Dead Space (series): Difference between revisions

* [[Artifact of Doom]]: The Markers, all of them. They are sentient and cause people to hallucinate their loved ones, hurt themselves, write strange writing on the walls in ''anything they can'', kill themselves, and somehow make Necromorphs appear.

** Note that the Red and Black markers only show horrific visions [[Starfish Language|as a form of communication]], and mostly ''try'' to prevent Necromorph outbreaks; it's stated a few times that one needs a high level of intelligence to properly interpret the visions and ''not'' go insane. The Golden Marker, on the other hand, seems actively malevolent. The visions of Nicole that it shows Isaac taunt, lie to and manipulate him, and want him to {{spoiler|kill himself}} in the end. The Golden Marker seems ''built'' to {{spoiler|begin Necromorph outbreaks and trigger Convergence events}}, unlike the others, which work to prevent them.

* [[Bittersweet Ending]]: How some stories end if the protagonists are lucky. Usually they will accomplish some goal before getting ripped to shreds.

* [[Blatant Item Placement]]: Enemies will often drop health when the main character is about to die, and often drop the right ammo needed for whatever weapons are being carried.

* [[Body Horror]]: And ''how!'' Horrifically mutilated and contorted corpses trying to tear you to pieces? Yep. Horrific death scenes? Yep. Peng? Yep.

** In order to get inspiration for the Necromorphs, the design team studied photographs of car accident victims. That somehow makes both the Necromorphs, and the design team, a hell of a lot creepier.

* [[Captain Ersatz]]: The church of Unitology bears [[Suspiciously Specific Denial|absolutely, positively no resemblance to the church of Scientology.]] Please don't sue us.

* [[Church of Happyology]]: Unitology, obviously.

* [[Crapsack World]]: Even without the Necromorphs, the mankind in the ''Dead Space''-verse is pretty banged up: Unitology is the dominant religion of dubious moral values, bureaucrats tend to use employees as tools in far worse ways than in [[Real Life]], and [[No OSHA Compliance|safety regulations are lacking]]. The sad story of {{spoiler|Howard, the caretaker of the Sprawl's solar arrays}} is example enough.

** There is evidence that ''humanity itself'' is circling the drain. Planetcracking came as a saving grace at a time when economic collapse and subsequent extinction due to resource starvation were ''very'' close at hand. Furthermore, that solution isn't sustainable, and humanity is still limping on its way to disaster. In many ways, the horrifically unethical experiments that EarthGov has ''repeatedly'' performed on {{spoiler|the Markers}} are [[Well-Intentioned Extremist|the only hope]] humanity has of long-term survival.

* [[Darkness Equals Death]]: Averted half the time. While Necromorphs do attack in the dark, and it is scary, they also attack in the light, which is also scary.

* [[Dialog During Gameplay]]: Thanks to the RIG, Isaac can maintain conversations with his [[Mission Control]], either on video or audio.

* [[Downer Ending]]: Most stories in this series end this way.

* [[Earn Your Happy Ending|Earn Your Bittersweet Ending]]: When you are around a Necromorph outbreak, this is the best you can hope for.

** {{spoiler|Given that Dead Space 1 ends with Isaac either being attacked and killed, or having gone completely insane, the end of Dead Space 2 featuring him escaping the Sprawl on a ship being piloted by an actual trained pilot, and most likely safely getting back to civilization with the Markers destroyed,}} you'd almost consider this a straight up [[Earn Your Happy Ending]]. Then you remember the thousands of men, women, children and babies you had to dismember after they were horribly killed and turned into monsters. Even if Isaac never sees a Necromorph again, he'll probably never have another good nights sleep without heavy medication.

* [[Fantastic Slurs]]: Unitologists are derisively called Marker-heads.

* [[Grid Inventory]]: Present in ''[[Dead Space (video game)|Dead Space]]'' and ''[[Dead Space 2]]''.

* [[Gorn]]: Oh my yes. Necromorphs don't just claw or bite their victims, they stab them through the abdomen, or rips their heads off, etc.

* [[Holographic Terminal]]: Both regular ones for starships, and personal ones for backpacks.

* [[H.P. Lovecraft]]: One of the major influences of the series, according to [[Word of God]].

* [[Humans Are Insane]]: Given all the horrors seen across the odyssey of three games (and adjacent DLCs), comic book content, some print literature coupling in a host of spin-off material. One would think it best our hero; Isaac Clarke, amongst others, is better off sticking to slaughtering and/or eviscerating undead terrors than ever trying to buddy up with other still living human beings throughout the full story. Especially given that a great many of what little survivors of a plague of Necromorphs remain tend to be (A) not long for this world as the few good, actually stable people either [[Too Good for This Sinful Earth|end up dead]] by their wounds or [[Cruel and Unusual Death|viscerally butchered]] by the undead monstrosities in full viewing glory, (B) poor unfortunate souls found still living beforehand [[Driven to Madness|turned mad]] (many of whom being [[Driven to Suicide]] as a consequence) by the either the [[Brown Note|Marker's effect]] or the horrors they were beholden to, (C) all a bunch of [[Ignorant of Their Own Ignorance|ignorant]] or [[It's All About Me|self-righteous]] [[Slime Ball|slimemolds]] whom claim to act on the behalf of all humanity or are simply no account good for nothings who think they know better when they really don't. I.e. self serving sociopaths like in EarthGov relating to [[Smug Snake|Kendra]] [[Bitch in Sheep's Clothing|Daniels]], the movement built on delusionality of Unitology pertaining to [[Mad Scientist|Challus Mercer]] or Daina, radicalistic omnicidal suicide fascists in The Circle which consists of [[Know-Nothing Know-It-All|Danik]] and [[Suicidal Lemmings|his zealots]]. Needless to say, there isn't much stock to be placed in general psyche balance regarding characters within the franchise's setting.

* [[Humans Are Morons]]: When it all boils down to it, the people portrayed in Dead Space are at least fiftythousand shades of [[Too Dumb to Live|catastrophically incompetent]]. From most agents as well as citizens within EarthGov to scientists on the Ishimura, as well as both the tame and more fanatical numbers of the Unitology death cult in its entirety. There is no shortage in the deficit of congenially smart human beings who go fiddling with [[Artifact of Doom|Marker's]], the few who claim to know better have a nasty habit of killing off their own faction workers in droves for a pointless pursuit of the deathly McGuffin which any sensible individual can see is the main cause of the dead rising from grave as reanimated monstrosities.

** Case in point, 200yrs ago one of the leading generals of EarthGov's military division stationed on Tau Volantis literally killed the only real hope of preempting the nightmare that they all came across while digging up what they mistakenly believed to be the archeological find of the century from reaching their home world. On orders from [[My Country, Right or Wrong|their own commanding power]] no less. Practically murdering a means of stopping a necromorph infestation from coming to earth in its crib.

** The whole mythos surrounding how the Unitologist faith came to be in the beginning is built on a whole mess of convolution and endless secrets & lies. When the supposed founder of their movement started becoming more and more perturbed by what it was they found. Members of the spelunking unit he discovered it with ended up killing him and turning the guy into a martyr to enforce a false belief in what boils down to being self disposing sacrilegious joke. One that becomes so twisted, contradictory and disastrously self-harm influenced that its very existence stands against all it was mistakenly built upon to begin with. Some of the more psychopathically hypocritical members of the church blaming their own kind for the mess of the necromorphs due to human hands tampering with their holy object. Despite their constructing replicas of which begat these mutant zombie atrocities popping up in the first place.

** Even the ruling power of humanist space colonization itself can take a bit of stick here too, given how at best they are self-betraying sadomasochists whose members are a bunch of halfwits whom refuse to put two & two together when it comes to the Markers and the Necromorphs. At worst, they're more than willing to sacrifice hundreds, if not thousands of their own to probe the doomsday devices secret despite being fully aware of just how cataclysmic the proportions of messing around with those things well & truly tends to be. Not even being above casting individual survivors of they're failed attempts at exploiting said apparati without losing countless lives to its disastrous functionality as criminals to compensate their atrocities.

* [[Latex Space Suit]]: Not Isaac's suit, which is bulky as befitting his position as an engineer, but casual ones are shown to be skin-tight.

* [[Life Meter]]: The R.I.G. has a spine-mounted life meter, which is actually in-universe and not just a convenience for the player. All adults wear them.

* [[Mundane Utility]]: The Dead Space universe used high-tech plasma cutters as the equivalent of a pickaxe, as well as all the other incredibly powerful (by modern standards) tools and tech being used in a casual manner.

* [[No Hero Discount]]: While the stores are all automated, this doesn't answer the question of why Isaac doesn't just hack all the stores to get items for free. Given that Isaac is shown to be capable of some very impressive rewiring tricks, and how vital items are to your success (items that have no limit for purchase at a single store, and the games [[RPG Elements]] come in the form of Power Nodes that can be bought in stores) there's no reason why Isaac never even tries to go for the five fingered discount.

* [[One-Way Visor]]: Most helmets.

* [[Our Ghosts Are Different]]: Not actual ghosts, but the Marker is capable of making people hallucinate dead loved ones, and only dead ones.

* [[Planet Looters]]: Humanity. We need natural resources, having depleted all of Earth's, and go out breaking down random planets in space to get them; only a matter of time before we pick up an unexpected guest along with our resources.

** And the first crack is one of Saturn's moons, which is where the sequel takes place.

** The background logs state that Planet Cracking is actually believed by some to destabilize entire star systems because of the gravity imbalance of one planet going missing all of a sudden. The [[Mega Corp|CEC]] denies this, though, and states that the planets are always carefully chosen.

** Digging at Aegis VII was prohibited in the first place, but the CEC broke the laws because the planet was abnormally mineral-rich. Now, had the [[The Government|EarthGov]] {{spoiler|placed their Red Marker}} on a resource-barren moon somewhere, things might have turned out differently.

* [[Reality Is Unrealistic]]: Some complain that the chance of almost all of Isaac's weapons be re-purposed tools strains credibility. For example, why would a tool called the "Plasma ''Cutter''" shoot out a single, non-continuous burst? Then you remember that Dynamite was originally intended for peaceful purposes by inventor Alfred Nobel, and was used for war. Not to mention the real life section of [[Improbable Weapon User]].

* [[Redshirt Army]]: Kinda necessary to increase the Necromorph bunch.

** Special mention has to be given to the army platoon in ''[[Dead Space (video game)|Dead Space]]'' that is taken out by a single Necromorph.

* [[Religion Is Right]]: Unitology, strictly speaking, is completely honest in its claims. They just happen to be a little vague about/ignorant of the specifics.

* [[Starfish Language]]: The Markers communicate by showing you visions of your dead loved ones [[Body Horror|in various conditions]].

* [[Superpowered Mooks]]: Mysterious covert operatives referred to as Oracles appear in ''Salvage'' and ''Dead Space 2: Severed''. It's unclear whether they work for the Unitologists or Earthgov, but they exhibit Jedi powers and imply that they're top-level spec ops agents sent to deal with the highest level covert incidents, such as Necromorph outbreaks.

* [[Through the Eyes of Madness]]: A common problem the Marker causes is to make people think they see their dead loved ones and think they are real.

* [[Used Future]]