As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.
"Heh heh heh... those eyes. You're afraid, aren't you? Why so scared?"
It's a Xenoblade game; of course Xenoblade Chronicles 3 will be filled to the brim with moments that perturb and disturb.
- The opening cutscene shows an Annihilation Event. Said event completely disintegrates a large chunk of Uraya. These events are happening all over Aionios, by the way, the only warning of them being the presence of the black fog (and even then the black fog doesn't tell you when the event will happen, it could be minutes, years or never, the fog is simply associated with the effect). Also, the fact that nobody really thinks that things just randomly exploding is worrying at all really drives home how much of a Crapsack World Aionios has become.
- The battle between Colony 9 and Colony Sigma at the beginning of the game shows firsthand the horrors of the endless war between Keves and Agnus. All those people, just whaling onto each other without mercy. By the end of it, the Everblight Plains are littered with Kevesi and Agnian corpses and wrecks.
- Moebius. The fact that these monsters (except Triton and M) are completely content to have Child Soldiers fight just so they can feed is bad enough. The fact that said child soldiers are trapped in a never-ending cycle of death and rebirth makes it worse. Of particular:
- D is possibly the scariest of the lot due to how preeminent he is. A Serial Killer Psycho for Hire who darkens the mood everytime he appears.
- Of particular, he serves as Eunie's walking Trauma Button due to D killing her in a previous life. The way he does it serves as the titular picture above.
- Before he became Mobius, D was an Agnian Sociopathic Soldier known as Blackblaze Dirk. Even back then, he was a psychopath who killed numerous people, even those ostensibly on his side. And worst of all, he would claim the heads of everyone he killed as a "collectable" so that he could preserve them and continue looking at the terrified faces they'd make.
- His partner J is no slouch either. A Creepy Child who has the face of Joran, a childhood friend of Noah, Lanz and Eunie whose first impression leaves it clear how much Moebius made him into a sociopathic person who thinks that he's surpassed his friends in power, so much so that he's willing to partner up with the monster that is D.
- D is possibly the scariest of the lot due to how preeminent he is. A Serial Killer Psycho for Hire who darkens the mood everytime he appears.
- The fake Queen of Keves malfunctioning and breaking down, revealing her robotic nature. Between the sudden Unintentional Uncanny Valley, her scary SkeleBot 9000 face under the mask, and the fact that she was meant to replace the real Melia, it's hard to see either of the masked Queens in the same light again. Adding to this, the fake Melia is dangerous and tries to murder the Ouroboros on sight, almost killing the party with a giant fireball and forcing Noah to draw Lucky Seven, and when she reappears in Chapter 7 she wastes no time in trying to incinerate the party again before being deactivated for good by Crys. She is, quite literally, Keves' take on The Terminator. The robotic face beneath that mask also evokes The Bionic Woman, while the characters' reaction is similar to that in the opening scene of Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, where Powers realizes his wife Vanessa was actually a killbot sent to have him murdered.
- There are two goals that Keves and Agnus soldiers wish to achieve: getting their colony to Gold rank and surviving to their Homecoming after ten terms of life. However, revelations in the game prove that both of these are bad things — colonies that reach Gold rank quickly get destroyed by Moebius to fill up on their lifeforce, while the Homecoming is basically like an assisted suicide... which causes the one being sent off to be Killed Off for Real, not returning to the cycle like everyone else. note
- It's revealed in Ashera's second Hero quest that in the distant past around the beginning of the Forever War, when soldiers managed to make it to Homecoming, it wasn't a solemn but happy affair with the Queens and off-seers in attendance, but a brutal execution at the hands of the Consuls (With the excuse being that it was a celebratory ceremony), done by V, of all people. Ashera being able to somewhat remember this time is why she's such a Blood Knight in the present, as she tells Eunie that every time she's gotten older, her neck scar from her past executions comes back, she regains her past memories, and the pain is such that she's gone mad more than once. It says something that despite how bad things are on Aionios in the present, there was a time when things were even worse.
- When the team finds the ruins of a Keves Gold Rank colony, they search for anything that can be salvaged. Eunie finds a lone husk that had been there for a long time, with its face intact and displaying absolute terror in its last moments. Eunie examines the dog tag and not only finds her name, but begins having flashbacks and nightmares to having been in that battle in her previous cycle. As it turns out, Colony 18 was not destroyed by the Agnians but by its own Consul (none other than D) once it reached Gold Rank. The past Eunie was the last to be killed by him.
- Eunie's flashback shows just how deadly D really is when against foes who lack any ability to kill him. He cuts through Colony 18's forces (who, due to their Gold Rank, were implied to be a highly experienced Badass Army) like they were animals, shredding a bloody path with his immense speed and strength. Especially with how quickly he dispatches the colony's Ferronis, tearing its head off in a matter of seconds. The past Eunie can only stare in horror at him as he prepares to finish her off, while the present Eunie is left shaken afterwards.
- Colony 0 is extremely disturbing from a psychological perspective. Outside the Colony, the members serve as a Secret Police who work to cause as much tension, evidence destruction, and propagation as possible to ensure that the war never stops. It's even worse inside the Colony, however, as all the members mindlessly give into the orders of Consul F, who acts eerily similar to a cult leader. He pretends to show compassion to his subordinates, he uses emotional manipulation in order to keep them from questioning his tactics, and he even has them embark on a suicide mission to kill Ouroboros with their Limiters turned off, knowing that it'll cause them to perish from overexerting their life energy.
- The Intersection, the incident that created Aionios in the first place. Due to their common origin and their worlds' yearning for each other, the world Shulk created and Alrest attracted each other to the point of collision. If Melia and Nia hadn't created Origin, both universes and all life in them would've been utterly destroyed.
- The very first cutscene of the game shows the Intersection from the original Noah's perspective, as he's left utterly speechless when Alrest floods his home city's skies.
- The very nature of Moebius themselves. They are immortal beings who upon becoming Moebius are Driven Mad from the Revelation of the memories of all their old lives and are driven to endless, amoral hedonism as a coping mechanism and draining the lives of others just to stay alive and stave off their eventual deaths. It doesn't help that many of them are fond of constant dog-kicking that makes them even more repugnant.
- Z himself is the embodiment of all those who wished to live in a world of stagnation, or the "Endless Now" as he puts it, caused Origin's programming being corrupted by humanity's desire for stability and fear of change. He wishes to preserve the world of Aionios and the "flow of fate" by any means necessary, both out of a desire to control the world and out of fear for what the future may hold should the worlds defuse.
- During Nia's Ascension Quest tour of Aionios, in the High Maktha Wildwood, she draws a haunting comparison of the people of Klaus' Earth and Moebius, and the atrocities they will achieve "until everything burns" merely for the sake of chasing eternity and running away from the uncertain future. And yet, all that remains are the ruins that were the Land of Morytha and now part of Maktha Wildwood. The music of the scene adds to the haunting parallel.
- Swordmarch is eerily quiet without any background music once the City is relocated. It's just an empty chasm full of very strong, dangerous monsters, with only the ambient noise of the wind and the occasional breathing of some of the monsters being heard. Fittingly, this is also where the most powerful, Lv 120 superboss can be fought — a massive dragonlike beast that can suddenly and rapidly perform a One-Hit KO on each of your party members.
- Exploring the area around Agnus Castle Barbican in the Cadensia Region will reveal that Agnus Castle is situated right above the Bionis' head. There's something chilling about the fact that all the of the pivotal story events happening from the end of Chapter 5 to the beginning of Chapter 6 are occurring right over Zanza's corpse.
- The battle against Consul M at the end of Chapter 5 shows just how terrifying somebody who can Body Surf can be to fight. She's able to switch from person to person rapidly with no clear visual indicator, meaning that the party has no idea which of them will suddenly turn on the others. She's able to mimic somebody's mannerisms and voice well enough to trick Noah into letting his guard down. She's even able to maintain control when they start using their Ouroboros forms, presumably by controlling whoever's in the lead at the time. Until Taion was able to figure out a way around using the Mondo, the party was swinging at each other in a free-for-all, unable to tell who was being possessed.
- You're exploring the Cadensia region for all its scenery and open structure, but it all comes down when you find an opening your ship won't fit into, forcing you to go swimming in the supposedly empty and vast open water, where you then meet the Lv. 110 superboss Levialord Empireo, the second strongest thing in the game. Not a great experience for a person with thalassophobia.
