History NightmareFuel / AnimalCrossing

** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-F3PyZTpJb0 K.K. Lullaby]] is a soft, comfortable sounding lullaby song. The creepy part is the [[LastNoteNightmare last few seconds of the song.]] [[BackMasking It does a creepy backmask effect,]] identically to, of all things, ''Isloation'' by Music/JoyDivision.

* Mr. Resetti's rants can easily make younger players cry of fear similar how abusive parents yell and scold to children in real life.

* Speaking of the movie, There's one scene in particular where Ai and her friends go along with Yu and Alfonso into a deep cave, While going down a rapid waterfall is already seemingly a near-death experience, It gets worse: They find a skeleton of the seisomosaurus, A dinosaur Blathers dreamed of finding. Yu tries to fruitlessly climb up on, Only to fall and hurt himself as a piece of rock that he was grasping onto gives out. The whole cave starts to come down. While everyone makes it out just in time, Yu is naive enough to try to go back in. Ai holds him back just as the tunnel becomes completely blocked with a boulder. If it weren't for everyone else, that little boy would have been outright killed.

* Mr. Resetti's rants can easily make younger players (especially female players) cry of fear similar how abusive parents yell and scold to children in real life.

** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-F3PyZTpJb0 K.K. Lullaby]] is a soft, comfortable sounding lullaby song. The creepy part is the [[LastNoteNightmare last few seconds of the song.]] [[BackMasking It does a creepy backmask effect,]] identically to, of all things, [[Music/JoyDivision "Isolation"]].

* Crazy Redd's ship in ''New Horizons.'' From the start, Redd is an incredibly shifty character who clearly isn't doing business by legal or ethical means - but the first time you encounter him, he's wandering around your island like everybody else. Explore a little before you talk to him, though, and you'll find a shabby, run-down old fishing vessel docked in the upper left corner of your island. The appearance is already reminiscent of haunted ships and the typical zombie apocalypse aesthetic, but try to interact with the ship and you'll get a message from your character stating that [[NothingIsScarier they have an uneasy feeling about the ship, and think that it's best if they don't board without permission.]] Being able to board after Redd invites you into the boat isn't much better, as the eerie music and dark lighting combine with the cluttered, damp room below deck to create a sense that this is not a safe place for you to be. You have to use a flashlight to see the details of any art you're interested in buying; Redd stands in the center of the floor commenting on everything you interact with, and when you decide to buy something his dialogue might make you wonder if he didn't just take more of your Bells than you agreed to pay. For a final creep factor, ''neither'' of Redd's lines when you leave the boat are very comforting. If you bought something, he'll say, "You won't regret it!" If you did ''not'' buy anything, he'll only look at you and mutter, "...Thanks." In both cases, the camera stops and swings around at an angle, with Redd and his unfriendly-seeming face dead center of the shot...

* The original Nintendo 64 Animal Crossing includes a quest to deliver an axe to a villager early in the game. When it's a grumpy-personality [[BearsAreBadNews bear]] or something, and you're really young and used to playing games where dangerous things actually happen to the player character, especially if you're playing at night... it feels spookily like the villager might go all [[AnAxeToGrind axe-happy]] on you with his new axe. Of course, what actually happens is even if it's a grouchy villager, they're grateful and nice and you probably get the nicest interaction you've had with them since you started.

** Harvey's Island can be a [[EldritchLocation surprisingly creepy place to visit]]. While it's just a photo studio in context, from a gameplay perspective, you're essentially kidnapping/duplicating your villagers and force them to take pictures with you. It goes further, as the villagers are [[UncannyValley utterly lifeless]], only repeating the interaction you gave them and when you go into another room, ''they follow you'', '''without even moving'''! It feels like something straight out of ''Film/TheStepfordWives'' or ''Film/{{Us}}''.

%%Previous thread did not produce a new image: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=1580516887077038300

[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/animal_crossing_nightmare.png]]
[[caption-width-right:350:[[EyelessFace Next time remember to save.]]]]

Welcome to the wonderful world of ''VideoGame/AnimalCrossing'', where everything TastesLikeDiabetes... [[NightmareFuel or not]]. Despite being one of Creator/{{Nintendo}}'s [[LighterAndSofter lightest and softest]] yet, [[AccidentalNightmareFuel players can still find reasons to be spooked by this seemingly harmless little series]].

* [[SpidersAreScary The tarantula]] in ''Wild World'' onwards. Thankfully rare, if it sees you approaching while carrying a bug net, it [[BerserkButton flips out]] and attacks you. The horrifying part of this is that your character PASSES OUT and the screen fades to black. Luckily, you end up in front of your house, no worse for the wear, but it's still a horrifying event in a game where the seemingly worst fate for your character is [[ScaryStingingSwarm being stung by bees]]. The [[ScaryScorpions scorpion]] does the same. And in ''New Horizons''? They appear not in the summer, but from November to April! In addition, in ''New Horizons'', if you run, the tarantula goes after your sorry behind. And if you wish to catch it in that game, it's an exercise in nerve-wracking patience as approaching it while its legs are up will provoke it to strike, turning it into “red light, green light”. And that’s not helping that May is now the month the scorpion starts to appear, lasting until October.

** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-F3PyZTpJb0 K.K. Lullaby]] is a soft, comfortable sounding lullaby song. The creepy part is the [[LastNoteNightmare last few seconds of the song.]] [[BackMasking It does a creepy backmask effect,]] identically to, of all things, [[Music/JoyDivision "Isolation"]]. Some have argued it's simply the tape rewinding, except there's the fact [[FridgeHorror that your music usually isn't played on tapes]]. Another theory is that K.K. deliberately made the song that way to emulate said tape rewinding.

* If you were unlucky enough to not save when you're away travelling on the train, the villager at the startup screen will realize that something is wrong, and warns you that if you play right now, it will be only "the data you left behind". Should you not heed their warning and continue, you'll find that you've lost your money, your items, and [[NightmareFace your face]]. Yep, imagine the horror of stepping out of your house, turning around to the camera and having an empty, gaping face. Empty eye sockets, open, expressionless mouth, warty skin, and a disturbing resemblance to a [[Franchise/TheLegendofZelda ReDead]]. You'll most likely also notice how much this resembles a gyroid, and knowing their history adds another layer of FridgeHorror to it; gyroids are [[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haniwa haniwa]], [[SoulJar clay vessels for deceased spirits]], suggesting that by "the data you left behind", the villager meant [[GhostInTheMachine your disembodied soul in a fake body]]; your real body is still in the other town. Technically speaking, this is, in theory, a failsafe, added to prevent {{Game Breaking Bug}}s. Namely, to prevent your face from looking like an EldritchAbomination, having your inventory filled up with massive glitches, and having negative bells. In hindsight, they probably could've done that better.

* In the original game, the music that plays at [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrEss6dcsc8 11:00 p.m.]] as well as the music that plays at [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odZ-OV8JWNk&index=24 midnight]] can sound really spooky for such a lighthearted game like Animal Crossing. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zriYPJvR45s 1 AM]] is fairly minimalist, but still similarly unsettling.
** The music at [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdrjrVPAMvQ 2:00 a.m.]] also made many players jump because of how out-of-place it sounds compared to not only the rest of the late night music, but also the rest of the hourly music in the game. In contrast, the next two installments' equivalent only has this sort of tone in its ''Super Smash Bros.'' remix.
* [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yL2diojhue8 4 AM]] in ''New Leaf''. While the music is unsettling enough on its own, an industrious Japanese player created an entire village meant to be visited in dream mode that is {{Creepypasta}} incarnate, and it is always 4 AM when visited. (Since Nintendo is a Japanese company, this one [[FourIsDeath was probably intentional]], in contrast to a lot of other music-related examples.)
** The [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmtKHo7GB64 7 PM]] music somewhat falls under this category. It sticks out from the rest of the music played during the general time like a sore thumb. It has almost a creepy sense of urgency to it, almost as if sorrow is plaguing your character.
** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_00O4KWBxY 12 AM]]. Unlike the 4 AM theme, which is creepy because it's essentially NothingIsScarier in musical form, the instrumentation has some unsettling knocking in it ''and'' made many players jump at the beginning. It sounds very out of place between the songs that play at 11 PM and 1 AM, which are more sad-sounding like ''Wild World'' and ''City Folk''[='=]s 11 PM-2 AM music.
** The [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQLvrhUXwtE 5 AM]]. After the unsettling 4 AM music, you're treated to what sounds like a deranged arrangement of the beautiful 8 PM music. Unless you have either the Early-Bird or Night-Owl ordinance, no one else is up. The music sounds distorted and has occasional pauses, with a tribal-sounding drum beat, comparable to the 12 AM theme's woodblock sounds, giving the feel of oncoming insanity.
* In the [[UsefulNotes/NintendoGameCube GameCube]] version, if you were unlucky enough to not save when you're away travelling on the train, the villager at the startup screen will realize that something is wrong, and warns you that if you play right now, it will be only "the data you left behind". Should you not heed their warning and continue, you'll find that you've lost your money, your items, and [[NightmareFace your face]]. Yep, imagine the horror of stepping out of your house, turning around to the camera and having an empty, gaping face. Empty eye sockets, open, expressionless mouth, warty skin, and a disturbing resemblance to a [[Franchise/TheLegendofZelda ReDead]]. You'll most likely also notice how much this resembles a gyroid, and knowing their history adds another layer of FridgeHorror to it; gyroids are [[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haniwa haniwa]], [[SoulJar clay vessels for deceased spirits]], suggesting that by "the data you left behind", the villager meant [[GhostInTheMachine your disembodied soul in a fake body]]; your real body is still in the other town. Technically speaking, this is, in theory, a failsafe, added to prevent {{Game Breaking Bug}}s. Namely, to prevent your face from looking like an EldritchAbomination, having your inventory filled up with massive glitches, and having negative bells. In hindsight, they probably could've done that better.

* ''New Leaf'' also gives us the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBehEwDHt74 3:33 AM alien message]], only available on Sunday and Monday.
* The original Animal Crossing started up with a voice saying "Nintendo" that differs depending on how many times you've loaded the title screen without powering down, with the cycle repeating. Eventually, it will start up with a deep voice saying "Nintendo" not unlike the one in Luigi's Mansion, and then while it usually shows a random character walking around, this time it shows a villager carrying an axe randomly chopping down trees. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3a00_TP9wk Here's an example of this.]]

** ''New Horizons''' new 2.0 update brings back Gyroids, for better or for worse. On one hand, they feel more alive and animated, but the key word is ''alive'', because the method for obtaining them is far creepier than before. You obtain them by locating gyroid fragments, burying them in the ground, and then watering them, to which the crack in the ground housing them will start to emit vapor, almost like a breath... These aren't just animate pottery, but they're animated pottery that can be ''regrown in the earth''.

*** The creepiest part about the Gyroids is their ''inspiration.'' The Gyroids are based off of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haniwa Haniwa]], cylindrical humanoid ceramic figures that were buried in tombs during Japan's Kofun Period (400-600BCE) to act as funerary offerings, retaining structures and protection against evil spirits. While their exact origins are a mystery, legend has it that Emperor Suinin ordered them to be created as a replacement for ''voluntary live burial.''

* Not even Happy Home Designer is safe from people making creepy homes. One in particular is for Apollo the eagle (who is portrayed in the anime movie as [[SugarAndIcePersonality stoic yet inviting]]) which begins showcasing a miniature city off to the side in bright daylight. Go inside the house, however, and the room is dark, eerie noises play, and an LED billboard with some ominous red Japanese text hangs over the dimly lit city. Go into the room in the back, and there's a blocked off area with skeletons, a picture of Julian (a unicorn villager), and the infamous K.K. Dirge. The code is 0008-7765-454.
* Speaking of the movie, There's one scene in particular where Ai and her friends go along with Yu and Alfonso into a deep cave, While going down a rapid waterfall is already seemingly a near-death experience, It gets worse: They find a skeleton of the seisomosaurus, A dinosaur Blathers dreamed of finding. Yu tries to fruitlessly climb up on, Only to fall and hurt himself as a piece of rock that he was grasping onto gives out. The whole cave starts to come down. While everyone makes it out just in time, Yu is naive enough to try to go back in. Ai holds him back just as the tunnel becomes completely blocked with a boulder. If it weren't for everyone else, that little boy would have been outright killed.
* The original Nintendo 64 Animal Crossing includes a quest to deliver an axe to a villager early in the game. When it's a grumpy-personality [[BearsAreBadNews bear]] or something, and you're really young and used to playing games where dangerous things actually happen to the player character, especially if you're playing at night... it feels spookily like the villager might go all [[AnAxeToGrind axe-happy]] on you with his new axe. Of course, what actually happens is even if it's a grouchy villager, they're grateful and nice and you probably get the nicest interaction you've had with them since you started.

* Many players have found Rover's reaction when you delete your town in City Folk disturbing. Rover is [[BigWhat shocked]] and freaks out when he first learns you want to delete your town, and panickedly explains all of the consequences of deleting your town, such as losing your bells, house, and villagers. But he smiles while erasing your town, and after he's finished wiping your town out of existence, [[DissonantSerenity he cheerfully says,]]"It's gone. Bye-bye!" Many have described his behaviour as "psychopathic". The black void behind him makes it even creepier.
* In New Leaf, when turning the basement light on, it flickers a bit before dimming and then fully turning on. It’s just a bit creepy considering what flickering lights can mean to some.
* Upon catching a sea butterfly in New Horizons, it wiggles around like all other fish. But hold it for long enough and its head will twitch and burst open, revealing multiple tentacles. This is typical hunting behavior of the creature, but it’s unnerving and alarming when you see it for the first time - it's almost reminiscent of something out of the Franchise/{{Alien}} franchise.
* In the Japanese versions of the original game exists a shirt called the [[https://nookipedia.com/wiki/Item:Tomato_Juice_Shirt_(Doubutsu_no_Mori%2B) "Tomato Juice Shirt"]]. While the shirt's design is supposed to be [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin self-explanatory]], the supposed "tomato juice" ends up looking like [[WhiteShirtOfDeath something else]]. It doesn't help that this is the default shirt of the rather {{Gonk}}-ish looking Tabby, [[https://dodo.ac/np/images/7/74/Tabby_PG_Japan.png thus unintentionally making her come off as an]] UncannyValleyGirl.

* King Tut's mask. Where to start? You can buy it from the Able Sisters, and then you can put it on. Normally, headgear does nothing but change your looks. But you don't hear the normal sound used for equipping an accessory. Instead, you hear a deeper, distorted version of the same sound, which is your first clue to the item’s true nature. Then you start running around town, and discover you begin to trip over. As long as you have the mask on, you're cursed. Now you start to wonder where the Able Sisters got this artifact of doom? In New Horizons, this item can instead be crafted. How does something you craft wind up with a pharaoh’s curse?!

** Speaking of them, the bees themselves aren't much better. When you shake the trees, sometimes a beehive falls. Your character gets an OhCrap expression and if you're not quick enough to either capture one of them without missing or run into either your or someone else's house, the bees will sting you mercilessly, causing some rather severe wounds on your face. Where, exactly? On your ''eyelid.'' OW. Not helped that in ''New Horizons'', they're renamed as '''WASPS''', due to the previous name being a somewhat inaccurate translation. ''New Horizons'' even encourages you to get up in the face of the little pests more often for collecting wood and using the wasp nests in DIY recipes. You even need to get ''intentionally stung'' to receive a DIY recipe for medicine from one of your neighbors in ''New Horizons''.
** To make matters scarier in ''New Horizons'', if you get stung again without taking medicine from the previous attack, ''you pass out''. The same way you do if the aforementioned Tarantula or Scorpion get you.
*** And, in a surprising and totally painful (literally) twist, you earn Nook Miles for either getting stung by wasps twice, and getting bitten by either by the tarantula or the scorpion for the '''FIRST TIME''. What a revoltingly bad way to get Nook Miles.
** According to this Animal Crossing Wiki article [[https://animalcrossing.fandom.com/wiki/Wasp here]], the wasps are based on the '''Japanese Giant Hornet'''. [[https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/animalcrossing/images/6/6d/Mandarinia2.jpg This]] image alone is Nightmare Fuel... when you '''think''' about how horrifying it is for your in-game character (or your real-life self) to be stung by them.
** To make things ''even worse'', one of the islands you can travel to in ''New Horizons'' is absolutely '''infested''' with tarantulas. And [[SoundtrackDissonance the same soothing island music plays]], so [[ParanoiaFuel you won't know you've stepped into arachnid hell until you step forward and suddenly find the place swarming with those creepy little assholes]]. If you know an exploit, you can even turn an otherwise normal island into a tarantula-ridden "paradise". At least they sell for a LOT of Bells.
** Whenever you catch a creature, all non-player activity freezes until you exit the dialogue. Which means if you catch a tarantula, wasp, or scorpion while another one of them is after you, you'll find yourself triumphantly celebrating your catch, with no way to break away from the critter that may as well be saying "YouAreAlreadyDead."

* The Atlas Moth. Unlike other bugs, which are happy to crawl around on the ground and on flowers or flutter about, this one just rests ominously on trees, waiting, looking incredibly eerie with how their stillness contrasts against the rapid activity of other bugs.

* [[GuiltBasedGaming Stop playing the game for long enough]] and the next time you enter your house, it will be infested by cockroaches, heralded by your character doing the [[ScareChord "Shocked" expression]].
%% * With the release of Dream Islands, with it comes the return of horror-themed island for players to visit. One such island is "Aika", which is famous for being a story-driven town in ''New Leaf''.

* Sometimes villagers will just stare off into the distance, their pupils constricted or face having the “surprised/shocked” expression. It’s a little off-putting if they don’t explain why or what made them react that way.

* Upon catching a sea butterfly in New Horizons, it wiggles around like all other fish. But hold it for long enough and its head will twitch and burst open, revealing multiple tentacles. This is typical hunting behavior of the creature, but it’s unnerving and alarming when you see for the first time - almost reminiscent of something out of the Franchise/{{Alien}} franchise.