What was once New York City...
Between the horrors of a Nazi-controlled America, unflinching portrayals of abusive parents, and Frau Engel getting even more psychotic and despicable than she was in The New Order, there are a lot of nightmarish things in The New Colossus.
All spoilers are unmarked.
- Frau Engel's treatment of her daughter Sigrun (and, well, everyone) is absolutely horrific, best shown at the very beginning where she threatens Sigrun with punishment if she doesn't decapitate Caroline with a fire axe. Engel's behavior may strike distressingly close to home for those who have dealt with abusive parents, especially her reveal to Sigrun that she intruded in her room and found her snacks and read her diary. Sigrun's heartbroken "You read my diary?" screams of a child who's finally realized they can't trust their parent. It's made worse by Engel and the two officers holding Wyatt down goading her on with chants of "Do it!" as she bawls her eyes out.
- Sigrun is so hurt by this betrayal that she snaps and tries to butcher Engel with an axe.
- And this hits close to home for B.J., himself having suffered under an abusive, bigoted father in his childhood.
- The scene's made worse due to the fact that B.J.'s confined to a wheelchair and Wyatt/Fergus's completely immobilized by the two troops holding him down. Barring a miracle, which considering this franchise is highly unlikely, Caroline's a dead woman. Come the full game, no miracle.
- Not only do we see Caroline's decapitation in full, but Engel proceeds to pick up her lifeless head and use it to mockingly "kiss" Blazkowicz and her own crying, retching daughter, before miming oral sex against her skirt. And she slaps Sigrun for daring to object.
- The Übersoldat casually crushing Caroline's discarded head with one stomp, even grinding the mess under his boot.
- Sigrun just barely manages to save Fergus/Wyatt from the same fate, with the axe slicing off their arm or giving them a gruesome scar across their face, respectively. Engel's response? To try to wrestle it away and murder them both.
- Fergus not caring about his severed arm is pretty badass, as even B.J. notes. Otherwise, anybody else would lose it if they lost a limb.
- When Engel appears on an pro-Nazi American talkhost show, she casually reveals that due to Sigrun's continuing obesity problems, she would rather have her own daughter euthanized than bother with a more strict diet and training regime simply to avoid social embarrassment in the regime.
- Frau Engel herself qualifies as pure Nightmare Fuel now. In The New Order, she came across as an Affably Evil sort of villain, who was most certainly cruel and callous, but not necessarily insane. In The New Colossus, however, she has clearly gone completely off the deep end, cackling madly as she executes Caroline.
- They really did the best they could with Frau Engel's face but you really just don't get thrown off a cliff and have your jaw shattered without some side effects. Where previously when she was relaxed Frau was relatively normal looking her exterior now matches her interior, a facade of normalcy with some very large cracks that make it clear she is just not normal.
- As B.J. lies dying, believing he's falling into Hell, he sees the entrance to the basement of his family home. It really tells you just how badly scarred B.J. from his childhood, that he can think of no greater torment than to be a child at the mercy of his father again.
- The ruins of Manhattan, New York after the bomb hit. Ironic considering the real-life atomic bomb development program during WWII was called the Manhattan Project.
- Speaking of the Project, this may border on Fridge Horror turf, but what if the Nazis managed to development nuclear weapons with the help of defecting ''American'' scientists courtesy of a reverse-equivalent of Operation Paperclip?
- The fact that the Nazis can bring one of the world's most powerful nations to its knees by simply destroying one of their most well-known cities is simply chilling. Much like how Japan surrendered to the US after WWII following the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It also reminds us how powerful nuclear weapons really are, not just as weapons but as tools in a very amped-up and twisted version of gunboat diplomacy and realpolitik that defined the Cold War (e.g. the Cuban Missile Crisis, to boot).
- Even more chilling is that it could have actually happened had the real-life Nazis developed nuclear weapons first.note
- Not to mention, the Nazis had a whole arsenal of nuclear warheads. They only used one to attack the US. They could have used all of them to nuke the whole country or even the world if they're omnicidal enough to do it.
- And if the DLC was considered canon, the Nazis aren't even stopping with nukes. The Sonnengewehr - 'Sun Gun' is a weapon designed to incinerate entire cities like a nuke does - basically a giant Death Ray. The Nazis plan to use the Sonnengewehr to quell unrest in the American Territories following the Second American Revolution. Overkill is definitely not in the Nazis' dictionary whatsoever.
- The upgraded models of the Übersoldat and Panzerhund are even more menacing than their counterparts in The New Order. The former's ability to charge at you and the latter's ability to breathe fire means that unless you're B.J., you would absolutely stand no chance against them.
- "German or Else!", a game show where contestants must demonstrate their knowledge of German or else be sent to a re-education camp. You can tell the contestants are terrified just looking at them, and why shouldn't they be?
- The show also counts as a warning that are only 173 days left of English being the national language. After that, anyone caught speaking English is immediately executed.
- Much like in the previous game, the way that the Nazi ideology and Germanic culture is being forced onto every other is nothing short of Orwellian. One collectible is a postcard from Korea, where a Nazi joyfully recounts how the people there have given up Buddhism, their native language, and even chopsticks. This and many other little snippets really drive home how the Nazis are hell-bent on not just conquering the world, but utterly remaking it in their image. And remember: it's only been thirteen years or so since they won. Imagine what the world would look like after a generation or two, growing up with nothing but Aryan culture forced down their throats under pain of death.
- Edging into a prolonged Tearjerker is just how readily so many Americans seem to have embraced the Nazis and their twisted ideology. It's made clear that while most people are following them out of fear, a chilling number of them (like BJ's father) jumped at the chance to get into bed with the winning team.
- Seeing as how a large percentage of the Nazi plan for the Holocaust was based on the US government's treatment of Indigenous Americans, this is perhaps not so surprising.
- The flashback's to B.J.'s childhood. His father is a monster, in so many ways.
- He manages to be the most awful, racist, despicable son of a bitch in a game with Nazis in it. If you thought what he did to B.J's dog was horrible, wait until you find out what he did to his wife: he ratted her (along with all the Jews, non-whites and homosexuals in the neighborhood with the help of other like-minded neighbors) out to the Nazis and sent her to her death in an extermination camp, just so they could reward him with a larger acreage in another town, and because she stood up to him in the past for his treatment of B.J. Furthermore, when B.J realizes that his father sold his wife, he simply replied by saying "So what?" without a shred of emotion. What a monster.
- The casting scene in Venus, even if it's played for laughs. Even if Hitler is depicted as a complete mess after aging disgracefully, he is still the murderous, raving lunatic who is not afraid to kill anyone like the three poor actors simply out of his paranoia and contempt for Jews and communists. It does make the moment where you get to kill him all the more satisfying, however.
- The worst part is how it all goes down. Ronald Reagan as a TV actor? Shot to death messily and a whole magazine emptied into his face because he called Hitler "Mr. Hitler" and admitted he was from Arizona. The man he was speaking with previously, who gets a rifle stock to the face by a fully outfitted soldier in what was supposed to be a mock battle? Shot in the ass by Hitler and bleeds to death for screwing up the scene. And when B.J. slaughters the everliving hell out of the Nazi in the fight scene instead and meets Hitler's praise for fitting the brutality he wanted, the tyrant casually shoots the remaining actor besides B.J. to death for the hell of it, despite praising his acting before. You can find their bodies callously dumped in a transport crate afterwards for disposal, and no one really raises a single eyebrow at this.
- Hitler explaining B.J's backstory to everyone including B.J. himself is pretty messed up. You'd expect B.J. to snap and kill him on the spot, especially when he mentions Zofia's death in an extermination camp.
- Also what kind of director would use a mook armed with a live weapon as an actor for a fight scene?
- From an engineer's perspective, it's a sobering thought that the Nazis aren't just confined to the Earth and Moon. No, they are fully dedicated to expanding into space. And they've actually started doing it by the time of the game.
- B.J. getting his head chopped off by Frau Engel. You know the game is going to be messed up when the protagonist gets defeated and successfully beheaded by the villains. And in case you are wondering, no, there is no Gory Discretion Shot. Worse, you get to see it from B.J.'s own perspective, to see his head fall off his body and hit the ground. Then the player gets to see his head in full view as it is displayed to the cheering Nazi army, before getting dropped off to the incinerator below. Luckily, his allies manage to save his head and transplant it to another body just in the nick of time, but the mere idea of head transplant is nightmarish on its own.
- Even worse, look closely at where it happens: at the pillars, the mall before it, the statue seated within its shadows. It's the Lincoln Memorial. Swathed in Nazi Hakenkreuz flags perhaps, but it's still recognizably the memorial. To see the monument to the great man and the country he helped forge turned into the execution ground of one of the country's bravest and most loyal soldiers is nothing short of sickening.
- It doesn't get any better when you see that the statue of Lincoln is now a statue of Hitler. What was once a symbol of freedom and hope is now just another symbol of tyranny and oppression.
- When B.J.'s head is being brought in and prepared for the brain transplant, poor Anya is clearly horrified by the sight of it.
- Even worse, look closely at where it happens: at the pillars, the mall before it, the statue seated within its shadows. It's the Lincoln Memorial. Swathed in Nazi Hakenkreuz flags perhaps, but it's still recognizably the memorial. To see the monument to the great man and the country he helped forge turned into the execution ground of one of the country's bravest and most loyal soldiers is nothing short of sickening.
- Frau Engel getting a taste of her own medicine, having B.J. chop off her arm, embed a hatchet in her face and taunt her while she struggles in agony before splitting her head in half, exposing the brain and the eyeball dangling on its optical nerve. Engel was a repulsive human being, but it doesn't take away from the gruesomeness of the scene.B.J.: Lady...that the best you got? Then your best won't do. You among wolves now. And these are our woods.
- Just imagine all of this from Engel's perspective. You recently finally executed the seemingly unstoppable soldier who'd been a thorn in your side for so long, and in doing so have also avenged your beloved Bubi. So even though the resistance is still out there, you don't really take them seriously; really, how dangerous are they without their Terror-Billy? And your daughter may have defected to their side, but meh, she was a disappointment anyway. So you let your guard down, and appear on a late night talk show without even bringing that much security along, confident that there's nothing more to fear. And then he comes back. You swore this man was dead, you'd even sliced his head off yourself... but nope, he's back, he looks pissed, and he's got a hatchet. Satisfying it may be, but is it any wonder the Nazis are so terrified of this guy?
Jimmy Carver: What the hell?! Jesus fucking Christ, it's Terror-Billy!! - The fact that B.J. has become more terrifying than ever is one for the Nazis, with their soldiers freaking out and screaming desperately that they can't stop him as he lays waste to dozens of mooks at a time, and now graduating to hacking them up with hatchets or blowing up their command centers with portable nuclear warheads, now decked out in seemingly impenetrable Power Armor. And just when the Nazi regime breathes a collective sigh of relief when they witness his execution at Frau Engel's hands, he comes back seemingly from the dead with a newer, more powerful body now sporting upgrades that lets him kill even more Nazis, culminating in him gruesomely butchering his own executioner on live television, right in front of the entire Third Reich. In short, absolutely nothing can stop B.J. Blazkowicz, and any sane person knows it.
- This even comes into the gameplay with one of the upgrades you can get for the Constriction Harness: enemies will simply freeze in utter horror when they first see B.J.
- The secret post-final mission, where you assassinate the very last Ubercommander. It starts you off in an underground nuclear bunker, except that this time, it's dark, you only have a flashlight and the whole place is crawling with Ubersoldats, soldiers and Laserhunds. If you get spotted, you better hope you at least know where they are or you'll have to spot them in the dark before those mechanical footsteps get to you.
- The promotional image
◊ of Frau Engel licking a captive BJ. Between BJ's clear disgust, Engel's gruesome scars and, well, the fact that it's Frau Engel, it's a very disturbing image. - A very mild example compared to everything else, but using the Constrictor Harness can be unnerving, especially if you happen to have claustrophobia. It constricts your body so you can squeeze into tight spaces, such as under trucks and even into pipes, and starts hurting you if you spend too long in there.
- Three words: "Not monsters. Men." Grace says this as she and B.J. look on the ruins of Manhattan, in answer to B.J. declaring it (and by extension the atrocities of the Nazis in general) the work of inhuman monsters. But Grace brings him a jarring, terrifying point: The Nazis were humans, many of which had lives loved ones of their own and yet they committed these acts against fellow man, and cultivated a xenophobic society where those who did not match their ideal image were fair game to be tortured, imprisoned, and killed for the "betterment" of their society, and they thought they were the good guys for doing so. Such was the very real horror of the Nazi party: They didn't just summon unearthly beings of evil to do their work, they took in living, thinking, feeling people and made them believe their rhetoric to the point of fanaticism.
- Grace's description of the immediate fallout of the Manhattan bombing. It wasn't just people staggering through the smoke or screaming that echoed throughout the ruins; she saw firsthand what kind of pain the victims had endured. A young boy with his arms stretched out in front of him, flailing blindly through the smoke as the skin on his arms peeled off. His destination? His mother, who was crawling to him because she lost half of her body. When Grace describes the story, she has a glassy stare and loses sense of her surroundings, even holding back tears when she's telling her story. When she describes it as "something out of Dante's Inferno", she meant it. Now keep this in mind: what happened to New York in the game happened to Hiroshima and Nagasaki in real life.
Grace: What are you thinking in a moment like that? When you know you're losing everything you love?
