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That fireball is the least of his problems.

The Black Mirror is a 2003 point-and-click horror adventure game developed by Czech studio Future Games. The name refers to the ancestral manor of the Gordon family located in England.

After the mysterious death of his grandfather, Samuel Gordon is forced to return to his home Black Mirror Castle after twelve years. Everyone believes his grandfather committed suicide, but Samuel isn't so sure about that and wants to find out what really happened. It doesn't help that Samuel suddenly gets a lot of vivid nightmares and excruciating headaches. Soon, strange and unexpected deaths occur in the nearby village Willow Creek and Samuel gets closer and closer to a dark secret.

Black Mirror 2 (2009) and Black Mirror 3 (2011) were developed by German studio Cranberry Production. They take place in the 1990s, twelve years after the first game. The college student Darren Michaels is working at the local photo shop in Biddeford, a small town in New England. One afternoon, he meets the beautiful Angelina who promptly gets accused of murdering Darren's boss Fuller. While trying to help her, he realizes things aren't what they seem to be: a mysterious stranger is following Angelina around and Darren himself gets involved in a series of strange events that eventually lead him to the small English village of Willow Creek. He learns about the Gordon family and a century-old curse that is connected with them.

A reboot titled Black Mirror was released in 2017. It was developed by German studio King Art Games and published by THQ Nordic.

Not to be confused with the British TV series of the same name.


Provides Examples Of:

  • 13 Is Unlucky: The room Angelina was staying in at the hotel in Willow Creek had the number 13 while Darren's had the much more positive number 12.
  • Abandoned Mine: Samuel falls into one in the second chapter of the first game, with his escape from the mine being the last third of the second chapter.
  • Aborted Arc: The death of Samuel's wife, Cathrin, is brought up a few times as a key factor in his having left Black Mirror 12 years ago. This would imply that it's going to be significant later on, but it's never brought up again in the first game. Not so aborted after the first game, though it takes until the third for the fully story...
    • In Black Mirror II, there is talk early in the game of a woman named Carrie who committed suicide in the small Maine town. You never hear of her again once you leave the town. It's possible that she was raped and then blackmailed by Fuller and killed herself as a result - after all, her picture is in Fuller's window.
  • Absurdly Spacious Sewer: The one under Ashburry is not seen, but it's big enough for several people to have escaped through it. The sewers under Black Mirror are a much more straight-laced example.
  • The Alcoholic: Henry, the gardener.
  • All for Nothing: Samuel kills himself at the end of 1 to stop the curse from affecting anyone else; you can look at 2 and 3 to see how well that went.
  • And Now for Someone Completely Different: In the last quarter of the last game, the Vatican agent, Valentina, suddenly gets thrown into the mix as a playable character, though you still play as Darren/Adrian at the same time.
  • Arbitrary Skepticism: Darren believes absolutely everything he is told about the Gordon family but he won't believe a Fortune Teller even when there's proof that she can predict the future.
  • Artifact of Doom: There's an actual black mirror that the castle is named for. It transports the souls of anyone evil who dies near it to some kind of hellish dimension (if it isn't the Hell), generates shadow versions of people that can torture said souls or kill the living, and literally radiates evil that only certain people can resist. It's heavily implied that Mordred was a good person until he was corrupted by it when he tried to study it. No one knows why it exists or who made it, but Valentina speculates that it's as old as the universe itself.
  • Asshole Victim: Robert Gordon and Dr. Hermann deserved their deaths for their involvement in illegal medical experiments, with Samuel even expressing that he hopes that Robert "burns in hell" for his deeds.
  • Ax-Crazy:
    • Mordred. Whenever Darren/Adrian lays a hand on anything with a sharp edge, Mordred goes nuts with admiration for the weapon.
    • Angelina, who has no compunction about killing members of her own family, including her own mother and brother.
  • Bedlam House: Samuel's uncle, Robert Gordon, runs one of these in the first game. However, he uses his patients for illegal medical experiments, including his half-brother James Gordon.
  • Bittersweet Ending: Samuel has ended the family curse, or so it seems, and stopped whatever Mordred's curse would have lead to, but he commits suicide to make up for his actions.
  • Black Eyes of Evil: Samuel has these when under the influence of the family curse. Darren/Adrian gets them when Mordred's soul is taking him over.
  • Damsel in Distress: For a good part of the second game Angelina seems to be this, and later her apparent death inspires Darren to contemplate a Roaring Rampage of Revenge. The truth is worse; she's an Ax-Crazy sociopath who managed to get Darren to work against the only people who could have helped him and told him the truth about his heritage until it was too late.
  • Ethereal White Dress: Maria's ghost is wearing white. Darren see her in the woods, when he is locked in the cabin.
  • Foreshadowing: The five red symbols in the first game form the Sigil of Baphomet, showing that there is more going on than first meets the eye.
  • Grand Theft Me: In the third, Mordred wants to take over Darren/Adrian's body.
  • Grave Robbing: This is how Samuel obtains the keys in the first game - save for James' key, which he takes from James' body before the latter has been buried.
  • Happily Adopted: Darren and his adoptive mother got on well during their life in America. Or so we are told, since she dies in the first chapter before we ever get to talk to her.
  • Heroic Sacrifice: Adrian's and Angelina's real mother takes the evil Angelina with her when she jumps into the abyss so Adrian can live.
  • Hipster: Darren is of the 1993, grunge variety.
  • Infallible Babble: In the second game there's the drunk who approaches Darren and in the third there's Madame Fortuna.
  • Jerkass: Fuller, Murray, Tom, Phil.. Also Darren to an extent in the beginning.
    • Samuel, too. While taking things that aren't yours and swindling the odd NPC is a long-respected genre tradition, Samuel's actions rapidly cross the line from "shady" to "incredibly illegal." Outright theft, subversion of the law, tampering with crime scenes and evidence, arson, passing off dyed water as an obscure chemical, locking somebody into a crypt.. Most of them because he couldn't be arsed to wait a few days. Yes, waiting or doing a timeskip would downplay player agency but still...
    • Samuel also has a habit of being unsympathetic or downright nasty to people in his search for answers. He threatens some of the staff of the manor with unemployment if they don't follow his orders quickly enough and puts undue stress on a lot of his family because of his impatience. Poor Bates is often forced to describe traumatizing events that he has no interest in reliving.
    Bates: It was very unpleasant having to describe [a murder scene] all over again, Sir.
    Samuel: Oh? Can you repeat to me what you told him?
    Bates: I was afraid you would ask...
  • Locking MacGyver in the Store Cupboard: At one point Darren is locked in a cell, how does he escape? He uses rust and an aluminum dish to make thermite that he ignites in the lock of his prison. This and similar feats are handwaved by the fact that Darren is a student of physics.
  • Luke, I Am Your Father: Darren is really Adrian Gordon, Samuel's son.
  • Morally Ambiguous Doctorate: Two examples in the first game.
    • The first is Robert Gordon, who uses the patients in the Bedlam House he runs for illegal medical experiments. By the end of the entries in his diary, he abandons any pretensions of science and all but writes that he intends to poison his half-brother James Gordon to silence him.
    • The second is Dr. Hermann, the local pathologist, who has been paid off by Robert Gordon to get rid of any dead bodies resulting from the latter's "research".
  • Not Always Evil: The Order of the second game, though they're completely useless at their job.
  • Obviously Evil: Mordred's portrait in the Gordon mansion foyer would give Vigo the Carpathian a run for his money.
  • Orphan's Ordeal: Something that Darren has to face not once, not twice but three times. When his adoptive mother dies from injuries caused by Angelina, when his newly discovered birth mother sacrifices herself to take down Angelina, and when the last living member of his family, Lady Victoria, dies from her injuries, you guessed it, Angelina is responsible for.
  • Playing Drunk: Darren was pretending to be drinking along with Tom to get information from him.
  • Police Are Useless: Detective Collier is so eager to close the cases he investigates and so uninterested in following leads that you could easily assume he's in on whatever's going on, but he isn't.
  • Ragnarök Proofing: Zig-Zagged. While some of the ancient tombs that Samuel locates still contain utilize mechanisms that are... um, somewhat advanced and oddly elaborate, he still has to deal with the fact that these are old ruins and he has to deal with cave-ins and broken architecture more than once.
  • Sequel Hook: Definitely with the second game, which ends with Mordred possessing Darren/Adrian and the third game is a direct continuation of the story. The third game arguably ends with one too since Adrian learns he is now responsible for protecting the world of the living from the Black Mirror and the dangerous shades it may have unleashed in the past. Also there's the spirit of an evil king from the distant past whom Mordred tried to summon and is implied to have escaped from the mirror. Unfortunately, to date there isn't a Black Mirror IV, but at least the trilogy we have manages to wrap up pretty much everything.
  • Shoot Out the Lock: Required by Samuel at one point while trapped in an abandoned mine. The player has to examine the padlock beforehand, revealing a weak point which Samuel can then aim at. Otherwise, it takes two bullets to destroy the lock, leaving Samuel with nothing to defend himself with when the wolf attacks outside the mine.
  • Town with a Dark Secret: Willow Creek. Aside from the fact that the town is next door to a castle built on top of an Artifact of Doom? The owner of the local pub runs an operation that films and sells videos of people being tortured.

Alternative Title(s): Black Mirror Video Games

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