As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.
Fridge Brilliance
- The LIFE meter is way too big and feels like an egregious mistake. As the story unfolds, it turns out that the same has become true of the very concept of Life itself.
- The first time you die, it racks up some debt and brings up a scary message. This will make new players want to start a new file - but it's actually beneficial because it makes the game easier - easy enough for new players. In other words, death is important and necessary - which, again, ties into the game's main themes.
- In Cruelty Squad HQ, the seemingly intended method to complete the cursed section is to invest tons of money in the stock market, then actually enter the level and get the ZKZ which is powered up by those investments, and use it to kill the target with tons of health. If you assume the target is a high-ranking member of Cruelty Squad (if not the leader), then basically your character is playing the stock market to oust an executive. The subsequent "LIFE" ending even says your character has a "CEO mindset".
Fridge Horror
- If you take a glance at the mission results stats after mostly using the DNA Scrambler, you may have noticed that your kills with the weapon don't actually add up to the enemies/civilians killed count (it could actually stay at 0 if you'd exclusively use the weapon in the mission), not even kicking the flesh masses would cause the number to go up. While this can be chalked up as a programming oversight, this can also raise some disturbing in-universe implications that targets struck by this weapon remain alive as flesh-plants. This is especially apparent if you have the volume up, as kicking each part of the flesh tendrils gives out a faint, pitch-shifted scream.
- This gets its own Fridge Brilliance: What's the best way to kill somebody but prevent them from counting as dead? Not really killing them, but just leaving them transmogrified into an inanimate flesh-plant. Considering the DNA Scrambler is said to kill people permanently, it's likely the actual effects described are watered down compared to the true effects of getting hit by it, since it reaches the same conclusion that they can't be revived afterwards.
- Combined with Fridge Brilliance, but very much belongs here: in the ending where you destroy the concept of Death, the first thing we see is the protagonist walking through a brick wall. This undoubtedly represents the conquering of Death. But all that's left is a bunch of people walking around aimlessly, forever. Except, of course, for the protagonist, who continues walking toward a distant second brick wall. Forever.
- On the way to achieving the "CEO" ending of the game, all the named people at Cruelty Squad HQ who were amicable with the protagonist (and the closest thing one could genuinely call 'friends') are instantly and permanently killed. This is described as "[s]acrificing your friends to develop your CEO mindset so you can finally ascend to primordial-financial godhood" in an interview with Ville Kallio
. Anything else the process entails isn't elaborated on, save for the ending "LIFE" screen declaring that "YOUR FRIENDS ARE IN HELL YET YOU SMILE".
