- The curse itself, while mainly played for horror, can be this as well. Once it kills someone, nobody will remember them. They may have been someone who treated everyone well, an extremely altruistic person, and yet, it would be like they never existed.
- Also, the fact that due to the curse, people lose important figures in their life, being a close friend, a lover or your family, and won’t remember anything. Someone very important to you dies and you won’t even mourn them, because they’ve disappeared from your memory.
- The argument between Oswald and Martha in her room, where he calls her an "imposter" and rages against her for owning his familial home when she's not even really a Galley. Martha ends up sitting alone and crying by the end of it. It's made even worse by the knowledge that this all happened just because neither of them can remember her husband, Oswald's brother Rupert. It's shown in the past that before Rupert died to the curse, the two of them had a much more cordial relationship.
- The scene that leads up to Victoria's death is a particularly tragic example of the curse's effect on people. Having just been reminded of her dead husband who was the last one to be felled by the curse, Victoria is found by her sister tearfully apologizing to his corpse for having forgotten him. She becomes distraught when she realizes that not even Annie knows who he is, and is terrified that she'll lose her sister too—and so she writes down the names of all the people she knows are in the house, just in case. Then the curse kills her. Not only does that list indirectly lead to Annie's death later on due to how the curse works, but the next scene with Annie has her asking who "Vic" is with no recollection that it's her own sister that she was close with.
- The story of Eleanor Galley. After her death, her family refused to hold a funeral or even acknowledge her existence. Although it's shown that losing her was very painful for her two brothers, they weren't even allowed to properly grieve for her. This incident still haunts Oswald even decades later.
- Oswald's death in Incident. He goes to the chapel to pray before Eleanor's memorial, only to see that the epitaph on it references his brother Rupert, whom he's forgotten. With that, he suddenly realizes that he's just as vulnerable to what's been happening around Galley House as anyone else—and likely also realizes that the dead bodies around the manor are likely corpses of people he once knew, that whatever killed them had also made him forget, and he'll likely be joining them soon. Small wonder he seems so deflated when Annie finds him. (In Type Help, he never reaches this realization, and ends up misguidedly trying to "save" Annie with religion.)
- He also tells Annie that the possibility of mourning has been taken from him again, having realized that he lost a brother and can’t remember him, knowing that he likely was important to him.
- John's death. Being deeply confused about the events of the last several hours thanks to the curse, he comes to the wrong conclusion that he murdered Annie himself and is so distraught that he commits suicide over it. The last chronological sound recorded is his groan as he dies from the fall from the attic.
- From Incident, Ervin's family's deaths. During his hallucinations of the event he desperately urges his past self in vain to remember who each person is before the curse can claim another loved one, going from his wife to each of his young daughters. He's furious with himself that he can't remember who his wife is after just talking to her, something that the player will be very familiar with by then after learning about the Galley House incident. By the time he's committed suicide, Ervin is a man who, to his recollection, has lived his entire life utterly and completely alone, and has no idea how many people the curse may have truly taken from him.
- Near the end of his speech, he muses that Eleanor Galley had never had anything to do with the curse, since everyone had remembered her... but the curse had, in its own way, claimed her too, as no one was left to remember her at all. He then makes a last request of Reya: that Galley House, and everything in it—including the machine—be destroyed.Ervin Dolskey: Let it all be forgotten. Then she and I may join our families in obscurity.
That's all I ask. I've already destroyed all my personal effects... I've erased every record of my existence I could find.
I am no one.
I am no one at all.
- Near the end of his speech, he muses that Eleanor Galley had never had anything to do with the curse, since everyone had remembered her... but the curse had, in its own way, claimed her too, as no one was left to remember her at all. He then makes a last request of Reya: that Galley House, and everything in it—including the machine—be destroyed.
- Reya's situation at the end of Incident. Over the course of one night, she lost several coworkers she once knew, the company she works for is likely in ruins, and she is burdened with the knowledge that the dead will be remembered by no one (except her own glimpses of the night this all happened), and likely no one will believe her story as to why it all happened. Ervin even expresses sympathy for how lonely she must have felt, thinking she'd been piecing together this story in a dark house all by herself.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/TearJerker/TypeHelp
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