie that it was the right choice, and that he would have done the same. He later appears wearing an Eyepatch of Power since Aiden's healing is unable to restore his eye.
  • Fade to White: Several dramatic scenes fade out to white, e.g. after Jodie gets beaten over the head by bullies and lies motionless in the snow.
  • Far East: Republic of Kazirstan, clearly meant to represent either China or North Korea, while curiously at the same time being a -stan. If the rift map is any indication, it is located in Heilongjiang, a province in northeast China. The soldiers there also seem to be speaking Mandarin Chinese.
  • Foregone Victory: With the idea of more organic failure states, there is no way to get an actual game over. If Jodie fails or gets captured, all that happens is an alternate escape scenario takes place which puts you back on the plotted line. You will beat the game. It is, however, possible to fail the last Quick Time Event and receive a bad ending.
  • Foreshadowing:
    • The player can see Nathan's family in a photograph on his desk in "First Interview". If Jodie agrees to draw Aiden when prompted, the camera frames her, the family photo, and the drawing of Aiden next to each other. This foreshadows Nathan seeking out Jodie and Aiden again, believing that they are the key to getting his family back.
    • When Jodie visits the mental hospital, Aiden can go into several rooms and be confronted by mental patients who can see him; one addresses Jodie directly, telling her to be prepared to sacrifice her life to save the world. Depending on your choices, she can end up doing exactly that. Aiden can also find the lab where Nathan is keeping his wife and daughter captive before this is revealed to Jodie and the player.
    • Shortly after Nathan first loses his family, Cole explains to a young Jodie that he "loved his wife and daughter more than anything in the world". This becomes literal in "Black Sun", where he proves himself willing to deactivate the containment field around the Black Sun rift in the hope of being reunited with them, even though he knows that doing this would likely cause the apocalypse.
  • Forgot About His Powers: There are numerous cases where Aiden's powers would come in handy, but his potential isn't even acknowledged. Despite being capable of messing around with objects without Jodie's involvement, he will never attempt to disarm people threatening Jodie with a weapon. His ability to strangle or possess people is arbitrarily limited whenever it would prove useful. At the Navajo ranch, Aiden is inexplicably restricted from passing through the walls; however, this might be justified since it's mentioned that the ranch walls are warded to keep spirits out.
  • For Science!: The American military's plot to invade and control the afterlife, filled with uncountable entities they can barely contain let alone combat, is given the flimsiest of justifications beyond, "it's more important than the space or nuclear arms race! For America!"
  • Freeze-Frame Bonus: In "Homeless," Jodie passes a man reading a newspaper. If you use Aiden to look at the article he's reading, it's about the Origami Killer from Heavy Rain.
  • Gameplay and Story Integration: A rather specific example, which only occurs when playing the chapter "The Dinner" with the game set to Duo Mode. If Aiden locks Jodie out of her apartment, she is able to force Aiden to let her back in. When this occurs, the Jodie player has control of Aiden.
  • Ghostly Chill: Besides messing with electronic devices, another way for ghosts to make their presence known to the living is by making the air cold so people's breath will make visible steam.
  • Ghost Memory: Aiden can give Jodie these from dead bodies to see what they experienced before they died.
  • Gilded Cage: The DPA scientists let Jodie have a comfortable, personalized room, but there are cameras everywhere, the door is locked from the outside, and she isn't allowed to go out much without someone accompanying her.
  • Goth: Jodie wears very gothic clothing in one section of her teenage years in the institute. However, this is dependent on her choosing to get revenge on the teenagers in "The Party". Otherwise, Jodie will be wearing more plain-looking clothing.
  • Goths Have It Hard: Jodie adopts a gothic ensemble after being bullied by the other teenagers whose parents work on the base, and if she chooses to get revenge on them through Aiden (which is very likely).
  • Guide Dang It!: The only way to romance Ryan involves a choice of leaving a bar in a previous chapter. Too bad there is no clear sign that tells you that you CAN leave the bar, and the chapter between Ryan's romance and the bar is one of the longest in the game.
    • One achievement requires the player to kill off every single character that can be killed, then let Jodie join them in the Beyond. While most of the deaths are fairly obvious and easy to engineer, getting Ryan killed can only be done by failing to talk Dawkins down when Jodie meets him in the Black Sun chamber, then resisting the ingrained reflex to throttle him with Aiden as soon as the controls switch to the latter. Only then does Ryan intervene by Taking the Bullet meant for Jodie and dying in the process.
  • Gun Struggle: If Jodie fails to talk Nathan down in "Black Sun" and Aiden does not intervene, Ryan shows up and tries to wrestle the gun from him. Unlike most incidents of this trope, this results in them both being fatally shot.
  • Handy Cuffs: First averted, and then played straight during "Hunted." Jodie can get arrested three different times at various points in the level. The first time, she ends up with her hands cuffed behind her back and locked up in a small, guarded room, thus making her escape complicated and downright impossible without resorting to help from Aiden. However, if she gets recaptured later, the officer handcuffs her hands in front of her, allowing her to easily strangle him. One has to wonder why they decided to get sloppy with precautions only after she managed to escape her restraints the first time.
  • Healing Hands: Sort of. Jodie often places her hands over someone when they require healing, but it's actually Aiden performing the healing.
  • Hellish Copter: During Jodie's escape from police and SWAT teams, a helicopter can be heard and seen circling above. Depending on how the player tackles the following scenes, it gets less than a minute of screen time prior to its unscheduled explosive disassembly on the ground (and right in the middle of its comrades, to boot).
  • The Hero Dies: One possible outcome of the game is Jodie choosing to go into the "Beyond" voluntarily after destroying the condenser. This also happens if she is killed by entities before reaching the condenser.
  • Heroic Fire Rescue: In "Homeless", Jodie has to rescue her friends from a building set on fire by a group of thugs.
  • Heroic Sacrifice: If Jodie fails to talk Nathan down in "Black Sun" and Aiden does not intervene, Ryan comes in to save Jodie by engaging Nathan in a Gun Struggle that gets both of them killed.
  • Homeless Hero: The chapter "Homeless."
  • How We Got Here: Layered within itself. The story starts with Jodie surrounded by a mysterious light and trying to piece her memories together. The first memory she accesses is heavily lined with flashbacks and makes no sense until the player goes through several other chapters.
  • I Cannot Self-Terminate: Jodie, although involuntarily - every time she attempts to take her own life, Aiden will angrily intervene. She later exploits this to save her friends from a burning building in "Homeless," trusting that Aiden will keep her alive long enough to get everyone evacuated.
  • If You Won't, I Will: Phillip, Jodie's foster father, uses this to try to get Nathan to tell Jodie that she's being left at the institute indefinitely.
  • I Just Want to Be Normal: Jodie wants to be like other normal girls her age, but it's just not possible with her abilities and with Aiden's presence in her life. This causes her to resent him at first.
  • Impaled Palm: Jodie gets her hand pierced with a screwdriver during her fight with the Chinese commander.
  • Impromptu Tracheotomy: During "The Condenser," Jodie impales a possessed scientist through the neck with a metal pole... which does little more than annoy him.
  • Improvised Weapon: Among the objects that are used as weapons in some fight scenes are a metal pole, a computer, a screwdriver and a hook on a chain.
  • Ink-Suit Actor:
    • Elliot Page as Jodie and Willem Dafoe as Dawkins.
    • A couple of other examples (and one that is a Mythology Gag to Heavy Rain) is the sheriff from the opening, who is the spitting image of Paco from Heavy Rain, and by extension, his voice actor David Gasman.
  • Insistent Terminology:
    • David Cage constantly refers to Aiden as "the entity" in interviews.
    • When Jodie asks if her host family in the desert are Navajo, Jay replies that they are Dineh. This skirts the edge of Distinction Without a Difference territory as Dineh is the Navajo word for The People and is the tribe's preferred term for themselves.
  • Instant Birth: Just Add Labor!: Tuesday goes from labor to birth within an hour. Additionally, Jimmy tells Jodie that Tuesday's water broke which in fiction land means birth is immanent.
  • Interrupted Suicide: If Jodie attempts to kill herself, Aiden will immediately use his telekinesis to stop her.
  • Invisible Wall: A variation. While there are invisible walls in several places, usually if a character wanders away from the areas the devs intended, they'll briefly stop to collect themselves and turn around.
  • I See Dead People: Jodie, with her ability to see spirits like Nathan's dead wife.
  • I've Come Too Far: Jodie rationalizes escaping the base by possessing Cole by saying "it's too late to turn back now". While he would undoubtedly be angry or disappointed over this, it probably beats how he would react after she steals his car and leaves him in the middle of the woods.
  • I Want Them Alive!: One of the reasons why Jodie manages to slip the police/CIA on multiple occasions is that they want her alive and hence abstain from using lethal force to stop her escape attempts.
  • Just Following Orders: May as well be Ryan's catchphrase. He says it almost verbatim when Jodie angrily confronts him about the reason behind her mission in Somalia.
  • Karma Houdini: Zig-Zagged, unlike previous Quantic Dream games. Anybody that can get away with doing bad things is a player choice, except for:
    • The attempted rapists of Jodie at the bar level, who are implied to do this regularly, and they only get their comeuppance at the cost of traumatizing Jodie due to the attempted rape.
    • The thugs who beat up Stan for fun, subsequently set fire to the building where Tuesday has just given birth, and put Jodie in a coma seem to get away with their evil deeds at first, but they are captured by the police soon afterwards due to incriminating evidence: the gasoline odor on their clothes and their self-filmed footage of them beating her.
    • General McGrath, for his part, earns a solid punch to the face from Ryan for attempting to put Jodie in a permanent coma as well as trying to "conquer" the Infraworld despite the apocalyptic levels of danger involved, but he survives the events of "Black Sun" thanks to the efforts of Jodie and her friends. The epilogues heavily imply that he and the CIA are still hard at work on trying to fully access the other side, having learned nothing from the experience or the numerous deaths caused by their research.
    • To a greater extent, while some souls linger in reality for a number of reasons, most of those who die seem to pass on directly to the Beyond, a realm apparently separate from the Infraworld that is portrayed as a paradise without limits. The majority of the dead apparently end up in what is essentially heaven, regardless of how good or evil they may have been in life.
  • Kidnapped by an Ally: After Jodie's visit to her mother at the asylum, she gets ambushed and knocked over the head. When she wakes up, it turns out that it was Nathan who ordered the kidnapping since he didn't know any other way how to convince her to meet him.
  • Kill the Ones You Love: Jodie weeps after performing a Mercy Kill on her poor mother.
  • Laser-Guided Karma: A few examples here and there:
  • The Last Dance: In "Dragon's Hideout" the Kazirstan general is well aware that he is going to die in his Collapsing Lair. He chooses his last moments to brutally fight Jodie to the death.
  • Leitmotif: Several.
    • Jodie's theme—and, by extension, the game's theme—is a subdued, mournful One-Woman Wail.
    • Aiden has his own theme as well, an eerie, ominous four-note melody.
  • Love Confession: If Ryan and Jodie safely make it out of the Asian Underwater Base, they confess their love to each other.
  • Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: The Saint John's Hospital patients. Are they just mentally ill, or fellow psychics that were sent there to conceal their abilities? Some of their dialogue (and the fact a few of them know Jodie and Aiden's names) imply the latter.
  • Mercy Kill:
    • You have the option to kill Jodie's irrevocably brain-dead mother when Jodie goes to see her.
    • Killing Nathan as Aiden during "Black Sun" also qualifies, considering that he's gone completely insane due to his grief.
  • Mighty Whitey: Jodie comes across as this in "Navajo". First she has to show the native Americans how to tame a horse. Then, while exploring on horseback, she just happens to find an old burial ground, gets Shimasani to speak for the first time in decades, and is able to use her psychometry to perform a ritual that no Navajo has been able to in generations. All of this can end up saving the Navajo family from a hostile spirit that was summoned because of their ancestors' hatred for the white man.
  • Mirror Scare: In "My Imaginary Friend", Jodie has the option to make funny faces in the bathroom mirror. If she does, a dark entity suddenly appears behind her.
  • Mistaken for Junkie: During the "Homeless" chapter, Stan can assume Jodie is a drug addict after she has a ghost-related freak-out. She has to assure him that she's not.
  • Monster and the Maiden: Jodie has been bound to her Guardian Entity, Aiden, since birth. She's frequently frustrated with his overprotectiveness, but is ultimately happy that she has him to protect her. Near the end of the game, it's revealed that Aiden is actually the spirit of Jodie's stillborn twin brother.
  • Mood Whiplash: In the Anachronic Order, the chapter where Ryan rather heartlessly takes Jodie away to the CIA academy is immediately followed by a chapter where she's eagerly arranging a dinner date with him.
  • Multiple Endings: There are six endings in the game: the bad end if you fail the last QTE, Jodie is killed before deactivating the condenser and an apocalypse follows; "Chose Death" sees Jodie voluntarily leaving for the Infraworld rather than be separated from Aiden. "Chose Life" is further separated into four endings: in "Ryan", Jodie makes up with Ryan; in "Jay", she returns to the Navajo farm and starts a relationship with Jay; in "Alone", she breaks up with Ryan and lives alone, wandering through the world and looking for ghosts; and in "Zoey", she lives with the survivors of the "Homeless" chapter and Tuesday's daughter.
    • In a less glaring example, the looming Beyond ending also differs slightly, depending on which of the supporting characters live or die prior to the Black Sun's destruction. Shimasani (the old Navajo grandma) will always be there as her death is unavoidable, but she can also be joined by her son Paul, the two hobos Walter and Jimmy, Jodie's mother, Cole and Ryan. Facilitating this ending is required for an achievement, though a serious case of Guide Dang It!, especially when it comes to getting Ryan killed.
  • Mundane Fantastic: The CIA includes Aiden and his abilities in their plans for Jodie all the way from her three-year training, which is still fairly remarkable even if they had Nathan's research to use as a stepping stone.
  • Mutual Kill: At the climax of Jodie's mission in Somalia, Aiden possesses a soldier who starts killing the leader and all his men while also getting killed in the process. This leads to a convenient situation for Jodie who can walk into the headquarters with no resistance left.
  • My Life Flashed Before My Eyes: When Jodie slips into a coma after the head injury she conceived from the bullies, we see a sequence of scenes from her past life.
  • Mythology Gag: In "Hunted", during the train escape several of the passengers are voiced by the same extra who voiced pedestrians in the level where Madison and Ethan have to escape onto a subway train. Doubles as an Ascended Meme to a Narm-ish line from Heavy Rain, as he repeats it during the chase sequence.
  • Necromantic: Nathan Dawkins slowly becomes obsessed with bringing his wife and daughter back from the dead after he lost them in a tragic car accident. He eventually found a way to partially phase them back into the mortal world, which clearly left them in a state of constant agony, but he's too delusional to admit this to himself even after Jody uses her powers to let him talk to them. He then decides to shut off the containment field on the Condenser, which would cause The End of the World as We Know It by merging the realm of the dead with that of the living.
  • Never My Fault: If Jodie decides to take revenge on the teenagers by having Aiden wreaking havoc, the girl that started the whole thing blames Jodie for all the damage Aiden caused (which is partially true). She seems to forget that the entire reason that it happened was because they were the ones that drove her to do it.
  • Next Sunday A.D.: The game originally released in 2013. "Black Sun" takes place in November 2014, with the epilogues all taking place sometime in 2015. Jodie (or Zoey in one of the endings) has a premonition of a Bad Future taking place an unknown amount of years later.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Under the CIA's orders, Jodie unwittingly assassinates a democratically elected president of a war-torn African country, believing him to be a warlord, which sparks outrage among the locals and the international community.
  • Nobody Poops: Averted. Late in the game, Jodie needs to take a leak in an abandoned, ice-locked fishing village. Since she's forced to do so in a raging blizzard at -40°C, it unsurprisingly elicits a muttered Cluster F-Bomb from her.
  • No Celebrities Were Harmed: The Somali warlord Gemaal Sheik Sharif strongly resembles Somalia's seventh president, Sharif Sheikh Ahmed. As it turns out, the similarity provides some Foreshadowing as to Sharif's true character; like his real-life counterpart, he's an elected leader who's trying to bring peace to his embattled country. The CIA tells Jodie otherwise to manipulate her into assassinating him.
  • Noodle Incident: We see all the really important parts of Jodie's life, but anything else is relegated to exposition. In particular, we don't know how (or why) she became attracted to Ryan. This actually wasn't supposed to be as much of a Noodle Incident as it ended up being — there were two additional chapters that took place during Jodie's years in the CIA, which would have given her relationship with Ryan a more natural progression. The chapter names exist in the game files, but most of the content related to them was purged.
  • No One Gets Left Behind: Potentially either played straight or averted. During the final push for the Black Sun, Cole gets attacked by a hostile entity, and Jodie can either go back to drag him to safety or continue without him. Leaving him behind results in Cole's death, but going back and completing the following QTEs results in Cole telling Jodie that his wounds are too great for him to continue. Notably, Ryan at first elects to leave Cole behind, but if Jodie turns back, he comes to her aid immediately.
  • Not Quite the Right Thing: In "Hauntings", Jodie channels the ghosts of Nathan's wife and daughter in an attempt to provide him with closure and them with rest. This only results in him becoming obsessed with seeing them again, and eventually, deactivating the Black Sun rift.
  • One Last Job: The CIA promises Jodie to let her go if she does one last job for them in Kazirstan. Subverted when it turns out that the CIA doesn't really want to let her go after all.
  • One Riot, One Ranger: Also Jodie. The first time a condenser breaks, they try sending in a small army of soldiers to fight through the ghosts and fix it...which fails miserably. Then they send Jodie in, and, well...
  • One-Woman Wail: Jodie's Leitmotif is a mournful, ethereal female voice.
  • Onion Tears: Jodie will shed a few in "The Dinner" if she makes either the chicken curry or the Asian beef.
  • Optional Sexual Encounter: Jodie can have sex with Ryan during "The Dinner" chapter, but it's dependent on a few things. If Aiden interrupts the date too many times, Ryan will leave early, upsetting Jodie and preventing them from hooking up. Whether Jodie was assaulted in "Like Other Girls" or not is also important here: if she was not assaulted or never went to the bar, she is open to sex with Ryan if the date reaches that point. If she was assaulted, she breaks down crying as they start getting intimate.
  • Our Ghosts Are Different: Spectral beings such as Aiden are simply referred to as "entities" in-game. They are invisible and intangible, can possess people, and exert limited telekinesis. Oh, and the nasty ones appear as Living Shadows with Combat Tentacles, Glowing Eyes of Doom, Throat Lights, and More Teeth than the Osmond Family. We never really get to find out what benevolent entities such as Aiden look like when viewed by the naked eye because all of Aiden's cutscenes and gameplay take place through his eyes. Drawings of the more benevolent entities depict them as floating masses of energy with glowing eyes, and it is implied they have no defining features.
  • Painless Death for a Price: After being captured in the Kazirstan lab, the Chinese commander offers Jodie a quick and painless death if she talks. She doesn't comply so the commander changes his strategy and threatens to mutilate Ryan instead.
  • Pay Evil unto Evil: Aiden is prone to this, in regards to those to antagonize or try to harm Jodie. One particular example has him tormenting and potentially murdering a group of Jodie's would-be rapists by either strangling them one by one or possessing the bartender and making him perform a Psychic Assisted Murder-Suicide.
  • Pivotal Wake-up: In "The Condenser" chapter, the spiritual entities reanimate corpses and the first thing they do is rise from the ground like this.
  • Please, Don't Leave Me: Jodie begs her foster parents not to leave her at the government institute, to no avail.
  • Please Wake Up: If Jodie chooses death in the ending, Ryan discovers her body and keeps begging her to wake up, even as the screen fades to black. Keeping in mind that Ryan is a trained CIA veteran, it really shows how much he cares about Jodie that her death reduces him to a sobbing wreck. The hobos likewise beg this of her after Jodie either barely makes it out of the burning building or is beaten into a coma by the street punks.
  • Possessing a Dead Body: In "The Condenser" chapter, the spiritual entities who escaped from the Infraworld reanimate an entire hallway of human corpses to menace Jodie.
  • Posthumous Collaboration: Since composer Normand Corbeil died of pancreatic cancer in January 2013, Scottish composer Lorne Balfe took over. The game is dedicated to Corbeil.
  • Posthumous Narration: If the player chooses the Beyond ending, the game's framing narrative is revealed to be Jodie's soul sharing her memories with Zoey.
  • Power Born of Madness: If Aiden inspects the other rooms at the insane asylum, some of the mental patients indicate that they can see him.
  • Power Incontinence: Justified, as Aiden has a mind of his own. During an experiment into her powers, Jodie finds herself unable to control Aiden after the initial experiment, and total chaos results in the room; through it all, you can hear Dawkins shouting to Jodie to stop and Jodie screaming "I can't! He's not listening to me!"
  • Precision F-Strike:
    • Jodie threatens a SWAT commander this way after she and Aiden fight off his unit:
      Jodie: Tell them to leave me the fuck alone, because next time... I'll kill everyone.
    • She also launches one when Aiden takes offense at her dating Ryan.
      Jodie: This is my life, Aiden! Do you fucking hear me? This is MY! LIFE!
    • And another one mere minutes later when Aiden repeatedly sabotages her attempt to prepare for dinner with Ryan.
      Jodie: Aiden! For fuck's sake!
  • Psychic-Assisted Suicide: Aiden can possess people to force them to shoot their friends and/or themselves.
  • Psychic Nosebleed: Jodie gets them when she uses Aiden's powers for too long.
  • Psychic Powers:
    • Jodie can see spirits and act as a conduit for them, allowing them to communicate with the living. She also displays an ability to glean information by touching objects, and with help from Aiden she can read the memories of the deceased. There are also occasions where she sees the future in her dreams, and there is one instance where she apparently takes control of Aiden to force him to open a door after he locks her out (accompanied by the aforementioned Psychic Nosebleed).
    • Aiden can telekinetically move objects and possess others, as well as other Poltergeist abilities. He also appears to be able to communicate directly with Jodie through Telepathy.
    • In a later chapter it is revealed that Jodie's biological mother had telekinetic powers.
  • Rank Scales with Asskicking: The Chinese commander puts up a much better fight against Jodie than any of the other mooks and thugs she throws down against over the course of her life.
  • Rape and Revenge: If the patrons in the bar attempt to rape Jodie, Aiden will intervene and kill all of them.
  • Reality Has No Subtitles: There are no subtitles during portions of the game where characters are speaking Persian, Chinese or Navajo since Jodie apparently doesn't know any of those languages, and the game is in her point of view.
  • Real Life Writes the Plot: Like in Heavy Rain, the story was sparked by an event in David Cage's life—namely, the sudden death of a person very close to him.
  • Reed Richards Is Useless: In the 'Alive' endings, Jodie is shown as living moderately well, despite her/Aiden's ability to cure drug addiction in the space of a few minutes. The fact that it'd be both ethical and extremely profitable to sell her abilities at, say, rehab clinics is never brought up. It's justified, though, in that the 'alive' endings have her believe Aiden to be gone for good for a long while. In addition, Jodie just wants to be left alone, especially after all the shit and abuse she has gone through by that point. If she sold herself out as a miracle healer, she'd not only draw a crapton of unwanted attention but would probably also reignite all the fear and prejudice she already had to put up with her entire life.
  • Refusing Paradise: At the end of the "Black Sun" chapter, Jodie can choose to return to the world of the living over joining the Infraworld.
  • Relationship Sabotage: In "The Dinner", you can make Aiden try and succeed in sabotaging Jodie's date with Ryan.
  • Resignations Not Accepted: The CIA does not take kindly to Jodie deserting them. First they hunt her down for treason, forcing her to become a fugitive. Then when she reluctantly does One Last Job for them in exchange for her freedom, General McGrath tries to put her in a medically induced coma, just like he did to her mother twenty-four years earlier.
  • Road Block: The cops pursuing Jodie set up a roadblock on the other side of a bridge. She decides to just go straight through it on her stolen motorbike, having Aiden conjure a force field that stops all bullets and knocks friggin' SWAT trucks out of her way.
  • Roaring Rampage of Revenge: The player can have Jodie go on one with Aiden after the kids at the birthday party lock her in the cabinet and she gets out. Not undeserved, considering the way they treated her.
  • Sanity Slippage: Nathan, once he realizes that his dead family exists in the infraworld and can be communicated with.
  • Scenery Censor: During Jodie's Shower Scene at her apartment, a towel hangs in the right position to hide her sensitive parts from the in-game camera.
  • Seal the Breach: Jodie is tasked with closing the rift to the Infraworld at the Condenser site. She later also destroys the Kazirstan condenser.
  • Sequel Hook: No matter what ending you get, they all allude to another conflict with the Infraworld. This is strange considering David Cage notoriously dislikes sequels and, to anyone's knowledge, has no plans to make one for this game.
  • Shout-Out:
    • David Cage named Jodie after none other than Jodie Foster.
    • The party Jodie attends is for a girl named Kirsten, a name heard previously in Indigo Prophecy.
    • If Ryan loses his eye during the interrogation scene, he resembles Nick Fury in "Black Sun" given his looks and occupation.
  • Shower Scene: There are two shower scenes in the game with Jodie that are most notable for the resulting real-life controversy. The first is in the "Navajo" chapter in an outdoors shower in the desert and the second in "The Dinner" as she prepares for her date with Ryan. Nothing explicit is visible in the game proper, but a player who had access to the source code managed to manipulate the camera freely during the scenes and discovered that Jodie is fully modeled with visible nipples and genitalia. Once an uncensored version of the shower scenes were released, Elliot Page threatened to sue Sony since he had never agreed to be featured nude.
  • Soft Glass: During "The Condenser", when Jodie smashes through a glass window to escape from a small army of possessed scientists. Justified: it is incredibly cold in the room, and glass becomes more brittle in the cold.note 
  • Stern Chase: As with Lucas Kane in Fahrenheit and Ethan Mars in Heavy Rain, Jodie becomes a fugitive; in her case, she abandons the CIA after being manipulated into killing the elected leader of a foreign country. She's mostly successful in evading them until her desire to visit her mother allows them to lure her into a trap.
  • Story to Gameplay Ratio: Ridiculously high. This is essentially Asura's Wrath gameplay mixed with Heavy Rain, with an even more unnoticeable interface.
  • Stupidity Is the Only Option: In "Navajo", Jodie is repeatedly told not to go outside at night but will eventually exhaust all other options, and the only way to continue playing would be to do just that.
  • Super Breeding Program: It is implied that the CIA has been experimenting with selective breeding by pairing up people with limited psychic abilities to see if their powers will be increased in the next generation. Jodie is a result of this project.
  • Sympathetic P.O.V.: Done rather cleverly in "The Dinner". For most of the game you can switch between Jodie and Aiden at will to accomplish several objectives, making them a perfect team. In this chapter, this interactivity is dropped so you control either Jodie or Aiden in sequence. Subsequently, from Jodie's POV Aiden looks like an obsessive stalker trying to prevent her from having her own life, while from Aiden's POV Jodie looks like she's callously ignoring the soul who can't help being eternally tied to her.
  • Take Up My Sword: If Jodie dies, Zoey takes up her place as the world's future savior, guided and protected by her spirit. Otherwise, in the "Zoey" ending, Jodie and Zoey take on the apocalypse together, but Jodie consciously trains Zoey as the next savior, presumably out of fear that this trope will be needed.
  • Talking the Monster to Death: It is possible to talk Dawkins into suicide in the final level. Failing to do so is required for one of the achievements, as it can also get Ryan killed.
  • Teens Are Monsters: In one level, Jodie attends a birthday party, but after enjoying herself for a bit, the kids berate her for the old Edgar Allan Poe book she gives as a birthday present, then gang up on her, with one calling her a slut and going so far as to say that she only invited Jodie because her mother made her do it, and lock her into a cupboard under the stairs. She gets out with Aiden's help, and can get her revenge moments later.
  • Tempting Cookie Jar: An amusing example in the "My Imaginary Friend" chapter, where little Jodie can have Aiden use his telekinetic powers to get her a cookie from the jar on top of the fridge after her mom told her no.
  • Tempting Fate: Ryan just can't keep his mouth shut in critical situations.
    Ryan: Fucking monsters! Without those belts we'd be dead already!
    [cue Jodie's portable containment field shutting down]
  • Things That Go "Bump" in the Night: The dark entities tormented and attacked Jodie as a child, leaving her covered in cuts and bruises. They continue to torment her into adulthood, and target Zoey in the Beyond ending as well.
  • This Is for Emphasis, Bitch!: During "The Condenser," two of the dark entities, while possessing the scientists, call Jodie a "little bitch" before they attack her. The Kazirstan general also calls her a "stupid American bitch" at one point.
  • This Is My Human: Perhaps the closest equivalent to Aiden's opinion of Jodie. He frequently disagrees with her, is distrustful of all other humans, and makes it clear several times that he follows her directions because he wants to, not because he has to. But he is deeply protective of her, and cares for her like a friend. Or, more accurately, a brother. It's likely that, never being born, he never learned how to be an actual brother to Jodie, and the relationship they have now is the closest approximation of it he can find.
  • Three-Month-Old Newborn: Played with; Jodie helps a pregnant woman give birth in the "Homeless" chapter, and part of the mission involves snipping the umbilical cord. However, the baby is completely clean. Averted in a later flashback, where pre-birth Jodie is sufficiently... off in her proportions.
  • Together in Death:
    • If Jodie convinces Nathan to back down in the climax, he chooses to commit suicide instead and is then reunited with the souls of his dead wife and daughter before moving on to the Infraworld.
    • This option is also available to Jodie at the very end, where she can choose to move into the afterlife so she won't be separated from Aiden.
  • Traintop Battle: Jodie fights off cops chasing after her before jumping off with Aiden's help.
  • Traumatic Haircut: Jodie is shocked when she wakes up in a hospital and sees her hair stubble in the mirror.
  • Tropical Epilogue: One of the happier endings has Jodie and Ryan take off to a tropical island on a yacht.
  • True Love's Kiss: When Ryan rescues Jodie from the Kazirstan lab, she doesn't respond to his CPR. Then he kisses her gently and she finally comes back to life.
  • Two Siblings In One: This turns out to be the case for Jodie and Aiden; Aiden is in fact the spirit of Jodie's stillborn twin brother.
  • Tyrannicide: The CIA sends Jodie on a mission to eliminate a tyrannical warlord in a war-torn African country. After she completes the mission, she learns that the man she killed was actually a democratically elected president who was seen as the last hope for his country to ever achieve peace and stability. She doesn't take the news well.
  • Underestimating Badassery: Many people throughout the story attempt to mess with Jodie. Little do they know that they'll then have to deal with Aiden...
    • This trope reinforces itself after Jodie takes her CIA training. After that point, she can do a lot of damage, even without Aiden.
  • Underwater Base: A late game mission sees you infiltrate an underwater base where the Chinese are trying to build a condenser portal.
  • Underwater Base: Probably to hide their activities from the enemy, Kazirstan built an underwater research facility where they study the entities from the Infraworld.
  • Unreveal Angle: At the end of the game Jodie finally learns that Aiden is really her stillborn twin brother and meets him face to face in the Infraworld. The way the camera is framed prevents the viewer from seeing his face.note 
  • Video Game Caring Potential: You can bring Stan peace by channeling his family's words, help Tuesday give birth to her child, and save numerous lives. On a more personal scale, you can choose to make Jodie bring her stuffed rabbit to the military base, and let her have a normal date with the guy she likes.
  • Video Game Cruelty Potential: Or you can just let many of those people die instead of saving them. Jimmy and Walter will burn to death if you don't get them out of the building, Paul will die if his injuries aren't treated prior to battling the evil spirit, Cole will die if his injuries aren't treated prior to entering the Black Sun chamber, and Ryan will die if both Jodie and Aiden fail to prevent Dawkins from shooting her in time. The choice is all yours.
    • You can do even more damage as Aiden.
      • For example, during an experiment into her powers, Jodie is asked to knock over some blocks in the next room; she does. She is then asked what else she can move, and you can trash the room, break the see-through mirrors, wreck computer equipment in the observation room, and traumatize the woman participating in the experiment, all whilst Jodie is screaming for Aiden to stop... Or just head back through to Jodie and end the experiment.
      • Same with a level further in the game, where Jodie gives a group of teens a dose of Laser-Guided Karma. Aiden can simply kick their asses by knocking them down with furniture... Or start a fire in the house to try and kill them, or attempting to murder them through other means like dropping a fridge on and stabbing one of the teens.
      • Not to mention the chaos he can wreak on the SWAT teams in Bakertown. At best, he kills a handful of cops by forcing some to shoot others. At worst, his actions include 1. an armored truck crashing into a weapons shop which explodes violently, 2. an entire gas station blowing up in a huge fireball, 3. the upper half of a friggin' steeple getting broken off and obliterating anything on the street below, and last but not least, 4. possessing the pilot of the police helicopter circling above the scene and forcing him to crash the damn thing into his comrades on the ground. Everything combined pretty much annihilates the sizable police force, with only the heavily injured commander being seen alive afterwards. Pulling it off in the limited time available during the segment unlocks the aptly named "Aiden's Apocalypse" achievement.
  • Voices Are Mental: Whenever Jodie channels a ghost, she talks in the voice of that person.
  • Wham Episode:
    • "Night Session", in which Nathan's family is killed by a drunk driver, leading him into Sanity Slippage towards his resulting Face–Heel Turn.
    • "The Mission", in which Jodie assassinates who she is led to believe is an African warlord, but finds out that he was actually the democratically elected President, who many believed was the last hope for peacefully ending the years of conflict that had ravaged his country. Jodie is absolutely devastated and furious about this revelation and that, combined with Ryan lying to her (especially if she began a romance with him) cause her to go on the run as a CIA fugitive.
  • Wham Line:
    News Announcer: ...and the international community had just announced its recognition of the election of the new president Gemaal Sheik Charrief... and now, sources report that he and all his government were assassinated in what appears to be an unclaimed attack.
    Norah: Give me back my child! I, I wanna see her! My little girl! My little boy... [...] My son!! I wanna see my son!
  • What the Hell, Hero?:
    • "Alone" has this if the player decides to use Aiden to start choking Jodie's foster father. He runs out of the room screaming that she's a monster, while her foster mother who was nothing but supportive and loving to her can only stare at her in horror before running out after him.
    • "Like Other Girls" can be ended prematurely if Jodie fails to get past the guards with the possessed Cole, or she decides to leave the bar before things go south. Nathan then gives Jodie an angry lecture about the danger she could have put both herself and Cole in with her actions. Since it's possible for Jodie to experience an attempted rape in this level, it turns out he was right.
  • You Had Us Worried There: After Jodie closes the rift in "The Condenser", she calls out for Aiden who doesn't answer. She worries that he may have been trapped in the Infraworld but after a few seconds he answers her calls, much to her relief.
  • You Monster!: Jodie's foster dad calls her a monster if Aiden decides to choke him on his way out of the DPA.

 
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Jodie the Savior

After saving her friends from a building on fire, Jodie gets beaten over the head with a steel bat and lies motionless in the snow in a symbolic position as the camera zooms out from the scene.

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Main / CrucifiedHeroShot

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