Adaptation Displacement: Although many are aware of the book's existence, or at least familiar with its title, the loose film adaptation Apocalypse Now is far better known by virtue of being considered one of the greatest films of all time.
Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory: Considering how dense and omnifaceted the story is, this happens pretty often. There are a ton of ways to interpret Heart of Darknessnote you can easily find Marxist, deconstructivist, feminist, or post-colonial interpretations, just to name a few, and many odd ones are surprisingly well-supported.
Fair for Its Day: While the book's depiction of the native Africans comes across as extremely racist by modern standards, the story's anti-colonialist message was considered incredibly progressive by the time it was written. While undeniably guilty of stereotyping, the book never refers to Africans as being genetically or biologically inferior to whites and emphasises that no matter how savage the so-called "savages" of Africa may be, the supposedly "civilised" colonizers and Mighty Whiteys are infinitely more petty and evil.
Fridge Horror: Marlow realises, as he's telling the story, that the General Manager must have purposefully wrecked Marlow's steamer before he arrived so that aid to Kurtz would be delayed. After all, it was "too stupid — when I think about it — to be altogether natural".
Harsher in Hindsight: Barely two decades after Heart of Darkness was published, a real Kurtz named Baron Roman von Ungern-Sternberg terrorised Siberia during the Russian Civil War, becoming even more unhinged and sadistic than he already was the more he spent time in the wilderness, much like Kurtz in the Congo. His career cumulated in his short-lived conquest of Mongolia in 1921, where he ruled the country with an iron fist and was worshipped as a god by his subjects in a manner disturbingly reminiscent of both Conrad's novel and its adaptation Apocalypse Now.
Tear Jerker: Marlow's meeting with Kurtz's nameless widow may evoke a strong emotional response for many readers, with her voice being heartbroken and then crying, and Marlow trying not to cry.
Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: It's basically an Anvilicious book about how horrible people can be, so it's kind of hard to avoid this. Of course, it's not easy to be subtle when writing about the horrors of colonialism (especially in a place as nightmarish as the Belgian Congo).
True Art Is Ancient: Was a victim. T. S. Eliot originally wanted to use a quote from this book as the epigraph for The Waste Land, but his friend Ezra Pound talked him out of it on the grounds that Conrad was not high art and not a good enough writer. Had The Waste Land been written today, there is no reason why Conrad wouldn’t be considered an appropriate epigraph, and, moreover, Eliot did use the quote "Mistah Kurtz...He dead" from Heart of Darkness as an epigraph for his later poem The Hollow Men.
Values Dissonance: It does portray the native Africans as violent, ignorant, savage, and cannibalistic... and those are the good ones. On the other hand, the European colonists aren't treated any better, being portrayed as amoral and inhumane slave drivers.
Awesome Music: One of the very first games to incorporate symphonic music, to reinforce the cinematic feel.
Demonic Spiders: Nearly anything to be precise. Everything, absolutely EVERYTHING, has a way to One-Hit-Kill you. Shadows eat you, Worms will emerge from a wall, snap you and feast on you in a matter of seconds. Shadows in armor can use "The Power" in various ways, flying shadows likewise and they double for goddamn bats. And that are the few creatures you can actually HARM. The shadow spiders are a perfect match: you usually fight them while climbing, limiting your movements; they drip poison on the handholds that can make you fall, and they evade any shot you can fire at them unless you let them come very close.
Goddamned Bats: The shadows mostly, but flying shadows are a perfect match: They fly, they evade everything you throw at them if it's the last one and they can throw fireballs that kill you in one hit. Ask anyone about them and they will say they hate them with a passion.
Good Bad Bugs: If Andy crouches such that his rear end pokes off the screen, enemies will not come from that side.
What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: It's rated E and was designed as a kids' game, sure, but you'll start questioning the demographic when Andy dies in a way that doesn't involve falling off the screen. Here's a compilation of all the gruesome ways Andy can be killed. The E-rating is presumably the result of the animators walking the fine line between T-rated violence and "comic mischief" (there's no blood or gore anywhere in the game, and during Andy's death animations his body is frequently stretched and contorted in cartoonish ways that an actual human body can't.)
The E-rating is presumably the result of the animators walking the fine line between T-rated violence and "comic mischief" (there's no blood or gore anywhere in the game, and during Andy's death animations his body is frequently stretched and contorted in cartoonish ways that an actual human body can't.)