Nightmare Fuel / Library of Ruina

As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.

We do not talk about Love Town.

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• The in-game world itself is just one giant Nightmare Fuel. While alluded in Lobotomy Corporation that it's not quite the most ideal world to live in, in here we got to see it in its full glory. It turns out that Hired Guns were as common as retail workers and are legitimate professions instead of a rare occurrence, and insane, corrupt corporations (Wings) control every facet of its most prosperous cities (Nests) and they'll basically kick you out if you don't contribute to them sufficiently enough. To say nothing of the Backstreets, which are pretty much warzones where people's lives aren't even worth a cent and people die or vanish every second. If any one of these corporations fall, the Nest collapses and becomes just as bad as the Backstreets. To put the cherry on top of the shit cake, cannibals are everywhere in the Backstreets or Outskirts waiting to prey on people and it's basically impossible to go out during some times of the day.
• The Library itself is also such a thing. Not only is the place ran by Angela, the worst serial killer of the City who thwarted her master's plans, almost everyone who goes in vanishes and becomes books without fail, which she would use to grant her humanity and have her get out of L Corp's remains. The blackhole dissapearance of random fixers who entered the library to investigate became so severe, that the Reverberation Ensemble are using it just to make sure their victims get killed and so they could practically reinstigate the Seed of Light entirely unimpeded.
• This is a universe where every other person in the City is either a corrupt corporate elite, an Unwitting Pawn of them, a powerful criminal, a cannibal or a member of a paramilitary unit. Yet, out of all of them, you, as in the player, turns out to be THE monster among all of these entities. The whole purpose of this game is to lure out people who more often than not have lives, ethics, or desires and black-hole them dishonorably inside the massive complex of what was called L Corp. There's a reason why Lulu or Phillip are so torn upon realizing what kind of stuff is going on inside the Library, and others outright shuddering and crying simply because they were about to raid it, knowing that you are going to kill them anyway. While Angela or your in-game units most obviously hardly felt any guilt out the people you vanished in combat, you, as the player, might actually feel very horrible on what you are doing to some of these people. The only good thing about this is none of the people are actually killed but rather suspended indefinitely, although depending on player action later on they could all be Killed Off for Real in one fell swoop.
  • A later conversation between Hokma and Angela reveals that anyone who entered the Library in the first place had their physical bodies basically confiscated and a copy made out of light fighting in their place (to make sure nobody ever gets out with the books), and if anyone were to run away they are used as bait to get more people booked. The game was rigged from the start in the most devilish, subtle way possible, made nightmarish because they have zero clue they actually no longer exist physically and only thought they could fight out of it.
  • Things actually go even more sinister when you consider that Carmen was the person who instigated the whole deal. What actually caused this steep personality shift from her is up to speculation as of now, but one point makes this very terrifying in hindsight: It's literally just From Nobody to Nightmare, taken up to eleven. Carmen didn't start as some sort of overly dangerous or influential figure like a Syndicate leader, Association Director or a random rebellious Wing. On the other side, she isn't a lower-class living on scraps in the Backstreets, or a washed-up Grade 9 Fixer, either. In fact, Carmen looks no different from any other person living in a Nest, like that type of person who can walk next to you and you won't even bat an eye. Even if she does make a speech, most people won't even bother listening (considering that there are many crazy cult scams in the places where she regularly frequents) unless they really pay attention to what she's going to say. Yet, this woman (and her colleagues), at all odds, became an omnipresent, omniscient, City-destroying disaster because of an unholy combination of malevolence amongst her personnel, her own emotional sensitivity, and sheer bad luck. The same could be said for Ayin, whose involvement of the Library is so far unknown, but he still doesn't look like someone whom a person in the City would pay great attention to.
• Speaking of the aforementioned cannibals, in the world of Lobotomy Corporation using other humans as food or resources are very commonplace, although it's usually taboo. There are also several variants where cannibalism or human resources were used:
  • Right at the start of the game, several Rats had been picking up organs of dead people because organ harvesting/trafficking was a lucrative business. This should give you a good idea on how horrid this world can actually be, and the narrative of the Crapsack World set during Lobotomy Corporation absolutely meant it.
  • Then there's Pierre and Jack, who almost passes off as a cute couple trying to prepare some dishes for their bistro...aside that they are actually preparing human meat. It's still taboo in the usual cities, but the chefs of District 23 will gladly put people into the chopping block, and they will make sure their prey suffers as much as possible to bring out the ultimate flavor.
    • Oh and the 8 chefs mentioned by Pierre and Jack were the first entities being labeled as a Star of the City. While it's really unclear if the eight chefs are really that threatening that they are ranked like that, if you don't know what being a Star means, it means that they most certainly are one of The Dreaded entities in the City.
    • And then it turns out all but one of the Chefs died...but they did not get sunk by any Association or Office. According to their Sole Survivor Greta, the remaining seven chefs were so insane that they ate their own until their bones and teeth were all that remains in a display of pure art.
  • The Sweepers are yet another disturbing group of cannibals, being ascended to groups of their own right, from the mere Ordeals in Lobotomy Corporation. These are Ambiguously Human creatures made out of liquid and coated with armor who gather together in groups scouring the Backstreets and Outskirts for hapless prey, no matter what it is. The things tend to go out at night, and if you go out without a fixer to escort you at that time of the day, they will inevitably find and kill you. They also come in abnormally large numbers and have (surprisingly) high intelligence and tight bonds between clans, meaning that if you underestimate them, you will become one of their prey.
    • There's also what they actually are, something that isn't well explained in the prequel despite having been appeared there; the Sweepers are created by the Head using one of the singularities under their arsenal, where they use it to turn people into Liquidated cannibals that have to eat other humans to survive. And even worse, it's implied that the Head unleashes the creatures into the backstreets deliberately...for population control. To put bluntly, a reviled corporate shadow dictator who couldn't care a cent about how many people are suffering and killing each other outside for the sake of food and money captured random humans, transformed them into monstrous cannibals that have to eat humans or die, and unleashed them onto the slums for the sake of getting people killed.
  • The Carnivals are monstrous, ominous creatures with emotionless, white masks as faces and a totally monstrous, toothy, worm-like head beneath them. They turn people into silk and use them to make clothing. However, one of the more disturbing (or cute in some way) members of the Carnival is Beta, who looks identical to the other Carnival members, but speaks in a young girl's voice with extra echo effects.
  • The Smiling Faces resemble monks with iron plated smiling face masks wielding smoking pipes and speak in a rather odd accent, but they are just as dangerous as the other cannibals. The smiling masks are actually designed to choke and burn foes with their smoke, and after then they chop them into meat flakes and eat them. Furthermore, just like the Carnival one of the members look almost identical to the other two, but they speak in a young woman's voice.
  • While humans most certainly aren't used as food in the Library, the books, or skills you use are created from guests you seemingly kill in battles. If anyone enters the library, there's a near certain chance that they aren't getting out alive and end up as tools you use to vanish more people. Later on, it's even mentioned in a conversation between Hokma and Angela, that the guests aren't even killed, but rather have their physical bodies confiscated from the beginning. And if anyone runs, it's a calculated move to get other people in.
• The whole Love Town and Warp Train related scenario is just unpleasant and terrifying. Warp Trains are advertised as an extremely fast transport that teleports passengers from 1 area to another within 10 seconds, and W Corp advertise this as their singularity. It isn't. While the Warp Trains really only take 10 seconds to reach their actual destination, this isn't the case inside the train. In there, time is perceived slower, and 10 seconds in the outside world is equal to 2,000 years or more inside the train. Of course everyone in the train becomes insane and will start maiming and killing each other. The only saving grace is that, after 10 seconds have passed in the outside world, W Corp can restore everything with the push of a button and erase all memory of the horror the passengers endured (In fact, material restoration is their real Singularity, not fast travel!). Despite this, it's still a very unsettling transport to even think about boarding. Even a W Corp senior that you end up fighting commented that he will not think about boarding a Warp Train even if he could.
  • The Love Town cutscene has among one of the most terrifying visuals seen in this game, because the game doesn't have a Cognitive Filter built in it. There's one scene where the passengers can be clearly seen maiming and killing each other, blood starts spewing out onto the train interior, and people tried to commit suicide by ripping off their insides. Back at W Corp cleanup crew's footage, you can even see various skinless bodies moving around onscreen!
  • Tomerry themselves are among one of the most monstrous beings you will fight in this game, being consisted of the faces of the young couple used create the abomination and a large, muscular body and legs made out of lumps of flesh from dead passengers. On top of that, they were also degraded to a child-like mental state. This goes on for 1,984 years. To say nothing of their battlefield, which consists of large, dangling lumps of flesh and bones covering the Warp Train used to create Love Town, in addition to a very soothing, but dissonant and unsettling vocal track playing on the background if Tomerry is an active combatant.
  • Speaking of the W Corp incident, there's a minor chat between some W Corp employees when they land into the library, where they talk about the sightings they saw in the trains quite casually. They basically imply Love Town was a very minor incident if not for the Puppeteer and there are worse Eldritch Locations within the train, namely a train where its people basically made a Kingdom in it, and the passengers within made themselves as Kings, Knights and Nobles. Based on the nature that Warp Trains uses distorted time-space continuums to drive its passengers insane, this couldn't be anything pleasant.
  • The fact that Angela, arguably the most dangerous entity in the City itself is heavily disgusted and disturbed by seeing Tomerry's suffering. It's well justified here, considering that she's been subject to the exact same singularity used in the Warp Train within L Corp's underground complex and unlike the Warp Train's passengers, she can't even go insane and terminate herself despite having been perceiving time 100 times slower than normal, on top of the whole facility itself perceiving time slower because of that singularity.
  • Lesti's book reveal some more details that make the scenario more unsettling. The Rabbit Team (Yes, the same one you use in Lobotomy Corporation in order to emergency suppress highly dangerous abnormalities!) were sometimes dispatched to deal with insane and heavily mutated passengers, and a Color Fixer (who wasn't supposed to be allowed in the regular seats in fear of them causing a massacre) smuggled into the regular seats, then trained the passengers into Color-tier supersoldiers and forced the WARP Cleanup Crew to call the Rabbit Team.
• At the second time R Corp arrives to the Library, we finally get to see how they manufacture their troops, and it's not a pleasant sight to behold. It turns out that they create thousands of clones of the same person and force them to fight and kill each other inside a TT2-affected space, where a few months sum up as a few minutes in the outside world. In fact, you can see a shot where one of the Myo clones can be seen eating another. Just like the Warp Trains, these losses are easily recoverable and can be restored from scratch and in this case, it's well justified to ensure the quality of R Corp's mercenaries, but it's still not a pleasant sight to see.
• The Love Town arc brings forth another problem in this game's scenario; the Wings in this game aren't simply corrupt through monetary matters, their general behavior simply makes no logical sense. This can arrange from plain Cloudcuckoolander nonsense, well-justified with a concrete goal in mind, to outright unnecessary other than encouraging mass slaughters or brutal executions. Sometimes it doesn't even make any sense from an economic perspective. For example in the Warp Trains above, there's no in-game reason explaining why W Corp places every non-first class customer into a time-enclosed space where they will go insane and eat their own instead of placing every customer in cryostasis chambers, and it's up to player speculation on why. The in-game entities often mention that they have absolutely no idea what the higher ups are thinking when they create the regulations or make their moves.
• The distortions in this game are very terrifying. Just imagine some nobody in the streets getting affected by the immense power of an Eldritch Location and suddenly becoming a Person of Mass Destruction with the power to kill tens of thousands of people, or even becoming some monstrous manipulator with increasing shrewd and cunning. It's such a prevalent threat, to the point that authorities had basically labeled many with threat levels just because how dangerous they are.
  • The Pianist is a literal Person of Mass Destruction whose music killed 300 thousand people in a Backstreet, and the few who survived became insane. And not only does it cause insanity, the music notes it produces can even fuse those affected by them with the organ it plays. And even worse, it's an actual Hero Killer who managed to kill one of the former topdog Fixers of the City who was also the wife of Roland and the sister of Argalia (another 2 notorious Fixers amongst the City) — encountering her corpse alone is enough to get both men violently and dangerously insane.
  • Yesterday's Promise/Pluto becomes incredibly unsettling in a side story depicted by the Dawn Office flavor texts, where a man broke a contract made with him and rushed into an unknown Office trying to tell the office to kill Yesterday's Promise so he can't kill him, but the guy wasn't in his right state of mind so the Office brushed him off. Four days later, the man swollen up like a balloon and exploded into a flurry of spikes; if the spikes hit anyone they explode and die in the same way, causing a chain reaction that killed numerous people. This is followed by something extremely gruesome; the bodies merged with a resonator tower and became a towering figure of blood, throwing massive spikes that can melt entire buildings. Furthermore if anyone stared into the thing's eyes, they will explode and create spikes in the same way, causing massive mayhem within district 22.
    • Later on, it turns out that this man is capable of even more things than that; if you make a contract with him and didn't read the unfavorable terms of his contract (which can be be sneaked in letters around the size of grain), he will be able to take anything from you without actually damaging your body, including vital organs like hearts. Contracts aren't his sole specialty either; he is capable of horrifying feats of magic such as disguising his fellow Distortions (something that made sure Elena and Jae-Heon could instigate Love Town without arousing any suspicion), teleportation, creating copies of other people and even block or interfere with various singularities (such as the Purple Tear's teleportation). With such immense power that puts most of his fellow Ensemble members and even various ALEPHs back in Lobotomy Corporation to shame, he can do almost anything. It's a blessing that he never defects against Argalia and is one of his most loyal sidekicks.
  • Blood-Red Night, the "Mother of Love Town" or Elena turns out to be one of the most dreaded entities to ever grace the City, and was mysteriously able to revive herself after being shot down and killed. you do not see how she looks like until near the end of the Star of the City chapter where she's revealed to be a vampiric monstrosity with one half of her face consisting of Creepy Awesome facial horror.
    • While the game itself doesn't put a great detail onto it, in a chapter of the Distortion Detective, Moses explains what the Blood-Red Night is, making a lot more sense into her true appearance and how she was able of creating Love Town. It turns out she was actually a vampire Distortion called Elena who instinctively feeds on blood. While this type of Distortion is actually very commonplace, Blood-Red Night stands out from all of them. She kills her victims and rips off their organs, then turns them into zombies that potentially kill more people, making a lot, more sense into the Love Town incident. Elena was also said to be so elusive, that she would more often than not just flee upon being confronted by multiple Fixer Offices, and those who saw her ended up dead. The situation has gone so bad, that she has basically earned a name as a legendary force of terror in the north and eastern areas of the City before Roland and Angelica took arms and killed her...and then she's inexplicably back for unknown reasons.
  • The Puppeteer a.k.a Jae-Heon is a man who can turn people into puppets made of flesh and bones, their will as a human still intact and are aware that they are manipulated, but they are unable to do anything about it and can't seem to communicate in languages.
  • Then there's the Crying Children. Because Phillip was a severely torn man trying to avenge his comrades from the Library, when he stumbled into the 8 o Clock Circus Oswald, the ring master breaks him down by creating illusions of his comrades, then Pluto/Yesterday's Promise takes advantage of his desires to turn him into an Angelic Abomination who can't speak, can't see, can't hear and can only cry. And he still manages to escape the Library because the Library itself was acting up to spare him, unleashing an abomination who killed 80,000 people in a Nest and decimating anything but the Dawn Office. The Crying Children was even stated to be worse than the Pianist just because it targeted the safest construct in the city. Then made worst when Liu Association tries to take him down, only for the Blue Reverberation and Ensemble save him, and is later revealed to have joined their ranks.
  • The worst thing about these Distortions is that it's a very jarring example of Nice Job Breaking It, Hero. Ayin was only a week away from saving all of humanity with the Seed of Light with the hefty price of sacrificing most of his employees and even his inner circle's well being; had him ever succeed, society will most likely be restored to its former state...only for Angela to stop it halfway for a personal vendetta. Not even the combined forces of 8 Sephirah could prevent Angela from stopping the light. And so, instead of fixing society as intended, the failed Seed of Light plan turned people into abominations and just instigated more chaos from nowhere.
    • Later on, as it turns out not even this was true; Carmen already did want to turn a bunch of city-goers into Distortions or E.G.O. users based on how powerful or stable their emotions are, presumably after her Despair Event Horizon. Since most people are anything but stable in the City (As shown in the Distortion Detective where Moses reveals that almost everyone could Distort here and now), and E.G.O. could manifest in almost any form, including buildings, this is basically a surefire way to unleash hordes of monsters to unleash unbridled chaos while slipping under the Head's notice (they wouldn't be spared from this anyways in an absolute worst case scenario).
    • Roland also has a hand for this by randomly killing innocents in his Roaring Rampage of Revenge (as well as his Blackmail of a Fixer operator that indirectly led to Angelica being killed by the Pianist), having been taken loved ones from innocent people and Syndicates that have nothing to do with the Distortion, turning many of these people who met his wrath into Distortions themselves.
• When Argalia was executing Thelma with the Smiling Faces, his appearance was not shown. However, it's heavily implied that the meat on his body has been flaked into 10,000 meat flakes while alive, choked and slowly being chipped away and eaten to death by the Smiling Faces and gagged while Argalia throws sarcastic remarks against him.
• The Index Fingers are yet another one of these terrifying groups roaming around the Backstreets, being one of the Fingers, or the Syndicates that goes above all other syndicates and are usually beyond the Head and Wing's control. They carry some sort of "prescript" that you must do if it ever targets you. Usually they are something very bizarre, such as standing on the road for 40 minutes and chopping their heart off, putting mealworms on someone's spaghetti or placing 3 needles on someone's cake. Some are harmless, but many other prescripts basically demand you to commit suicide or murder. These are not vague orders or coincidences; you have to explicitly do as told or they will kill you, and the demands are done with a purpose in mind. (Namely the Prescripts can be used for assassination, if they wish.) And it turns out the prescripts are the way the Index taxes the backstreets instead of cash (as opposed to the other fingers who demand gross sums of money). While this means it's easier for commoners to survive the ordeals, it's still a rather unsettling organization to interact with.
  • Their members aren't immune from it too, and they already sent some of their proselytes to the library as one of these "prescripts", even if it means they most certainly won't get out alive. In fact, the Index Proxies or Messengers don't even really know why they are handed, but they do know they aren't random events.
    • And it turns out that the Index takes orders from what is known as the "Will of the City", a series of seemingly mindless tectonic vibrations that can somehow be translated into languages by the Index....aside that for whatever reason it's now giving orders to the Index elites for them to self-terminate inside the Library, with the implication being YOU meddling in their affairs and exploiting their faith to bait them for whatever goal you (or the Library) has in-mind. Yan was so terrified of the truth, that he outright distorts into a robotic typewriter abomination which isn't a pleasant sight to see, and he promptly enters the Library and dies in combat just like his peers.
  • Save for the Index, there are also four other Finger syndicates, namely: Thumb, Middle, Ring and Pinky. And the Index was the most merciful of these 5; while they are still more than happy to kill anyone failing to follow the prescripts, they still have laws prohibiting irrational violence, meaning that they can't go around killing bystanders or anyone individual members had with a vendetta with for no apparent reason. In other words, if any of the the other four were dispatched to deal with you, consider yourself dead.
    • Later on, we get to see the full extent of the Thumb's madness, alongside the Index...and it's not a pretty sight. Their whole quirk is that they are very polite and Affably Evil, but played to terrifying extremes. It tells when the best thing to do in a Thumb gathering is to not speak at all since even saying something to remotely disagree with a higher-up could get your tongue cut or worse (and getting your tongue cut is a minor punishment) and the rankings even apply to outsiders — if any regular Fixer tries to even talk to a high ranking Thumb agent, they're dead in no time. The same applies vice versa, and a second-in-command Capo who slightly frustrated Angela instantly got her tongue cut by her higher ups. In fact when you fight Kalo, nobody but him ever talks and it's safe to assume it's because every other person lower-ranking than him in the battlefield knew their place.
• The background of Today's Shy Look's Abnormality fight is quite disturbing, being a typical sunny day backdrop, just compounded by the incredibly unsettling 1st Warning music and the generally disturbing appearance of the abnormality. However, during Hod's floor realization and Angela wears its E.G.O....the background is now a blood red landscape with all the houses, tree and grasses being covered by blankets of skin.
• It's not something you will see most of the time considering it's used only by Mimicry Roland's first form (which is usually killed quick), but its Wear Skin page and the Terror pages it gives to your Librarians uses this extremely disturbing image of Nothing There trying to mimic a person.
• Apocalypse Bird's E.G.O. background is literally the Apocalypse Bird itself staring right at your Librarians.
• In the Hokma Floor Realization, if Paradise Lost Angela uses an attack that would kill your Librarians instantly and spawn Guardian Apostles, this unsettling image will flash full screen for a brief second before the next scene. It's an Apostle making a fairly unnerving smile while coming contact into WhiteNight.
• The description of Carmen's breakdown and death in the Red Mist's page, mixed with Tear Jerker. The upper part of the text on the Key Page features Kali trying to master an ALEPH-tier E.G.O. made from Nothing There, the most infamous Abnormality kept within L Corp after a big hurdle, but at the second half, you were greeted with this block of rather unsettling text:
  "Carmen’s state worsened with each passing day, like a rusting nail. The sunny eyes of the woman who had brought us together were now cloudy, and she spoke less and less. Her voice was lifeless, and she had gotten so cold; it wouldn’t have come to anyone’s surprise if she died at any moment. She didn’t bother trying to look okay. I think it was better that way. Everyone in the laboratory felt constraint in her presence. They viewed Carmen in different ways. Reproachful looks of those resenting her for bringing them so far, only to let go of her responsibility. Concerned looks of those worried that something might happen to her. And I guess there were some who had no thoughts. The research went on quietly, but not for long.
  A few days later, Carmen spilled out all of the guilt within her and plunged into it, never to come back up."
• Angela at the start of Impuritas Civitatis. She looks almost fine at first, hanging a rather pleasant smile that she never made in the past. However, the first few lines she spews out from her mouth (after a rather inane rant directed against Ayin) are completely wrong in an utterly Out of Character way. It wouldn't look out of place if Adam or Carmen (in her Ambiguously Evil current state) would say such a thing, and it won't even be surprising if Angela could be completely taken over by Carmen herself.

  Angela (to Roland): No, I told you my aim before. I will become free along with the Librarians. On top of that, the Abnormalities that are wandering inside this Library lacking a physical form will be able to leave. Gathering strength by devouring powerful individuals, the Abnormalities would roam the City as they like. That's what my plan is. I'm setting them free to do whatever they want. And they'll leave a mark deeper than any Distortion could do on the City. The one absolute and perfect book shall be the guide to teach me how to do it all.

• HEART OF ASPIRATION ANGELA/CARMEN. See it for yourself. Basically it's an ungodly combination of Body Horror and Non-Standard Character Design.
• Everything about Carmen doesn't look normal or make any conventional sense especially when the City's mechanics were put into regard; to put short, none of her behavior and routines were even normal Citygoer behavior to begin with. She's most likely genuine at least back then, but the descriptions themselves generally violate common sense and give an uncanny tint to her.
  • It's explicitly stated that she could make just about anyone fervently adore her just by personally interacting with them once. This is freaky enough considering people like Carmen were often to be avoided due to their extremely high odd of being shams and her setup wasn't that convincing, but nevertheless all sorts of people, including the most unlikely people to ever join a Backstreets cult did follow her upon a single interaction.
  • In fact, even before Kali joined her cause or even way before she became the Red Mist, Carmen has been known to wander the Backstreets without company, something that would inevitably become a disaster if done by anyone else because of all the dangerous Syndicates, Rats, cannibal chefs or whatever killers sprawling there. It doesn't look that off in the first glance, but being alone aside, she also didn't really seem to have any protection despite wandering alone in the obviously dangerous Backstreets and seems to be completely carefree doing so.
  • Keep in mind that she extracted Nothing There from a person to get its E.G.O. and gave it to Kali as a weapon, implying that she most likely has no issues on human experiments. However, when Enoch died to her, she was suddenly so guilt ridden that she suddenly fell into depression and committed suicide. With this added context in mind, Enoch's death and Carmen's subsequent suicide attempt becomes a bit freakier than simple Tear Jerker.
  • In the Kether Realization, we finally get to meet Carmen in the Light personally, and she tells Angela that her motives is for "everyone to become their truest, fullest selves". This would work if every other person were to be like Xiao or Kali, but the City is filled with sociopaths, inane people who are most likely not in their right state of mind, and out-of-luck blokes who could unleash the apocalypse with just a single push. Angela ruining the Seed of Light doesn't appear to affect her, and combined with the aforementioned, this indicates that people manifesting E.G.O. or turning into Distortion monsters were most probably her motive all along...or at least after suffering from depression while being locked in a tank as a half-aware brain stem for a good millions of years.
• When the Reverb Ensemble breaks in Argalia and Jae-Heon has a surprise for Roland, the reanimated corpse of his dead wife Angelica, taken from the Pianist's piano and refitted into a shambling monster. With Argalia explaining this is revenge for ruining her life and Jae-Heon doing this out of revenge for Roland killing his son. This gets Roland much angrier than we've seen him before, saying he doesn't care about Jae-Heon's dead son and says he will violently kill them all. This outburst shocks even Angela, who almost pleads with Roland to calm down.
• In the Reception of the Black Silence, Roland transforms into...an absolutely hideous-looking monster which seems to be made out of flesh, animal parts and parts resembling Roland's body, with thick, suffocating smoke spewing out from it. Even worse, it's implied that this was actually the true form of the Singularity that the Smoke War destroyed to make way for Lobotomy Corporation's ascension to a Wing, the one so horrifying that it made Roland a lot more cynical even after his and Salvador's memories were wiped out after seeing the thing.
• While it's just something mostly mentioned in-passing during Lobotomy Corporation, We get to see a bigger extent of The Head's power in this game. And they are not kidding. Just as soon as it seems there is nowhere higher to climb, a mere three of their Agents move in to smack the Library down with contemptuous ease — exactly when everyone was severely fatigued from fighting a gauntlet of excruciatingly difficult fights. Whatever little they send utterly break the established rules of the game and it’s all you can do just to delay their secondary goal of capturing Binah.
  • The Head itself is amongst one of the most cryptically disturbing things to ever appear in the game's setting. Imagine The Party of Oceania, but whoever running it wasn't even trying to act sane or seeking power for the sake of anymore. Orwellian doesn't even come close to describing this; It's just a group of madmen who simply don't really care even as senseless mass deaths and human experiments are all over the place, and people are turning into monstrosities who could potentially wipe out whole backstreets and nests. Yet, seemingly minor infractions (many of them which are literally nothing compared to mass manslaughter) such as creating an AI, failure to pay taxes or unleashing clones into the real world will result in a not-so friendly visit from one of their agents...and they are not for show. No outsider understands their inner workings or mindset, and not even their very own agents provide any concrete answers.
  • Then there's how their agents act. One might expect someone like that to act in an obviously threatening manner. But no — instead we are greeted with a woman no taller than Malkuth making cryptic threats and speaking with an eerily calm voice with Dissonant Serenity and Affably Evil in full display. She makes it clear that she's here for serious business and she doesn't really hide it, but her reasoning and way of speech was so outlandish that it manages to be funny and horrifying at the same time.