Just an interesting theory i have on the cramped caskets (see image above from IGN https://www.ign.com/wikis/bloodborne/Cramped_Caskets) and the humanoid scourge beasts found in Yahar’Gul post blood moon. Spoilers obviously. From a quick Google search and AI, I don’t believe anyone else has mentioned this.
So if you visit Yahar’Gul before the blood moon, out on the main avenue just outside the chapel, there are giant pigs walking about. Now I always thought that was an extremely strange feature, because why would you have giant pigs walking on a normal street? Heck, why would you even have pigs that large?
However after the blood moon, all the spots where the pigs were have now been replaced by corpse/cramped caskets. The caskets share some similarities to the pigs, both in size, and in how their attacks involve swinging around and flinging its giant body.
My theory is that the pigs were always supposed to be caskets. Rom had an illusion in place that was hiding their true form, making the horrific caskets appear as only a large pig. When we kill Rom and the illusion falls and the blood moon rises, we can see its true form as cramped caskets.
This also makes sense with some of the scourge beasts that are throughout Yahar’Gul. On several of the upper levels, you can encounter some werewolf-like creatures, however, instead of being covered in fur, they appear to be an amalgamation of dead bodies. That is keeping with the theme that if we had seen these creatures before the moon, they would’ve appeared as normal werewolves, but post moon we see the truth. AFAIK you can’t access these areas before the blood moon to see if these areas have a regular beast before the blood moon, but I could be wrong.
The only fault in my theory is that I would have expected additional areas than just Yahar’Gul to have revealed beasts, but AFAIK we only have corpse creatures in Yahar’Gul. That doesn’t disprove my theory, only yields no further merit to it.
(EDIT) after reading the comments, there are a few things that cannot easily be reconciled with my theory
- why are beast and pig transformations not applied universally? For example, why is the pig in the forbidden woods not transformed after the blood moon? One could only argue that the ones in the woods are real pigs.
- pigs and cramped caskets have different abilities, I.e. projectiles. The only way to reconcile that is for Rom’s illusion to be placing some kind of limitation on them.
- why are there more corpse caskets post blood moon than “untransformed” enemies pre blood moon? This actually could have a loose explanation, since the Mensis ritual was actively in progress, there are simply additional corpse creatures generated in that timeframe