Video Game / Eternal Darkness

To think that once I could not see beyond the veil of our reality... to see those who dwell behind.

"Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing, doubting..."

— Quote from Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven" used in the game's title sequence.

Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem is a psychological horror-themed action-adventure game released for the Nintendo GameCube in 2002. Developed by Silicon Knights (creators of Legacy of Kain), it holds the distinction of being the first M-rated game ever published by Nintendo.^note While Nintendo supplied the marketing funds for Conker's Bad Fur Day and Perfect Dark on the Nintendo 64, developer Rare self-published those titles.

Early one morning, Alexandra "Alex" Roivas, a mathematics graduate student at a Washington university, receives a phone call that brings her rushing to her grandfather Edward's Rhode Island mansion. The reason? He had been found decapitated in his study by an unknown assailant, and she's needed to identify the body. The detective tasked with investigating the murder is left baffled and clueless, because the house shows no signs of a break-in and the old man had no known enemies. The police investigation eventually stalls, but Alex decides to stay in the mansion to try to figure out the mystery behind her grandfather's death herself.

Her search of the residence leads to a hidden book called the Tome of Eternal Darkness, containing the stories of twelve people throughout history, both Oriental and Occidental, who were involved in an ongoing centuries-long fight against several otherworldly gods. As Alex reads the book, she is imparted with the knowledge of both their accomplishments and the arcane magic they learned on their travels; knowledge that Alex will desperately require, for while continuing to read the book weakens her grip on both reality and sanity, she is determined to be the last link in the story and stop the evil forces once and for all.

The gameplay of Eternal Darkness is known for two things. The first is its "magick" system that functions more akin to Item Crafting, allowing players to create new spells by using runes.^note (In practice, they're more like sigils or glyphs since these represent words and not letters, but you get the idea.) The second and far more infamous is the titular "sanity system." In addition to health and magic meters, the game has a Sanity Meter that drops every time an undead creature sees you. You can regain sanity by decisively finishing the creatures off, though the recovered amount will always be less than that taken away in the initial shock. If the Sanity Meter drops low enough, players will experience random in-game hallucinations. At first, these hallucinations will be minor, such as books spontaneously flying from one bookshelf to another, or hearing footsteps when there's nothing there. But the longer you go without replenishing your sanity, the more devious they become, with your body parts exploding during unsuccessful magic casting or statues and busts watching the player character as they walk by. This eventually culminates in the game messing with the player themselves via Interface Screw: from the controller ceasing to work in a room full of enemies, to the video or audio signal cutting out, to seemingly erasing your memory card.

After sixteen years of relative silence regarding the game in any form besides renewing its trademark, Nintendo would give Eternal Darkness an official nod by including Alex as a Spirit in their massive crossover, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.

Impressively, the game's Japanese website is still online, though some aspects of it require an Adobe Flash emulator to function.

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Provides examples of:

#-C

• 13 Is Unlucky: The full Japanese title is Eternal Darkness: Manukareta Jūsan-nin, meaning Eternal Darkness: The 13 Guests. The "13" accounts for the twelve playable characters and likely intends for the player to be considered #13.
• A Deadly Affair: Chandra is punished dearly for not waiting patiently for Karim to return (from a quest she sent him on). However, compared to what might have happened to her or Karim if either of them had touched that artifact, and considering that Chandra's ghost just barely stopped Karim from touching it, it's not that bad.
• Ability Required to Proceed: Most chapter pages can only be found by using an ability or solving a puzzle that you learned in the previous chapter.
• Action Bomb: Ulyaoth zombies sing and explode if you don't remove their heads. If one starts singing, all the nearby zombies sing and explode, and the more there are, the bigger each explosion will be.
• Anachronic Order: There is a bit of an order to the chapters. While they do tend to jump around a lot, all the chapters that take place in the same location happen in the correct chronological order. Justified when you consider that Mantorok can manipulate time. Every person got the book with the spells that they would need when they needed it in order to further his Gambit Roulette.
• Ancient Conspiracy: For at least two thousand years, the Ancients and their followers have been keeping their movements out of public view and have been working toward the overthrow of humanity. Mantorok, however, has done a lot of operating out in the open.
• And I Must Scream:
  • Mantorok's binding to the temple qualifies, as does Anthony being trapped despairing in an empty chamber under an unrelenting zombifying curse. He is put to rest after a few centuries by Paul Luther.
  • There's also Roberto Bianchi, a Venetian architect who gets buried alive in what Pious calls "The Pillar of Flesh" (a monolith made of concrete and dead bodies) until his spirit is released over 500 years later; Ellia, a Cambodian slave girl cursed to guard Mantorok's heart for more than 800 years as a rotting corpse; and Karim, a Persian man cursed to spend a whopping 900 years guarding another of the ancient artifacts as a disembodied spirit.
  • Xel'lotath zombies are so psychologically tormented that they're too crazy to die.
  • Bonethieves puppet their skin suits around while the original owner is still conscious and aware.
• And Now for Someone Completely Different: Happens every chapter. The game will switch from Alex Roivas to the star of any playable chapter when Alex finds the appropriate page.
• Annoying Arrows: Paul and Roberto can find a crossbow in their chapters, but between their weak offensive power and their lengthy reload time, they make poor weapons again most creatures. The only exception are the Trappers, which die in one hit from any projectile or gunshot.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • Sanity effects don't trigger during big boss battles, except for the Dutch Angle and wind chimes. Also, for those who have particular difficulty (or otherwise take an inordinate amount of time) solving the first puzzle in the game, a ghostly voice will whisper the answer.
  • Monsters that drain your sanity when you're spotted by them can't drain your meter multiple times. This allows you to at least get back most of your sanity when you perform your finishing move on them. Outside of bosses, only one type of enemy can drain your sanity at a constant rate and even then, it does so slowly.
  • Because Ellia doesn't learn magic and Karim may not get a proper healing spell based on your artifact choice at the game's start, both characters get a magicked item that acts as a healing spell for them with a limited number of uses.
  • Peter's chapter ends in a boss fight that requires a specific spell to defeat it. The Magickal Elixir can fully restore Peter's magick meter, though you can easily miss out on it if you don't go out of your way to find it.
• Anyone Can Die: Being a playable character does not exempt you from a horrible death (or worse) in the slightest. Out of the twelve playable characters, only four survive their stories with their health and sanity fully intact, and at least one of them is implied to still be on the run and might not live for much longer.
• Apocalypse How: Dominance by any of the three Ancients would result in a Planetary Class 3; Mantorok's dominance has an uncertain future.
• Arbitrary Weapon Range: If you use the OICW's grenade launcher while you're too close to your target, the grenade will blow you up too.
• Arc Number: The number 333 shows up in several places.
• Artifact of Doom: The Ancients' essences.
• Artistic License – History: Though his death is a mystery even today, Charlemagne the Frank is assassinated in France rather than historical Germany to further the Ancient's plans; his death does correspond, however, to the time he died in the real world.
• Artistic License – Linguistics: "Augustus" was an honorific used by emperors; a mere soldier like Pious would not have it as part of his name. Although it may be an alias that Pious gave himself in anticipation of ruling the world with his Ancient's power - Alex only knows the name from the story he tells about himself after the fact.
• Bag of Holding: The description for the Tome of Eternal Darkness states it has such properties and easily explains how the characters carry around all the crap they find. This doesn't explain how Edward can carry around a saber and two books the size of his head before he gets it. Only Michael Edwards finds anywhere near as much before the Tome itself, and he finds it in a way he likely got the stuff to carry it as well.
• Beat Them at Their Own Game: Alex defeats Pious by summoning her own Ancient to fight his. This almost leads to Out of the Frying Pan when Alex realizes she just opened the door to an equally dangerous entity that doesn't have an adversary and which also has plans to enslave mankind, but avoided when her grandfather intervenes to bind the Ancient, preventing any of this from happening.
• Bedlam House: The Jefferson & Coombs Sanitarium, where Max spends the remainder of his life.
• Beneath the Earth: Ehn'gha, the ancient city.
• The Berserker: If you cut off the head of Chattur'gha's zombies, they will start swinging around and attacking like mad even though they can't see (until their head regrows) which makes them dangerous to approach in this state
• Beware My Stinger Tail: Gate Keeper Guardians and Trappers, though the latter does not do direct damage.
• BFG:
  • One of the guns in Edward's gun case is an Elephant Gun. It takes Edward a second or two to level it, but you can shoot before that; if you do, Edward gets knocked back on his ass and it takes him a moment to get back on his feet. And sweet Christmas is it powerful. Two bullet firing with a 7 point enchantment will kill a Guardian in one shot.
  • Michael's OICW is a modern day assault rifle, complete with the gun's Grenade Launcher as an underbarrel mount. Compared to the limited capabilities of the other characters' weapons, that is a lot of firepower.
• BFS:
  • Karim's Ram Dao certainly fits into this category. Like the Elephant Gun described above, it is wickedly destructive. A "head shot" will destroy a standard target's entire upper body, and properly enchanted, it will slay a Horror in a couple hits, again leaving just a pair of legs to fall comically to the ground.
  • The Two-Edged Sword used by Anthony, Paul and Peter Jacob can take down a Horror in a few swings, and it's insanely good compared to the weak melee weapons the former two get earlier (a Scramasax and a Mace, respectively).
• Big Fancy House: The Roivas Mansion, the family's ancestral home in Rhode Island which has existed since at least the 1700s, has had several rooms added to it over the centuries, and it stands as a reminder of their influence despite being persecuted when they emigrated to America. Plus it was built over a whole subterranean city, Ehn'gha. The Ancients' agents occasionally turn it into an Old, Dark House, but it was never enough to force the Roivases to abandon it entirely.
• Bilingual Bonus: "Oublié" is French for "Forgotten".
• Bittersweet Ending: Humanity is saved, Alex is able to bid her grandfather a proper goodbye, and all the restless souls the Ancients killed can now pass on in peace. However, while she puts up a strong front, Alex herself is clearly traumatized by everything that has happened and is currently all alone. Meanwhile, there are still two ancients at large, though this one can be changed by the player by completing the game two more times.
• Bizarre Alien Biology:
  • Xel'lotath Horrors have jaws for eyelids.
  • In general the Horrors and Guardians, as said by Maximilian, make no sense from an anatomical standpoint but somehow still work. The Xel'lotath Guardians in particular not only lack organs but don't even have heads.
• Black Comedy: The game does have a sense of humor, mostly regarding some of the particular over-the-top sanity effects like the player character's head falling off and reciting Hamlet.
• Blipvert: Happens every time a character, from Chapter 3 on, picks up the Tome of Eternal Darkness, showing brief flashes of everyone else to have picked it up across the game before.
• Blood for Mortar: The Pillar Of Flesh is constructed by The Ancients to facilitate their entry into our world. It is built of people smothered with concrete.
• Body Horror: Bonethieves, inducing both nightmares and paranoia.
• Body of Bodies: Downplayed. Xel'latoth Gatekeepers are a pair of headless torsos fused together at the waist. Instead of glowing eyes when they Mind Rape a character, it's their neck stumps.
• Book Ends: This pair of gems at the beginning and end of the game, respectively:
  Pious: To think that once I could not see beyond the veil of our reality... To see those who dwell behind. My life now has purpose, for I have learned the frailty of flesh and bone... I was once a fool.
  
  Alex: And yet, as quickly as it began, it ended... To think that once I could not see beyond the veil of reality, to see those who dwell behind... I was once a fool.
• Booze-Based Buff: Edward can chug a quick swig of port wine in his chapter to regain some sanity.
• Boss Banter: The Black Guardian in Peter's chapter will start engaging in this, taunting Peter, if hit with non-magickal attacks.
• Blessed with Suck:
  • Sure sounds cool to get a tome of incredible power and knowledge, which not only gives you access to magic spells, but can also store seemingly unlimited amounts of knowledge, both past and future, and gives you the ability to write whatever you want in it for other wielders of the tome to read. It sounds less cool when you realize the drawback is instant, unavoidable servitude to an elder god and automatic enlistment into a cosmic war that you have to take part in, which is very likely to cost you your sanity, your life, or worse.
  • There is also the case with cursed Anthony. He can't die, making especially the boss fight at the end mostly just time consuming, but otherwise incredibly easy. But he is incredibly slow and rotting alive before being nothing but a zombie guard that barely resembles the young man he had once been.
• Bragging Rights Reward: Eternal Mode, unlocked with 100% Completion, gives you invincibility and infinite ammo. Since you've already beaten the game three times just to get it, there's really no use for it unless you care to play the game again for kicks.
• Breakable Weapons: Happens often with minor items needed to solve puzzles, and only once with an actual weapon. Fortunately, the first magic spell you learn is one that fixes broken items. Items break at plot-specific points, though, so there's no damage meter or anything for them.
• Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu: It takes several punches and several broken arms before any dents are noticed.
• Buffy Speak: The Bankorok (protect) rune is referred to as "The squiggly circle thing" by the ghostly Edward when he appears to help Alex bind the Ancient she summons.
• Buried Alive:
  • The Pillar of Flesh, a giant structure that is filled with human sacrifices (including Roberto) and then with concrete.
  • One of the hallucinations has the character sink into the ground.
• Burn the Witch!: How the Roivas family was largely treated after immigrating to America from the Mediterranean region.
• But Thou Must!:
  • You'll be asked several times to make a choice, such as "Do you want to read this book?," "Should you turn this wheel?" or "Do you want to go through the door?" Every single one needs to be answered with a hearty "Yes" to continue with the story. It's here so that you have a chance to stop yourself from mindlessly rushing onwards with the plot before you're ready.
  • "Should [Character] claim the Tome of Eternal Darkness?" No. No, they really shouldn't, especially considering what happened to everyone else who did it. But since your other option is to wander around the mausoleum of creepy statues suspended in a void of blackness with a floor that has a habit of screaming, you might as well.
  • Also happens if you try to leave an area (e.g. Oublie Cathedral). You'll get a message telling you why your character can't or won't leave.
  • In one particular moment, after Karim has used the Tome to open a gated door, the game literally will not let you move at all until you pick the book back up.
• Camera Abuse: Sometimes, when someone has low sanity and is carrying a gun, they will randomly fire it. Once in a blue moon, they will turn to face you and then fire their gun, putting a "bullet hole" in the "screen."
• Cast from Sanity: Summon spells gradually cause the player to go insane, and the character loses control of the summoned creature if their sanity runs out completely.
• Chromatic Rock Paper Scissors: Chattur'gha (red) beats Xel'lotath (green) who beats Ulyaoth (blue) who beats Chattur'gha. Mantorok (purple) is powerful against all three of them.
• The Chosen One:
  • Deconstructed. All of the characters, including Pious, have been feeding into Mantorok's plot this whole time, under the guise of saving the world (which they undeniably did), but their fate under Mantorok might not be terribly dissimilar. Even before the 100% Completion ending comes into play, the only way Alex can conquer an Ancient is to summon the opposing Ancient into this world, and the one she summons wants to dominate the planet just as much as Pious's lord.
  • Played generally straight with the enchanted Gladius, which only the Guardian of Light can wield. Although all of the Tome-bearing characters are chosen to defend humanity, Alex is the only one with an official heroic title.
• Circle of Standing Stones: Seen in the cover art, five monolithic stones form the entrance to the Forbidden City by magically warping any human who stands in the center.
• Cognizant Limbs: Averted slightly in that you can specifically target the head or arms of all enemies, and only two of 26 enemy types generally bother regrowing lost limbs.
• Collector of the Strange: The Roivases. A hidden chamber inside their mansion houses the Tome, as well as portraits and artifacts taken from each location significant to the Ancients and Pious.
• Colour-Coded Characters: Chattur'gha is red, Ulyaoth is blue, Xel'lotath is green, and Mantorok is purple, with some random yellow enemies which Word of God says are aligned to a fifth Ancient never seen in-game. Their respective spells, glyphs, and minions are tinted appropriately.
• Corrupt Church: Oublie Cathedral.
• Cosmic Horror Story: A few deviations on what's expected from the genre but still fits in neatly.
• Creepy Cathedral: Oublie Cathedral is this, especially when it's being used as a field hospital for the wounded in the Battle of the Somme. The catacombs, however, are where the real nightmares are to be found.
• Creepy Good: Mantorok had been worshipped as a benevolent fertility god for millennia. It's hard to say how "good" he is, except in comparison to the other three Ancients.
• Cruel Mercy: When Edward starts investigating the Tome of Eternal Darkness, Pious says that he "will not be so merciful" with Edward as he had been with Maximillian. That "mercy" was to allow Maximillian to suffer a slow, agonizing death in an asylum rather than a quick death at his hands.
• Crutch Character: Rather, Crutch Item. The two (killable) characters who will not have access to a healing spell both have limited use healing items.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: The battle between Paul and the Black Guardian is the literal example of this (except for one guardian), and the Ancient's battles, especially Chattur'gha vs. Ulyaoth.
• Curiosity Killed the Cast:
  • Pious sets off the entire chain of events when investigating some voices calling to him.
  • Ellia gets herself trapped in a temple looking for adventure, while Anthony contracts a deadly curse by peeking on a scroll meant for Charlemagne. Averted with Lindsey. While his curiosity as an archaeologist does lead him to the temple, he's one of the four characters to survive his ordeal.

D-H

• Darker and Edgier: Easily the most morbid game Nintendo has ever made, which says a lot considering their usual penchant for unexpected creepiness even in most of their family-friendly works. The darkest games of their main series like The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, Luigi's Mansion, Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers, Metroid Prime 2: Echoes and Xenoblade Chronicles X are not as frightening as this. Not even leaps of faith like Sin and Punishment, Mother 3, Geist, Pandora's Tower, Devil's Third and Astral Chain clear the bar this one set.
• Dark World: The Trapper Dimension. Thankfully, it's really simple to escape, and even a boon to savvy players.
• Dashed Plot Line: The game consists of various people who've fought against the Ancients at different points in history with varying success, all recorded in the Tome of Eternal Darkness.
• Dead Man Writing: Edward. Technically, everybody except for Alex.
• Deflector Shields: The "Damage Field" spell; the enemies' usage of it usually blocks off some hallway and must be dispelled to proceed with a given chapter's plot. You do it to give you a safe place to catch your breath or pilot minions from.
• Deletion as Punishment: Subverted. One sanity effect makes it looks like your data is being erased, but "this isn't really happening!"
• Developer's Foresight:
  • In Edward's chapter, the portraits of the Roivas family and the dialogues of the servants change as his sanity gets lower; however, at that point of the chapter, the only way to lower your sanity enough to see these effects is by summoning more enemies and then fighting them, which you probably didn't think to do until now.
  • Saving the nurse at the start of Peter's chapter (difficult, but possible) will result in a special low-sanity reaction if he tries to talk to her, though she still has her original reaction if you heal it back up.
  • They had absolutely no reason to include it, but casting Enchant Item on Michael's portable flashlight indeed enchants it, changing the color of its beam to that of the Ancient fueling the spell.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Played with. It is the efforts of Alex and the others who foil the Ancients, but they never could have done it without Mantorok’s help. It’s basically “Did you and Yog-Sothoth punch out Cthulhu together?”
• Disney Owns This Trope: Nintendo patented the various fourth wall breaking sanity effects.
• Divide and Conquer: The "Bind" spell.
• Dodge the Bullet: Bonethieves are exceptionally good at this when they're just milling around. You have to wait for them to attempt a lunge before you can be guaranteed a hit.
• Do Well, But Not Perfect: Gamers who obsessively try to keep their stats topped off at all times will miss out on the eerie, fourth-wall-breaking sanity effects that are perhaps the game's most unique feature. If you want to see the various sanity effects, you have a pretty strong incentive to keep your sanity low. Just be warned that if you run completely out of sanity, enemy sightings end up draining life instead.
• Dramatic TV Shut-Off: Several sanity effects in Eternal Darkness Sanitys Requiem have this effect; one has your television appear to turn off, another claims that it's deleting the game's data when you're attempting to save it, another makes it look like your Gamecube is having a BSOD.
• Dueling Player Characters:
  • In Paul Luther's story, you find a deranged and zombified Anthony and have to put him out of his misery once and for all.
  • The Final Boss is Pious Augustus, the second player character in the game.
• Durable Deathtrap: Though somewhat justified, as revealed to players of an Ulyaoth game.
• Dutch Angle: The angle of the third person camera became progressively more skewy as your Sanity Meter decreased.
• Early-Bird Boss: The first Horror fought by a killable PC is encountered before any of the spells that make Horrors easy to deal with (Shield and dominant alignment / Mantorok enchant), and the character's only non limited weapon (the limited throwing weapon isn't much better due to the small room it is fought in) has range that makes hitting its head tricky and stands a good chance of killing the player. Even later Horrors encountered before getting those spells in the same level are easier due to a much better weapon being acquired.
• Eldritch Abomination: Exactly what the Ancients are, where they come from, or why they do what they do is left largely unanswered. However many there are isn't specified but there is evidence for no more than five and four of them are doing a good job of keeping encounters with human beings to a minimum. And if a human does encounter a mere remnant of evidence one exists, four times out of five it will be a fatal experience, and the rest of the time it will still be horrific.
• Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: Three meters — Health, Sanity, and Magic; three corresponding Eldritch Abominations. Respectively; Body, Mind, and Soul, which is the theme of each Abomination. Mantorok is the "Nuke" option for this.
• The End of the World as We Know It: Each of the big three will bring about the collapse of civilization upon arrival. Unless they meet direct opposition from another.
• Enemy Mine: The Chosen and Mantorok work together in order to combat the other three Ancients. Interestingly, the game may actually subvert this, because although Mantorok seems to be dark and evil, he's portrayed as the opposite in-game, most notably in murals at Angkor Thom. The natives viewed him as a gracious and good fertility god, and loved him. In addition, he, unlike the other Ancients, actually had a physical manifestation on this plane of existence for an unknown thousand of years, without ever harming the human race, which is better than what it's shown that the others would do by far.
• Everything Fades: Enemies aligned with the Ancients disappear to another dimension with a crashing sound after being killed. Regular corpses stay right where they are, however, excepting the Tome bearers in scripted events.
• Evil Sounds Deep: The voice that recites the runes when you cast a Chattur'gha spell, is one of the deepest, most guttural voices ever. It makes casting spells so much cooler.
• Evil Versus Evil: To defeat an Ancient, you have to summon another Ancient that has an advantage against it. Of course, summoning a great evil to destroy a great evil doesn't exactly solve the problem facing humanity. The secret ending reveals that the entire series of events has been manipulated by Mantorok as a ploy to have the Ancients destroy each other, leaving him unopposed.
• Evolving Attack: Once you pick up the Pargon ("Power") rune and 5/7 point Circles of Power, you can manually boost the oomph of any given magic spell by just loading it down with Pargons, at the obvious cost of it taking more MP and time to cast. Moreover, since the bad guys use the same magic system the heroes do, Pious starts throwing down 9 point spells that consist of three ordinary runes and six Pargons.
• Explosive Stupidity: "Ashes to Ashes" features an OICW rifle, complete with grenade launcher. If you set it to launch grenades, and you're within a certain range of your target, firing it will blow you up too.
• Fake Ultimate Mook: Roberto and Michael both encounter large purple worms with sharp teeth, whose appearance is preceded by a cutscene of the hero recoiling in shock. It only takes one hit from any weapon to send the worms away without a fuss.
• Finishing Move
  • Performing this on an enemy revitalizes your Sanity Meter — probably because such a decisive way of enforcing your will upon the world is therapeutic for the mind, not to mention the satisfaction of ridding the world of a horror that should not be. It's advisable to use a finishing move on nearly every enemy, unless you enjoy hallucinating as you walk around from loss of Sanity. Of course, you can't inflict a finishing move on all your enemies.
  • This is required to permantly kill Xel'lotath zombies as any limbs that are hacked off are replaced by green ghostly equivalents. If you don't Double Tap Xel'lotath zombies, they will get back up; Chattur'gha zombies that don't have their torso destroyed may do the same, once their Healing Factor regrows their limbs.
• Flashback Cut: Anybody who claims the Tome of Eternal Darkness spontaneously experiences quick moments in the histories of previous and future owners; it may be a quick representation of them reading the Tome.
• Flash Forward: Due to the game's Anachronic Order, the aforementioned Flashback Cut is sometimes about a character from the chronological future. May lead to moments of Fridge Logic. For example, Michael's chapter comes just after Edward's, the last page of which representing his murder 48 years later. Michael sees this, then meets Edward shortly before his death, and he won't warn him.
• Flavor Text: Seen throughout the game. One of the best examples is the titular Tome of Eternal Darkness:
  "Cradled in what appears to be a leathery hand lies a mysterious book. It is bound in human skin and intricately decorated with shrunken bones. It beckons and yearns to be possessed."
• Flip Personality: Xel'lotath has two personalities that act like this. Some other people may appear this way too, but that just means your sanity meter is too low.
• Flying Books: One of the sanity effects in the library.
• Foreshadowing:
  • Maximillian has a sanity effect where he's stuck in an enclosed space: An asylum room, which is where he ends up later.
  • One Sanity Effect sometimes places characters in the past somewhere in a future character's version of events (Paul in Peter's version of the Cathedral, where there are medical tents).
• The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You: The sanity effects which target the player, chiefly by showing fake error messages, messing with the game's volume, and the game seemingly corrupting and deleting the save files.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: Looking at the scroll Anthony peeks into in the brief time it's visible on screen shows that it contains a 7-point spell using the Antorbok (Project) and Aretak (Creature) runes. Trying to use these runes to craft a spell of your own would normally result in a failure, but considering its effect is to Zombify the Living, that would be counterproductive to the cast, who want to help humanity. Incidentally, the scroll also uses Xel'lotath to fuel its effects, perhaps giving additional explanation to Anthony's tortured state later.
• Functional Magic: Mainly force magic, tapping into the power of the ancients. They usually take a passive role in casting and there are many rules to follow. For example, the player can make use of Summon Magic but needs to apply additional mentalism or barriers if they do not intend to eventually fight what is brought forth. Most enemies engage in a mild bit of mentalism as well, it being the main cause of your draining sanity meter. Blood Magic is not used onscreen but is speculated on.
• Gambit Roulette: Spanning millennia and three different time streams. You need to see the best ending to learn this.
• Gameplay and Story Integration: Happens quite a bit over the course of the game in lots of small ways (particularly things like sanity effects, with characters reacting to things that shock the player and using the lack of story integration as story integration, as the point of the scene is that this isn't really happening), but in broader, more noticeable ways, too.
  • A lot of the characters' stats actually reflect their personalities and dispositions quite well.
    • Alex is a Jack of All Stats with very high magic regeneration and pretty good stamina. This is mostly because she's the final recipient of the Tome of Eternal Darkness and thus has all its power at her disposal as well as being in her physical prime. However, her sanity meter also depletes the fastest of any character, no doubt due to her spending the entire game reading said tome and discovering what she's been pulled into, as well as the death of her grandfather.
    • Edward is a Squishy Wizard with terrible stamina, low health, but extremely high sanity and magic bars. He's a scholar, not a warrior, but his study of psychology means he's hardened to madness to the point where he was actually excited to start studying his family's odd history of mental illness.
    • Pious is a Lightning Bruiser immune to sanity effects. He's a career soldier of a powerful empire so of course he doesn't bat an eye at monsters, and their eyes don't glow at him anyway. Furthermore, being the first person recorded in the Tome means he never added to its arcane knowledge so he has no magic meter.
    • Ellia is fast but has a tiny health bar and no magic. She's just a normal girl so she doesn't fight, she runs. She never learns any spells either, which is partially why she's mortally wounded by magic.
    • Anthony can dish out and take damage with the best of them due to being a trained swordsman as well as a cursed undead.
    • Karim has the largest health bar in the game. After all, he would have to be resilient to search for an entire year in the Persian desert.
    • Maximilian, being a middle-aged, overweight man, is not fast, but he can still pack a punch.
    • Lindsay has the highest sanity bar in the game, likely a result of his travels and fits with his Crazy-Prepared nature to the point where he's well-armed in addition to having tools to look for clues.
    • Paul is a Squishy Wizard with high magic and sanity, but low health and stamina. The former are likely due to his strong faith, even carrying a staff that can help him regain sanity.
    • Bianchi is sturdy, but his magic is extremely low. He's an architect during the Renaissance when science began overtaking mysticism.
    • Peter has high magic but extremely low health and the smallest sanity meter in the game. He's just a war correspondent, not a soldier, and the horrors of the war have left him shell-shocked.
    • Michael is sturdy but has low magic and sanity. His job of course requires fortitude, but the combination of the Gulf War, stressful occupation, and then being thrust into an abandoned, underground city full of eldritch horrors would make anyone edgy and he's living in a time where superstition has plummeted.
  • Pious' statue is shown in the corridor whenever a character claims the Tome despite being the primary threat for most of the game, and the chapters jump from time period and location for no clear reason, until the final ending. Mantorok's manipulation of the timelines required the sacrifice of Pious Augustus because it would be his decision that split the one timeline into the three possible runs of the game. This creates the desired rock-paper-scissors wheel of mutual destruction for the other three Ancients, while making sure each character would get the Tome when it had the spells they needed to get past their obstacles.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: There was a murder in a house with no weapon or suspect found. Inspector Lagrasse and the police would have turned the entire mansion inside out in their investigation, not only to try to find evidence or a murder weapon, but also in case the murderer was still hiding inside the mansion...But when you start the game most of the mansion is still locked up, including the top floor and basement doors, which would have certainly been unlocked/broken down during the search. Of course, this would have removed many of the puzzles from the game.
• "Get Back Here!" Boss: It takes a while of chasing the thing around before you actually get to fight the vampire in Edward's chapter.
• Giant Mook: Horrors, which are pretty damn... Horrific. Even if one is not hostile toward you or does not notice your presence, you can still get hurt by simply touching or getting close to one.
• Glowing Eyes of Doom: When an enemy spots a player character.
• Go Mad from the Revelation: Inverted in that looking at monsters has no ill effects. It's when they discover you that it goes to crap, as your sanity can be drained if you never even look at one. Also, Maximillian's sanity was already suspect before he discovered plotting Bonethieves.
• Gondor Calls for Aid: In the final battle, the ghosts of everyone who died^*or in Maximillian's case, met an ignoble end while possessing the Tome of Eternal Darkness appears. Each one gets to strike a blow against Pious' artifact.
• Good Morning, Crono: Although Alex starts the game fighting an infinite number of zombies in a nightmare before she actually gets around to waking up.
• Gradual Regeneration: The Magick Pool spell regenerates your health, magick, or sanity, depending on which alignment you use. Casting the spell with the Mantorok alignment regenerates everything.
• Gross-Up Close-Up: The infamous bathtub scene does this abruptly, and several of the corpses of NPCs get cut to with close-up shots like this, particularly when Bonethieves are involved. The camera also zooms in on Anthony each time he starts getting up after another wave of his curse hits him, and by the last instance the effect is pretty disturbing.
• Guest-Star Party Member: With 11 guest stars. Since this isn't an RPG, there's no party involved, but the game hits most portions of this regardless.
• Guide Dang It!:
  • The Permanently Missable Content items, especially the Mantorok rune, which is easy to miss, but only in the sense that the game doesn't prevent you from progressing without it. Some of the codices that give you the names of the runes and the formulae can be this. Even knowing that a rune codex or spell scroll will always be in the first chapter that requires the spell's use isn't always enough to know where to find the exact spider web that covers the tablet is.
  • Although spell scrolls can be missed, the spell itself can be manually created if the correct rune combination is known (especially the Magick Pool spell).
  • After completing Roberto's chapter, it isn't immediately obvious what you're supposed to do next, as you didn't learn any magick that would help open more of the mansion up to exploration. And if you rush out of the Tome's room straightaway to go investigating, you'll miss the sound of crumbling debris which indicated a survey site for Roberto.
• Guns Are Worthless:
  • Averted, once you start controlling characters who exist in an era where gunpowder weapons are used, anyway. Not only that, but playable characters from eras where guns are used tend to be the ones who survive their chapter, although in Maximilian's case "survival" was a Cruel Mercy... World War I era Peter survived to a ripe old age. Edward, though eventually killed by a Guardian many years after his venture, did survive his initial encounters and lived on to be the go-to guy if you had one of the MacGuffins. Lindsey from the 1980's survived, Michael of the Gulf War successfully delivered the MacGuffin to Edward and is still alive at the end of his chapter (though his eventual fate is left ambiguous), and of course, Alex survives in all the endings of the game.
  • Maximillian's guns are pretty worthless given that they have to be reloaded after every shot. Having two flintlock pistols at once seems like a good idea until you discover how helpless you are while reloading. Better to stick with the saber.
• He Who Must Not Be Seen: The fifth, yellow Ancient, responsible for the damage floors in Ehn'gha and the Forbidden City, as well as the magic affecting Anthony's curse. Denis Dyack later confirmed his existence.
• Healing Boss: In Edward Roivas' chapter, the first enemy you face is a creature known as a vampire. It goes about the mansion attacking the servants, and Edward needs to stop it. However, each time it's fought off, it retreats to the basement to replenish its health from a stone with a rune on it. To kill it permanently, Edward must first destroy the stone.
• Healing Factor: Chattur'gha's zombies will regrow limbs and heads and may even get back up if not finished off. Even if they have their torso destroyed (which will make them fade from existence) you can see the torso regrowing as they dissappear.
• Healing Potion:
  • Peter can find Magickal Elixirs which restore his Mana Meter.
  • Karim and Ellia have items which cast healing spells when used.
  • Edward has his flask of liquid courage, which restores his sanity.
  • Paul has a limited use meditation rod that can be used to completely restore his sanity.
• Hearing Voices:
  • Pious was initially lured to the Ancient's temple by voices beckoning him.
  • Right at the beginning you hear occasional nonsense whispers while walking around the mansion. These happen before you start to lose your Sanity Meter.
  • Once it does empty, the most common hallucinations are hearing windchimes and someone crying (sometimes preceeded by the sound of knives being sharpened).
• Helpful Mook: Trappers. They can't actually hurt you; all they do is teleport you to an alternate dimension with free healing pads for the cost of not being able to use magic. Though, you might end up running into a few zombies and horrors while there.
• Historical Domain Character: Emperor Charlemagne factors into the plot of Anthony's chapter and makes a very brief appearance in it. As a corpse.
• Hoist by His Own Petard:
  • The giant stakes with which Pious skewered Mantorok were fueled by magic of Mantorok's own alignment.
  • The Black Guardian. Nigh-Invulnerable. Nothing usually even phases it, only bothers. It also recharges periodically. The solution? When it's recharging, add to the energy the element it is weak to.
  • The Enchanted Gladius. Implied to be the same weapon which Pious used in the first chapter, and you use it to send him to Hell.
• Hollywood Torches: Six characters get access to a torch as a weapon. They come lit, never run out of fuel, and (except in Lindsey's case), they're usually redundant in terms of lighting the general area. Incredibly useful for igniting Xel'lotath's and Mantorok's zombies, though.
• Hourglass Plot: For Alex and Pious; his downfall ultimately begins with her inheriting the Tome, and by the end, Alex (and the rest of the Tome bearers) is the servitor of one of the Ancients and has succeeded in summoning another into the world. To think, they were once fools.
• Hub Level: The Roivas mansion in Alex's time. It's more like a regular level in some chapters, particularly Maximilian's.

I-N

• Identification by Dental Records: Alex is appalled that the Rhode Island police brought her in to identify Edward's body, asking why dental records weren't used. The reason? Edward's head is missing.
• Identifying the Body: The game opens with Alex Roivas being called in to do this for her grandfather. She does so via his ring, as he's missing his head. After the police fail to solve the murder, she takes matters into her own hands, and finds the Tome of Eternal Darkness, beginning the plot.
• Idle Animation: One of gaming's most versatile examples. The different characters all idle in different ways, and the idle method changes depending on what weapon they're currently equipped with, if any. Even if characters share a weapon (Alex and Pious both wield a Gladius, for instance), they'll toy with them in separate ways.
• Immune to Bullets: Go ahead, shoot the Black Guardian and see what it has to say about it.
• Improperly Placed Firearms: The OICW wasn't even a concept in 1991; Michael probably should instead have picked up a CAR-15 Colt Commando with an M203 slung underneath. This is possibly deliberate: Michael is the only one of the protagonists to be given direct instructions by Mantorok, who has powers over time, and the Forbidden City is well known for its ability to draw people in with magic.
• Infinity -1 Sword: The double edged sword, if obtained by Anthony, is usable by two other characters who have a very painful time without it. Peter notably has no other melee weapon able to finish off something, though given his repertoire of magickal spells and his large mana pool, to say nothing of his BFG and large supply of ammo, he might not need one.
• Infinity +1 Element: The Mantorok rune. With it, you'll almost never need to use the other elements again.
• Infinity +1 Sword: The Enchanted Gladius, which can be thrown.
• Instant Runes: When casting a spell glyphs will appear around you and then light up one by one, and are read by the Ancient whose power you're invoking.
• Interface Screw: Ten of the 37 potential hallucinations caused by a low Sanity meter mess directly with the player (instead of their player character), ranging from a subtle bug crawling around on the game screen, to your TV's input appearing to suddenly switch to another RCA video input (nowadays not so believable now that HDMI is the norm), to a sudden fake ending message promising a sequel.
• Invisible Monsters: The vampire, there is also a room in Eng'ha that has invisible trappers. Even your Area of Effect magical attack will fail against invisible targets, forcing you to cast reveal invinsible, get them to bump into a damage field or shield, or wait for them to reveal themselves.
• Item Crafting: With magic instead of items.
• Item Get!: Exaggerated, as each location has its own fanfare music.
• ...In That Order: In a Xel'lotath aligned playthrough, in the prelude cutscene to Chapter 3, Xel'lotath orders Pious to: "Make sure [Charlemagne] is dead... Or insane... Or perhaps one, then the other?" In fact, doing those in the order given turns out to be definitely possible.
• I've Never Seen Anything Like This Before: The detective at the start of the game when Alex accuses him of being incompetent... For a start.
• Jack of All Stats: Alex, Anthony, and Lindsey, although each is above average in one of their stats.
  • Alex has a fairly large magick meter and her MP regenerates twice as fast as all other characters.
  • Anthony is a zombie, and thus is effectively unkillable. If he dies, he just gets back up again.
  • Lindsey has the largest sanity meter in the game.
• Jump Cut: At the end of Maximilian's chapter, it transitions from him reading in the hidden room trying to figure out how to stop the darkness to being thrown into an asylum, ranting and raving on how no one listened to him and the darkness will destroy humanity. The transition is sudden and there's seemingly no context for the cut, but you find out near the end of the game on how Maximilian wound up in the asylum. He killed his servants in their beds, paranoid that they were all Bonethieves.
• Jump Scare: The only one in the game is a one time sanity effect. Alex looks in a bathtub full of blood to find a pale, apparently dead version of herself. After a loud scream and a series of zoom-in flashes, it disappears.
• Kill It with Fire
  • The oil fires in Michael's chapter, which he attempts to snuff out using "80% nitroglycerin grade dynamite."
  • The Mantorok and Xel'lotath zombies can be set on fire with a torch due to being little more than dried out husks.
• Killed Off for Real: Every character that isn't from the 20th century, plus Edward. Though this doesn't stop them from helping out on occasion.
• Lampshade Hanging: A Magick Attack scroll, hanging on a wall:
  "Peter has acquired the "Magickal Attack" Spell Scroll! Why would it be here, of all places? Here, in this corridor?"
• Landmark of Lore: Angkor Thom in Cambodia, as well as the five monolithic stones inscribed with Ancient runes that transport Chosen to the Forbidden City.
• Large Ham: William Hootkins' performance as Maximillian is a joy to listen to. Pious is also impressively bombastic:
  Pious: I am the scourge of God, appointed to chastise you, since no one knows the remedy for your iniquity except me. You are wicked, but I am more wicked than you. So be SILENT!
• Late to the Tragedy: Alex shows up after her grandfather is already dead along with everyone else, leaving her as the only one who can stop Pious' summoning, which is just about to start.
• Law of Inverse Recoil: Averted. Don't spend enough time bracing yourself and the Elephant Gun will knock Edward flat on his ass.
• Letterbox: When played with widescreen support switched on, every cutscene is windowboxed (briefly pillarboxed when the Tome of Eternal Darkness is shown). Understandable for the full motion video which is already very grainy from the high compression, a bit less so with scenes using the game engine.
• Life Meter: Not consistent among the characters, and slows you down when it gets too low.
• Lock and Key Puzzle: From the start you are likely to run into a locked door. Nearly every chapter has some sort of lock-and-key puzzle, whether literal or figurative.
• Long Game: Pious' plan spans all the way from his corruption in 26 B.C. to the present day, accumulating enough power over two millennia to summon his Ancient to our reality, doing what he can to destabilize civilization in the process. Mantorok's own plan goes for just as long and is still incomplete as of the game's ending.
• Lore Codex: The Tome of Eternal Darkness has a section recording the lore — item descriptions, Monster Compendium, story recaps, it's all there.
• Losing Your Head: One of the sanity effects is your character's head spontaneously falling off. Can lead to an Alas, Poor Yorick if the player picks up the head: It starts reciting Hamlet.
• Lovecraft Lite: An interesting example. On one hand multiple heroes are driven insane and/or killed, the Ancient's plans go unstopped for ages, and overall the tone is dark and almost hopeless. But then suddenly several characters successfully start ruining the Ancient's plans, reveal that older characters were able to hinder them in some way as well, and then in the finale you KILL one of the Ancients! By turning another of its kind on it. Furthermore playing through the game twice more allows you to destroy the other two ancients, leaving one left who has in fact been helping you the entire time. All in all, a pretty darn optimistic eldritch horror story.
• Made of Iron: Unless they're struck with enough force to destroy their entire upper body, Chattur'gha zombies can survive having their head and both arms severed and just stand there, and that's before their healing factor regrows the limbs you cut off.
• Mad Libs Dialogue: "Kneel before my master <<INSERT NAME HERE>>!" Doesn't happen much, though; most cutscenes featuring the specific Ancient being opposed have three versions, one for each Ancient, with entirely different dialogue. Avoiding this also extends beyond dialogue: Events, enemy placement, and nature of some of the puzzles in the game change greatly depending on the Ancient.
• Magick: Because just spelling it as "magic" is apparently too lighthearted for a game with Eldritch Abominations.
• Mana Burn: Monsters aligned with Ulyaoth will sap your magick power upon each hit.
• Mana Meter: Different sizes and recharge rates for everyone (that has one).
• Masquerade: Upholding it is a prime concern of the ancients, since they need followers to let them into the game world.
• Meaningful Echo: "To think, that once I could not see beyond the veil of our reality, to see those who dwell behind."
• Meaningful Name:
  • See Sdrawkcab Name below about "Roivas." "Ellia" means "chosen one," and Paul, Peter, and Michael are all biblical names. "Karim" means "generous" or "noble." "Edwin" means "rich / blessed friend," and Roberto / Robert means "bright fame," which he was looking for abroad until getting captured (and ultimately achieved in the worst possible way). "Pious" means "doing one's duty with enthusiastic devotion" (again, in the worst possible way), though as a name, it's spelled "Pius." Alexandra is the feminine form of "Alexander," which means "defender of mankind," and for all of Pious's Evil Gloating about how long he's lived, Alexander the Great lived three hundred years before he was born. "Maximillian" derives from the Latin word "maximus," which means "the greatest," and Edward means "rich / blessed guardian." "Anthony" is the name of the patron saint of skin diseases and gravediggers, and is the English form of the Latin name "Antonius," which was the nomen of the clan or gens Antonia. The first of the Antonii to gain fame was Titus Antonius Merenda, who, in 450 B.C., was one of ten men who helped to complete the Law of the Twelve Tables, which formed the basis of Roman law, and thus the foundation for much of the common law of Western Europe as well. In a less obscure reference, Mark Antony was the Arch-Enemy of the first Roman emperor, best known as... Gaius Augustus.
  • Spell Ehn'gha backwards and you get a phonetic way to spell "agony."
• Merged Reality: The true ending: you've played through the game three times, with a different Ancient being defeated each time, but the other two being left at large. In the true ending, these three timelines are merged, creating one where all Ancients are defeated.
• Mind Rape: Getting spotted by a zombie, horror, bonethief, Gatekeeper or other guardian results in them getting Glowing Eyes of Doom and your character going utterly nutterly-butterly.
• Mind Screw: A lot of the sanity effects.
• Minor Crime Reveals Major Plot: It all starts with Alex investigating the murder of her grandfather, but things soon get much worse than that...
• Mook Bouncer: Trappers, but they're blind and can usually be crept around.
• Mook Maker: Inverted, as the player character gains the ability to create mooks by the halfway point just like the bosses. Mooks the player creates will still have to be killed after control over them is released though.
• Moon Logic Puzzle: One of the puzzles has a hint to the effect that you have to find "88 keys" to continue; up to that point, the only keys you've encountered are the kind that open locks, and the hint implies that you have to open another lock, so it's not exactly obvious that the hint was referring to a piano.
• Multi-Mook Melee: Karim has to deal with a couple of these. Luckily he's a Lightning Bruiser who can dual wield or use a BFS. Unfortunately, he may not have a healing spell yet.
• Multiple Endings: One standard ending with three distinct variations and one secret ending that you have to defeat the game three times (defeating all three Ancients) to see.
• The Multiverse: After you beat the game three times, earning the secret ending, you find out each time you beat the game, it was with an incarnation of Alex from different universes. Essentially defeating Mantorok's enemies across multiple realities.
• Mundane Utility: Enchanted weapons glow, making the torch redundant except for killing the two types of zombies weak to fire. This doesn't stop Alex from needing to reset the circuit breaker to look around a dark room though.
• My Death Is Just the Beginning: Subverted — immediately after naming the trope, Pious Augustus dies, and despite his claims, this provides no benefit to his plan and you never see him again.
• Mysterious Backer: Mantarok. Sure it's the only one of the Ancients who isn't planning to enter the world and run amok, is actively opposing the others and even spent some time serving as a small village's personal fertility god. On the other hand, it's hardly in a position to oppose humanity and after masterminding the destruction of the other three Ancients, who knows what it's planning.
• Mystical City Planning: The city of Ehn'Gha in Eternal Darkness has nine towers that form a giant spell circle. This is the only way that the player can cast nine-point spells, which are powerful enough to nearly destroy the entire city or summon Ancients.
• Nested Story: Every time we follow a chapter that focuses on a character that isn't Alex. If you remember, the game starts with the Tome of Eternal Darkness opening to her chapter: "Death in the Family," so every chapter she reads is part of her own personal chapter.
• New Game Plus: Required to get the best ending. Successful completion of the game records the completion, including the alignment of the dominant Ancient (Pious' master), cutscenes completed and autopsies completed during the Maximillian chapter, all of which can be rewatched (it can be very entertaining to see the differences in conversations based on the alignment of those involved). Completing the game three times, once per dominant Ancient, gives you the 100% Completion bonuses, including "Eternal Mode", a chapter by chapter playthrough with God Mode and everything unlocked.
• Non-Standard Game Over:
  • Dying as Pious in the very first chapter results in a different game over message than with any of the other characters because none of the plot (even the prologue) can happen without him.
  • Losing in the final battle results in a cutscene of Pious taunting Alex and spitting on her.
• Not Quite Dead: Mantorok is mortally wounded, but due to its nature as an ancient, bleeding out entails literal centuries of just sitting there.
• Not Using the "Z" Word: Averted on one end, as Maximillian's Monster Compendium entries record basic minions as zombies, but also inverted. Pious and his minions refer to humans as "flesh and bone," thereby objectifying them as resources to be used.
• Nothing Is Scarier:
  • Wandering around the Roivas mansion as Alex between chapters is quite creepy, even though (outside of one instance) nothing tries to attack her until close to the end of the game. The fact that she finds weapons right from the beginning, as well as finding better weapons several times, and that Maximillian's chapter takes place in the same house leads the player to expect to be attacked at every turn.
  • When your sanity is low, sometimes you might try to open a door only to hear the "locked" sound with no message saying that the door is locked; usually, this happens when a sanity effect is about to occur, but sometimes you just have to wait a few seconds and then try again to open the door. In other words, there is a sanity effect where all the doors to the room are locked, but nothing else happens, not even the flash of light or the cry of "This isn't really happening!"
  • Lampshaded by Maximillian in his diary: "I have learned to fear nothing, although it is nothing that I most fear."
• Notice This: A combination of the characters focusing their attention on collectible objects, and the objects in question faintly glowing.

O-S

• Off with His Head!: One method of dealing with zombies and Horrors. In fact, it's the fastest and, in the case of Ulyaoth aligned zombies, safest way to defeat them.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • Peter has this reaction when he realizes that The Black Guardian is shrinking his barriers during their fight.
  • Lindsey gets one too, when he shoots Paul Augustine in the chest and doesn't even slow him down.
• Ominous Fog: The sign that there is a gate keeper guardian in the immediate area.
• Ominous Latin Chanting: Heard among the background music for the Forbidden City, and also used in the holy choir variety whenever an object is collected in Oublie Cathedral.
• One Bullet Clips: Averted with most characters, who must hand feed their rounds into their firearms' chambers, and then played completely straight with Lindsey and Michael's modern, magazine fed firearms, when the player opts to manually reload.
• One-Steve Limit: Paul Augustine and Paul Luther. Also Edward Roivas and Michael Edwards, and, if you squint, Edwin Lindsey.
• Orbiting Particle Shield: The shield spell surrounds the user with tiny floating particles which fly in the way of anything that would hit the user and expand into a shield to block it. Properly cast, a shield can take seven hits but gate keeper guardians will drop any shield in one hit.
• Our Monsters Are Different: Ghosts are instantly reconizable, the main trouble is distinguishing the genuine from the hallucinations. "Zombies" have some quirks and varieties, with a small minority resmbling hoodoo slaves even slightly, but are otherwise recognizable as such to players of other Nintendo games or horror themed games. Pious is identifiable as a lich in appearance and function, though he is very non standard when observing fine details. The "vampires" a very distinctive and immediately identifiable as such in appearance or behavior.
• Our Demons Are Different: Trappers, Bonethieves, Horrors, lesser guardians and Gatekeepers are all minor Eldritch Abominations aligned with the head Blasphemous Alien God they represent. Chattur'gha Gatekeepers even look like stereotypical demons.
• Our Ghosts Are Different: Ghosts of the Chosen seem to have the ability to maintain hold of physical objects, even when hidden within physical objects themselves.
• Our Liches Are Different: Pious is an undead sorcerer kept alive by his magickal connection to the relic that turned him into a Lich in the first place. Ellia, too, is kept alive by her magickal connection to the Heart of Mantorok, and vanishes into dust when she (willingly) severs that connection.
• Our Vampires Are Different: An invisible, vaguely humanoid creature with four jaws. It sucks blood by magicking it out of people, and turns them into zombies.
• Palette Swap: Played straight with the Trappers, but averted with all other monsters; although they are Color-Coded for Your Convenience, they all have different physical appearances as well.
• Parasite Zombie: Bonethieves climb into the chest cavity of humans and puppeteer them around. They can also do this to zombies, giving you a nasty surprise when you kill it. Killing a hostile human nearly always spawns a bonethief, except in Edward's chapter.
• Pastel-Chalked Freeze Frame: The Chapter Complete segments.
• Permanently Missable Content:
  • While you need certain spells to advance the plot, you can discover them on your own without the codices or the scrolls, and if you don't get those codices and scrolls in the chapters in which they're available, they're permanently missable.
  • Ellia's chapter: The Short Sword after it breaks, if you fail to save the guard in the sublevel of the temple.
  • Anthony's chapter: The Two-Edged Sword, if you fail to save the monk in the first sublevel of the catacombs.
  • Karim's chapter: The Ruby Statuette.
  • Maximilian's chapter: The autopsies.
  • Edwin's chapter: The Mantorok rune and codex.
  • Roberto's chapter: The Sapphire Statuette.
  • Edward's chapter: The Elephant Gun, if you fail to save the servant in the master bedroom.
  • Michael's chapter: The Enchanted Gladius.
• Personal Space Invader: Bonethieves.
• Pet the Dog: When Ellia is found in the tomb of Mantarok, Pious advises her to leave, lest she be eaten. He's not kind at all about it whatsoever, and later when he's certain she knows where the Essence of Mantarok is hidden he kills her, but given how readily he tends to kill or otherwise harm others, or even save them for sacrifice, it's odd to see that he's initially more than ready to just let her go back to her merry life, apparently.
• Picture-Perfect Presentation: How the games' chapters are presented. Accompanied by narration, a sepia-tinted image in the Tome of Eternal Darkness will be zoomed in on, which then dissolves to a scene In Medias Res to introduce the relevant characters. Upon reaching the end, the process is reversed, the scene dissolving to another sepia image which settles back into the Tome, which closes its cover.
• Poisoned Weapons: Ellia can get a blowgun with poisoned darts, which is good because the weapon does very little damage and gets no additional ammo. You can be sure the zombies you hit with it will die eventually. The Mantorok spells have a "decaying" effect that steadily damages enemies in a manner similar to video game poison but Gate Keeper guardians can turn the "poison" effect off.
• Poor, Predictable Rock: 90% of enemies you fight are aligned with one particular Eldritch Abomination of three, so once you gain access to magic spells of the alignment that beats it in Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors, instant buttkicking commences.
• Portal Cut: How Ulyaoth ends up killing Chattur'gah.
• Powers That Be: The ancients, especially the unseen yellow one.
• Power Trio: The unholy trinity of Chattur'gah, Xel'lotath, and Ulyaoth are mortal enemies, but are still very closely associated.
• Power Up Letdown: The aforementioned "Eternal Mode", which is unlocked by completing the game three times and sealing away all three Eternals. This mode lets you replay any chapter in the game, along with the bonus of having infinite health, magick, sanity meters and infinite ammo for the weapons that use them. While this seems like an awesome thing on paper, actually using it can become another matter entirely:
  • Infinite health does just that: enemy attacks and environmental damage will never harm you... but this also means that any source of damage will still interrupt you while trying to cast spells. You'll have to toss up magical barriers to block damage anyways just to prevent spell interruptions... which reduces the awesomeness of having infinite magick in the first place.
  • Likewise, having infinite sanity means that no enemy in the game can ever make you lose your mind, and will prevent any health damage from having lost all your sanity... but you'll no longer be able to enjoy triggering any sanity effects again. This means that for players who enjoy the randomness that said effects can offer, having them suddenly not appearing can be mildly disappointing.
  • Finally, in any chapter you replay with Eternal Mode, you must manually unlock any 5-point and 7-point spell upgrades in order to use them again everytime you play in this mode... despite having already unlocked them quite some time ago.
• Press X to Die: The room with a large switch on the floor that, when stood on, causes a large stone slab to crash down on the switch, helpfully demonstrated by a Zombie wandering into this trap. There is nothing to stop the player character from standing on the button.
• Punctuation Shaker: Chattur'gha, Xel'lotath, and Ehn'gha.
• Quad Damage: Enchant item can become this with the correct alignment.
• Ragnarök Proofing: Justified: The big bad is maintaining two of the three locations that keep getting revisited over ~1000 years maintained (one of the chapters even involves a character being forced to work on said maintenance) while the other has a separate justification. Plus Amiens Cathedral still stands in the real world (the fact that Anthony's chapter (814 AD) takes place in it way before it being built in ~1220 is another story).
• Rainbow Speak: Done in the game's text when talking about key words in general, or items of interest relating to Chattur'gha, Ulyaoth, Xel'lotath, or Mantorok.
• Reckless Gun Usage:
  • During Maximillian's chapter, after he picks up two flintlock pistols, a sanity effect involves dropping one of them while reloading, killing him.
  • If Lindsey's sanity is low, there's a chance he'll target his own foot when you aim.
  • If Peter or Alex's sanity is low, there's a chance that they might aim their gun at the fourth wall and put a bullet hole in it.
• Recoiled Across the Room: In Edward's chapter, the player can find the elephant gun if they rescue his servants from The Vampire. Because it's such a massive rifle and Edward's a fairly small guy, failing to let him brace himself before firing (by staying in the firing stance for a few seconds) will knock him flat on his ass.
• Regenerating Mana: Your magick meter slowly refills when you're moving.
• Replay Mode: Beating the game unlocks "Jump to Game" in the main menu, letting you immediately play any character's chapter that you like, along with enabling God Mode if you've unlocked it.
• Remixed Level: The levels consist of the Roivas Mansion, The Forbidden City in Persia, the church in France, and the temple in Cambodia. Each area gets played more than once and each revisit changes the levels in some way such as altered scenery and new areas to explore.
• Revolvers Are Just Better: Averted. Revolvers suck in this game. You're better off with almost anything else, unless you want to get in a finishing blow or are killing Trappers, which die in one hit from any projectile weapon.
• Sacrificial Lion: Not in short supply. Sometimes averted / subverted as people like Ellia and Karim manage to make a difference even after they're technically dead, but in cases like Anthony's or Paul's, it's played pretty damn straight.
• Safecracking: In the basement during Alex's time.
• Sanity Meter: Trope Namer, and Trope Codifier for the video game uses of it. As you encounter enemies, it goes down; once it gets low enough, freaky things start to happen. In and out of universe.
• Sanity Slippage: Pretty much the entire point of the game, and a significant portion of the gameplay as well due to the Sanity Meter above.
• Say My Name:
  • "Charlemaaagne..."
  • Also, any time you cast a spell, the name of the runes are chanted, one of which is usually the name of the Ancient aligned to the required spell. The Forbidden City and Black Guardian have a habit of beckoning to Chosen, as well.
• Scare Chord: A sudden one plays when you die. It also plays in some of the sanity effects, including the ones where your character explodes from a botched healing spell or when you enter a room to find half a dozen enemies barreling down on you while your controls stop working.
• Sdrawkcab Name:
  • The Roivas family. "Roivas" is the word "savior" backwards.
  • Ehn'gha roughly comes out to a pronunciation of "agony."
• Scenery Porn: The environments are immaculately rendered and lit, still holding up several console generations later, and watching them change over the millennia the story takes place helps show them off further.
• Sealed Badass in a Can: Mantorok, after Pious binds him. Mantorok is also ambiguously Sealed Evil in a Can. Aside from getting revenge on the other Ancients, not much light is shed on his motives, especially in regards to humanity.
• Sealed Evil in Another World: In the climax, Alex is forced to stop Pious from summoning one of the three active Ancients by summoning whichever of the others can defeat it in Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors... then, before her own Ancient could cause a slightly different apocalypse, use the power of the fourth Ancient, Mantorok, to reverse her summons and banish it into another universe. Mantorok was a relatively-benign god of entropy and has been mortally impaled under Angkor Wat for millennia, so a few thousand years of the status quo before the stars align again is about as happy an ending as a Cosmic Horror Story could expect. Completing the game against all three Ancients unlocks the true ending, revealing that, thanks to Mantorok's manipulations, all three timelines happened together, and Alex banished each of them into the timeline where Pious tried to summon it. Chattur'gha was sent to the timeline where Ulyaoth killed it, whereupon Ulyaoth was summoned to its death at the hands of Xel'lotath, and Xel'lotath's victory was cut short by Chattur'gha... leaving no challengers to Mantorok's dominion.
• Secondary Fire: Mike's OICW doubles as a grenade launcher. It can also be set to fire single shot, burst, or full auto. Many other guns have alternate fires as well, usually limited to single / double barrel, however.
• Secret Legacy: The Roivas family, as said by Edward, has a long history of strange members such as Maximilian's mental illness and even being persecuted in witch hunts. Considering the Roivas mansion being built on top of the ruins of Ehn'gha as well as Maximilian's father Aaron knowing about the Ancients,it's possible their connection to the Tome of Eternal Darkness goes back even further.
• Sequel Hook: The game has some, including a fake one triggered by having low Sanity.
• Set Piece Puzzle: Most chapters have at least one set piece puzzle, and Alex usually needs to solve a similar puzzle in between chapters to find the next chapter page.
• Shapeshifter: Pious. Mantorok is thought to be one of these by Lindsey.
• Share Phrase: Almost every playable character has "This. Isn't. Really. Happening!"
• Shoot the Shaggy Dog: With very few exceptions, every individual chapter is one of these, though subverted when considered the entire game, since the majority of the chapters accomplish something that eventually helps to defeat the Ancient.
• Shotguns Are Just Better: Averted, but not by much. As far as projectile weapons go they're 3rd in the game in power, behind Edward's Elephant Gun and Mike's OICW. That being said, they're still damn good weapons.
• Shout-Out:
  • Among the books in the Roivas mansion's library are the works of Edgar Allan Poe and H. P. Lovecraft. At the end of his chapter, Max is put in the Jefferson Coombs Sanitarium, a shoutout to Jeffrey Combs, who starred in several adaptations of Lovecraft's works. Also, the detective in the beginning is named Inspector Legrasse, a reference to one of the protagonists in Call of Cthulhu.
  • Michael must construct a Staff of Ra and use it to reflect light through a center gemstone to aim a laser like beam of light onto a scale model of a city. Just like Indiana Jones did in Raiders of the Lost Ark.
  • What does Maximillian say when you select the Chattur'gha Horror out of his autopsy notes? "Oh, the Horror. THE HORROR!"
  • The fact the fifth Ancient (yellow) remains nameless is itself a shout out to The King in Yellow, Hastur.
  • Lindsey's chapter is clearly modeled after Indiana Jones: Set in an ancient temple full of pressure place triggered death traps, Edwin himself dresses similar to Indiana Jones and is an archaeologist. You have to pull off the weight replacement bit from the opener of the first movie swapping a metal bracelet with a silver bracelet of the same weight (except in Lindsey's case it actually works). Heck, Paul Augustine even looks like Arnold Ernst Toht from Raiders of the Lost Ark.
  • Edward explicitly name drops Sir James George Frazer and his comprehensive text: The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion.
  • Chakrams were not designed to return to the thrower's hand.
  • The Ancients match both colors and states as the Hyrule Goddesses, Chattu'gha matching Din, Uylotath matching Nayru, and Xel'lotath matching Farore.
• Shown Their Work:
  • Silicon Knights spent a ridiculous amount of time to make the game fit in with real life history as closely as possible; most weapons are era appropriate (and the few that aren't are justified as the equivalent of museum pieces) and most chapters coincide with major historical events.
  • The monk who gives Anthony the scroll at the beginning of chapter 3 says "Hanc mitte ad dominum et imperatorem nostrum..." ("Deliver this to our lord and emperor...") Hanc is the feminine singular accusative form of "this" in Latin, which is correct for the letter (epistula) to which he is referring.
  • Even the cathedral in Amiens is an example of Shown Their Work; it was built in the 1200s in real life (which in the game would place it between Anthony's and Paul's chapters); indeed, the only building on the future site of the cathedral in Anthony's time was a tower (specifically noted in Paul's chapter as being "old") with some catacombs underground. Word of God is that this was intentional.
  • While uncommon, "Roivas" is a legitimate surname and not just "Savior" backwards (though that is a happy coincidence); specifically, it's from Estonia, written as "Rõivas", however the game notes that the Roivas family emigrated to America from the Mediterranean region.
• Sinister Scraping Sound: The lower the sanity meter gets, the more of this you will likely hear.
• Smashing Hallway Traps of Doom: Angkor Thom has pressure point activate traps ranging from swinging blades, to toxic gas to literal smashing mechanisms. The forbidden city also has a smashing mechanism... That is required to make use of a door!
• Solve the Soup Cans: You're actually shown a majority of the game's puzzles as soon as you get proper control of Alex (with even more once you unlock the second floor), which is likely an remnant of how Silicon Knights originally envisioned a much more open-ended structure. With the mid-development switch to linear progression, you're now forced to sit and think of how puzzles and spells learned within each chapter will apply to the setpieces inside the Roivas mansion.
• Songs in the Key of Lock: There are three "locks" that are opened by playing an organ or a piano. Technically there are two, one of which is opened twice.
• Sorting Algorithm of Evil: This is done over two thousand years! Not quite as bad as it sounds, the order in which the player goes through events is not the chronological one, so it could be reduced to between 1110-1800 years before they got their act together.
• Sorting Algorithm of Weapon Effectiveness: With Magick. Averted in that you can discover useful combat spells far earlier than the game gives you the scrolls for them, by experimenting with rune combinations.
• Soul Jar: Two examples:
  • The obelisk in the basement of the Roivas mansion in Edward's chapter keeps the vampire alive. In order to kill the vampire, Edward must first destroy the obelisk.
  • Whichever Ancient's relic Pious picks up ultimately becomes a Soul Jar for him; Alex cannot defeat him until it's destroyed.
• Spell Crafting: There's a Rune System. Essentially, all you need are three types of Runes (Spell, Target, and Alignment) and you can mix and match them into whatever spell you want to create. Medallions called Circles of Power have a number of slots you can use to mix and match, from 3 to 5 to 7. If you have the right runes you can cast a spell even if it's not on your list, though there are only a certain number of valid combinations, usually in the form of "verb-noun-[power-up]-alignment" such as "Dispel-Area-Ulyaoth" or "Summon-Creature-Pargon-Pargon-Xel'lotath".
• Spinventory: Mostly just used to examine items closer in an aesthetic sense.
• Sprint Meter: Hidden from the eyes of the player, but it's there. After running for too long or aimlessly attacking with a melee weapon too many times, characters will start to stagger and gasp for breath eventually and they must walk or stop and catch their breath before they can resume. It varies from character to character. Michael, a fire fighter, can run for long distances and swing his fire-axe pretty rapidly without needing a break while Maximillian, an overweight physician, can only jog or swing his cutlass for a short period before he starts breathing heavily.
• Squishy Wizard:
  • Paul, a Franciscan monk. He has some of the lowest HP in the game and isn't particularly athletic. If a prior condition is met, he can obtain the Two-Edged Sword and wield it the most gracefully out of the three characters with access to it, but without it, apart from Magick, for combat, he's left with a low-damage ranged and short-reach melee weapon. As a bonus, in two out of three routes, he even meets death by squishing.
  • Peter is in better shape than Paul, but his health isn't much better. His covering WWI has left his brain a bit broken, and if he finds the Two-Edged Sword, he has the same problem Anthony had with it that Paul didn't — it's heavy and difficult for a scrawny guy to wield. He has among the very best capacity for magic of the twelve though, necessary for a Wizard Duel at his chapter's end. He even finds a unique item for the fight that instantly replenishes his entire mana meter. Edward has the smallest possible health bar, but he's got large sanity and magick meters in exchange — magick which can be put to use enchanting his Elephant Gun.
• Staggered Zoom: A sanity effect.
• Start of Darkness: The very first guest character is also The Dragon.
• Status Buff: Four of twelve spells are buffs. Well, technically five if you Mantorok a Reveal Invisible spell.
• Status Effects: Poster child for the "Meta effect" thanks to the sanity meter.
• Stupidity Is the Only Option:
  • "Should Paul claim the ''Tome of Eternal Darkness?" Paul is a Franciscan monk. No, he really shouldn't claim an evil book of sorcery bound in human skin and found in an extradimensional mausoleum where the floor is made of the screaming souls of the damned, especially since he has been accused of murder and heresy. Granted, it's Pious doing the accusing, but Paul has no way of knowing that at the time.
  • Also, Pious, despite being an experienced fighter and quite cunning tactician, is still compelled to grab an artifact that's defying the laws of physics and so powerful it radiates energy across the room with his bare hands, leading to his corruption and the events of the game to unfold. This is even avoided by all other characters in the game who claim an artifact, as they all feel the air itself become corrosive near it, and wrap it in some sort of fabric or protective housing. To be fair, they've also all read the Tome of Eternal Darkness, so they all know what happened to Pious.
• Summon Bigger Fish: This constitutes much of the gameplay in the final level. Naturally this leaves one of the Eldritch Abominations wandering around unopposed, so the ghost of Alex's grandfather has to subsequently bind the Bigger Fish. Then in the Real Ending we learn that essentially all three fish have swallowed themselves, because Mantorok has been invoking this trope over a span of thousands of years, simultaneously, in three different timelines.
• Sundial Waypoint: Twice, the first as mentioned in Shout-Out, the second in Alex's endgame chapter.
• Suspicious Video-Game Generosity:
  • Just before Peter's duel with the black guardian, you encounter a door and receive a message telling you that absolute evil lurks on the other side of this door, gnawing away at your very soul. It then goes on to ask you, very innocently, if you would like to save your progress. Earlier in the same chapter, the narrator makes a point to question why Peter just found the "Magickal Attack" spell scroll hanging on a wall, highlighting its importance in the battle to come.
  • One of the (in)sanity effects is to have the game drop a huge pile of fake ammo at your character's feet as they walk into a room.
• Sword of Plot Advancement: The Gladius for Alex and the Ram Dao for Karim are both needed (along with an enchantment of a certain alignment) to unlock a couple of doors.

T-Z

• Taking You with Me: Mantorok may be bound and dying, but the true ending shows that he planned his revenge on the other Ancients throughout time and space to kill all three of them as well.
• Tele-Frag: If you can master the timing, it's possible to do this to Horrors while in a Trapper dimension.
• Temple of Doom: The Cambodian shrine that binds the Corpse God. Complete with trap filled corridors!
• These Are Things Man Was Not Meant to Know: Comes with the Lovecraftian territory. Best exemplified in Max's autopsy reports.
• Those Were Only Their Scouts: A Guardian serves as the boss of Maximillian's chapter, and after killing it, he's horrified to realize that there's an entire city of them beneath his mansion.
• Through the Eyes of Madness: A lot of what goes on in the game "isn't really happening" but just the same enough is. Maximillian Roivas's chapter is the best example.
• Time Abyss: The four Ancients are millennia old at the least. Pious lives to 2026 years old before his death at the player's hands near the game's end.
• Timed Mission: The end of Michael's chapter requires him to escape from the ruins before the explosives detonate.
• Title Drop: Several times, and not just when referring to the Tome:
  Chandra: Without your sacrifice, the world will fall into eternal darkness!
• Tome of Eldritch Lore: The semi-eponymous Tome of Eternal Darkness, an ancient text made from human skin and bones. Inside is the knowledge of millennia which includes eldritch spells and the fates of all who have ever come to possess it. It seems to be able to hop across time and spontaneously appear to prospective recipients while at the same time having a physical form, and it transcends language, as Chosen of multiple time periods and nationalities, even some who would realistically be illiterate, can read it without a hiccup. You spend most of the game reading it, and most of the time not spent reading it has you trying to find more pages to read.
• Took a Level in Badass: All of the characters once they find good weaponry and the Tome of Eternal Darkness.
• Translation Convention: Pious and Anthony's chapters start with characters communicating in Latin, which then seamlessly transitions to English mid dialogue.
• Turn of the Millennium:
  • Alex's chapter, and by proxy, The Present Day for the game in general, although the specific date isn't given.
  • The climax takes place during the planetary alignment of 2000, which occurred on May 5 of that year.
• Unintentionally Unwinnable: One player found a means to soft-lock the game by saving directly after skipping a cutscene in Edwin Lindsey's chapter, which the Japanese version of the game subsequently patched. The timing on this is so small that it's also a fairly insane decision to make.
• Universal Ammunition: Averted. You have or find ammo for individual weapons. If you run out of ammo for your main weapon, you have to switch to your back-up.
• Upgrade Artifact: The Circles of Power, which are always found in Oublie Cathedral.
• Use Item: I can't use that jar now? Why not? You sometimes do have a description of what an item is to be used for or why it cannot be used for a specific task at least.
• Useless Useful Spell: You can use the Restore and Self runes in combination with one of the three Elder God runes to restore your health, sanity, or mana — but if you cast the mana variation, your mana will drain and then refill itself by the exact amount used to cast the spell. It's funny when you have more than one Elder God rune, but when you only have Ulyaoth's rune (i.e. in the third and most of the fourth chapters on Xel'lotath's route), less so.
• Unwitting Pawn: Pious was meant to be a Chosen of Mantorok. When Chattur'gha, Ulyaoth, and Xel'lotath lure him away from Mantorok's service, they present him with the statue that would have been his in the Hall with the others who died in Mantorok's service. The three Ancients then trick Pious into destroying his own statue to become their slave. This was all according to Mantorok's plan.
• Video Game Caring Potential:
  • You can save some Bonethief victims before they get controlled if you're quick. This is very prevalent in the World War I chapter with Peter.
  • Ellia notices a guard under attack right after falling down a shaft and breaking her sword. If she saves the guard, he will repair her sword.
  • Edward can gain access to the Elephant Gun if he stops a Vampire Predator from draining the servant who has the key.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: Rats scurry around in some areas. If you have a firearm, you can shoot them with no ill effect. Kill a human, though, and you suffer a huge drop in sanity.
• Video Game Tools: Alex Roivas starts investigating her family home in Rhode Island, and nearly every door inside is locked with no obvious means of opening them; you even break the key for the upstairs hallway upon using it. Instead, by reading the game's Tome of Eldritch Lore, you acquire magickal spells which allow you to enchant, dispel, or reveal various facets of the mansion, gradually opening it up in combination with more expected items to use to solve little setpieces.
• Voiceover Letter: Edward's letter to Alex in which he describes the plan to fight Pious' Ancient master with the opposing Ancient is fully voiced, unlike all other letters and written documents.
• Voodoo Zombie: The basic enemy is a corpse given life by the will of an Eldritch Abomination, and granted some of its physical attributes. They can also Mind Rape by eye contact.
• Walking Wasteland: The Ancients' essences, particularly Mantorok's, are mentioned in the text as corroding the very air around them, needing a cloth to be handled. Also, Ehn'gha seems to have some sort of sphere of influence on the Roivas mansion, as the house staff frequently comments that the building never gets clean no matter how hard their attempts to work.
• War Is Hell: The chapters that take place near battlefields (i.e. "A War to End All Wars" and "Ashes to Ashes") play up the horrors of twentieth-century warfare for all they're worth, and Peter's and Michael's sanity is below average even before they encounter the Ancients.
• When the Planets Align: Right there in the cover art. You're also given short FMV's between chapters of the planets' progress in making this happen.
• Whispering Ghosts: Even when the sanity meter is full they can be heard in some places at regular intervals and the characters in the game can apparently hear them too.
• Wing Shield: Gatekeepers don't fly, but they have wings which they keep caped around themselves when not attacking you, rendering them immune to attack from the front.
• A Wizard Did It: Anything "weird" that happens during the game (including the fact that the Tome appears to jump through time to make stories that happened in the future available to characters in the past) can easily be written off as "Eldritch Abomination time / space magic made it possible." The True Ending suggests more specifically that the proverbial "wizard" here is Mantorok.
• Who Forgot The Lights?: The title lives up to its name and every area has a description for why it is so dark. Though the 2000 era Roivas mansion doesn't really hold up, considering it has electric lights.
• A Winner Is You: Subverted. At the end of a chapter, the game will abruptly throw a static "To Be Continued" image at you and demand that you buy the nonexistent sequel if you want any sort of proper conclusion. Lucky for you, it's just a hallucination, a Shout-Out to the infamously abrupt ending of Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver.
• With This Herring: Averted for the most part; few of the characters are warriors or are expecting to be attacked, and the ones that do are armed. Some of them heavily.
• Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe: Pious is fond of it:
  Pious: Fool! I spit at thee! The darkness shall be eternal!
• You All Share My Story: "This is not my story... Or even the story of the Roivas family. It is the story of humanity."
• Your Head A-Splode: Poor Paul thought he was gonna get a nice big boss fight with Xel'lotath's Black Guardian... Nope, just a head popping. Also happens occasionally if you try to cast a spell with low sanity, though it isn't permanent.
• Zero-Effort Boss: A morbidly hilarious inversion. One chapter begins with The Dragon summoning a giant guardian that looks like it'll be one hell of a boss fight. You open the door to its chamber with a message to the effect of: "Shall you put an end to this heresy?" There's a huge build-up with the dragon, with the characters declaring their intent to throw down — then the guardian unceremoniously stomps you flat (or makes Your Head A-Splode), and admonishes the dragon to not cramp its style. That's right: Your character is the anticlimax encounter. You get to fight them with a different character later in the timeline, however.
• Zombify the Living: What happens to Anthony; also, anyone killed by the mini boss of Edward's level instantly becomes a hostile zombie (although apart from the very first victim, you can drive it off and save Edward's servants if you're quick enough).

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(FLASH)

This isn't... really... happening!

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