Line #79 NightmareFuel/Left4Dead


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5	[[caption-width-right:350:"This is some grim shit we’ve gotten ourselves into!"]]
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10	For a game where you have loads of firepower and three teammates backing you up, it can be really scary. Any of the following things become vastly scarier when your party is either low on health, or worse, you are the only party member still alive currently. It doesn't help that the levels are both cluttered and dark, making it hard to see threats. You will find yourself often taking more damage from wild fire from your panicked teammates than actual zombies.
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12	[[foldercontrol]]
13	[[folder:Both Games]]
14	* The basic zombie has two modes: listless, or sprinting in your direction snarling, meaning that you often don't see them coming until it's too late.
15	** That is still minor compared to when the malevolent AI director decides to throw a wave of several dozen which start sprinting towards your group from all directions, including the one you came from, with you hearing a chorus of distant snarling long before you actually see them.
16	** The Special Infected are the truly scary enemies though, and most are heard long before they are seen. They consist of:
17	*** The Hunter, an almost human-like zombie but with abnormal leaping distances and inhuman aggression should he be able to catch a survivor. What makes it worse? ''The Hunter has no eyes''. If you look underneath his hood, you can see two empty eyes sockets with dissolved skin around them. This means the Hunter tracks you by sound and scent alone, meaning '''you can't hide from him'''.
18	*** The Smoker, a horribly boil-covered emaciated man that can strangle you with a 50-foot-long tongue, or possibly even ''his intestines'';
19	*** The Boomer, a horribly bloated and boil-covered man (and sometimes woman in the sequel) whose attack obscures your vision with green vomit while triggering a wave of infected that will target you specifically;
20	*** The Witch, a crying woman with long claws that can knock you down in one hit and kill you in two more;
21	*** The Tank, an abnormally muscular man with equally massive muscles capable of painlessly soaking a dozen and more bullets as well as quickly knocking you down.
22	* Incapacitation: Take enough of a beating from the Infected and you are left almost helpless on the ground. Sure, you can still shoot your pistol (very slowly), but your health constantly ticks down as you bleed out. You are completely dependent on your teammates picking you back up, and if they take too long, you will die. Now remember that you're probably still being mobbed by the Infected, who will switch to stomping on your body, killing you even faster. This means your survivor is also screaming in pain the entire time. To top it off, [[InterfaceScrew your view constantly lists]] to one side as you begin to have trouble keeping your head up, and, with the last bit of your health bar, your vision will fade to black.
23	** Possibly the only thing worse than being incapacitated by yourself is being incapacitated together with a teammate, especially if they're being mobbed by Infected or if the rest of your team is [[LeftForDead trying to push to the saferoom without you]]. On top of your own InterfaceScrew, you have to lay there while you both bleed out, listening to your teammate yell for help while they die, knowing there is ''nothing you can do to save them''.
24	* Try having a Witch spawn in a place where it's COMPLETELY impossible to avoid her, like the subway car in No Mercy that you have to go through. (They hate the light, yet they're always sitting under a bright light... weird... ) Looking into the eyes of one of those things when she's looking your way is fear in physical form.
25	** One particularly unsettling thing with the walking Witches of Left 4 Dead 2 is that noises near them are less likely to startle them but will still ''attract them'', causing really horrible occasions for people where they back into a corner with a running chainsaw, watching the Witch slowly following the noise.
26	* [[FromBadToWorse It gets worse]] when the Tank appears. You're frantically spraying lead in his general direction and you inadvertently BACK INTO SOMETHING. ''While his attention is on you.''
27	** It is entirely possible to run from a horde, close the door on them, come face to face with a Tank so close he's within touching distance, THEN HAVE THE MUSIC START PLAYING.
28	* And if all of this isn't bad enough, you can look at the infected and realize that these are HUMANS. They're not undead, they're humans who got sick, are still humans (albeit animal-like) and you're executing THOUSANDS of them. Not only that, but it makes you wonder whether you'll wind up immune, should this ever occur in reality... because it's that, an unceremonial corpse on the street, or you got lucky. But you don't have too high a chance of getting lucky, looking at those hordes.
29	** [[FridgeHorror The thought of]] ''[[FridgeHorror any]]'' [[FridgeHorror of the special infected]] [[AndIMustScream knowing what they were going through]] is terrifying. The Boomer finds themselves gaining weight and expanding uncontrollably, the Hunter's fingernails grow into claws and their skin is covered in boils, the Spitter can't stop vomiting as her mouth dissolves, the Smoker starts exhibiting all those growths and breathes out smoke, the Charger's left arm atrophies without reason as their right grows like cancer, the Tank's muscles expand out of control and they slowly lose their ability to speak, the Witch's hands extend into claws and she loses control over her emotions... those were all regular, everyday people like us, who may well have been aware of their transformations and in terrible pain, and unless there's a cure out there, killing them is all the survivors can do. Death is the only mercy they can get from that...
30	* The horror shifts to a more personal level in Versus, in which you actually play the things which blight your existence in Campaign Mode. Viewed in [[DeliberatelyMonochrome sepia]], you await the Survivors to spring whatever trap you've laid for them. In the meantime you can consider the fact that whoever you were was just slightly less lucky than the people you are now hunting, and listen to the sounds of whatever you have become. And look at your hands. Probably the worst for this is the Jockey, who has completely normal hands... except they shake, endlessly.
31	* A savvy player can predict where Special Infected are likely to spawn and know when one will strike well before it does thanks to the music clues. However, one big-time Infected does ''not'' have a musical cue when spawning: the Tank. Sometimes, you can tell a head of time if there's one nearby, but only because you can hear their comparatively quiet huffing and growling. Opening a door and finding a Tank there is bad enough, but standing in front of a closed door and hearing his panting clear as day is [[PunctuatedForEmphasis so. Much. Worse.]] Even worse when the breathing noise doesn't even show up in the subtitles. You hear the breathing, but since the subtitles don't say anything, it may be just paranoia. You walk on, hear it again... now you're almost pissing yourself every time you walk around a corner, but again, no Tank, no music, no subtitles, but you hear the freaking noise. Eventually, you decide that it was just paranoia and move on, and wham, there it is, right in front of you.
32	* Let's not forget about the campaigns themselves.
33	** No Mercy: The AbandonedHospital in the last two stages is rather chilling. You'll see that the entire staff failed both at finding a cure for the infection and evacuating the hapless citizens, and as such became infected themselves.
34	*** A rather chilling case of realism is at work here. Hospitals are the places sick people often congregate in, so an infection like this will spread like a wildfire among those with already weakened immune systems. CEDA should have thought twice before choosing this building as an evac site.
35	** Crash Course: A [=DLC=] campaign. The fact that the person piloting the helicopter became infected is already horrifying, but the fact that you crashed in the middle of nowhere is much, much scarier
36	** Death Toll: This campaign features the infamous "Church Guy". A survivor who was bitten by an infected and [[ParanoiaFuel has gone mad]]. Hearing him repeatedly say [[MadnessMantra "Better safe than sorry"]] like a deranged psycho is horrifying. He even scribbled those words on the wall more than a hundred times. [[AndThenJohnWasAZombie Three guesses at what happens when you get inside the safehouse he's been hiding in]].
37	** Dead Air: So, you're heading to the airport for evacuation, easy, right? It isn't. From the bombed airport, the incredibly difficult crescendo event near the end inside the said airport (assuming you're playing the VideoGame/Left4Dead2 version.) to witnessing a plane crash barely missing you, this campaign has lots of things to worry about.
38	** Blood Harvest: What's worse than going through the woods at night? Going through the woods with zombies at night. The dead cows near the farmhouse are also rather scary, as well as the cornfields at the farm [[InterfaceScrew where your sight will be heavily diminished]].
39	** The Sacrifice: This is it. You've made it past a hospital full of infected patients, crashing your helicopter, met an infected psycho, went through a bombed airport and got through the zombie-filled woods, surely this will not be difficult. It won't be. The wrecked boats near the starting point are bad, but the end has you [[HeroicSacrifice sacrifice one of your teammates]] to restart the generator. What's worse, the sacrifice is considered canon, as shown by Bill's dead corpse in The Passing.
40	* Until around 2004 there were in the entire recorded history of the Rabies virus (which the infection is a strain of) exactly TWO survivors, one of which was a Greek man several thousand years ago. Now thanks to modern medical science (and a quick google search) the number has increased to a whopping SIX with there being no verification for all but one of the latest batch of survivors actually having the virus in the first place. Worse? Rabies can take up to 2 years before it progresses to the first stage despite it normally taking 2~12 weeks? To top all of it off, the symptoms listed for rabies include anxiety, insomnia, confusion, agitation, abnormal behavior, paranoia, terror, hallucinations, progressing to delirium, etc. In other words, the infected are probably fully aware of what's going on with the virus actively amping their emotional state up to eleven which (judging from the descriptions of the Special Infected) correlates to the behavior. Witch is Anxiety and possibly terror. Hunter is paranoia so it's trying to get you first possibly because it thinks YOU are the infected one. Tanks are obviously aggression. Jockeys are hallucinations and general delirium. So on and so forth with the rest being a mixture.
41	* The virus in ''Left 4 Dead'' is a mutated strain of rabies. As in, it can affect animals too. We've seen what it can do to humans now think about what the animals would look like.
42	** Blood Harvest, Dark Carnival and Swamp Fever have cow corpses in them. Whatever the infection does to non-humans, it isn't pretty - [[{{Squick}} their skulls are completely]] [[{{BodyHorror}} devoid of flesh.]]
43	*** That's because the only way to check for the presence of the rabies virus is to take samples of brain tissue and examine them under a microscope. The standard procedure is to euthanize the animal and peel the scalp off for easy access to the skull.
44	** [[FridgeHorror Which leads to another disturbing implication:]] what if this entire situation started out as a standard test with a new form of the rabies virus on animals?
45	* It is especially terrifying if the music on your game is glitching up when a Tank is spawned.
46	* For the comic, that yacht FULL of Witches who appeared to be in a sort of Girls Gone Wild deal. Some of them are even ''[[{{FanDisservice}} naked]]!'' Others are covered in the [[{{Squick}} blood of the cameraman]], who is currently lying dead with [[{{BodyHorror}} his torso carved open]].
47	** Also from the comic, we get to see ThroughTheEyesOfMadness of a person going rapidly through infection. He ends up seeing the first game's crew as demons and monsters, and is driven by compulsion to "defend himself" as an innocuous joke by Francis causes him to blame Bill for his pain. To some degree, the infected are ''still cognizant'', but completely unaware of their current fate until they either deteriorate and die or mutate into Specials, and the infection drives them to murder anyone that isn't truly infected like they are with extreme prejudice.
48	* The [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3pDahm4W7E first trailer]] for the ''Left 4 Dead'' beta, in a harsh contrast to the newer, action-packed trailers with brighter and cheerier characters, has the four survivors get overwhelmed in a quick and brutal fashion from a single horde summoned by a loud, shrill scream (of a cut Special Infected known as The Screamer). The dreadful atmosphere throughout those fourty seconds doesn't help.
49	* To celebrate two years since the release of the first game, and one year since the second, Valve posted some of its concept art for the new Special Infected. The [[http://www.l4d.com/concept_art/charger_art.html Charger]]'s art isn't all that bad, but the art for the [[http://www.l4d.com/concept_art/jockey_art.html Jockey]] and the [[http://www.l4d.com/concept_art/spitter_art.html Spitter]] are absolutely horrifying.
50	** [[https://cdn.80.lv/api/upload/content/dd/6348d609ef24c.jpeg Another piece of early concept art]] shows that, at one point, the development team once considered a possibility of infected animals such as zombie pigs and hogs, possibly to accompany the scrapped zombie dogs whose sounds were reused for the Hunter; the Ratman, whose ''body erupts and spews out a herd of rats'' (before it was presumably replaced with the Spitter) and the Meatwall, the twenty-four feet tall infected that would grab the Common Infected to fling them at you.
51	* You might not ordinarily expect the developer commentary to be that scary, but one of the sequel's nodes is particularly nasty - the art department had a folder full of photos of various real-world skin conditions caused by diseases to use as a reference for how to design the Infected mutations. You know, the Infected whose appearances have already spawned several entries on this page. They ended up not using any of the photo material because it was ''too unpleasant to look at''. Just look at a screenshot of one of the Infected and imagine catching a real disease that looks ''worse''.
52	** Made a bit less horrifying when the commentary node states the "secret ingredients" used to make the infected skin textures were instead photos of housing insulation and potato skins.
53	* The Witch's [[{{Leitmotif}} musical cue]] in the first game. For the curious, it's this constant creepy female chorus ululating a "Do do do do DO DO DO do do do" noise and it is MUCH creepier than it looks on here.
54	* What happened to the possibly hundreds of children that [[{{FridgeHorror}} were across the country at the time]]?
55	* The Finale is plenty hard enough to worry about. After all, fighting off waves of zombies until rescue arrives could rattle anyone's nerves. But how about when rescue '''does''' arrive? Your indication is a sharp change in music, a warning on the screen that basically says "Rescue has arrived! Run like hell!" (which most, if not all, players do) and a nice, fresh wave of zombies trying to keep you from getting away. In that short time, the AI seems to go all out to prevent you from escaping, sending a crapload of Specials after you. The whole thing can make your adrenaline shoot through the roof, make you heave a huge relieved sigh when you make it, or give you a nice bitter feeling if you fail to make it.
56	* Two of the options for your menu theme are absolutely blood-curdling: You could either go for [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gshBY5ZzWpw the campy, yet creepy theme]] based on the Dark Carnival campaign or the fucking terrifying fiddle theme based on [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEBLvUlphxk the Swamp Fever campaign.]] Regardless of what you choose, good luck sleeping tonight.
57	** Let's not forget [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_7C8oN2klY Hard Rain's]] theme, which uses a creepy, almost unnatural banjo along with a very faint kick beat. Truly, this is what you'd probably hear in literal hillbilly hell.
58	** The Dark Carnival menu theme has a JumpScare too, the one that is [[FreezeFrameBonus hard to spot at first]]. If you look at the left ticket toll, sometimes a zombie with [[GlowingEyelightsOfUndeath yellow glowing eyes]] will show up in a distance before leaning back out of the view. Quite a nasty surprise for many players, especially since no other Infected, Special or not, has their eyes glow such color and so ''brightly''.
59	* The 'Last Man on Earth' mutation is probably the scariest this game gets. The player is absolutely alone and only Special Infected spawn. This means that there can be long gaps of the player just wandering about completely alone until a Special Infected feels like showing its ugly face. And even then they like to stay hidden meaning that you'll only have the gurgles and music queuing you into the presence of a Special Infected. This can actually set up some genuinely startling jump scares and atmospheric tension more in line with classic Resident Evil than Left 4 Dead. Oh, and on top of that the PC will constantly call out in desperate search of non-infected life.
60	* From The Sacrifice: All the dead bodies that are being bulldozed into a burning pit.
61	--> '''Zoey:''' "And if we pass the test?"
62	* In Dark Carnival, when powering up a Merry-Go-Round (and alerting a horde of zombies) to get through to the other side of the carousel, the song that starts playing is creepy carnival music that's very slow-paced and ominous-sounding. Makes you question how well it did back when the carnival was still actually in operation.
63	* The Sacrifice Comic has some pretty terrifying sequences. The flashbacks show that moments before surgery, Bill's doctors are attacked right before an operation, and he has to find his way out of the hospital while under the influence of very powerful anesthesia. Louis is stalked in the toilets by a zombie which delivers a terrifying jumpscare. Zoey has a family argument interrupted by an infected suddenly killing her mother and she is forced to watch her shriek in pain and attack her father. Francis is making out with someone who turns into a zombie while kissing and makes a terrifying face.
64	** The sequences at Millhaven are pretty terrifying. Soldiers witness the infected for the first time and are rapidly overrun, with their defensive positions being silenced one by one on the radio. With the last survivors becoming more and more panicked until Bill opts to leave the soldiers to their fate just to get his own group away.
65	*** When they actually make it to the final town. Louis finds a yacht filled with bikini-laden witches which glare at him in terror, not to mention that they mauled the camera guy.
66	* The backstory of some of the locations in each campaign is pretty disturbing:
67	** No Mercy: A city which the police and CEDA tried to quarantine sections of and evacuate, only for it to end in a disaster. There are signs all over of terror, from an underground subway and sewer systems filled with dead bodies, implying that people tried to either flee or hide underground from the hell above. Many crashed vehicles suggesting people were in such a rush to get out that they didn't pay attention.
68	** Crash Course: There is a bridge that is absolutely gridlocked with traffic, imagine waiting in your car for traffic to pass, with the anxiety of the infected approaching before you are attacked and killed in seconds. There is also an empty, bent shipping container that contains a sleeping bag with a mauled body in it. Suggesting someone thought they were safe and good take shelter. In the same container yard, there is a body torn in two, with no sign of the lower half.
69	** Death Toll: Imagine living in the small town of Riverside, hearing strange reports on the news about violence in the cities before the Military shows up, barricades your entire town, inspects all citizens and issues martial law. However, it's futile in the end as by the time the infection shows up, the town falls in a few days.
70	** Dead Air: The numerous crashed planes outside of the airport are implied to have been shot down by the military. Imagine boarding a flight to get away from a world-ending infection only to die seconds after takeoff.
71	** Blood Harvest: The Military has pulled back, hiding in the forest far away from cities. But even then, it's still not far enough to survive the onslaught of infected, who eventually kill them all.
72	** The Sacrifice: Being the one to spring to the generator as three tanks throw cars and rubble at you, getting closer every second. And aside from that, on the very first level you will come across a derailed train containing a ''live Tank'' in one of the cars. And you ''have'' to open it to proceed forward.
73	*** Said Tank is dressed in a military uniform and has tattoos on its body. Makes you wonder what kind of experiment was the Military attending.
74	[[/folder]]
75
76	[[folder:Left 4 Dead 2]]
77	* The sequel introduces a few Special Infected more in addition to the ones that existed before:
78	** The Spitter, a woman with horribly burned off and open jaw that's able to somewhat spray corrosive goo at incredible distances.
79	** The Charger, a man with an abnormally large right hand and abnormally thin left hand. Like the Hunter, it has inhuman aggression too, but instead of abnormal leaping distance, the Charger instead charge with his right hand striking toward a group of survivors, stunning non-targets and catching the target to be pounded into submission.
80	** The Jockey, a skeletal hunched man with the posture of a monkey and the ability to painfully grab a survivor moving the victim around.
81	* The sequel takes place largely in broad daylight, which actually helps not at all; there is a sense that if the kind of terrible things that will happen to your team regularly can happen in the sun, then you really are beyond any help. These terrible things are not limited to the zombie menace; there is a much larger sense of a [[PowersThatBe genocidal authority]] wishing you'd take the hint from the airstrikes they regularly throw at you.
82	** Not fazed enough? Did we mention that the Witch now wanders around in some levels?
83	** The end of Hard Rain is a freaking MONSOON. So much so that the waist-high water actually slows you down on Campaign Mode, and the weather actually reduces your visibility, covers up everything with thunder and howling wind, and the output level of your voice chat. So you're wet, you're bogged down, nobody can hear you, you can't hear anybody else, you can't see more than a foot in any given direction, and oh yeah, there's infected itching to do you a serious unkindness. Isolation in VideoGame/Left4Dead-World is a Death Sentence.
84	*** To make it even worse, turn on realism mode. Now you don't even get the benefit of those outlines that tell you where your teammates are. If you get too far out of eyesight of your team you're as good as dead.
85	** Dead Center, Hard Rain, and Swamp Fever all have large sections in the daylight. The Parish is the only one that STAYS daylight through the entirety of the campaign.
86	* Also in the sequel, the classic Special Infected are now even more heavily mutated than before. The worst victim is the [[http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/left4dead/images/e/e3/L4d2_Smoker.png Smoker]], who now has ''six'' tongues, poking out from ''all over his body'' (although he still only uses one).
87	* All throughout the Parish, you find evidence that the military was killing PEOPLE. There's strong evidence that they weren't necessarily infected, too. And there's the quarantine zone in the Graveyard level... ruined buildings, and some particularly chilling graffiti. "If you can read this, the army left us to DIE." It's possible that the military was in a panicked retreat that left no time to evacuate everyone or distinguish carriers from infected, but it's also possible that there was a unit of {{Sociopathic Soldier}}s.
88	** Also? [[ShaggyDogStory The first batch of survivors apparently didn't manage a clean getaway either.]] Makes you wonder if the new DLC is going to have some shocking revelations or just add to the confusion of it all.
89	** There's evidence that the military is crumbling. Sure, some of its members are assholes, but the military is in charge of evacuating whoever is left out there.
90	* VideoGame/Left4Dead had some pretty scary campaigns, but VideoGame/Left4Dead2 has its own fair share of horror:
91	** Dead Center: From the moment you walk out of the safe area and begin making your way down a burning building filled with fireproof zombies you know that this game is gonna be a lot more intense than the last one. If you're lucky you may even run into Ellis's hero turned zombie, Jimmy Gibbs Jr. in the abandoned mall at the end.
92	** The Passing: A new DLC campaign. Pairs you up with the original survivors from the first game at the beginning and end. That doesn't stop this campaign from being freaky! From along stormy streets above and to the extremely dark sewers below you'll encounter some really creepy stuff. Survivors that went out into the world fully armed... but not immune! The Witch's wedding which even the survivors agree is frighteningly weird and when you've met up with the survivors and been given your task you may decide to that room just to the right of the lift when you exit. What's Inside? The dead body of Bill! Making this campaign not only horrifying but a TearJerker as well!
93	** Dark Carnival: A CircusOfFear type place filled with {{Monster Clown}}s. The clowns are made even scarier by the fact that they're zombies, and they draw other infected closer to you. Oh yeah, the whole campaign takes place entirely at night, too...
94	** Swamp Fever: What's scarier than making your way through a swamp in the middle of the night? Making your way through a swamp filled with zombies in the middle of the night. What's worse than making your way through a swamp filled with zombies in the middle of the night? Making your way through a swamp filled with ZOMBIE MUDMEN in the middle of the night.
95	*** Worse than that: the swamps are deep enough to fully conceal Witches. Have fun.
96	*** [[FromBadToWorse Even worse]], at one point during the finale, you have to face '''TWO''' Tanks at the same time.
97	** Hard Rain: This campaign starts off fairly normal, make your way through a town and get some gas, easy right? It is... until you get to the sugar mill that's full of Witches. And then it starts raining. On your way BACK THROUGH THE SUGAR MILL, you run into just as many Witches as before... except it's raining so hard you move at half your normal speed and can barely see or hear your teammates.
98	*** Later on in the campaign, you have to navigate a field of sugar canes taller than the survivors and dense enough that you can't see more than a foot and a half in front of you. There are Witches in the field. Witches that you likely won't be able to locate until you bump into one. You then need to push through this field again, except this time, it's through a storm that hinders sight, speed, and hearing.
99	** The Parish: This is it, you made it down a burning building, under a river through sewers, through a carnival from Hell, past the swamp filled with animalistic mud people, and across a sugar mill that was home to the local Witch population, this HAS to be easier. It isn't. From bullet-proof zombies in riot gear to the hundreds of corpses lying everywhere, there are way too many things that are scary and difficult about this campaign to list them all here. Have fun.
100	* In a new [[GameMod Mutation]], you get to play as the only survivor alive - the other 3 don't exist. To balance things out, there are no common infected, but you still have to fight Special Infected all by yourself - it's scarier than it sounds. Even worse, the survivor's dialog will still be as if the other survivors are there, giving the impression he/she is going crazy.
101	** The latest mutation, Lone Gunman, is even scarier. There are no Special Infected other than Boomers, Witches, and Tanks. Yes. Tanks. However, the only weapon you have is the Desert Eagle and the Common Infected swipes do 25 damage on ''Normal'' (and bring you down in one hit on Expert)... it's not really about how you'll get to the safe room, it's about how long you'll survive.
102	** The TAAAAANK mutations were either horrifying or a CMOA depending on your perspective. It's a versus game where all of the infected team spawns as Tanks. And if they die they respawn as more Tanks. For the survivor team, it's basically don't stop running for a second or you're going to die incredibly quickly.
103	*** Headshot! is pretty bad too. You'll see zombies missing limbs, huge sections of their backs, bleeding profusely and still coming at you. Worst of all is the [[HitboxDissonance hitbox problems]] that mean they sometimes lose their head and keep coming.
104	* The actual nature of the zombification. The effect of rabies is massive pain and sensitivity, like an eternal hangover. That makes the zombies irritated, as well as attacking all sources of bright lights and loud noises. So the common infected are [[FateWorseThanDeath completely conscious]], and attack you out of their own never-ending pain. In fact, their motivation could even be [[ICannotSelfTerminate suicidal]].
105	** That could make the Special Infected all the scarier. They're capable of high-level thought, but attack you out of their own hatred.
106	** For something a little more common, sensitivity to light and sound along with massive pain are also symptoms of a severe migraine. Nausea and vomit can occur as well.
107	** If the transformation of Lt Mora was any indication, all of the infected have undergone TranshumanTreachery to the point of viewing [[HumansAreTheRealMonsters normal humans as "monsters"]], thinking they're still normal while everyone else has turned into zombies. Now think how they see you, the player, wielding a shotgun can completely dismember them in a few shots, coming straight at you, almost unstoppable...
108	* The Spitter... not because of her attacks, or her concept art that made her look pregnant -- it's the way she dresses. Look at her. A cute little top and some capri pants, a pink thong... this was a normal girl. This was a teenager, a preppy girl that suffered from bulimia. The infection turned her into... into THAT. That is what the infection could ''do'' to you!
109	** It's get worse. If you kill a Spitter, you can clearly see on her hand that she has a ring on her ring finger. That means she was married. What do you think happened to her husband?
110	* A scene in The Passing. You run upon a park littered with chairs and nice decorations. Then you see a Witch at the very end of the chairs wearing a wedding dress. You can assume that this woman, and possibly every other person nearby at the time, almost instantly became zombified ''during her wedding''.
111	* Every so often, you'll see one of the Normal Infected standing over to the side, vomiting blood. You realize ''these used to be normal, living people'', and how much pain they must be in even if you're not shooting them.
112	** Sometimes, an undisturbed Common Infected will just [[WallSlump lean against a wall, slowly slide down until they're sitting on the ground,]] and fall over dead. Whatever made them like this is still killing them.
113	* How about turning a corner and finding yourself face-to-face with a ''Tank''. No musical cues to speak of, just suddenly finding yourself staring down something that can kill you in three hits on ''easy''.
114	** Imagine this: You are playing with friends when you hear something. Your friends quiet down and you realize it's a Tank. Now you all know what's coming and that's it is unavoidable. The worse part is picking someone to find it and draw it back to the group.
115	* Dark Carnival from ''2''. It's not the zombie clowns, it's not the other zombies. It's the [[{{AmusementParkOfDoom}} setting itself.]] A whole amusement park, where thousands of people came to have fun and a good time, most probably there to see a rock concert. This was a place of fun, happiness and such. Now it's silent, foreboding. ''Joy'' is ''dead'' and ''happiness'' is ''gone''... at least until the [[SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome rock concert escape]].
116	* Continued from the first Left 4 Dead, here's the backstory of each location in the second game's campaigns:
117	** Dead Center: You're abandoned on a rooftop, missing the last helicopter evacuation by moments. Also, imagine seeing the city you've grown up in and lived your entire life now a zombie-infested hellhole.
118	** The Passing: The bride witch and fallen survivors.
119	** Dark Carnival: A gridlocked highway (see Crash Course) and clown zombies.
120	** Swamp Fever: You travel through a town that prided itself on being a survivalist community that held out the longest without government help. Despite being remote, located deep in the swamp and heavily fortified, it was eventually found by the infected and overwhelmed. Graffiti in the area says things like 'I was sick of seeing all the death so I fled'.
121	** Hard Rain: Seeing zombies sprint at you from in the storm, also a Witch-infested sugar mill.
122	** The Parish: The Military set up an evacuation center at a bus station, where they screened people for disease and sent them on buses to other parts of the city. Of course, lines to the screening center were long (it's implied it took days to get through). This alone is terrifying, imagine lining up, being watched suspiciously by soldiers who will shoot you for being disorderly or if they see you as infected, knowing that someone next to you could turn and there is nothing you could do. The lines were so long they went to a nearby park where a sort of refugee camp formed. Once a horde attacked the camp, the people ran to the bus station and tried to force their way in, leading to the soldiers massacring all of them.
123
124	[[/folder]]
125
126	[[folder:Mods and Fan-Made Content]]
127	* Because some people have talked about mods... "One 4 Nine" takes place in the Nevada Desert, in and around Area 51. What's disturbing about it is that multiple saferooms are destroyed, however, one specific one in the first chapter has a blood pool with bones and human body parts surrounding it. Later on, you find almost the same thing, but with one difference. It has parts of human faces in it. Also, the finale has you activate a huge black monolith to get out. However, after you activate it, it causes the screen to switch colors, albeit very slowly. What happens after the "rescue" is coming, is both hilarious and terrifying: The survivors are apparently transported into an alien spaceship.
128	** Said blood pool with human parts also appears in one part of the "Dead Before Dawn: Director's Cut" campaign
129	** A part of the fourth chapter of "Vienna Calling 1" has you navigating a river ''with toxic waste that can drain your health''. Good luck playing this portion with bots.
130	* The 4th chapter of the custom campaign ''[[https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/575682109 Dark Wood]]'', which takes place right after you blow up an underground lab and find yourself in a prison that's literally, ''literally'' straight out of ''Franchise/SilentHill'' (the textures on the walls are pretty much lifted from ''Silent Hill 3''). In a campaign that already was advertising itself on its creepy factor, the 4th chapter turns it up to eleven by having the entire map be one dark, long, rusty labyrinth as you and your friends dread everything that might be coming around the corner, complete with the really unsettling ambience of ''screams'' in the background. It really feels like you've gone deep enough to be in Hell.
131	** The most unsettling part of that map is the furnace. At one point, you'll reach a room with a small peephole into a furnace on the other side of the wall, with [[HellIsThatNoise one really long, prolonged scream that never ends]] of what sounds like a woman or ''a child'' burning inside of it. [[NothingIsScarier It's never explained what's in there]].
132	** To top it all off? Pyramid Head himself makes an appearance in the map on the final elevator ride to the surface, just watching you ascend back to normality like nothing ever happened. The whole chapter is just one huge, horrifying BigLippedAlligatorMoment.
133	* Much as you can invoke SoundtrackDissonance to make the game [[Funny/Left4Dead2 funny]], there are some music swap add-ons that were made to ''increase'' the fear factor. For example, music themes for [[https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=257759938 the Witch]] and [[https://www.gamemaps.com/details/9845 Tank]] lifted straight out of ''VideoGame/{{Outlast}}''.
134	* The mostly ridiculous yet funny [[https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/?id=176107716 Journey to Splash Mountain]] is all in good fun, until you reach the Haunted Mansion. If you were scared of that place before, revisiting it overrun with zombies and a [[SarcasmMode lovely familicide aftermath]] will rekindle that fear.
135	[[/folder]]

Context NightmareFuel / Left4Dead