Video Game / Beyond: Two Souls

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 fifteen years (and wholly unrelated to the two aforementioned games), centers on a young woman named Jodie Holmes (modeled after and played by Elliot Page) who tries to uncover the mystery of a strange poltergeist-like presence serving as her protector as well as Nathan Dawkins (Willem Dafoe), a researcher who serves as her surrogate father. The central topic of the game is what happens to one after death. Like its immediate predecessor, Beyond: Two Souls was a PlayStation 3 exclusive, though it received an Updated Re-release for PlayStation 4 in November 2015.

In March 2019, it was announced that the game would be coming to PC later that year, exclusively via the Epic Games Store for the first 12 months; Quantic Dream is self-publishing this port.

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

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Beyond: Two Souls provides examples of:

• 20 Minutes into the Future: Jodie is eight years old by the winter break of 1998-99. The present day takes place in 2014, with the epilogue taking place in 2015. The Time Skip of Jodie (and possibly Zoey) takes place about a little more than a decade into the future.
• Abusive Parents: One scene shows Jodie's father verbally abusing her; he even flat out calls her a monster, and while talking to her mother, goes so far as to call her an "it" and a demon; at one point, he almost starts physically beating her until Aiden scares him off. As it turns out, he's only her foster father.
• African Terrorists: Subverted. During her time with the CIA, Jodie goes on a mission into Somalia to assassinate a local warlord to stop the latest insurgency. Only after she completes the mission does she discover 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 a teenager and he's already a high-ranking agent who's gone through a previous marriage.
• Anachronic Order: Justified by Jodie's experiences with the world beyond scrambling her memories of her life to the point where she has to put them on paper to make any sense of it. This is what happens in the epilogue if Jodie is still alive. Otherwise, the narrator is revealed to be Jodie's soul sharing her memories with Zoey in form of visions. The PS4 and PC versions give the player the option of playing in chronological order, with some chapters excepted.
• And I Must Scream:
  • Nathan builds a machine in order to see his dead family. Only problem is that it more or less puts their souls into a state of constant pain and being unable to tell him how much suffering he caused them by doing this. He refuses to listen to Jodie and even his wife herself when she talks to him through Jodie, and he nearly causes the apocalypse trying to get them back. In the end he realizes what he's done and he does not take it well.
  • Happens to Jodie's real mother, Norah Gray, as well when the CIA decides to silence her after Jodie's birth. They couldn't risk letting her go to the afterlife, so they forced her into an eternal coma.
  • Also happens to Jodie herself in the worst of the Multiple Endings. The Infraworld has overwhelmed the world of the living, all life has been extinguished, and Jodie (and presumably all other humans) are left as disembodied souls drifting alone and aimlessly in a cold, lightless, endless quasi-hell for all eternity. The 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 the entity/Aiden.
• Animal Motifs: Jodie describes Aiden as 'like a lion in a cage.'
• Anticlimax: Some found the last third of the game this for various reasons.
• Apocalypse How:
  • Three of the six Alive endings heavily imply at least a Class 2 after someone (presumably the CIA) continued to experiment with condenser technology, opened a giant portal to the Infraworld and got what looks like the whole of Earth overrun by hostile entities, with Jodie and/or Zoey preparing to battle the ghostly invaders. The other Alive endings don't outright show this scene, but there's nothing to suggest the same events won't come to pass regardless eventually.
  • Failing the final QTE sequence results in an outright Class X when the Infraworld overwhelms the physical world, merging the realms of life and death 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. And all this because the military wanted a new toy.
• Arab Oil Sheikh: One of Jodie's early missions with the CIA involves spying on several classified documents belonging to an arab sheikh. It's even possible for Aiden to mind control the sheikh himself.
• Artistic License: The section in Somalia has everyone speaking Persian, which is not spoken anywhere in Africa. Meanwhile the game's paper-thin proxy of China, where people still speak Mandarin, is called the Republic of Kaziristan, seemingly identifying it as one of the Central Asian Republics.
• Attempted Rape: Jodie can be the victim of attempted rape twice throughout the story, depending on her choices.
  • If she manages to make it to the bar as a teenager, the patrons and bartender will attempt to gang rape her (only to be thwarted by Aiden).
  • Additionally, 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. Unfortunately for him, Jodie has already undergone her CIA training at this point.
• Aura Vision: Aiden can see glowing auras around people. They are color-coded, indicating how Aiden can affect them. Additionally, a glowing green wisp shows up on objects that contain a particular "memory" of an event.
• Authority Equals 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.
• Back-to-Back Badasses: Jodie and Ryan in the Black Sun chapter.
• Bad Future:
  • The Beyond, Alive - Zoey, and Alive - Alone endings finish with a Flash Forward to when 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.
• 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".
• 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. Justified, as Aiden has healing abilities and is very protective of Jodie.
• Berserk Button: If anyone willingly harms or tries to harm Jodie, Aiden can and will violently lash out at the offending party regardless of whether or not Jodie wants him to.
• 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: In one of the early levels, CIA agents Jodie and Ryan visit a Middle-Eastern sheik's mansion during a formal dinner in order to spy on him when Jodie excuses herself to use the restroom, then use Aiden to break into his offices without being detected.
• 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. Jodie also gains these when she channels a spirit to let them communicate with the living.
• Blessed with Suck: What Jodie views her connection to Aiden as.
• Body Surf: One of Aiden's abilities. It is also implied that he can switch his connection and powers to any other person, at least after his connection to Jodie is severed, as it is implied that Aiden is Zoey's guardian entity in the Zoey-Life ending.
• 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" level, Jodie will end up knocked out and captured by the militia. She will awaken 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.
• Bratty Teenage Daughter: Jodie in the "Like Other Girls" chapter wants to go out on a Saturday night but Nathan grounds her in her room. She proceeds to throw a tantrum, play loud guitar music to annoy Cole, and use Aiden to break stuff.
• 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 Normal: Jodie is cut off from Aiden in the epilogue, although he comes back in several of the endings.
• Burn the Witch!: This line is dropped by the kids at the party. Jodie is also accused of being a witch by another boy whom Aiden attacks.
• Bullying a Dragon:
  • Everyone. Well, everyone evil. When it comes to the spirits, no one can ever leave well enough alone. Even after previous attempts to connect the afterlife to reality annihilated hundreds of people.
  • Also an example with literal bullies: The kids who pick on Jodie at the party apparently decided that assaulting a girl who had personally demonstrated her connection to a powerful spirit and then locking her in a closet was a brilliant idea.
• 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.
  • In "Like Other Girls", Jodie must always possess Cole to escape from her confinement, though she can fail to sneak out of the facility afterwards.
  • In "Hunted", it doesn't matter if Jodie initially outruns the cops pursuing her or is captured by them. Either way she'll end up at a roadblock and has to steal a motorcycle. The only difference is that in the latter case she starts out in the back of a police cruiser and has to break free.
  • 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.
  • "Black Sun" has Jodie unable to refuse to be a conduit for Nathan's family again.
• 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.
• Chained Heat: Aiden and Jodie.
• Chekhov's Skill: Played with. In chapters that chronologically take place earlier in the story, Jodie can practice her guitar in her room, which later becomes useful when she plays the guitar to get charity money while living on the streets. However, since "Homeless" is played earlier due to the game's Anachronic Order, her skill initially seems to come out of nowhere until we learn more of her past.
• Cluster F-Bomb: Both Jodie and Ryan tend to carpet-bomb the scenery in Fs whenever things get really messy. Especially noticeable during the "The Mission" chapter when Jodie has to escape from vengeful African militias and said soldiers hose the building she just sought shelter in with automatic weapons, as well as during the "Black Sun" finale.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: Jodie and Ryan suffer it at the hands of the Chinese base commander. Both have to be healed by Aiden once freed.
• 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 keep any nasty things that might jump out contained. This also has the unfortunate effect (for the heroes) of keeping Aiden out, and causing Jodie to lose her mind control over the base commander.
• Content Warnings: For "Allusions to Sexual Violence" when two drunks try and rape Jodie.
• 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: After being attacked by a thug, Jodie slips into one for three months. Can also be caused by being hit by a falling girder if she fails to escape the building in time.
• 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 laying next to her, to cut the ropes. However, she first needs Aiden to break the bottle in order to do so. Something the guard watching over her conveniently doesn´t hear...
• Creator Thumbprint:
  • Main character taking a shower at least once (Jodie).
  • A friendly black orderly type character similar to Barney from The Silence of the Lambs (Cole).
  • Flashbacks to childhood which reveal important plot points/character motivations.
  • Main characters have sex in questionable circumstances.
• Creepy Basement: Well, garage, but it fits. It's unclear on the player's first venture in there to get oil whether the creepiness is due to the evil spirits, Aiden, or just Jodie's young imagination playing with her. There is, however, an actual creepy basement in the "Homeless" chapter.
  • The one in her childhood home is actually haunted as well. Take too long to grab the oil and see what happens when Jodie approaches the door...
• Creepy Twins: We only find out that they're twins in the game's final chapters, but Jodie and Aiden are very, very creepy- both individually and together.
• Cute Bruiser: Thanks to her CIA training, petite little Jodie fights like frickin' Solid Snake.
• Cutscene Power to the Max: During the chapter "Dinner", where Aiden isn't under player control for most of it, he 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.
• Dashed Plot Line: The story consists of scenes from three main periods of Jodie's life: her troubled childhood, rebellious teen years, and the 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 several 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. Also, the game features a Distant Finale... sort of, it's just a vision, but Jodie says it will happen in a number of years, apparently sufficient for Zoey to grow up in two endings.
• Death Seeker: This is what you can play Jodie as (though Aiden will always be there to stop her). Otherwise, it's kind of ambiguous.
• Deflector Shields: One of Aiden's powers is forming a barrier around Jodie or others to either deflect bullets or cushion the impact of falls. Unfortunately, they're completely useless in close-quarters combat situations.
• Demonic Possession:
  • Aiden can enter the minds of people and control their bodies. Other entities can do this as well.
  • 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.
• Ding-Dong-Ditch Distraction: Aiden does this in "The Dinner" (via making the doorbell ring so that Jodie assumes Ryan is early) to aggravate her. If Jodie steps outside the apartment even after seeing the hall is empty, he slams the door and locks it behind her, which forces Jodie to use her own psychic abilities to unlock it again.
• Disproportionate Retribution:
  • During "Homeless", Jodie at one point beats 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, and then hit Jodie twice in the back of the head with a steel bat, putting her into a coma.
  • 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. A very rare book that, if nothing else, was probably worth a lot of money.
• Double-Meaning Title: "Two Souls" refers to both Jodie/Aiden, and to the ending of the game, where either Tuesday's daughter Zoey faces the apocalypse with the help of Jodie's spirit or Jodie herself if she survives, or Jodie with Aiden facing the apocalypse.
• 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.
• 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 dies, Zoey will have the above vision, with the implication being that Jodie, as her Guardian Entity, is sharing it with her to better prepare her for what’s to come.
• 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 Asian underwater base dressed up in their uniforms. Subverted in that they get caught pretty quickly. Doubly subverted in that they get caught because of Jodie collapsing when Aiden visibly hits an entity containment field, not because the disguise itself was bad.
• Driven to Suicide: Jodie can attempt this. Subverted as Aiden will use his powers to stop her.This can also happen to Nathan if you successfully talk him down, as he kills himself to be reunited with his family.
• Driving Question: "What lies beyond?"
• Dull Surprise: The sheriff that interrogates Jodie at the beginning of the game is later shown to be 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 ghostly entity, he's probably suffering from a severe case of shock.
• Easter Egg: You can find a newspaper that mentions the Origami Killer in one of the levels.
  • One of Jodie's stuffed animals is Totoro.
• Eagleland: Type 2, considering how the CIA is portrayed in-game.
• 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 stronger ones like Yé'iitsoh, a malevolent spirit that creates sandstorms and looks like a monstrous, legless skeleton with a fanged mouth and glowing yellow eyes, have more unique appearances.
• 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.
• Electromagnetic Ghosts: Entities cause significant interference with electrical devices, making lights flicker and screens display strange images. Aiden only causes it when he's angry or using his powers frequently.
• 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 the visions Jodie (or Zoey, if Jodie chooses the Beyond ending) experience of another Black Sun experiment at the end of the game, they still haven't learned.
• Exact Words: To keep Jodie's life a secret, the CIA declared that she was "stillborn". The "stillborn" part is half-correct; they were also talking about Aiden.
• Expository Hairstyle Change: Used extensively. It's particularly useful, given the non-linear timeline.
• Eyepatch of Power: Ryan, if you refuse to talk when tortured.
• 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.
• 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 somewhere near northern China and Mongolia. The soldiers there also seem to be speaking Mandarin Chinese.
• Foreshadowing:
  • Nathan's family appears in a photo early in the game on his desk, and the camera at one point puts the photo, Jodie, and the picture of Aiden next to each other, representing that Jodie and Aiden are Nathan's key to get his family back.
  • There are times where Aiden can wander off during the levels, and it often hints or outright gives you tips for what to do or what is going to happen next. The two major examples are during the mental hospital visit to see Norah, where Aiden can go into several rooms and be confronted by mental patients who can see him (as well as one who tells Jodie directly to be prepared to sacrifice her life to save the world), and the level immediately after, where Aiden can go through the giant metal doors to find the lab where Nathan is keeping his wife and daughter captive.
  • 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 "The 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.
    • Another example is during the bar scene, where, using Aiden, you can eavesdrop on the two men conversing about raping Jodie long before the game moves to that point, and allow the player to escape the graphical scene.
• 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. You still technically beat the game, but the ending isn't really much better than simply dying at any point, simply consisting of Jodie monologuing over a shadow background about how she failed and the world ended.
• Forgot About His Powers: There are numerous cases where Aiden 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. Even having Aiden scout outside the Navajo ranch during the stand storm doesn't seem to occur to either of them, with Jodie instead opting to look outside herself and Aiden being inexplicably restricted from passing through walls.
  • Possibly justified with the walls at the ranch because if they were warded to keep spirits out, it would make sense that they'd keep Aiden in.
• 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 the "Homeless" chapter, while having Jodie walk around, there'll be a man reading a newspaper and if you look at the article he's reading, it's about the Origami Killer from Heavy Rain.
• Gameplay and Story Integration: A rather specific example. It only occurs when playing Duo mode in the chapter "The Dinner." 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.
• General Ripper: General McGrath wants to use the Condenser and Jodie to conquer the Infraworld, despite all of their prior attempts pointing to the fact that it wasn't going to work. True to form, at the end of the game their constant attempts to break through are in danger of dooming the world.
• Ghost Memory: Aiden can give Jodie these from dead bodies to see what they experienced before they died.
• 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.
• Gilded Cage: How Jodie lives during her adolescence. The scientists let her have a comfortable, personalized room, but there are cameras everywhere, and she isn't allowed to go out much. In the finale, the government gives up on this and tries to put her in a coma.
• Gun Struggle: If Jodie fails to talk Nathan down in "The Black Sun" (or fails to have Aiden strangle him once he shoots her), Ryan will show up and try to wrest 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 the "hunted" level. Jodie can get arrested three different times if the player messes up during the chase scenes. The first time, she ends up with her hands cuffed behind her back and locked up in a small room whose door is being watched over by a policemen, thus making her escape complicated and downright impossible without resorting to help from Aiden, the supernatural entity that is linked to Jodie. However, if she gets recaptured later, the police will simply handcuff her hands in front of her, allowing the girl to easily strangle an officer. One has to wonder why they decided to get sloppy with precautions only after she managed to escape her restraints the first time.
• The Hero Dies: One possible outcome of the game is Jodie choosing to go into the "Beyond" voluntarily after destroying the condenser, rather than being separated from Aiden.
• Healing Hands: To an outsider, it seems like Jodie has this power. In reality, Aiden is the one doing the actual healing.
• Hellish Copter: During Jodie's escape from police and SWAT teams, a helicopter can occasionally 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).
• Homeless Hero: The chapter Homeless.
• How We Got Here: Layered within itself. The story starts with Jodie surrounded by mysterious light and trying to piece her memories together. The first memory she accesses is heavily-lined with flashbacks (within the flashback), 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. In the "Homeless" chapter, Jodie can attempt to jump off a ledge, or slit her wrists. Both times Aiden will stop her. It's clear that Aiden is trying to keep her alive at all costs, which is something that Jodie later exploits to save her friends. Also happens in "The Mission", where Jodie can attempt to shoot herself in the head before Aiden stops her.
• If You Won't, I Will: Jodie's dad uses this to try to get Nathan to tell Jodie that they're leaving her at the institute indefinitely.
• Impromptu Tracheotomy: During the "The Condenser" mission, Jodie impales a possessed scientist through the neck with a metal pole... which does little more than annoy him.
• 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; and General McGrath, who, like the sheriff, has his appearance based off both his voice actor and a Heavy Rain character, his being Doctor Baker.
• 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.
• 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 Just Want to Be Normal: Jodie wants to be like other normal girls her age but that's just not possible.
• I See Dead People: Jodie, with her ability to see spirits.
• 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.
• Just Following Orders: May as well be Ryan's catchphrase.
• 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 in 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 "The Black Sun" thanks to the efforts of Jodie and her friends, and it's heavily implied in the epilogues that he, along with the CIA, is still hard at work on trying to fully access the other side, having learned nothing from the experience.
  • 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 Infraworld, which, despite the fact that it contains certain malicious entities, is mostly portrayed as a paradise without limits. Meaning that the majority of the dead end up in what is essentially heaven, regardless of how good or evil they may have been in life.
• Laser-Guided Karma: A few examples here and there:
  • After the kids at the birthday party lock her in the closet, Jodie can choose to use Aiden to get back at them.
  • Soon after burning down the building where Tuesday has given birth and beating Jodie into a coma, the thugs are arrested because of the smell of gas on their clothes.
  • In a more positive example, Stan--despite being homeless--takes Jodie in when he sees her collapsed on a sidewalk. This act of compassion really pays off.
• 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.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Various psychic abilities are real, as are ghosts, and the asylum level implies precognitives may also exist. Apparently Jodie wasn't the first psychic to be born—just the first to be recognized as legitimate and not insane. And to be discovered outside the government conspiracy.
• Mercy Kill: You have the option to kill Jodie's irrevocably brain-dead mother when Jodie goes to see her.
• Mighty Whitey: Jody fixes the Navajo family's motorcycle, finds a burial ground, gets the old grandmother to talk for the first time in decades, and is able to perform a Navajo ritual that no Navajo has been able to in generations, saving the Navajo family from the ghosts summoned because of their ancestor's 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 assumes 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 is bound to her Guardian Entity, Aiden, since birth. She's frequently frustrated with his overprotectiveness, but is ultimately happy that she has him. Near the end of the game, it's revealed that Aiden is actually the spirit of Jodie's stillborn twin brother.
• Mood Whiplash: 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.
• Mugging the Monster: 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.
• 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 died 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.
• 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 was released in 2013, but the chronologically last chapters of the game are set in 2014 (starting with Old Friends and ending with Prologue) and 2015 (Epilogue, minus the Sequel Hook).
• 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.
  • A young Jodie is able to help console Nathan's grief by channeling the spirits of the dead and uses his dead wife and daughter's spirits to talk to him. Unfortunately, this leads to him obsessing over the Infraworld to bring his family back to the point he nearly destroys the world.
• 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.
  • The latter could have something to do with her three years of CIA training, which he helped oversee.
• No One Gets Left Behind: It's up to the player to play this trope straight or avert it: During the final push for the Black Sun, Cole gets hit by a hostile entity, and Jodie can either go back to drag him to safety or go on ahead without him. Going back results in an additional QTE and a healing minigame as Aiden; not going back results in Cole's death—but his wound prevents him from following Jodie, anyway. Notably, Ryan at first elects to leave Cole behind but if Jodie turns back, comes to her aid immediately.
• Not Quite the Right Thing: In "Hauntings", Jodie channels the ghosts of Nathan's wife and daughter in 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-Woman Wail: Jodie's Leitmotif is a mournful, ethereal female voice.
• One Woman Army: Jodie.
• Onion Tears: Jodie will shed a few in "The Dinner" if she makes either the chicken curry or the Asian beef.
• 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...
• Optional Sexual Encounter: Jodie can have sex with Ryan during "The Dinner" chapter, but it's dependent on an earlier choice in a previous chapter. Namely the "Like Other Girls" chapter. If Jodie never reaches the bar, or simply leaves before the bar flies attempt to rape her, then she'll be open to sex with Ryan. If not, she'll break down crying as they start getting intimate. It's also dependent on Aiden not interrupting them during their date.
• 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 in the psychic/spirit world 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, There are drawings of Aiden by Jodie and other benevolent entities by the Navajos that show them to be a floating torso with glowing eyes, and it is implied they have no defining features and are made out of shadow-like energy.
• Papa Wolf: Aiden, while not Jodie's father, will (try to) murderize anyone who so much as touches her the wrong way, whether she wants him to or not. He also gets audibly pissed at Jodie herself every time he has to save her from a suicide attempt.
• Parental Abandonment: Jodie's adoptive parents hand her over to the government for testing when she's only 8.
• Parental Substitute: Dawkins serves as this to Jodie. Inverted as well, as Nathan uses Jodie as a substitute for his child after her death.
• 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 potentually 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.
• Pet the Dog:
  • Jodie's father, despite being a bit of a Jerkass and verbally abusive. When she's screaming in terror at night, he unhesitatingly busts her door down to help, and does indeed appear genuinely regretful over leaving Jodie in Dawkins' care (if Aiden chooses not to attack him before he leaves, that is).
  • Aiden himself has his moments. He'll murder anyone who happens to be in his and Jodie's way, he'll wreak havoc in any situation given the chance to, and he'll drive Jodie to the point of tears on some occasions when he's out of control. But he also protects her, steals her cookies when she's sad, and nudges her favourite pink stuffed rabbit onto the bed when she's scared. One chapter even has Aiden doing a shadow puppet theatre for a young Jodie, in lieu of a bedtime story.
• Please, Don't Leave Me: Jodie begs her mother 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.
• Poltergeist: The spirit that Jodie interacts with, whom she addresses as "Aiden".
• 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: But only if the player chooses the Beyond ending.
• 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 offence 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!
• Protagonist Title: The "Two Souls" doubtless refers to Jodie and Aiden, who have been psychically tied together since birth.
• 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, possibly through Telepathy.
  • In a later chapter it is revealed that Jodie's biological mother had telekinetic powers.
• Rape and Revenge: If the patrons in the bar attempt to rape Jodie, Aiden will intervene and kill all of them.
• 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.
• Reality Has No Subtitles: There are no subtitles during portions of the game where characters are speaking foreign languages, since Jodie doesn't know any of those languages, and the game is in her point of view.
• 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.
• 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.
• Sequel Hook: No matter what ending you get, they all allude to another conflict with the "Black Sun" and the "darker entities". Which is weird since 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 modelled 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.
• Sneaking Snacks: 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.
• 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 Glass contracts when cooled down, forming tiny cracks and lowering its structural integrity—so with enough desperation, you can break through a sheet that big with a body slam.
• 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.
• Super Breeding Program: It is revealed 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/Homeless 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 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]
• The Shrink: Nathan appears to be this, as well as a researcher of Jodie's abilities.
• 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 "The Condenser" mission, two of the dark entities, while possessing the scientists, call Jodie a "little bitch" before they attack her.
• 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 scene, 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.
• Too Dumb to Live: In the "Homeless" chapter, a guy in a back alley offers to pay Jodie for a blowjob. Unless he's trying to get HIV on purpose (yes, people like that actually exist), this is... unwise.
• Traintop Battle: Jodie fights off cops chasing after her before jumping off with Aiden's help.
• 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.
• Tyke Bomb: Deconstructed; Jodie is trained from a young age not only to use her psychic link, but also to be a CIA agent. However, she does not choose to do so, and the guilt of being forced to kill people hangs heavy on her, crippling her self-confidence and personal relationships.
• Tyrannicide: Subverted: 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.
• Underwater Base: A late game mission sees you infiltrate an underwater base where the Chinese are trying to build a condenser portal.
• 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 However, hacks of the game show it to be almost identical to Jodie's bald-headed look. Which, him being her twin, should be unsurprising.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• Zombie Apocalypse: In one level, Jodie investigates an abandoned lab where an experiment into opening a portal to the spirit world led to several malevolent entities breaking loose and killing everyone there. At one point, Aiden has to fight off a seemingly-endless legion of possessed corpses while Jodie tries to open a door.

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