UHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Picture this; What do you get when you bring the creator of Resident Evil and one very unorthodox-minded, batshit crazy game developer together to create a game about a diverse team of badass assassins having to deal with all sorts of pretty fucked up targets? The end result? Killer7. Strap yourself in. It’s gonna be one hell of a ride.
- The simple fact that nothing makes sense. The player's total disorientation makes for a constant sense of unease as utterly insane and violent things keep happening around them with little to no explanation. If ever a video game has given a truly vivid look into the mind of a paranoid schizophrenic assassin, this is it. "Step into The Mind of An Assassin!" indeed.
- killer7 has such fascinating boss encounters as a pair of Japanese politicians who rise from the dead after having their heads blown open, and then attack by shooting their exposed brains at you. Also, the Heaven Smile's laughter.
- If you die as a persona, they'll simply fall down (Dan will still hold out his gun even as he's dying) and stop moving. The major exception is Kevin, who, after falling down on the floor, twitches and spasms for a couple of seconds as he curls up in the fetal position. It's...a disturbingly feasible way for a dying body to react.
- The KAKU building ("隠 building") in "Sunset" becomes this in gameplay. The main building interior is comprised of one fairly narrow L-shaped hallway per floor, with various available rooms branching out from each. That means when you hear a laugh, you can't immediately shoot the Heaven Smiles because even if they're sharing the same space as you, you have no idea where they are at first. You're left with you options: simply stay put and let the Smiles charge you 'round the bend, with no clear idea what Smile types are approaching beforehand; or move blindly to the hallway turn or an open side door, pulling out your gun, scanning, and finally attacking...all the while being careful not to run directly into your bomb-laden quarry.
- killer8 takes it up a notch. The KAKU building dilemma remains the same, save the details that k8 takes away your ability to see the Smiles' One-Hit Kill weak points, and that the Smiths sans young Harman will die in one blast. Even with Con or KAEDE upgraded with Critical Lock-On, even with young Harman and his Tommy gun available, you'll get through this maze of a level by the skin of your teeth, at best.
- The boss fight against Andrei Ulmeyda in the "Cloudman" scenario is one of the most frightening boss fights in all video gamedom. After turning into a Heaven Smile, he slowly chases you through a maze of ambulances, all of which are horribly vivid and unnatural colors, and he is trailed by...bloody tentacles sprouting from his back and arms and legs. These tentacles drag his floating afro—his weak point—behind him. It doesn't help that he kills you in one hit, and thanks to the camera's positioning, you can't look around corners. Which means that, like in the Kaku building situation, there is a very good chance you will run straight into him. And to make the fight even worse, here's the boss theme.
- Curtis Blackburn is a pedophile with a fetish for anime loli (Ayame Blackburn!), and he harvests organs for the US government from the little orphan girls he kidnaps and molests... Even worse, he uses a giant car-wash/slaughterhouse hybrid machine in his home. This contraption rids the body of all organs, cleans it up, and closes it up, leaving just a shell of the dead body behind. After the boss fight, in the room outside you can see naked little girls' hollowed-out dead bodies. In the end, in an ironic twist, it's Curtis who is finished off by the machine. After it's done with him he is hung on a hook and his dead empty body tumbles slowly from side to side.
- A good indication of what a sick bastard Curtis is? Garcian, Dan, Mills and Travis are all disgusted by him.
- There's also Taxidermy, the song that plays after Curtis's death. If you value sleep, do not listen to it if you're alone in a dark room.
- How he punishes Pedro for betrayal. He slaughters Pedro's wife and children, and then holds him at gunpoint and describes, in sparse and lurid detail, just what he did to them. Oh, and he brought Pedro a gift—his daughter's severed head. By the time Curtis finally kills Pedro, it's a relief for the player.
- AYAME Blackburn's identity. Remember Curtis' Establishing Character Moment? When he kills everyone on one office floor, then turns toward the sole remaining person there—a terrified young girl. It's initially implied that it was a random stranger that Curtis simply killed without further thought. Then in Part 2, it's implied that it was Pedro's daughter Marie, who Curtis made an example of... Both implications are proven wrong. When the mask comes off, it turns out that that girl that Curtis turned his attention to is AYAME Blackburn. Which begs the question: what the hell did he do to her to make her his pseudo-Magical Girl accomplice? And within one or two days, at most?
- Greg Nightmare at the end of "Smile". He's an obese dead man who'd hanged himself in the gymnasium, and yet he clings to a gun in his hand and lets out horribly distorted grunts. To beat him, you have to shoot him in his horribly swollen balls. And after that, Black Heaven Smiles appear and kill all of your personae, one by one, while sinister organ music blares in the background.
- Not even young Harman can fight the Black Heaven Smiles. He goes down just like the others.
- In a horrific case of Developer's Foresight, if you go into the fight with personae already dead and thus get Garcian out early, then as soon as he picks up the Golden Gun, every remaining Black Heaven Smile will go after him at once. If you go out of your way to kill everyone but Garcian off before the Black Smiles spawn, what should be a victory lap turns into a race to kill all seven before any of them reach him, made worse by the fact that, as the Golden Gun only holds six bullets, you have to reload.
- Susie's stories. She's a Remnant Psyche who, before getting killed by the Smiths, killed her own mother by jumping out of a window with her, landing in a trash compactor; killed her boyfriend with a rifle because he broke her window accidentally with a pebble, hitting her in the face; and castrated lots of men. Even the Smiths couldn't stomach the thought of making her a Smith.
- Those random screams in Garcian's trailerhouse. They'll likely have you moving the hell out to work just to get away from them, and you'll be wondering, Where the hell are they coming from!?
- At first you'll assume that it's Harman screaming from Samantha raping him, as usual. Until you find Samantha dead, Harman gone, and the screams still happening. As it turns out, your trailer home has a basement. And while you're still digesting that piece of information, you catch a glimpse of the last Heaven Smile running away from you...
- Now that we've mentioned it: Samantha constantly raping and abusing Harman. And Garcian lets this happen.
- At first you'll assume that it's Harman screaming from Samantha raping him, as usual. Until you find Samantha dead, Harman gone, and the screams still happening. As it turns out, your trailer home has a basement. And while you're still digesting that piece of information, you catch a glimpse of the last Heaven Smile running away from you...
- The Heaven Smiles are among the most horrifying regular enemies in video games. Besides the ones that Duplicator Smiles, Mother Smiles, and the Final Boss create, they are humans that are either filled with ecstasy from Kun Lan's God Hand or injected with an unknown substance to become...this. This causes them (with a few special exceptions, most notably Akiba and Kurahashi) to be in an eternal state of happiness to the point of only being able to laugh and follow a single command: "One Heaven Smile must kill one human being." Their bodies are then horribly altered; they've been given a bomb organ that they can detonate at will, and can naturally cloak into the scenery. Only very, very few people able to see them, and even then, most need a special ring. Oh, and they're everywhere. Once you hear their laughter in a level, they're coming for you. And pray you're in a place where you can find them...
- hand in killer7 gives us the fear that is Jaco Checkbox witnessing his wife and daughter turn into Heaven Smiles right in front of him, after his entire squad was killed or turned into Smiles. He then proceeds to shoot the both of them to death...
- Target 00: Angel features a woman who has had her entire backside sliced off by a Heaven Smile, and another one who gets her legs blown off while pleading for help. It really sets the tone for the game.
- hand in reveals that these people were part of a criminal group, the Red Gunners. And the Heaven Smiles still killed them. Any notion that they have "honor among thieves" dies early in Target 00: Angel.
- The flashback cutscenes of Emir Parkreiner, a.k.a. Garcian calmly walking through the Union Hotel and killing the other Smiths, if only because he catches all of them off-guard with absolutely no problem. Not helping is the Soundtrack Dissonance of someone whistling "Greensleeves" in each scene.
- Kevin Smith, disguised as a bellhop, was shot by Emir in the lobby as he was turning around. Kevin's strength meant nothing to the assassin who saw through it.
- The blind Con Smith was listening to something and thus did not hear Emir enter his room, allowing the latter to leave the teenager's body half-dangling out the broken window.
- Mask de Smith was at his most vulnerable when Emir killed him: in the shower, and without his mask. Emir left the "hero" face-down in the bathtub, bullet holes ridding his back.
- KAEDE Smith tried to actively run and hide from Emir. He immediately detected her hiding place in a wardrobe and shot it with her inside. Cue her body slipping out and slumping to the ground.
- Coyote Smith tried to barricade himself in his room and catch Emir by surprise. But Emir got one up on the Thief, scaling the hotel balconies and shooting Coyote from a blind spot.
- Finally, Dan Smith tried to intimidate Emir with big talk, but Emir called his bluff, shooting him point-blank in the head.
- The Body Horror of certain types of Heaven Smiles. Take the Phantom Smiles, for instance. Having one enlarged and malformed hand for a weak point is pretty horrific, but it's the enlarged head ones are much worse. Several long growths sprout from the head like petals of a grotesque flower—including spots like the eyes and nose. How the Smile can still laugh in spite of that is a mystery.
- The Stinger of Harman and Kun Lan fighting a hundred years in the future in Shanghai only highlights how fucked the plot is. All of this death, Japan wiped off of the face of the Earth (or Japan and the United Nations doing it to the United States instead), and the entirety of the Heaven Smile incident? History Repeats; these two are seeming immortals in a never-ending song and dance of warfare, even as Kun Lan admits to the world's inability to change. So more mass death will ensue, and more assassins like Emir/Garcian will eventually be hand-crafted to perpetuate it, and all this fucked up stuff is stuck on loop in each new era.
