Don’t forget that the country you’re in is being invaded by a much larger nation, one of your fellow townspeople has PTSD from being tortured in a POW camp and it’s causing him to lash out at his wife, one of the marriage candidates lives in an abusive household, another one is suicidally depressed, the mayor is using taxpayers’ money to build solid gold statues of himself while the infrastructure crumbles but everybody’s so disenfranchised with politics that nobody ever stands against him for election and, oh yes, the main plot of the game is that a supermarket is trying to destroy the town so that they can stripmine the local area.
Stardew Valley is wild cause it’s this fun wholesome little game where you raise animals and grow crops and get married but it also has monsters and dwarves and the mayor and rancher lady are secretly fucking and it’s heavily implied the shop owner’s daughter is actually an illegitimate child his wife had with the local wizard and there’s a note from your grandpa saying he’s gonna return from the grave and visit you on the dawn of your third year in the valley
I love the lowkey implication in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (especially in the Gene Wilder movie) that Willy Wonka was minding his own business one day and he just saw this skinny looking kid staring up at his factory, licking his lips, and he was just like, “Shit, that kid needs some chocolate, but he’s clearly too poor to afford any and there’s no way I can run outside right now and reveal my existence to the world, right? Damn. Okay. I can send an Oompa Loompa. No, that’ll scare the kid. What candy does he even like anyway? What if I give him the wrong one? All right, we need to get this kid into the factory so that he can pick his favorite treat. But what happens when he leaves? Shit, shit, shit, okay, we’ll just give him the factory. Give him the whole factory. That’s the only way. But how? Come on, Wonka, be inconspicuous here. I’ve got it. A nationwide contest inviting multiple kids into the factory where I’ll reveal that the winner gets the factory. Crap, no, then there will be four other kids in the factory. Okay, no problem, we’ll just kill them all until he’s the only one left. Yeeeah, that’s a good plan. Okay, everyone, places. We’ve got literally one shot at this.”
