The recent development of high brightness 3rd generation soft x-ray sources and high energy resolution electron spectrometers made it possible to accurately trace quantum phenomena associated to the vibrational dynamics in core-excited molecules. The present paper reviews the recent results on mapping of vibrational wave functions and molecular potentials based on electron spectroscopy. We discuss and compare the mapping phenomena in various systems, stressing the advantages of the resonant x-ray scattering for studying of the nuclear dynamics and spectroscopic constants of small molecules. The experimental results discussed in the paper are most often accompanied by state-of-the-art ab initio calculations allowing for a deeper understanding of the quantum effects. Besides its fundamental interest, the vibrational wave function mapping is shown to be useful for analysis of core- and valence-excited molecular states based on the reflection principle.