YMMV / The Banner Saga

• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: If you keep the tainted food supplies, while traversing the high mountains, Mogr advises Hakon to stop and rest. After considering it, Hakon watches Mogr jump off the side of the mountain while flapping his arms like a bird, and then explode into flames. Hakon then wakes up at the foot of the mountain, Mogr is fine, and both agree not to talk about it.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Refusing to go to Ridgehorn in chapter 3 causes Hakon to suddenly be compelled to change his mind for reasons that are unclear even to himself. At first, it appears to just be the game lampshading But Thou Must!, but the second game reveals that Juno has the power to brainwash people, which means that it is likely that she was the one who made Hakon go to Ridgehorn.
• Nightmare Fuel: Pretty much everything involving the dredge, who are basically an entire species of The Juggernaut. There's also the run to Godstone Hadrborg just before Einhartoft, where a massive wyrm slithers across the landscape, completely collapsing two mountains.
• Player Punch:
  • The game pretty much runs on it, but the biggest example is Onef's betrayal. If Egil is still alive, he's killed, and it briefly seems like Oddleif might be dead too.
  • Gunnulf's death. The game goes out of its way to make the character likeable, only to snatch him away in a blink of an eye.
  • Those Dredge slingers sure are annoying, aren't they? They're Dredge women, and you can see the ones that have baby Dredge strapped to their backs.
  • In the finale of the first game, the death of Rook or Alette. They survived so much, only to die after striking the crippling blow on the immortal Bellower.

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