Much like the last game, with all the horrors infesting the world with the apocalypse, there is also moments of despair and hopelessness that will make your heart ache.
- The Antiquarian makes her return... as an enemy in the back rank of a bandit gang in a random encounter. You have no choice but to put her to the sword.
- The Academic sounds suitably bitter when describing the next region you go to, should you select it... and it's especially pronounced for the Sprawl. While it's kind of expected, considering he's an intellectual type, the way Wayne June delivers the line (especially the last part) makes it sound like his heart is shattering by watching a city that once worshipped history and knowledge being burned to cinders by the Fanatics. It almost feels like he's Trying Not to Cry!All that beauty and knowledge... ash on the wind.
- While at an inn, some of your party members are positioned in their chairs in ways that really make it clear how much everything's taken a toll on them. It's most apparent with the Highwayman, who's leaning forward and holding his head as if suffering from a terrible headache, and the Flagellant, who looks completely exhausted and just leans back in his chair while staring up at the ceiling. Even before you get to the first inn, it's apparent that the Spreading Stain has had an effect on the party.
- It's revealed by the Runaway's personal story that Bonnie ran away from an orphanage at a young age because her caretaker was a sadistic nun that continually branded her for small grievances. It's noted later on that she developed pyromania due to her trauma but she still found a kindly couple that took her in. Being that this is Darkest Dungeon though this does not end well. The last two chapters reveal that young Bonnie accidentally set the house on fire and she tries to smother it only to make it worse. Bonnie escapes the burning house through a window only to discover in horror that her loving adopted parents are still inside and are screaming as they burn to death.
- The Leper's past is just as painful as it seemed in the comic. Baldwin was The Good King, but was exposed to leprosy and became the pain-riddled Death Seeker he is when giving comfort to a beggar over the objections of his Deadly Decadent Court. No Good Deed Goes Unpunished.
- The reveals about the Plague Doctor's past are both nightmarish and tragic. She tried to reanimate the corpse of her professor who had just died, mostly as a way to show him off and to prove her theories were superior to his. However, her experience didn't go as planned. The entire thing takes place during a 'fight'. The first stage consists of the Plague Doctor trying, and failing, to restrain the reanimated professor to stitch his wounds while the latter spends all his time wailing in pain. She's even pleading with him to stay still. During the second stage, the Plague Doctor realizes she has no choice but put him out of his misery, while saying she's sorry and will end his suffering. She falls into a Heroic BSoD afterwards.The shrieking was horrible, but the silence that followed... was even worse.
- The reason for the Vestal's repressed attitude is given far more context here - and it's hard not to feel for her. Junia was briefly distracted by a tryst in the garden outside the tower the abusive abbot of her monastery had kept her in, isolated from the world, her whole life, and the sacred fire running down resulted in him sealing her away to be tortured for years. Though she later escaped, she later finds out he also murdered her only friends, her fellow nuns, for her crime. Small wonder she represses her urges.
- The Jester's original comic backstory ends on a bittersweet but triumphant note, where he finally gets his revenge on the Decadent Court, at the cost of his sanity. The Hero Shrines pull back to reveal that it was with the aid of a demonic song he learned from a seemingly undead musician, and the Jester was horrified at the grisly sight of the court massacre. This was the moment he truly snapped, laughing mirthlessly as he then cuts off his own finger to ensure he could never play it again, ending what he once wanted to be a career with physical and mental scars.
- The Highwayman's backstory does not reveal too much new information about the character: he was a prison escapee who was Reduced to Ratburgers, revealing that the caravan he attacked in the comic was supposed to be One Last Job to continue scraping by for a while. We all know how that ended up. What gives it a mention is Wayne June's excellently narrated prose, detailing how he never felt free after the prison escape, and will be haunted for the rest of his days.Arrested by the ghoulish sight, he felt the cold chains of remorse tighten around his heart. Guilt was a pursuer he could never outrun, a prison he would never escape.
- Also concerning the Highwayman, when picked at the Memories Of A Dream Academic's Study, Dismas will say "Like a dream that feels too real. The manor, the knight..." This would imply that after everything they went through together, all the trials and tribulations they faced and the redemption they potentially received, Dismas literally cannot remember Reynauld, the other half of his iconic Adventure Duo. Subverted as of The Binding Blade DLC, where Dismas is explicitly looking for an old friend during the unlocking of the Crusader as a character.
- Any time a Hero has a Meltdown, some of the barks they have can be this:Jester: "I LISTENED to you all! I DARED to hope...!"Highwayman: "Who was I kiddin', playin' at heroics..."
- The backstory of the Duelist- the new hero introduced in The Binding Blade- reveals that she and her fencing mentor, over time, became lovers; this relationship reached its culmination when the two entered a passion-fueled spar, which ended with the Duelist striking him dead in a moment of blind, impulsive reflex. The Academic's final narration in "The Perfection" has her realizing, in her newfound clarity and the gravity of the death of the man who trained her, that "[...] sport is an unacceptable abstraction", and that the "true test" of one's skill is whether or not you can survive a fight to the death; upon this understanding, she takes her mentor's cape as her own and vows to search the land for an opponent capable of striking her down, posthumously thanking her teacher and lover for this "final lesson". The narration alone suggests that she's simply a proud and remorseless Glory Hound, but the fact that she's completely facing away from the light like so many of the others heroes- rather than facing it triumphantly like the Leper, or even being somewhere in-between like the Crusader- implies that she in fact feels just as awful for the mistakes that lead her down this path as the others, and is in truth a Death Seeker.
