Oh yeah, those guides that came with the Zork games were ridiculous. They didn't need to explain the finer details of magic, the lore behind sorcerers guilds, why a useless dam was constructed near a canyon, and the long and intricate rise and fall of the Flathead royal line, etc. Yet they did.
I'll admit, I teared up a little when the ending of Spellbreaker requires you to smash the last source of magic. The idea of such a lighthearted, parody-filled piece of wierd technology becoming serious was the last thing I expected when I picked up a copy of Z1.
Though the third game with its bleaker scenery should've been a sign of what was to come.
Even Beyond Zork has a relatively serious scene where the elders decide to seal the reserves of their magic in the Coconut of Quendor so that one day a future age will rediscover it.
Curses has this bug where it uses a piece of the demon's text for the angel.
The demon glances lazily at the [object] and rouses himself to say:
The angel looks keenly at the [object] and rouses himself to say:
It doesn't affect gameplay or anything, but it takes me out of the moment. Even putting the wrong gender pronoun aside, "rouses" is obviously the demon's — it's consistent with his character, not the angel's. Makes me wonder if the angel actually has her own text for that occasion but it's buried somewhere in the source code and never reached... or if it was just never written.
Curses can definitely feel a bit clunky as that semi-awkward transition from early text parsors to the more forgiving presentation a few years later.
I like her insight on the ancient Greek poems. (You can't read them yourself since they're in Greek, naturally.)
The angel looks keenly at the scroll bearing an epic poem and rouses himself to say: "Oh my. Well, the plot, um, there are seven attackers, all with different shields, one for each of the seven city gates, and it's a civil war so of course the brothers are really in a duel and there are champions and the women are upset but it's all because of their brother who was really their father... Never mind. It's strictly for aficionados."
>show short to angel
The angel looks keenly at the scroll bearing a short poem and rouses himself to say: "Oh my. "I touch your... and the scent of you rises from... your beautiful..." I'd better not read the rest. Strictly for aficionados."
I ended up making a bunch of IF-related pages over the past couple days: Andrew Plotkin, A Change in the Weather, Emily Short, Savoir-Faire, Max Blaster and Doris de Lightning Against the Parrot Creatures of Venus, Nord and Bert Couldn't Make Head or Tail of It, and Glass.
A Change in the Weather is the only one I've actually played through; I mainly made these pages by trawling for examples already written about them.
I also played (and made a page for) Eat Me semi-recently. I really enjoyed discovering the ending where (spoilers) you grow powerful enough to attack the narrator, thereby gaining your freedom. I haven't found anyone talking about it online, though! I'm not sure most people are aware it exists. 
I noticed Eat Me is a finalist in the 2017 XYZZY Awards
. I admittedly haven't played any of the other finalists, but I'm hoping it wins for best individual NPC. But that comes back to how much of the game you actually see, and realizing the narrator is a character in the first place, let alone interactable.
I... don't think so? I'm not sure what an FMV is exactly, but looking up some gameplay videos, it looks more like a point-and-click.