Unmarked Spoilers ahead!
"You cannot escape me, even in death."
While the game doesn't reach Binding of Isaac levels in terms of creepiness and dark imagery, it does have a few notable moments that can make one quiver in horror.- The very first thing you see after pressing start to bring up the main menu is the Lamb floating above a pentagram with blood dripping from their eyes, surrounded by dozens of cultists praying to them. If that doesn't let you know exactly what kind of game you're in for, then nothing will.
- The opening where the Lamb is approaching the Four Bishops and preparing to get their head cut off. The way the Lamb is slowly walking combined with no music is very ominous.
- You're NOT running a proper religion, you're running a cult, with all the horrors that implies... Some fanworks are specially good at emphasizing this.
- Anytime the Lamb performs sacrifices and rituals, their eyes start bleeding and appears to be silently screaming before it's over. While these moments are brief, they can still be unnerving for first-time players due to the facial expressions.
- Speaking of sacrifices, they're appropriately terrifying for the unfortunate soul being sacrificed: they take their spot in the middle while visibly scared, before giant eldritch tentacles burst from the ground and drag them screaming into the abyss. The follower will have exactly the same reaction — horror throughout if the "Belief In Sacrifice" trait isn't chosen and all — even if they requested to be sacrificed themselves.
- However, if you have the Belief in Sacrifice Doctrine the victim won't be nervous (unless they are a dissenter), and after the initial panic when the tentacles grab them, they close their eyes and smile in happy acceptance just before they're pulled to god-knows-where. This does not make it better.
- One Doctrine lets you flat-out kill a follower on the spot, no sacrificing or anything. You can end some poor soul's life at any time, and it's definitely shocking, to say the least. Slightly mitigated if you do it to deal with a dissenter, since you have an actual reason for it: getting rid of a problematic follower trying to sow discord among your flock.
- At first, the Ascension ritual seems nice compared to being sacrificed and as close to "holy" as this game is going to get, with the follower being floated up toward the ceiling as light shines down on them... and then, if you don't have the 'belief in the afterlife' doctrine, once they ascend off screen an indescribably horrible sound happens, and their meat falls down onto the summoning circle while the other followers cheer. Wherever they went, it certainly wasn't Heaven.
- Rescuing a follower in Anura will show you that Heket has her sacrifices carried out by way of strapping the victim to a giant mushroom and letting its flesh grow over them until it smothers them. Going by the wriggling victims trapped under it, trying and failing to cry out for help, this takes a while. Thank goodness you saved at least one.
- In general is it quite disturbing to see just how many corpses exist in the lands of the Old Faith. While Leshy's forest simply has body bags and the occasional crucified corpse, Heket's realm is filled with people half-merged into mushrooms. Kalamar has countless skeletons that got drowned by having their legs tied to stones. And Shamura's Silk Cradle has the ceiling of almost every room covered in silk bags holding bodies. And, since destroying said bodies offer "bones of the unbelievers", those aren't people unwilling to follow the Old Faith: most of them were believers most happily sacrificing themselves, it seems.
- If the player refuses to kneel to the One Who Waits, the Lamb responds by letting out an angry roar as their eyes turn red, they briefly sprout wings, and bare fangs. Not to mention, the Lamb roaring and letting out bleats are the only notable sounds they make in the entire game.
- The first phase of the One Who Waits' boss fight is nothing special. After he sends his attendants, Baal and Aym, at you, he attacks you himself with fireballs and barbed chains that spear out of the ground. Then you get his health down, he sinks into the ground, and everything goes dark... Before his true form, a massive red thing, with three eyes, several more beneath his flayed skin, and rows of teeth that would make Pennywise proud, roars at you. Then its eyes fly out of its face to attack you in the middle of a lake of blood surrounded by burning crosses, and several of your frightened followers are crucified and forced to watch you fight for your life. And yes, that is it in the page image.
- If the Lamb kneels to the One Who Waits and gives back his crown, he breaks free from his chains, lifts up the Lamb and murders them by breaking all their limbs, while both of their eyes start bleeding, and grins evilly and lets out a deep laugh as he's killing them.
- Midas's Cave is just one unsettling thing after another. The location itself has a very uncomfortable ambience. For one, the room is filled with statues that cry blood and laugh whenever Midas bids them to, and it's all but stated that said "statues" are actually unlucky passers-by that the cave's owner imprisoned. Midas himself is a creepy Perpetual Smiler obsessed with gold and constantly making thinly-veiled insults towards the Lamb.
- If you sacrifice your followers to King Midas, the animation for them being transformed into sentient golden statues can be unsettling; first they scream and frantically wave their arms before seeming to accept their fate - poof, suddenly they're covered in molten gold, looking more like horrifying figures covered in yellow wax. And to even further ramp up the horror of this fate, unlike the followers you can resurrect that are killed in other ways, such as dying from illness or being sacrificed in a ritual, these followers cannot be brought back as they are technically not dead.
- A potential relation to Midas's "God" is a bizarre tree-like statue you can encounter during a crusade amidst piles of gold. Offering it 20 gold gives you a decent boon of items per offering, and you can break open the piles to gain gold coins and nuggets. Why is it so unsettling? Because the statue isn't gullible. It knows you're stealing its gold and trembles in rage every time you take something from it.
- Some of the random rooms you find can be a bit creepy due to the fact that there is no explanation why these things exist. A room to grab meat, for example, has the meat in what appears to be bushes in a pink and bony room that looks like a tongue.
- The "Gluttony of Cannibals" ritual introduced in "Sins of the Flesh" is exactly what it sounds like. A poor follower you pick gets tied to a cooking spit, and the rest dine in as the victim is very visibly terrified and rock music plays. That's a very scary ritual that'd make Banica Conchita look tame. To top it all off, unless you have the Cannibalism trait, you'll lose 40 faith upon doing this ritual.
- What happens if you absolve a follower 3 times in a single day or via the Sinner's Pride ritual? They become damned and get kicked out of the cult via hole... But not before they swear to have revenge on you. And they can get payback for all that sin on your next crusade.
- Damned Follower: What have you done to me? The Sin... It's consuming my soul! How could you? Your greed for sin has damned me! I will find you in the next life and punish you for this!
- In order to save the Bishops the player must pay a toll to reopen all of their doors. As well as having a certain follower count, the player must also sacrifice a follower to open the door, with text warning that the follower cannot be resurrected. When chosen, the follower looks afraid before being sucked into the door, their eyes turning red as it happens. The final door requires a follower of loyalty level 10 - and that follower may also have become one of the Lamb's disciples, i.e. their most loyal followers who help enforce loyalty in the cult. They've likely expressed their happiness and loyalty to the Lamb for giving them a home immediately prior to the player sacrificing them, and the sacrifice isn't just painful, but may have destroyed their soul since they cannot be resurrected. Whether or not the rest of the cult knows what happened to them is ambiguous, since there is no penalty for sacrificing loyal followers in this manner.
- Of the vendors you can meet during a Crusade, Chemach is one of the creepiest. She's a massive owl chained to the ceiling, with bags of meat surrounding her that she refers to as her 'followers' - and she gets very angry if you 'attack' them, even threatening you.
- If you agree to Reincarnated!Sozo's quest and bring a Mushroomo follower back to the cult compound, he will relentlessly chase the poor terrified bastard down to eat them. If you want to finish his storyline, you have no choice but to let him catch them and then refuse the next time he asks.
