Echo Bazaar/YMMV

• Colbert Bump: A large spike in popularity came about after being mentioned on Extra Credits.
• Complete Monster: You can become one of these with high enough Heartless and Ruthless scores.
• Crowning Moment of Awesome: If you choose to let him do it, the Disgraced Rattus Faber Bandit-Chief finally clearing his name by setting up an Enemy Civil War to take down the Big Rat's lieutenants. Sadly, he dies in the ensuing fray.
• Crowning Moment of Heartwarming: The ending of the Persuasive and Shadowy paths of the Mysterious Benefactor storyline.
  • The third option of the "reminisce about the Comtessa" card -- "The Comtessa. It's what she wanted."
  • The first option of the "one of your minions has been captured by the Constables" card -- "Send your lawyer after the chap. Provide sureties and whatnot. You owe these people, even though you wouldn't admit it to them."
  • Repaying the Soft-Hearted Widow as a Person of Some Importance by contributing to her charity.
• Fridge Brilliance / Genius Bonus: Four of the Recurring Dreams can be said to correspond to the four Classical elements. The Fire Sermon is obviously fire, and Death By Water is obviously water. What the Thunder Said relates to the air and wind, while The Burial of the Dead talks a lot about the earth. Is Someone There? may even correspond to the fifth element, ether, since it seems to have a connection to the Mirror-Marches, a very strange and dreamlike world. This might also explain why A Game of Chess is classified under "Dreaming Strange Dreams" rather than "Recurring Dreams", since it doesn't seem to correspond to an element.
  • Another one for Fridge Brilliance and recurring dreams; Almost all of the initial dream cards are autofire (which is to say that you can choose whether you activate the card or not, but you have no control on what happens afterwards). However, as you progress higher above the dream levels, you get the opportunity to have more control over your dream. Initially it's just normal cards (which differs from autofire in that you have some idea of what you're getting into), but then you get choices, you have additional options if you've fulfilled other dreams to a certain extent; essentially, the more you dream, the more control you gain over your dreams!
• Tear Jerker: The ending of the Watchful and Dangerous paths of the Mysterious Benefactor storyline.
  • Even moreso, the ending of the Comtessa storyline, mixed with a bit of Player Punch. You arrive too late to do anything; the Comtessa is in the process of being turned to stone by her Clay Man lover. You are given no information as to whether or not the Comtessa gave consent, or what the end result of the process is, only a frightened look in the Comtessa's eyes. Your only options are to Mercy Kill the Comtessa or turn and leave. Yeah, it's a Downer Ending.
  • The Driven to Suicide overtones present for many of the Black Ribboners.
  • The ending of the Cheesemonger storyline, which also turns out to be a Shoot the Shaggy Dog.
    • Pretty much the entire storyline is this. It starts off with you doing increasingly shady and morally blurred things to people who don't seem to deserve it. Then you get to talk to people who used to be agents of the Cheesemonger like yourself. They're hiding in the darkest corners of Fallen London, terrified that the Cheesemonger will come after them, saying she's snapped and wants to Kill'Em All. If you investigate her past, you find her reasoning for this: her family used to all be operatives in the Great Game, but her entire family was assassinated. As revenge, she decides to ruin the Great Game forever so that no one will suffer like she did ever again -- by "wiping half the pieces off the board". If you agree to help her and make all the operatives who killed her family Deader Than Dead ("Can you live with that much blood on your hands?"), the Cheesemonger is eventually found dead. Furthermore, the Game was merely paused for a few weeks, not stopped -- so the whole thing was meaningless in the end.
• Scrappy Mechanic: Most ventures have an alternate branch at the end that grants better rewards, but is riskier, and completely resets your progress quality if you fail, regardless of how high it is. Keep in mind that it usually takes 20+ actions just to get the challenge rating to "modest", and that the rewards are rarely worth 20+ actions in the first place. Oh, and did we mention that it's entirely luck-based?
  • Mercifully, this has been toned down in a recent update, to the relief of many.
• Ugly Cute: The Rubbery Men.
• The Woobie: The poor Albino Rat...