Per wiki policy, Spoilers Off applies here and all spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned.
Considering this is a version of Pinocchio but with a dash of Bloodborne, this is to be expected.
- This is not a game for anyone with pupaphobia, fear of puppets, which can extend to those with a fear of dolls, pediophobia.
- The opening cutscene shows the Puppet Frenzy in all its glory; puppet butlers and maids beating their masters to death in their homes, desperate survivors being swarmed by puppets like something out of a zombie apocalypse, and a child hiding under a carriage, covering his mouth and trying not to scream...
- P arrives in Krat after the worst of the Puppet Frenzy, and it's not a pretty sight; there are dead bodies everywhere, some of which have been strung up in gruesome displays, or are still being mutilated by puppet dogs.
- Many of the enemy puppets P fights are visibly damaged, parts of their exteriors being cracked or exposing the internal gears. Those with twitching behaviors and horrific screaming/yelling when attacking P adds on to the unsettling imagery.
- Several of the human bosses hide their faces behind masks, but many have lines that range from them threatening to tear P to pieces, to screaming that it's all his fault on the basis that he's also a puppet, and to their ramblings showing how far insane they have become since the Puppet Frenzy.
- The mutated plague infectees known as Carcasses are basically walking Body Horrors, with tentacles and fungus-like growths covering them. Some of the stronger enemies can throw slime that can cause the Decay status on P, which is a form of poison.
- Venigni Works is a very, very unnerving area. A Nightmarish Factory filled with steaming, smoking machines, where any given step can see you plunge through the floor. It's also where you're introduced to the mannequin-like Unfinished Puppets, whose bodies are being pulled through the facility on wires overhead even as you're fighting them. The entire level feels like it's a few seconds away from exploding and taking you with it.
- The boss of the area that introduces you to the Carcasses is an appropriately bombastic culmination of all the depressing body horror that you've been hacking your way through to get to him. This game's love letter to Vicar Amelia is Fallen Archbishop Andreus, whom the collectibles have been teasing as an originally good man gone mad with power and greed - but if you didn't get that by the time you walk into the boss room, Andreus will do his best to beat you over the head with that point with his design and dialogue (while he's just regular beating your character over the head, of course).
- You push through the boss-fight doors to find the archbishop is very far from human at this point. The first stage is a gigantic, dripping, rotting, bloated froglike creature with a gaping upside-down face - the beast doesn't so much walk as drag itself around the arena, crudely pawing at you and lashing you with a literally acid tongue. Already a sad, disgusting fate - but the game's not done tormenting you or Andreus once you drain that first health bar.
- Stage two triggers a cutscene where the "frog" tears its own ribcage open with lovingly rendered wet snapping noises - undergoing something halfway between a flower blossoming and open-heart surgery performed with the jaws of life. Out from this new orifice slithers a semi-repitilian, semi-insectoid tail and mounted on the very end of it like a scorpion's stinger is the mostly intact torso of the zombified archbishop - who is apparently still conscious enough to speak to you. He vacillates between religious megalomania (trying to convince you and himself his mutation is a divine gift), histrionic regret over his greed and the cosmic punishment for it that seems to be singling him out of an entire city's worth of corrupt elites, and, perhaps most horrifyingly of all, dementia-like confusion over the basic facts of his situation ("Where is everyone? And why do I taste blood?"). More than perhaps any other boss in the game, defeating this one is a mercy killing.
- The True Final Boss, the Nameless Puppet. A puppet controlled by Geppetto to try and take P's P-Organ by force, it looks absolutely horrifying, appearing less like a puppet and more like a corpse jammed full of robotic parts. At first, it's a decently challenging Mirror Match... then phase 2 happens and P slices off the top of its head, causing Geppetto to lose control, and it goes utterly berserk and abandons its previous objective in favor of trying to outright kill P by destroying his organ. It becomes much more aggressive, has attacks that happen so fast it may as well be teleporting, and has a grab attack that gives us a lovely close-up of its Nightmare Face, complete with skin stretched over the jaw and blood surrounding its mouth. And as if to make matters worse, it's outright stated that if it can feel anything, it's pure hatred.
- The music for the boss as well. It sounds like the theme of a slasher villain and completely removes any bombast in favor of pure terror.
- And to truly cinch how terrifying this abomination is, it outright beats P in a one-on-one fight and only loses because Geppetto sacrifices himself to give P a chance to rip its P-Organ out. Keep in mind, this is the same puppet that defeated basically every major foe in his way, including a literal Physical God in Simon Manus, Awakened God. Despite all of that hardship, despite the insane amount of power he amassed, despite all the skill he attained in combat and the variety of weaponry he's likely obtained by the end, the Nameless Puppet was too much for him.
