YMMV / They Breathe

• Demonic Spiders: Green 'moose' and green jellyfish are the most dangerous enemies in the game:
  • The former regularly emit toxic bubbles that harm the player and other frogs, remove oxygen from headless jellyfish, and if these enemies contact a normal bubble they turn it into a toxic bubble that hurts a lot. They take a longer time to drown than the regular moose in exchange of being unable to regain air. Finally, upon drowning they spawn a large toxic bubble that can greatly hurt you instead of a large oxygen bubble.
  • The latter take four bubbles instead of three to die and will very quickly kill frogs (including you) if they touch one and there's no air bubble to force the frog out. If they manage to do so to a frog that isn't you, they turn into the above except on steroids, being faster and producing three times the amount of toxic bubbles. Complicating matters further is that they start out larger than normal jellyfish, and after taking in three bubbles they become large and harder to evade, and like the other jellyfish they also get faster over time if not taken care of. They were heavily toned down in the Remastered version, now taking a longer time to kill frogs (though quicker than normal jellyfish), allowing the player frog to force rescuable frogs out by taking their place, and also making it easier to struggle towards a direction if the player's caught by one.
• Fridge Brilliance: Why were frogs chosen by the Jellyfishes as respirators and not any other animal? They're amphibious, air-breathing, and very likely to be found in a forest stream. The jellyfish were likely trying to find a way to become amphibious in order to leave the water while still being able to serve their subaquatic queen.
• Fridge Horror:
  • Whatever happened that caused an entire forested area to become submerged is never mentioned.
  • The parasite alien queen may be dead, but judging by the huge numbers of jellyfish polyps around the forest that will eventually spawn more jellies, the threat to the frogs is still far from over, and without the queen that continuously expels Oxygenated Underwater Bubbles, they'll be harder to defeat than ever before. Then again, it's also shown that the queen is responsible for the creation of moose-jellies, as evidenced by her using some of the corpses around the floor to create one if your frog dies during the battle.
• Heartwarming Moments: Saving a frog from dying by pushing/guiding it into oxygen bubbles and keeping them away from the creatures until it's healthy enough to swim to the surface. At the end of the game, you get to see all the frogs you managed to save floating along with the player's frog.
• Moment of Awesome: The final encounter has a normal but courageous frog defeat an Eldritch Abomination and the source of the frogs' plight by tricking its own minions into destroying its life support, ending the major threat to the frogs.
• Nightmare Fuel: Loads of it. From the eerie atmosphere, to the constant threat of drowning, to the jellyfish monsters and their using the frog bodies to help them deal with oxygen, to the parasite queen at the bottom of the lake. Pretty much everything about this game other than the cute little frogs is scary or at least unnerving.
  • When the toxic jellyfish capture a frog, you get to see that frog clearly suffocating from the poison, clutching at its throat and gasping as it soon stops struggling and gets made into a "head" for the jellyfish. The remaster makes the toxic jellies take a longer time to kill the frog, but the captured frogs quickly go from an expression of distress into an Involuntary Smile of Incapacitation.
  • Even the title screen is extremely nightmarish. And Fridge Horror sets in if you realize the frog that you see in it might not even be seeing our protagonist frog, but seeing one of the victims of the monsters just before they're attacked.
  • Finally, even the ending has some nightmarish stuff to it. Your frog begins swimming back up to the surface. There are no air bubbles to save it after the parasite queen dies, and it nearly drowns before it manages to reach the surface in time.
• Tear Jerker:
  • The frogs' expression when they're drowning is both frightening and downright sad.
  • The frogs have a helpless and frantic expression when they're engulfed by a jellyfish.
  • If a frog gets caught by a green jellyfish, you get to see them helplessly and hopelessly suffocate and die before being used as a head by the jellyfish.
  • The plight of the frogs. They're being killed and dragged down to the queen jellyfish to be turned into breathing organs.
• That One Achievement:
  • "Escape Artist" requires you to beat the game without dying. It's very easy to die against the enemies, especially the toxic variants.
  • "It's the Frogs!", which requires saving every frog in the game in one sitting. You have to actively go out of your way to prevent the frogs from being killed by the enemies (especially the green jellyfish) while also trying to survive and kill the enemies quickly before you or the other frogs run out of air.
• The Woobie: Glenn the frog, as well as all the other frogs. Poor Glenn has to save himself and his own brethren from dying while frantically avoiding enemies, and then several of them have been killed and their bodies used as breathing organs for the jellyfish.

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