"Don't even breathe."
- The deeply unnerving atmosphere of the first trailer will certainly send a few tingles down one's spine, with notable mention being the stark landscape and the use of "I'll Keep Coming" by Low Roar to set the tone beautifully.
- The corpse delivery going wrong shows the dangers of the post-Stranding world. The Game Awards 2017 trailer introduces Invisible Monsters known as Beached Things (BTs), some of which are absolutely enormous. A bunch of Hunters surface from the ground and start to carry off the CD team driver, and his teammate Igor's response is to shoot him in the head before he's fully taken away. Whatever happens to those who get taken by the BTs, death is a preferable alternative. Igor himself is then grabbed by another BT, and he furiously tries to kill himself with his knife, screaming and begging while floating away, but doesn't manage to die before being Eaten Alive.
- It's then revealed that it's not so much a Fate Worse than Death than the consequences of dying, and specifically failing to properly dispose of corpses before the Catchers get to them: the voidouts.
- The Invisible Monsters that are the Beached Things, first teased with the first trailer and given extensive focus in the Game Wards 2017 Trailer. Unless you have a high-enough level of DOOMS, you can't even see the things. Sam himself is a Level 2 DOOMS sufferer, and that means he can only sense their presence. They're essentially Death Stranding's version of wraiths, with a good majority of them being incredibly violent. The worst part? They come in different types. The ones you see floating around are essentially hunting dogs who sniff out an unfortunate person they found, and if they catch them, drag them off to get killed by a larger BT called a "Catcher"-type. And they're not even the most dangerous. The strands that are connected to the BTs' bodies are connected to a gigantic "Controller"-type BT.
- It gets even worse. In the prologue, you learn that being killed by a BT isn't the only way to trigger a voidout. Just dying in general will cause one, but unlike the former this can be prevented. Once a person has died, Corpse Disposal crews have 48 hours to get the body to a cremation site in the mountains. If they don't, the body will start to leak black tar-like ooze and attract BTs. The only way to ensure that a voidout isn't triggered is to cremate the body, and safely release the chiralium in their bodies up into the air. Unfortunately, this also brings out timefall as well. Oh, and did we forget to mention that every death, regardless of how it happens, results in the creation of another BT?
- After Sam delivers Bridget's body to the cremation site and finishes cremating her, he's almost immediately attacked by BTs. The whole place is swarming with them, and his only option is to plug in a BB, despite Deadman claiming that the BB is defective. As we later learn, plugging in a BB and having DOOMS is a bad idea, with Deadman comparing it to the feedback of two microphones, and the user runs the risk of entering a place they can't come back from. Do we even want to know?!
- The voidout. It's a supernaturally souped-up version of an explosion cranked up to max in that it obliterates everything in the surrounding area, triggering only when a "Catcher" or "Controller"-type BT eats someone. And they're everywhere. If you pay close attention to your map, you'll see that the UCA is actually isolated in the western region of the continent because there are thousands of voidout-induced craters separating them from the rest of what's left of their country, nevermind the rest of the world. Not making matters any easier are the Homo Demens, a group of nutjobs who artificially engineer voidouts. In other words, they're extremely effective suicide bombers.
- Higgs. As if being some kind of big-shot in the Homo Demens wasn't enough, he has a golden mask that has the power to conjure up a "Catcher"-type BT, meaning he can trigger a voidout anytime he wants. To make matters worse, he's an Omnicidal Maniac who wants to cause the Last Stranding — an explosion so powerful that, according to Amalie, it's on the level of a big bang. Die-Hardman previously said that the Homo Demens only care about remaining independent and don't want to live under somebody else's rules, but Higgs just doesn't give a shit about any of that. As far as he's concerned, humanity deserves to be rendered extinct.
- Though it's more a Tear Jerker more than anything else, the fact that Mama is connected to a Beached Thing. That Beached Thing being her infant daughter. And apparently, that's the reason she can't leave her garage-like work area.
- Just the concept of the Bridge Baby alone. There's something legit horrible on a base level of being forced to carry around babies with you into direct danger of terrorist groups or alien beings.
- In the spotlight trailer for the Bridge Baby and Deadman, we learn that B.B.s are physically removed from their "stillmothers"—who are lying braindead in the Capital Knot City ICU—and placed inside womb-like glass pods. This means to keep a B.B. "functioning", Sam has to synchronize the B.B. pod with its corresponding stillmother's womb via the chiral network. And even then...no B.B. has been in service for more than a year. Deadman comments that Sam will lose his B.B. before his journey is complete.
- One portion of the game involves wading into surreal World War 1 firefights, offering front row seat for the baby to watch all the violence.
- Heartman's character spotlight puts a pretty heavy emphasis on just how awful his life is, even if he seems to take it in stride. We first see him seemingly laying down and sleeping, only to hear his AED device charge up and go off, shocking him back to consciousness. Yeah, he was dead there, and when he is resuscitated he goes about his business as if he had just gotten up from a nap. One can only imagine what his condition must be doing to his brain and body since they regularly lose blood flow for three minute intervals sixty times a day.
- There's even a small timer at the bottom left corner counting down to his next death.
- Apparently, this period of death was somewhere above the 200,000 count. Doing the math, that can only mean he's been subject to this for about 9 years at least.
- Heartman's first trip to the Beach offers an eerie sort of horror. The imagery of dozens of people silently shuffling into the ocean, as if sleepwalking, triggers an Uncanny Valley instinct for human behavior.
- Even your Private Rooms aren't Nightmare Fuel-free. Interacting with objects has a small chance to instead trigger a frightening hallucination. One involves Sam and Lou playing knock-knock...which results in Lou bashing their head against the inner wall of their pod, breaking it. Another has Sam looking at himself in the mirror, only for Higgs to teleport in behind him. When Sam turns around in horror, Higgs is gone and Sam is wearing his mask.
- Imagine being Deadman during the World War II-era Beach sequence. Scared as hell, he tries to find shelter from all the soldiers and vehicles, and almost succeeds. In a desparate move, he hooks his cord into BB's pod, and calls Sam. It's only then that Deadman learns that the man leading the dead soldiers (Cliff) isn't after Sam—he was going after BB, who is now with Deadman. And Sam's attempt to get him to focus also reveals that Deadman shouldn't have hooked into BB's pod in the first place, because now Cliff is about to home in on him. Oops.Sam: Keep it together, I'm on my way. And don't hook up BB either—it'll lead him straight to you.
Deadman: Oh, boy...
Sam: Not that you would, since you hate them.
Deadman: I just did because I was scared to death!- Keep in mind that the second trailer introducting Deadman and Cliff as characters uses this cutscene. Countless people have doubtless watched this video long before launch, unaware that Kojima wasn't just using very oblique visual worldbuilding—he was showing Deadman making a serious mistake, while hiding what the consequences of it were going to be.
- The Beaches that Cliff fights you on seems to imply that if you die in a war instead of moving on, your soul might be trapped in an endless loop of that conflict.
- Your last stop before Edge Knot City is the Tar Belt. It cuts off the entirety of eastern America from the west. It's populated almost entirely by giant horrifying mutant whales. You have to go there, and the only way is to get caught by a BT and dragged into the tar belt. Have fun.
- Edge Knot City. There's absolutely nobody living there. No civilians or Bridges personnel. Not even any Homo Demens. There are 0 inhabitants when you get there, and nobody comes to reinhabit the area once Sam connects it to the chiral network. It's a very creepy ghost town.
- How the Death Stranding occurred. What should have been the scientific discovery of the Millennium, which would rewrite everything not just science but theology understood about physics, life, and death, turns into a global apocalypse.
- Overlapping with Tearjerker, there's the minor subplot involving the Elder. Late in the game, you'll be making a delivery to his shelter, only for the automated system to play and show your results. Then, instead of the Elder speaking to you via hologram, you wind up face to face with a hologram of a BT, silently floating there for an uncomfortably long period of time. Then you receive the emails confirming the Elder passed away. Worse still, somehow, even as a BT, he's still making orders to UCA facilities.
- And overlapping with Funny, there's the strange prepper known as Peter Englet. He speaks to you only through emails where he has an nauseatingly chipper and polite attitude as he requests pizza from various UCA facilities, always failing to meet you when you arrive and giving a long-winded apology and excuse for his absence. His odd behavior is both endearingly funny and oddly unnerving. Then it's revealed that it was Higgs all along, which makes it almost hilarious to realize he was trolling Sam throughout the whole game, if not for the fact that Higgs has actually been trolling Sam the entire game.
- The second story-mandated BT boss that Higgs sics on you. Atleast with the first one, you could rely on the buildings in the tar for safety. This one? It can leap onto those small rooftops after you. Better hope you can run away fast enough before it catches you.
