History NightmareFuel / Arknights

* The very nature of Oripathy infection. To wit, it takes longer for the infected to suffer its various symptoms before getting crystallized to death, and the crystallized body then will infect everyone in the vicinity. Not only is it incurable with a 100% mortality rate, but the non-infected also treat the victims with fear and disdain instead of sympathy, and ostracize them in every way they can. Most infected are even punished for their status, either with flat-out cruelty like the Ursus empire or in secrets like Wei Yenwu​ does. And with Originium basically being the lifeblood of the world, it is extremely difficult ''not'' to come into contact with it and contract Oripathy.

** There aren't many cases in that you can actually ''see'' the physical effects of Oripathy due to most characters either being in the earlier stages of infection or wearing body-concealing clothing (or both), however, Lappland is in the advanced stages ''and'' wears clothes that show off her legs. This lets you clearly see the black, jagged crystal shards growing painfully out of her skin.

* Wei Yenwu raincoat squads executing any living infected in the slums. In an effort to purge Lungmen from the infected, Wei Yenwu used the chaos of the fighting that had rocked the city in order to silently dispose of any possible hint of rebellion, starting with the Infected. The scene of what happened is similar to what happens in the real-life Holocaust, as the raincoats silently eliminated each and every one before they even have a chance to run and even if they did, hunted down relentlessly before their bodies are dumped into the sewers by the dozens. For all of Wei's pretentious acts that he did in service of Lungmen, it was still nothing sort of nightmarish at how easy he is to order genocide.
* In Chapter 6, there's a dialogue that describes Kal'tsit's way of summoning the [=Mon3trs=], which is very creepy. The [=Mon3trs=] come out directly from her spine when she calls for them, [[MookHorrorShow and even Crownslayer is scared by that scene]].

* Patriot lost his true son, then he lost [=FrostNova=], the former by his own hands no less which inspires his rebellion. His true son had been the victim of a purge under the Ursus Government, a purge that is done under Patriot's own command. The sheer horror Patriot had to experience knowing he had willingly, albeit unknowingly murdered his own son must be frightening.

* It is implied the Reunion death squads or looters are still roaming the ghost city still as implied by Guard. Even despite Patriot's warning of imminent execution, death squads and looters are still under his radar; free to engage in barbaric actions that harm the remaining civilians still in the city such as Tatiana. The survivors had to live and hide in fear every day, hoping that they couldn't be found by the death squads like something out of a Dystopian movie.

* Mephisto's final fate during Chapter 8 is as equally as tragic as it is horrifying. In his attempt to eliminate his most recent memories regarding the demise of Faust, in desperation, he used the sarcophagus where the Doctor was put under before. What he got wasn't pretty. Instead of losing his memory, he instead transformed into some sort of....mutated Liberi several feet taller than a regular one, with Originium crystals jutting out of him. He can't even fly, nor even walk like a regular avian, he has instead been reduced to just pitifully crawling with his so-called wings.
* The result of Mephisto's transformation wasn't limited to just himself either. As soon as he walked...or rather, crawled out of the sarcophagus, he began passively spreading Originium particles around him that induces bizarre mutations to any living being they made contact with, starting with his Sarkaz escorts by turning them into aberrations that made the Enraged Possessed infected look tame in comparison. The sarcophagus hadn't just devolved Mephisto, it had accelerated his Oripathy to the point he became patient zero of a severe biohazard. It was so bad that Rhodes Island operators under Kal'tsit and the Doctor have to fight the horde using biohazard safety equipment. Be mindful that the mutation begins as soon as the particles made contact, not when Mephisto prompted it to happen with his Arts unlike before. Let that sink in, this happens naturally.
* Throughout the entire experience, it's implied Mephisto is slightly aware of what happened to him. Locked in a constant state of suffering like the very same Infected he used his powers on, all he can do was remember what had brought him here as he waited for his demise.

* Talulah's parasitic relationship with Kashchey. For the longest time, Talulah is imprisoned in her own body, unable to do anything. She was forced to watch as the the Reunion Movement she fought and bled so hard to build, is slowly ruined by the hands of her so-called adopted father. Her friends are dying one by one and she can't do anything about it.

* Continuing on that, what we know about the Flame Demon Incident. Rhine Lab is very powerful and seems to have its hands everywhere all over Columbia, and Kirsten Wright is all at the head of it. The same Kirsten Wright, who, by the way, has ForScience as a primary motif. And so, she together with a number of other people took or created a young girl, and artificially infected her body with Originium ForScience.

* The way in which the bank operating in Davistown systematically takes advantage of a government plan to gentrify the run-down mobile city plate is realistically terrifying. They use a combination of unfair insurance policies, and brutal loan plans with overwhelming interest rates, to grind down the already impoverished townsfolk, repossess their properties and large assets, then pressure them to sign up to be Pioneers in order to have their debts forgiven. Effectively, they are profitting from driving the poor out of town into the wild frontiers while being enriched by government kickbacks. Stubborn townspeople get harassed and even assaulted by the bank's legbreakers, hired to masquerade as bandits to put pressure on them to skip town.

** Those last two paradigms are particularly disturbing due to the fact that they have a miniscule chance of appearing and there is absolutely ''no'' indication that they even exist as their slots in the log do not even appear until you've seen the effects, meaning you are likely to be completely caught off guard should you see them unless you were spoiled beforehand. And their effects themselves are pure [[InterfaceScrew Interface Screws]], with the first one hiding ''all'' life bars and your Life Points, giving you no indication of how close your Operators and enemies are to dying nor how much life you have left, while the second covers all your deployed units' sprites with pitch black silhouettes to make it harder to distinguish who you even have on the field. While these effects statistically affect you far less than any of the other paradigms, the fact that they directly interfere with your interface gives the feeling of [[TheFourthWallWillNotProtectYou the game itself glitching out on you]] making them arguably more horrifying to run into.

* We get our first real glimpse into the Collapsals threatening Sami, and ''everything'' about them seems to completely defy conventional reasoning, with Typhon's unique Arts being pretty much the only thing that can even stave off their influence. Between Magallan having her senses distorted and hallucinating messages that turn out to be ''premonitions'', the contamination causing visible distortions in spacetime yet not being detectable on camera, and even resurrecting the dead as erratic zombies, it's not just conventional techniques that don't seem to work against the Collapsals, but common sense itself. The worst part is that outside of vague imagery, [[NothingIsScarier we never actually see what they actually are]], yet even a mere glimpse from Magallan or Gitano is nearly enough to drive both of them mad. It's only because Sami is arguably ''just as eldritch'' as the Collapsals that the Samifjod have been able to hold them off for so long.

* The "Black Mark" that Santalla has been hunting isn't just a normal rogue Ursus, it's a ''compromised Emperor's Blade'' that has fled their own kind and is spreading Collapse across the whole country. [[EveryoneHasStandards Even the notoriously brutal Ursus aren't willing to allow this slide]]...which is why Liebafowl, the spy that Santalla was also tracking, went behind their backs to try and prevent the info from getting back to Ursus, effectively betraying the safety of their own country [[FantasticRacism just to make the Sami suffer more]].

* One of the endings describes in horrific detail the BadFuture that Skadi the Corrupting Heart comes from. The Seaborn threat grows powerful enough to throw the entirety of Terra into utter chaos, to the point where not even the Grand Knights of Kazimierz and the Golden Knights of Leithania could do much to fight back. Remember the major demonic threat hidden within the Emperor's Blades? [[GodzillaThreshold The Blades were forced to unleash the demons within them]] to create a defensive line against the Seaborn. It would buy some time, but even '''''that eventually fails.''''' That's right, even the mighty '''Emperor's Blades''' with extremely powerful eldritch demons in their bodies ''still stood no chance'' against the utter unpredictability and adaptability of the Seaborn. It's only the Doctor's survival and her own duty that leads Kal'tsit to create one last bastion for what's left of humanity to evacuate to. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to Kal'tsit, Skadi, or rather ''Ishar-mla,'' focuses her gaze upon the Doctor, relentlessly sending out swarms of Seaborn just to rush to the Doctor's side, until everyone is dead and only she and the Doctor remain. And considering Skadi TCH's [[ForegoneConclusion final entry in her operator record...]]

*** Even worse, the patrols actually contemplated capturing her and torturing her for fun if not orders from Patriot to not harm any students.

* As hilarious as her antics are, Lappland is absolutely ''terrifying'' because of her insanity, violence, and unrestrained hatred for Siracusan society. She remains completely unpredictable, casually murdering her of famiglia's soldiers and committing mass property destruction, with the sole aims of bringing back the "old" Texas and tearing down her home country's famiglia system. She's so terrifyingly insane and unpredictable that [[WowingCthulhu Zaaro himself cannot break her or make her submit to her will, and submits to her instead.]]

[[caption-width-right:350:Jesus Christ, Mephisto!]]

* The flavor text for Ptilopsis's module reveals that she was the test subject of a brain implant experiment that proved that Originium contained vast amounts of information and that she required an additional chip implant to offset the brain damage she suffered from the entire process (heavily implied to be caused by the Originium ''speaking'' to her in an [[BrownNote incomprehensible language]]). This same experiment also wound up infecting her with Oripathy and is the whole reason she ended up attached to Rhodes Island for treatment at the request of Rhine Labs.