Phantasmagoria: A Puzzle of Flesh: Difference between revisions

* [[Catch Phrase]]: ''Beat it, Rat Boy.''

* [[Changeling Tale]]: {{spoiler|Curtis being revealed as an alien clone of the original Curtis who was stolen away has shades of this, just making it told from the changeling's point of view and making him sympathetic as a result. It just replaces fairies with interdimensional aliens.}}

* [[Chick Magnet]]: There's only two people in the office who ''aren't'' into Curtis in some form. Hell, even Trevor wants him.

* [[Contrived Coincidence]]: Well, if he wanted his son to find this box, ''clearly'' the smartest thing to do would be to hide it in a small walled off room hidden behind a small closet in your workplace and hope that he works there too someday, and just ''happens'' to feel like checking out hidden tiny doors in the back of closets. ... and also shove a dress in there for good measure.

** There are many others listed [http://anthonylarme.tripod.com/phantas/p2eggs.html here].

* [[Epiphany Therapy]]: Played with. Curtis goes to see a therapist about his problems. He ends up having several sessions with her. He even manages to recover repressed memories of the death of his father. However, the sessions do not cure him of his hallucinations. At the end of the game, he does find the source of his hallucinations and resolves it. Unfortunately, by that point, he may ended up worse off than he was before he went into therapy in some other ways.

* [[Evil Is Visceral]]: The Hecatomb, the hallucinations he causes, the deaths he causes, his projection, and his real form, {{spoiler|the original Curtis Craig.}} Everything about the Hecatomb defines this trope.

* [[Evil Twin]]: {{spoiler|Inverted; the game's main villain is the original Curtis Craig, the hero is an alien who has taken on his form}}.

* [[Final Exam Boss]]: Kind of. Near the end of the game, Curtis goes through numerous visions...or...''[[Mind Screw|whatever]]'' that involve practically every dead character and traumatic scene from Curtis's past. You better remember that clicking on people during suspenseful scenes often gets you killed, and that the best option is to do whatever it takes to get the hell out of there. (Except the first puzzle with the doctor; that's just "pick an object and hope it works", and the last puzzle, which flips it)

* [[Have a Nice Death]]: If you die, the voice of the Hecatomb mocks you.

* [[He Who Must Not Be Seen]]: {{spoiler|The aliens in the Alien World that Paul Allen Warner had been communicating with.}} You only get to hear a voice from one of them, but you never actually get to see any of them. Which is weird, because you actually go into the {{spoiler|Alien World.}}

* [[Hospital Gurney Scene]]: The beginning of the game starts with this. Curtis is the patient being wheeled in and being given electric shocks with Dr. Marek looking on and telling him "You're having a psychotic episode". All this is to show that Curtis Craig is not a well man. However, there is more to the story than that. Curtis, years later, has a flashback revealing that he was put in the mental institution and strapped to a wheelchair. He has no idea how or why he ended up in both positions. No one will tell him anything and he is unable to connect to anybody there. So he causes a distraction, unstraps himself from the wheelchair, and runs for it. Unfortunately, he gets caught by Dr. Marek and some orderlies. Doctor Marek says "Curtis! You've been a bad boy! Now I have to punish you!" Then the flashback shows the [[Hospital Gurney Scene]], and [[Fridge Horror]] sets in when you realize that they were not trying to help Curtis, but were subjecting him to [[Cold-Blooded Torture]].

* [[In Name Only]]: The game's story is almost completely detached from the one in the original Phantasmagoria. There is exactly one reference to the first game, and it is not plot critical in any way.

* [[Starfish Aliens]]: Literally. {{spoiler|The residents of Dimension X, who all resemble invertebrate sea life. [[Word of God]] says they have a [[Hive Mind]] and communicate via biochemical reactions such as combining or dividing.}}

* [[Talkative Loon]]: The other patients in the asylum scenes.

* [[There Are No Therapists]]: Almost averted in Phantasmagoria: A Puzzle of the Flesh, where the main character goes to therapy after he starts hallucinating. However, his therapist is quite possibly the most useless therapist in the history of psychotherapy and generally just sits and nods while he talks about his massive amounts of childhood trauma, sexual issues, and slow descent towards insanity.

** And then she just lets him walk out of her office right before she records notes on how she believes he is delusional and possibly homicidal.

* [[There Is No Kill Like Overkill]]: All the main character deaths are really over-the-top brutal.

* [[Too Dumb to Live]]: {{spoiler|1=Tom Revell goes into WynTech to type up a report of Paul Allen Warner's conduct, so he can send it to the Board of Directors and take down PAW. This would be fine, except he is all alone in the cubicle farm in the middle of the night. One would think he would take precautions after a murder occurred and PAW told him "You're a dead MAN!" But no, he did not.}}

* [[Took a Level in Badass]]: Arguably, when Tom Revell, a fairly bland, but still friendly co-worker, angrily calls Warner out on the fact that he forced his employees to come to work the day after a grisly murder took place in the building. {{spoiler|Too bad he doesn't live past the CD this moment comes in...}}

* [[Wrongly Accused]]: A detective starts to suspect that Curtis is a murderer.

** The strange thing about it is that {{spoiler|she's ''right'', [[From a Certain Point of View]]. The murders were pulled off by Curtis Craig; the real one, not the alien construct you control throughout the game.}}

* [[You Have to Believe Me]]: Played with. Curtis finds evidence of a conspiracy. He does not even turn over the evidence to the cops. In fact, there is only one cop he interacts with. On his side, he acts like some raving loony to her. On her side, she dimisses his claims, does not even try to investigate them, and clearly thinks he is full of it and worse. He also tries to communicate his findings to his therapist and even shows her some concrete evidence. His therapist thinks that he is paranoid, delusional, prone to psychotic episodes and has some capacity for violence. To be fair, he was cetainly acting hysterical towards her at some points. His therapist does believe his claims in the end when {{spoiler|she discovers her phone is bugged. Unfortunately, the Hecatomb kills her off shortly afterwards}}.

** Another example is when Curtis finds his therapist dead, and he sees a vision of the Hecatomb. A spooked security guard bursts in. Curtis says "Get it! Get that thing!" and points at the vision. The guard sees nothing and motions to Curtis to move to another part of the room. It is implied that the guard heard the doctor's death screams on her phone. The guard thinks the Curtis not only did something to the doctor, but that Curtis is out of his mind.

 

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