History NightmareFuel / ClockTower

[[quoteright:348:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/scut.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:348: [[ShearMenace C'mere lil' pest, time for the snip snip.]]]]

[[caption-width-right:348: [[ShearMenace C'mere lil pest, time for the snip snip]].]]

----
* You thought Scissorman was scary? Believe me, you will shit bricks by the dozen when you finally meet the titular AxCrazy psycho of ''Clock Tower'': Ghost Head. Imagine this: You're all alone in a room, trying to find a piece of a puzzle or your amulet that will let you [[SplitPersonality switch personalities]], and all of a sudden an ImplacableMan in a bloody lab coat and Hannya mask dragging around a giant machete barges in. Cue chase sequence! It's a lot more startling than it sounds, especially since you have no idea when it'll happen; at least with the other stalkers you usually get a MusicalSpoiler before having to deal with them. Then there's the scraping...
* And let's not forget the way the environment tries to kill you. You can walk into a room and suddenly have the floor fall out from under you, or have a porcelain doll rise from the floor and dash at you, or have a disembodied hand jump out through the mirror and strangle you. Not to mention the killer wolf laying somewhere outside waiting to pounce and mangle you the first chance it may get.
* The second game has numerous death scenes for some of the characters once you reach [[SpellMyNameWithAnS Barrows/Burroughs]] castle. One character, Beth, is found dismembered inside a wine barrel on Jennifer's route, and is yanked through the floor on Helen's route. Another character, Tim, is found stuffed inside the chimney on Jennifer's route, and has a death remarkably similar to Beth's on Helen's route. You can also find Harris's head in a pot in Helen's game, find Barton hung from a tree on Jennifer's route, and find Gotts trapped inside a torture gear in Jennifer's game. There's also the suggestion that if you fail to release Nolan from the coffin in Helen's route, or Helen from the box in Jennifer's route, they were left inside and suffocated in there.
* Also in the second game, any time you have Jennifer hide in a wardrobe. Usually it works. Usually. Scissorman stalks up to the wardrobe. ''SHING! SHING! SHING!'' You hold your breath. You, '''the player''', hold your breath for fear he'll hear you. He turns towards the exit. You slowly exhale. He immediately spins around and runs Jennifer through, making you [[ScreamsLikeALittleGirl scream like a four-year-old in a Stephen King movie]].

Spoilers abound below. Beware.

* ''Clock Tower'' on the SNES is absolutely disturbing. The constant fear of the Scissorman ambushing you eats at one's nerve. But worse, finding your friends dead in the worst of places, like trapped in a suit of armour. Then there's the demonic fetus baby, which is on a level all its own. Throw in that all but a couple of endings result in you being killed later on anyway, and you've got a twisted game.
* Due to the lack of ambience in much of the mansion, you'll be exploring most of it with only your echoing footsteps, leading to a severe dose of ParanoiaFuel.
* Quite a few of the rooms are unsettling to explore, for instance.
** The Mannequin Room. Featuring nothing but a rotting room with 20 or so mannequins that may or may not do something...
** The Child's Room, which features a doll that can kill you in one hit, complete with a creepy music with footsteps in the background.
** The Cage room, which has a strange noise-like ambiance in the background with vivisected crows on the table.
* The SNES game even uses an effective JumpScare. When you jump on a shelf and kick down the ladder, Scissorman walks away since he can't get up there. However, what happens ''next'' is he suddenly jumps ''through the ceiling'' and then goes after Jennifer on the shelf. The reason this one is scary is because it outright ''tricks'' you. While you knew Scissorman could be anywhere, he never ambushes you by jumping ''through'' the ceiling during gameplay.
* To elaborate on the bad endings in the SNES version:
** You run into an elevator in order to escape from the caves. It stops mid-transit, you hear Bobby's laughter, and he then drops down into the very small, very enclosed space with Jennifer, scissors at the ready. Blackout and credits.
** You run into the same elevator, and the doors close just as you find out that Bobby is already in there. Cue Jennifer screaming, that horrible sound of Bobby's scissors snapping, and a huge pool of Jennifer's blood oozing out under the door.
** It seems like Jennifer has survived the nightmare. However, the very end of the text epilogue reveals that she was mysteriously found dead in her bed very soon afterward.
** You get in a car and escape, leaving your friends to their fate. However, as Jennifer is driving, she glances up in the rear view mirror and notices [[DangerTakesABackseat two giant scissor blades rising from the backseat...]]
** After eliminating Dan, Jennifer finds Mary and, [[spoiler:oblivious to Mary's true nature,]] runs up to hug her out of relief. Cue [[spoiler:Jennifer getting stabbed in the chest and pitifully asking "Why?" before collapsing.]]
* So many of the friend deaths in the first game. The pool drowning, shower, and throwing from the [[TitleDrop clock tower]] take the cake. [[ItWasHisSled Lotte's death]] is either the also-creepy sacrifice, or the SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome that is saving Jennifer's life, which unfortunately isn't canon. And according to WordOfGod, Laura's death was due to her running to the phone to call 911. Somebody was waiting there.
** Laura's deaths can hit one notch higher than the others depending on who you ask. According to the comic, her shower death was she was tied up on the shower head, already stabbed in the chest and/or stomach and bleeding out. Of course it differs from the game where she ''is'' hanging on the shower head, but has no signs of blood anywhere on her. Many fans speculated what caused her to die, including [[http://dcj.bluemoonsea.com/articles/myinterpretationsofrollasdeaths.html this one]], and when you think about it, [[FridgeHorror it's not too hard to imagine Laura may have been burned to death by scalding hot water and looking at her face will give you nightmares beyond nightmares]]. It also covers her other death in the armor, which is very much plausible as it is [[FridgeHorror very easy to imagine her stuffed in there, slowly suffocated and crushed to death]].
* The trophy room in the first game. Not just the room itself, with the bizarre sounds coming from the walls. You also find a human heart in a jar, which is still beating. And do you want to know who that belongs to? The mummified corpse that you find in the locker in the same room. Which, in some versions of the game, opens its horrible looking eyes, gets up, and tries to kill you.

* Dan is creepier when you realize that, according to the second game and WordOfGod, he's somewhat of a well-meaning, but still evil being. And the "fetus" form he took in the first game? Just a shell made of the corpses of the previous victims.
* The body you can find in the sealed room. It's actually the body of Jennifer's father, a doctor who was called to help with the boys' birth, only to get his right hand eaten. He was then sealed off in a room to die from suffocation because [[HeKnowsTooMuch he knew too much]].

* According to an interview with the original creator (posted on the Remothered fanpage on 1/4/2010), the Scissormen were originally from some sort of Hell "that cannot be perceived by the limited human cognitive system". The Scissormen are officially [[EldritchAbomination Eldritch Abominations]].
* At first, Mary seems like a sweet and maternal lady. That is, until you discover that she gave birth to Bobby and Dan. In one of the endings, you can find Mary upon returning to a room you've already been in. And she's just...standing there, with her hands pleasantly clasped behind her back. Then, all of a sudden, she pulls out a knife and starts walking very slowly toward Jennifer. It's easy enough to escape from, but...
* The soundtrack helps add to the creep factor, such as the two Scissorman [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CylxDpJaoU chase]] [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSMKSrnJtIo themes]]. When either of these kicked in after the relative silence and lack of music in the game, you knew you were in some deep shit and had better find a hiding place as soon as possible. The second one was used more as a jump-out-at-out type of scare, but the first one is arguably more frightening because it's the one that just starts up randomly after you've simply walked around for a while without encountering him, so you don't know exactly where he might be. And for that matter, the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WxrXvDdKuw chase theme]] from the original game for the Super Famicom (released only in Japan, but there is a fan translation available) is just as scary.
* The shower scene in the first game, which may be the first scary scene you encounter. It's the one that shows Laura tied up to the shower head, which is disturbing in and of itself, but then the Scissorman bursts out of the bathtub with his scissors opened wide. This scene is in first person, played to a horrifying musical sting, and has Jennifer's portrait zooming in on her eye to express her own shock at Scissorman's appearance.
* Of course, the sound that announces the Scissorman's arrival: '''''Shing, shing. Shing, shing.'''''
* In the SNES game, some of the cutscenes are shot in a photorealistic style. It gives the certain parts of the game an UncannyValley feel, especially the shower scene mentioned above...
----

** And finally, the padded cell, which mysteriously features a dead body and has no entrance.