You can interact with these characters in different ways, and your actions will cause different things to happen.

Such a terrible crisis can cause unexpected things to happen.

Or does it actually cause bad things to happen?

Well, malware is able to do that also in order to cause obviously malicious things to happen.

The feel of his passing caused things low in my stomach to clench.

A special object in the game is the ocarina that Link can play, causing different things to happen.

Why, the next thing you know, people would be causing things!

Frightening, to think that a man without any apparent sorcery about him could cause such things.

Do they cast spells to cause bad things to happen?

"Excess sodium causes things like high blood pressure, heart disease and kidney problems."