History Main / DisguisedHorrorStory

* Arguably, ''VideoGame/ReadyOrNot'' is this. While technically a tactical shooter, many of the scenarios faced by the SWAT are based on real-life depictions of criminal acts, and many of the atrocities done resonate very well in the real world -- especially the operation set on a university campus, where the enemies encountered are school shooters (which are one of the primary problems plaguing America).

** Played straight in-universe, with [[ShowWithinAShow the titular in-universe game]] ''not'' warning anyone about what's underneath, and {{Justified|Trope}} by it ''originally'' being a genuinely innocent LicensedGame starring the beloved cartoon character Bucky Beaver, but was later twisted into what it is now in the last few months of development. This is because [[spoiler:the in-universe developer, after learning about the horrific murders and experiments committed and covered up by the animation studio behind Bucky, transformed it into an elaborate exposé of them, including photographs and video footage of said murders]]. Once the content was discovered in-universe, there was an eruption of backlash, [[spoiler:[[EngineeredPublicConfession exactly as planned]]]].

** The game ''tries'' to [[DefiedTrope Defy this]] by warning you multiple times about [[ContentWarnings just what kind of game it is]], but if you don't pay attention to those warnings, you might mistake this game for a typical mascot platformer... at least, until some of the "artifacts" start popping up.
** Played straight in-universe, with [[ShowWithinAShow the titular in-universe game]] ''not'' warning anyone about what's underneath, and {{Justified|Trope}} by it ''originally'' being a genuinely innocent LicensedGame starring the beloved cartoon character Bucky Beaver that was later twisted into what it is now in the last few months of development. This is because [[spoiler:the in-universe developer, after learning about the horrific murders and experiments committed and covered up by the animation studio behind Bucky, transformed it into an elaborate exposé of them, including photographs and video footage of said murders]]. Once the content was discovered in-universe, there was an eruption of backlash, [[spoiler:[[EngineeredPublicConfession exactly as planned]]]].

* ''VideoGame/Shipwrecked64'': If not for the warning at the start of the game, you might mistake this game for a typical mascot platformer... at least, until some of the "artifacts" like disturbing images of Bucky start popping up.

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[[quoteright:350:[[VideoGame/GeometryDash https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/everythingisfine.png]]]]
[[caption-width-right:350:Oh, this looks like fun![[labelnote: Wait...]]https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/everythingisnotfine.png GAH! Never mind![[/labelnote]]]]

* ''Manga/ShimejiSimulation'' is what you would expect for every single SliceOfLife story: a story about a girl who leaves a two-year reclusion and tries to find friends played out in a traditional comedy format. Until the next few chapters start to peel that disguise away: it is an ExistentialHorror, surrealism story about Shijima, despite her friendships with Majime and the rest of Hole-Digging Club members, struggling from her inner crisis after her reclusion, giving away from her apathetic and quiet nature. There's the fact that the town, West Yomogi, is extremely empty and unusual, which is a ThrivingGhostTown, [[spoiler:a product of the world being a simulated reality, which is only one-half of what this trope embodies]]. Then, after the story introduces the KnightOfCerebus, Big Sis, the story takes a [[CerebusSyndrome very dramatic, if not permanent turn]] when [[spoiler:Big Sis battles the Gardener, reads through the minds of humanity with a machine and it doesn't even taking account with how she altered reality in the first place by giving humanity RealityWarping powers to give them the freedom to warp everything to their own imaginations.]] And cue to another ten chapters, [[spoiler:the rogue clone of Big Sis carbon-copied the same thing as what her prime did, except this time she wanted humanity to use the same power to change themselves, destroying the world's natural order and freefalling it to chaos.]] After that, [[spoiler:[[UpsettingTheBalance the fabric of reality takes a massive downturn and begins to collapse]] that it's barely recognisable and Shijima's attempt of kicking Majime out triggered another DarkestHour, before putting her into an unforeseen dilemma where it echoes her reclusive past.]] And Yomikawa, the PluckyComicRelief of the manga, [[spoiler:is an AmbiguouslyHuman who is no stranger to the simulation's mysteries, as she spouts a major reveal regarding how their world is just a byproduct of a simulation, meaning everything that happened through the entirety of it just happens inside a fusiform-shaped {{Cyberspace}}. And the reveal regarding Shijima and Big Sis being mere creations of it hits the nail hard, such as the fact that their orphaned life was not because of their [[ParentalAbandonment missing parents]], but because they were a creation in the first place, along with many others in this world.]]

* ''{{WesternAnimation/Alma}}'' has a cute art style, was directed by a former Creator/{{Pixar}} animator, and starts in a very innocent manner, before turning into a horror tale with [[spoiler:the main character becoming trapped inside the body of a doll, alongside numerous other children who have met the same fate]].
* ''WesternAnimation/{{Felidae}}'' looks at first glance as another animated movie about talking animals made in the 90s, with a cute art style, giving the impression it might be a kid-friendly movie. The original German trailer was even labeled as a "Youtube Kids" video.[[TrailersAlwaysLie The trailer in question does not reveal at all]] it's actually a horror movie featuring lots of death and violence. And also cat sex.

* ''Literature/TheAdventuresOfThePrincessAndMrWhiffle'' first presents itself as a whimsical story about a princess living in a marzipan castle who has lots of grand adventures with her beloved teddy bear, though a sharp-eyed reader might notice some signs that everything is not rainbows and unicorns, even before you get to the third ending (aptly named "The One With Teeth").

** The Devil Of Christmas is an interesting case, as the episode is presented as a so bad it's good horror movie about Krampus. Meant to look like it's from the 1970s, with director commentary and delighting in replicating the period tone. And then the real horror makes an appearance.
** To Have And To Hold, is the story of a marriage slowly crumbling as a couple drift apart, due to the wife's past infidelity. Such quiet, personal tragedies and the grim comedy in them appears to be the episode's focus until we see what's happening in the basement...
** Three By Three, an episode dressed up to look like a quiz show, complete with Lee Mack hosting as himself and a non-standard intro. Even if you realize it's Inside No. 9, it looks like one of their tragic stories of human failing. However, throughout the episode, subtle hints imply all is not as it seems but only the last 20 seconds is undeniably supernatural horror.

* The ''VideoGame/CattoBoi'' series of games starts off in a bright and colorful setting with the titular feline protagonist performing mundane tasks such as collecting biscuits or retrieving pearls for Big Boi. Then the game starts to glitch which slowly turns into a horror genre as the player resets the game multiple times, and it is heavily implied that [[spoiler:[[EldritchAbomination an unknown Entity]] is responsible for corrupting Catto Boi's world to begin with.]]

* ''VideoGame/DigimonSurvive'': The title being Digimon ''Survive'' and not Digimon ''Story'', and being billed as a SurvivalHorror entry in a more-or-less kid-friendly {{Mons}} series, speaks volumes, but it does start off with a relaxing extracurricular camping trip...which goes horribly wrong when several students and two locals get TrappedInAnotherWorld and were chased by deadly, hostile [[NotUsingTheZWord "not" Digimon]] (dubbed as "Kemonogami" or "monsters"). From that point on all hell breaks loose -- human party members can actually [[AnyoneCanDie go insane and]] ''[[AnyoneCanDie die]]'' and there's (usually) nothing you can do about it even if the game sometimes gives you options that tell them to chill out. In the absolute worst-case, some major party members go insane out of seeing their loved ones die and turn into terrifying monsters that you must put down, and the BranchAndBottleneckPlotStructure and MultipleEndings system is set up so callously that there's no saving anyone whenever it happens. The game also has a [[GhostStory supernatural twist]] near the end, with the entire thing turning out to be [[spoiler:the result of a grudge amongst long-dead ancients that would lead to the complete eradication of humanity and Kemonogami alike.]]

* ''VideoGame/GenericFishingGame'' looks like a minimalistic fishing game with only four fishes to catch, and Spacebar is the only button you can catch. [[spoiler: But catching one of the fish with human faces is only a warning about the long nightmare coming next.]]

* One of the mini-games in the MinigameGame ''NEEDY STREAMER OVERLOAD PETITE GAME COLLECTION'', a side game of ''VideoGame/NeedyStreamerOverload'', contains a minigame known as [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMHe6H4LVns Ame's happy happy dating game]]. As the title suggests, it's a dating SIM where P-Chan goes to a date with Ame. The Arcade and Nakano Broadway sections play out rather normally, but if you take her to the Hospital, School Ruins or Beach, she'll say or do some depressing and/or disturbing things. If you bring her to her "Childhood Home" [[spoiler:without bringing her to all of the other locations first]], however, [[spoiler:she'll undergo a horrific meltdown, and whatever happens to her next is [[NothingIsScarier up to the player's interpretation]]]][[labelnote:explanation - spoilers]]The context for this is in ''Needy Streamer Overload'' where it's indicated in various hidden texts that Ame is born in a poor family where her parents didn't care about her and would often violently fight with each other even after they divorced, and her mother at one point tried to sell her to prostitution for money. You're bringing her to visit her own parents here, likely her mother as it's implied that she was the one with the custodial rights over Ame[[/labelnote]]. Just like in the original game, it's also implied that [[spoiler:Ame wasn't dating anyone and the P-Chan there is still a product of her schizophirenia.]]
* ''VideoGame/OhDeer'' is a Hide-And-Seek game where you have to hunt other players acting like deer, with bright polygonal visuals and silliness like the deer having the ability to [[ToiletHumor eject themselves away via pooping]]. But once the hunter's {{sanity|Meter}} depletes fully, it transitions to a straight-laced horror game: the area suddenly goes dark, with the player deer standing on their hind legs to transform, revealing their true nature as wendigos, with [[TheHunterBecomesTheHunted the hunter being forced to flee to a cabin or die trying.]]
* ''VideoGame/{{Omori}}'', despite being billed as a horror game and having an eerie beginning thick with PsychologicalHorror symbolism, is largely innocuous with the horror elements confined largely to the background or specific sections of the game. [[spoiler: Headspace's nature as a severely troubled teenager's way of coping with the trauma of his sister's death becomes more and more prevalent until exploding fully into horror with [[TheVeryDefinitelyFinalDungeon Black Space]], a [[SurrealHorror surreal]] nightmare scape representing the AwfulTruth of Sunny's repressed trauma.]]
* ''Petals'' initially appears to be a rather serene FirstPersonSnapshooter where the main objective is to simply take pictures of plants in the wilderness. [[spoiler:It's actually a tie-in/prequel for ''VideoGame/TheTexasChainsawMassacre2023'', and to drive the point home ends with [[DownerEnding the player being murdered by Leatherface]]]].
* ''VideoGame/PortaBoyPlus'' starts off as a retro-flavored ''VideoGame/WarioWare''-style [[MinigameGame collection of minigames]], played on a handheld Game Boy {{Expy}} with appropriate graphics and music, and a geometric shape background behind. [[spoiler: Then you notice the game gives you a shotgun when you reach 9 points. Then you see the games starting to glitch and distort when you reach 12 points. Then at 15 points the geometric shapes give way to a dimly lit hallway with monstrous Portaboy-zombies ambling toward you, and you now have to juggle killing the monsters with the shotgun and completing the increasingly glitchy minigames and uncovering a story about a MegaCorp hooking brains up to computers to mine crypto.]] The art was made by WebAnimation/LumpyTouch, who is very well known for blending retro video game aesthetics and Eldritch Abomination horror.
* Content warning at the beginning of the game notwithstanding, ''VideoGame/PromDreams'' begins as a fairly typical harem dating sim, complete with upbeat music, comedic scenes, and many of the genre's standard tropes. In fact, the player can win their chosen love interest's heart and make it to prom night without experiencing a single horrific element, [[spoiler:only for said love interest to be killed suddenly and brutally, without any way for the player to avoid it. From there, the game "resets" itself several times, sans the girl killed in each previous loop, with the atmosphere becoming more horrific as the dating sim plot gives way to a supernatural murder mystery.]]

* ''VideoGame/SpecOpsTheLine'' appears to be, at first glance, a generic, dime-a-dozen ''Call of Duty''-inspired modern war shooter, albeit with the somewhat unique premise of being set in a city that has been ravaged by sandstorms and seemingly abandoned. However, before long, the game reveals itself to be [[spoiler: a DeconstructionGame that uses the lens of horror to examine war shooter tropes.]] The game employs AlienGeometries that don't seem to make any sort of sense, MindScrew as the player character gradually loses his sanity [[spoiler: because of his actions causing the agonizing death of dozens of innocent civilians, including [[WouldHurtAChild several children]]]], war crimes depicted with brutal realism, all topped off with [[spoiler: the reveal that the main antagonist was DeadAllAlong, and the main character is the true antagonist who has committed war crimes, atrocities, and destroyed hundreds of lives in his desire to become a hero.]]

* '''''Inverted''''' with ''The Typing of the Dead'', which is just as gruesome-looking as any of the ''VideoGame/HouseOfTheDead'' franchise but is at heart a [[EdutainmentGame typing teacher.]]
* ''VideoGame/YummyBreakfast'' starts out cute and simple, with a girl just trying to make herself a "yummy breakfast". It takes a turn for the creepy as she gets more and more desperate for food, resorting to eating live animals and [[spoiler:a girl.]]

* ''VisualNovel/HowToDateAMagicalGirl'', A cute game about going to a school for magical girls and looking for love until it suddenly becomes a murder mystery game.

* ''VisualNovel/{{Penthos}}'' is an interesting example, as it doesn't attempt to pose as anything but a horror story, just a more traditional pastiche of familiar SlasherMovie tropes. [[spoiler: It's in the game's Second Act that the story becomes more postmodern and allegorical, switching gears from a slasher to a cerebral PsychologicalHorror.]]

* WebAnimation/LaceyGames:

* [[http://koshiandoh.com/flash-gallery01/natsumi-step/ Natsumi]] [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pw4LstqkNcw STEP!]] On the surface, it's an adorable animation about a girl who goes to a magical world full of kittens and puppies. That is until you notice some uncanny visual cues such as "Natsumi Andou, arrived at 7/20 23:36"[[note]]Referencing a date of death[[/note]] and a sign reading "59"[[note]]A Japanese wordplay for "Goku" a.k.a "Hell"[[/note]] where it's all but implied that said "magical place" is the underworld. When you click the second link, [[spoiler:it shows Natsumi, our cheerful protagonist [[MoodWhiplash crying]]]], and if you go back and observe the animation, as well as viewing the SWF file of that second link, you will learn the real story behind this seemingly cute film. There's no dialogue nor explicit confirmation by word, but the implication was [[spoiler:Natsumi going to hell after killing her boyfriend and committing suicide]].

* [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSER3yml1iM Pokopokopikotan]] by WebVideo/Nana825763 is at first an adorable stop-motion video of two little paper girls on a bright setting. Then the scene gets darker and a hand starts attacking them in what is strongly implied to be a metaphor for child abuse.
* The entirety of the ''WebVideo/DontHugMeImScared'' series is the infamous TropeCodifier of the Disgusied Horror Story along with SurprisinglyCreepyMoment. Mostly because it starts out innocently enough, with ''Series/SesameStreet'' style puppets discussing [[SurrealHumor different themes in a really catchy song]]. By the end... well, let's just say things go [[SurrealHorror a bit too far]].
-->''"[[LetUsNeverSpeakOfThisAgain Now let's all agree / To never be creative again.]]"''

* ''WebVideo/MasahiroSakuraiOnCreatingGames'': Discussed and discouraged in the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tb6GJUvJGpM "Paint an Accurate Picture of Your Game"]] video. Sakurai argues that no matter how much you want to surprise people, it's more important to make sure people get an accurate impression of your game. He uses a horror game disguised as a cozy farm sim as an example of what not to do because it's likely to alienate players -- [[UncertainAudience people who appreciate horror will be turned off by the game's harmless appearance]][[invoked]], and [[NeverTrustATrailer people who buy it expecting a fun farm sim will be upset]].
--> '''Sakurai:''' Imagine buying a banana, only to have it taste like an apple. That's not right, now is it?

* In ''Kitty Kart 64'', the player controls a fuchsia-furred feline on a kart, in a game the emulates the aesthetic of ''Mario Kart 64''. Its first stage is an open roadway with pastel colours. However, as the player continues on, [[spoiler:things begin to glitch out in some stages; black, human-shaped glitches appear to be seizuring in an pastel-coloured ClosedCircle; balloons pop up, which causes screams to sound and blood to spill; and finally the cute pink cat nearly reaches the finish line, when a gaunt, dark figure appears and beats them to a pulp.]] A pastel-coloured "Congratulations" banner appears as the final scene of the game.

* ''VideoGame/DigimonSurvive'': The title being Digimon ''Survive'' and not Digimon ''Story'', and being billed as a SurvivalHorror entry in a more-or-less kid-friendly {{Mons}} series, speaks volumes, but it does start off with a relaxing extracurricular camping trip...which goes horribly wrong when several students and two locals get TrappedInAnotherWorld and were chased by deadly, hostile [[NotUsingTheZWord "not" Digimon]] (dubbed as "Kemonogami" or "monsters"). From that point on all hell breaks loose -- human party members can actually [[AnyoneCanDie go insane and]] ''[[AnyoneCanDie die]]'' and there's (usually) nothing you can do about it even if the game sometimes gives you options that tell them to chill out. In the absolute worst-case, some major party members go insane out of seeing their loved ones die and turn into terrifying monsters that you must put down, and the BranchAndBottleneckPlotStructure and MultipleEndings system is set up so callously that there's no saving anyone whenever it happens. And that's not even getting into [[GhostStory the supernatural twist]] the game pulls out near the end, with century-long grudges and (in the GoldenEnding) the ghosts of long-dead people being involved in the mix.

* In ''Kitty Kart 64'', the player controls a fuchsia-furred feline on a kart, in a game the emulates the aesthetic of ''Mario Kart 64''. Its first stage is an open roadway with pastel colours. However, as the player continues on, [[spoiler:thing begin to glitch out, black, human-shaped glitches appear to be seizuring in another stage; balloons pop up, which cause screams to sound and blood to spill; and finally the cute pink cat nearly reaches the finish line, when a gaunt dark figure appear and beats them to a pulp.]] A pastel-coloured "Congratulations" banner appear as the final scene of the game.

* ''VideoGame/OhDeer'' is a Hide-And-Seek game where you have to hunt the players acting like deers, with bright polygonal visuals and silliness like the deers having the ability to [[ToiletHumor eject themselves away via pooping]]. But once the hunter's {{sanity|Meter}} depletes fully, it transitions to a straight-laced horror game: the area suddenly goes dark, with the player deers standing on their hind legs to transform, revealing their true nature as wendigos, with [[TheHunterBecomesTheHunted the hunter being forced to flee to a cabin or die trying.]]

* ''VideoGame/{{Omori}}'', despite being billed as a horror game and having an eerie beginning, is largely innocuous with the horror elements confined largely to the background or specific sections of the game. [[spoiler: Headspace's nature as a severely troubled teenager's way of coping with the trauma of his sister's death becomes more and more prevalent until exploding fully into horror with [[TheVeryDefinitelyFinalDungeon Black Space]], a [[SurrealHorror surreal]] nightmare scape representing the AwfulTruth of Sunny's repressed trauma.]]