This is based on opinion. Please don't list it on a work's trope example list.
Per wiki policy, this page contains unmarked spoilers. You Have Been Warned!
Although it's not to the extent like
Luminous Avenger iX and
Luminous Avenger iX 2, it still deserves mention.
- The Vanishing World Non-Standard Game Over. Dear lord...
To summarize: If you allow berserk GV to either use his septima or get hit too much, he will eventually lose control of his powers and revert back to a Primal Dragon where the screen goes all white and the only highlight visible being his silhouetted self in his monstrous form. After this, he proceeds to obliterate everything on a planetwide scale, all while accompanied by a sinister BGM as he does so. And no, you don't get to continue from the last checkpoint because the world is gone, so back to the title screen you go. - The second boss in the game, BB, has one nasty surprise: If Kirin gets hit by his specters four times throughout the fight, the screen suddenly fades into black, Kirin is framed by a laughing black skull, then BB just instantly kills her.
- Moebius's Damnatio Memoriae Special Skill not only has the power to assault Kirin and Gunvolt with past events of their lives, it has a scary side effect; if Gunvolt is the one struck by the attack while using specific Image Pulses: Gunvolt will be warped to an alternate timeline created by Astral Order where Nova has successfully implemented Azure Striker into his body and wields it with his Psychokinesis, or an ominous future where Asimov is about to go mad with power. There's also the implication that another scenario of Damnatio Memoriae cast Kirin into the world of Luminous Avenger iX 2 as an Optional Boss in that game. Oh, speaking of striking Gunvolt? Anthem Gunvolt in this game is The Juggernaut immune to everything the game throws at him... except Moebius' Damnatio Memoriae. Just how powerful is Moebius that he alone can stop the unstoppable?
- And speaking of Asimov, he returns in this game as a superboss, and he just sounds... wrong. Very wrong.
- First, he parrots his lines in the first game where he wants Gunvolt and whichever-girl-beside-him become King and Queen. Given that this is highly implied to be Asimov from the iX timeline, which happens because he killed Gunvolt, this is a major warning about his deteriorating mental state: not only he sounds like a Broken Record, he has apparently forgotten about the murder.
- Then, he intends to make Kirin live forever along with him after, as he literally puts it, removing unnecessary parts from her, a.k.a, what he did to Mytyl.
- What's worse, Asimov admits that his own body isn't holding up much longer, which foreshadows his decision to cast off his physical form and embrace a pure lightning electronic form, Demerzel, who will turn utterly insane and inflict over a century of genocide upon non-Adepts and oppression on Adepts.
- Lastly, his final Limit Break, "Volt X re:Age", is pronounced roughly as "Voltic/Voltaic Rage" instead of what the spelling would suggest. Which other character in the franchise has a Limit Break with audible pronunciation but nonsensical spelling? None other than the no-less-batshit insane Elise in the first game, suggesting that Asimov's sanity is already a fraction away from completely shattering.
- Epilogue: ATEMS Episode brings its own Nightmare Fuel in the form of Azure Spirits. Initially, the plot of ATEMS Episode is merely ZedΩ collecting Azure Spirits for research purposes. At the climax of the game, ZedΩ, Layla and Kirin return to Sumeragi's Future Institute of Technology only to find that the lingering Azure Spirits in the depths of the facility has coalesced into a replica of Primal Dragon Gunvolt. However, it doesn't stop there: After defeating the replica, at first, ZedΩ is happy to find a massive amount of Azure Spirits he can take as research material. However, he then gets a panicked phone call from Sistina that the Azure Spirits they have gathered and stored with them suddenly have gone missing and, soon after, said missing Azure Spirits just barge in, promptly possess Layla and drive Luxia berserk, forcing ZedΩ to fight her to get her back to her senses. All this leads ZedΩ to a terrifying conclusion: Not only Azure Spirits can innately drive Adepts berserk, they are apparently sentient and it's safe to say that the planetwide attacks from Berserk Adepts (as mentioned in the ending) came from the spirits themselves and not from Moebius as initially assumed.
