The manuscript pages you find after discovering that Mulligan and Thornton have been Taken by the Dark Presence are both heartbreaking and horrifying, describing their murder of a woman they mistook for one of the Taken before realizing that she was a normal human, eventually deciding to hide her body down a well to avoid having to deal with the consequences for it. This eventually results in their guilt over the incident consuming them, giving the Dark Presence the opportunity to take control of their bodies and use them to carry out its will. Not helping is the fact that unlike most of Alan's readings of the manuscript pages you find throughout the game, where he remains almost unnervingly calm and rather distanced from the events at play, for the pages that describe these events he sounds as though he's barely able to tamp down how upset he is over what they've done and how their irresponsibility led to the death of an innocent woman, and by the time he gets to describing their attempts to hide her corpse in the well he winds up completely unable to do so, disgust and rage leaking into almost every line he's made to read.
Cynthia Weaver's fate is a true gut punch to experienced players; Scratch seized the opportunity to control Alan's story and wrote a particularly gruesome fate for Cynthia, having the Dark Presence crawl up on her in her one moment of weakness without her lamp and basically killing her by drowning her in her own bathtub, then Taking her body to mess with Tor Anderson in a way not unlike what it did with Barbara Jagger's image towards Thomas Zane. Scratch killed Cynthia horribly, made her into a Taken and forced her to try and kill Saga's grandfather, as well as corrupting her into doing exactly what the woman she hated would end up doing under the Dark Presence's grasp.
Profiling her is also a horrible reminder of who Cynthia ultimately was; the other Taken bosses - Nightingale and the two Deputies — all appear in ominous shadows looking stoically at the camera as their Taken dialogue plays for Saga, walking and pacing in their own respective situations (like Nightingale coming out of the lake). Cynthia doesn't do that. Her silhouette just looks... scared. Every flash of her that isn't the Jump Scare cutaways shows not Cynthia Weaver the dutiful Lady of the Light, but Cynthia Weaver the person; a frail, tired old woman, too aged to fight the darkness effectively and who just wanted to finally rest quietly... and even that was ripped away from her in death.
Listen to her "Evil Laugh" in her boss fight. The subtitles say she's laughing evily. It also sounds a lot like she's crying.
The story behind the creation of "Anger's Remorse" a song the Old Gods only ever made a single vinyl for. In his old age, Tor grew to regret all the poor choices he made and the way his relationship with his daughter Freya ended. The song is all his pent up grief poured into an apology come far too late, as Freya predeceased him.
The "Drowning" video. Alan's in the full throes of Sanity Slippage, coming dangerously close to the Despair Event Horizon as he realizes that no matter what he does, he just can't get out of the Dark Place. He speaks in a frantic gibbering and the video shows him slowly turning almost animalistic: pacing restlessly around, mimicking a bird on his desk, flipping off the camera, throwing his paper and typewriter around, eating manuscript pages, lying on the floor in the fetal position...
No way out. There's no way out. Sinking deeper. Deeper and deeper. I'm in hell. This is hell. I died. I wish I was dead. Let me die. I just want to sleep. Please let me sleep. I'm so tired. I just want to go home.
You can't stop the story, the STORY will go on forever. There's NO ESCAPE! YOU WILL NEVER ESCAPE! YOU'LL DROWN HERE... you're stuck in a loop... you don't have a clue... you're lost... you lost the plot...
Ilmo's reaction to his brother's death. Whatever Scratch does to Jaakko, it leaves Ilmo instantly covered in blood, and in his shock, he can only mutter his brother's name in confusion. By the time Saga fights off Scratch outside, he has laid out and covered his brother's corpse and is openly mourning.
During the last "ad" which is shown in the version of Bright Falls where Scratch gets his way, Ilmo will occasionally set Jaakko up for a line and then turn to look at the empty spot where his brother should be. When he turns back to the camera, even from behind the deer mask he just looks crushingly sad as he continues to read the ad copy as if Jaakko had said his lines.
Saga Profiling Casey after the battle in the morgue to discover his inner thoughts. While he puts on a brave face, Casey fully believes he is dying from his infection by the Dark Presence. Even in a Creepy Monotone, his short monologue is filled with despair.
Casey: I'm a goner. Swell. A shadow crawling under my skin. In my head. Call my ex, tell her, "I'm sorry". Terminal Case Casey.
Pat Maine's subplot can be heart-wrenching to see; the game plays the Scatterbrained Senior trope for drama. At first, Pat seems to be his normal, chipper self, if a bit insistent on plugging a brand of beef jerky local to the area... but as the game progresses and you hear more and more radio messages, it becomes abundantly clear that Pat is fully delusional. The beef jerky he's plugging not only doesn't exist, the woman who he claims sold it is one of the victims Saga and Casey are investigating, resulting in an angry call from her widow. A radio conversation in Chapter 5 reveals that he doesn't even remember that Alan exists. He's unwell and is in full denial of the distress he's causing people with his reporting. Anyone who's had to deal with an Alzheimer's or dementia patient in the family will probably relate.
Saga's ongoing crisis over Logan's role in the story. Several times, she has to grapple with the fact that her daughter will die, with her and her husband powerless to stop it, if she can't prevent Scratch and Alan's story from coming true. It's horror at its finest. Worse in that she has to work together with the man who wrote it, something that clearly tugs at her throughout the game.
The story's influence eventually begins to spread too far, culminating in Saga receiving a resentful phonecall from her husband David (whose memories have been rewritten so that he believes he and Saga are separated, and that Logan drowned in Cauldron Lake years ago) where he blames her for their daughter's death after she took full custody in the divorce, and angrily demands that Saga never contact him again before hanging up on her. The worst part about this is that it isn't even David's fault, as the poor guy's perception of reality has been completely altered by the story, taking his daughter away and unknowingly making him hate the woman he loves.
