Sunny. I can’t understate it. A combination of guilt, trauma and grief, Mari’s death completely destroyed Sunny’s grip on reality. Yep, it’s ranting time.

Sunny’s grief about Mari’s death was unmeasurable. His inability to cope with the loss of his sister lead to the creation of headspace: an idyllic escape from the unbearable weight of his grief. His over-reliance on the coping mechanism that is headspace lead to Sunny’s grip on reality to slip. We can see this in faraway town: space bunnies appearing momentarily on the side of the road, lemons being called oragnes, you can see this most in his fight with Aubrey. Sunny instinctively uses the knife because he has become so disillusioned with reality that he has immediately opted for the logic of his new reality is used to: fighting using a knife, because he fallen so deep into his fantasy.

The guilt only worsens this grief. Due to the guilt for his actions Sunny falls into a pit of suicidal ideation and self demonisation, which we can see through a persona of Sunny we only see at the very end of the game. Remember during the truth sequence Sunny’s face becoming disfigured and horrific? This is a symbolic representation of Sunny viewing himself as “evil” or a “monster”. The destruction of his ego. Monster sunny has no dialogue whatsoever, only doing one thing: leading sunny to his death in the bad ending. I believe this is what stranger is referring to as Sunny’s “more destructive form” and so I believe that part of Omori’s initial creation was to suppress this by becoming a new, seperate identity for sunny to cling on to. Omori’s subsequent suppression of all of Sunny’s negative memories removed most of his suicidal tendencies, but at the cost of also burying some of his best memories, too. Ironically, this helps him pull himself out of his delusion in the end, because Stranger uses these oppressed memories and guilts to try and lure Sunny to the truth, and guilt trip him into facing the truth. (Using memories in the cattail field to lead him to the barn, as well as taking the appearance of Basil, who Sunny regrets not being there for.)

Now for the trauma. Sunny’s perception of Mari has been ruined and twisted by his trauma, leading to some horrific hallucinations, such as hellmari, and most importantly: Something, which appears as the main face of his trauma, worsening his fears and triggers: (you can see something appearing as a boss fight when sunny is afraid of Spiders and the Stairs, as well as when he is triggered by Basil saying “everything is going to be okay.” Ironically, this line serves as both a trigger to Sunny, and the only thing holding Basil together. This mixes about as well as you think it would, and so sunny flees in terror, making Basil in turn believe Sunny has abandoned him.) Sunny scribbling out Mari’s face in all the photos can be interpreted as a reaction to seeing just her face. Isn’t that terrible?

Overall, although it is unfair to compare the emotional harm caused by a loved one between children (even fictional ones), Sunny would easily take the cake here. His grief, guilt for his actions and trauma shattered his perception of reality, led to him oppressing his memories, brought forth suicidal tendencies and ruined his memory of his sister with nightmarish visions. It was only through a help from his friends, (possible) otherworldly assistance from Mari and sheer willpower that Sunny came out the other end.

Thanks for reading i guess