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Accidental Nightmare Fuel: Video Games
I see you!!!

Some computer and video games are supposed to be scary, but that's okay because we as player characters have the power to destroy The Legions of Hell. These examples, however, leave us wondering what the hell the script writers were thinking.

This can often occur while braving Big Boo's Haunt and/or during the Night of the Living Mooks. Also, while not quite the same thing, many Demonic Spiders can lead to nightmares.

Please note that this page and all Accidental Nightmarefuel pages are intended for examples that WHERE NOT meant to be scarey by the maker of the media form. If it was intended to be scary that is High Octane Nightmare Fuel

Sub-Pages

The rest...

  • Little Big Planet: Fireflies... The lifelessness of the Sackboy is noticeably horrific in this video. Especially when he stares right at you with his cold, dead eyes at around 1:05.
  • The original JumpStart Fourth Grade was so scary, especially for a game aimed at little kids, that it got discontinued after four years. In fact, this is the main thing the game is notable for.
    • The most frightening part of it had to be Repsac the ghost. If you wandered around the island, he would pop out of the side of the screen at random to ask you a riddle — answer incorrectly and he would take away some of your health. Needless to say, a lot of people opted to warp using the map.
  • Endless Ocean is a relaxing, slow-paced game family-friendly of scuba-diving. With one notable exception. In one level it is possible to dive into a deep sea trench. This pitch black abyss is filled with enormous horrific creatures with big pointy teeth.
  • The Sly Cooper series has a few examples. Of particular note is Mz. Ruby's swamp from the first game, in which your enemies include huge, glowing-eyed spiders, tree monsters which, after you hit them, will split into a severed head and a decapitated torso that keep attacking you, and endless armies of moaning ghosts that will pass through objects in relentless pursuit of you until you destroy their gravestones. The swamp also contains the level "Lair of the Beast," where you spend most of the level getting occasional hints of something really big lurking beneath the swamp water, then spend the last bit running for your life as the "something," a giant vicious-looking sea serpent, destroys the path behind you. This, in a game that's otherwise mostly kid-friendly and looks like a Saturday Morning Cartoon.
  • Ratchet & Clank is usually pretty NightmareFuel-free, at least up until the Future series. In Tools Of Destruction, there are HUGE enemies called Leviathans who resemble giant, multi-eyed, floating sea serpents. Oh, and their cousins on the planet Sargasso are Grunthors, which are basically Tyrannosaurus rex IN SPACE!.
    • Oh, and those Leviathans? They would have gotten BIGGER in A Crack In Time, and would have tractor beams to pull Ratchet's ship in and take a HUGE BITE out of it.
    • Emperor Tachyon aside, the Cragmites are pretty creepy, especially the larger varieties who can actually dissipate into a dust cloud to move quicker than your weapons can fire.
    • The War Grok... Until it's tamed by Captain Qwark.
    • Tetramites are like army ants on steroids; they can't be killed by any of Ratchet's weapons, and they kill you in seconds. Did we mention they move ridiculously fast and make your jumps too low to escape them?
  • PC kids' game Nightmare Ned uses Nightmare Fuel as a plot point and is extremely disturbing, namely one level in where Ned in some sort of hospital about to have his organs taken out by beaver-like monsters.
    • That. Game. Scared. The. Living. Crap. Out. Of. Me. Whoever thought that would be a great idea for a kid's game had some horrible, sick problems.
  • Tales of the Abyss has a couple.
    • The first trip to the Quiphloth is certainly Nightmare Fuel. Even though it's entirely a good example of Nice Job Breaking It, Hero, when the ground gives way under Akzeriuth and the entire place falls into a realm of creepy dark purple and red colors, caused by a poison gas, it can be quite a disturbing thing.
    • Not to mention John, a little child, dying an agonizing death as he was swallowed by poisonous mud from the planet's core shortly after.
    • Jade Curtiss liked to use his fonic artes to experiment on and kill even the most harmless of monsters. For fun. Please bear in mind that this is also the guy who never stops smiling.
      • The whole replication of Gelda Nebilim flashback scene is also very creepy.
  • Another point from the Tales series that can be quite disturbing, is Soulless Colette from Tales of Symphonia. Her red eyes were creepy enough, but the fact that she had become a monstrous killing machine adds to the effect.
    • Actually, Tales Of Symphonia is pretty much full of it, but it's all covered up by fun, cute and bright graphics. Examples:
    • The Desians, a Nazi-like enemy organization. Seriously, many of the things that they do are Nightmarish.
    • Exbelua. These horrific monsters were once human. Now think about that.
    • The Desians BREED HUMANS. Imagine being born into a torture of the caliber that the Desians put people through.
    • Or worse, imagine being a little kid trapped in Rodyle's undersea Human Ranch.
    • Of note, the main bad guys, the Cruxis, also do this. But their method is a tad less cruel. They arrange marriages to create people with certain qualities. So that the result can be sacrificed to bring the sister of the organization's leader back to life. This is how Colette, the female lead of the game came to be, Zelos, her male counterpart found later in the game is involved in a scandal surrounding this and his mother states that he should never have been born.
    • Anyone absorbed by an Exsphere faces the fate of And I Must Scream. Even happens to Colette. (As it was stated that she knew what was going on when she was "soulless").
    • The first visit to Presea's house. The house looks completely unlived in and Presea, who is obviously brainwashed, is mindlessly wandering around in there and occasionally doting on the sixteen year old corpse of her father that's still lying rotting in the very bed he died in.
    • You probably don't want to read the manga adaptation then. The reader actually gets a full view of Presea's dead father after she regains her soul, and it's none too pleasant.
    • You're welcome.
    • A randomly occurring graphical glitch in the conversation before the final battle with Mithos means that, while the cutscene and conversation flow naturally, Mithos himself is completely motionless. Even his mouth doesn't move. And, given the subject of the conversation, it's almost possible that this was intentional, just to stoke the fuel.
    • The Devil Noise Glitch creates a horrific sound at the end of a battle that easily can be called Nightmare Fuel, oh, and it can freeze your game. Worse, no one knows exactly what causes it.
      • Speaking of And I Must Scream, when Mithos briefly succeeds in putting Martel's soul into Colette's body, it's made clear that she's been aware this entire time of what Mithos has been doing, watching her younger brother and friends fall gradually into deeper madness and torture the entire world in her name. For FOUR THOUSAND YEARS.
    • The first encounters with the Zerom soldiers in Tales Of Hearts. Zerom are ugly little bastards that eat Spiria, essentially souls, causing a wasting disease caused Despir Sickness. The villain generates them, captures them, and fuses them to humans. From that moment, the remainder of the stage begins crawling with dark-colored, red-eyed, inhumanly growling armored soldiers. This is the state in which you fight them, all but foaming at the mouth, and they're worthy foes to boot, using soldiers' moves and some new ones as they growl for your blood. Oh, and the first time you see them, the soldiers stagger out from basically magitech coffins. * shiver*
    • Tales Of Hearts starts with Accidental Nightmare Fuel. Kohak gets shot with a beam of negative energy that causes her soul to splinter into a thousand pieces, each one severely affecting the town where they land in some way...
  • Despite being centered around repeatedly watching people die (and then manipulating the environment so that their death never happened), most of Ghost Trick is reasonably upbeat. Then you meet Yomiel—a vengeful ghost with the ability to manipulate other people's bodies against their will, as well as animate his own immortal body. Watching him slowly stand back up after being shot in the heart is terrifying.
    • Or heck, Yomiel's own situation. Left unable to interact with the rest of humanity, unable to feel, controlling your own body like a robot, totally alone besides your pet cat...and you can't even die.
    • The justice minister's heart attack . At least most of the other deaths were quick, he spends his entire four minutes writhing in pain.
    • Ray's timeline. Everyone is dead and Yomiel is trapped at the bottom of the ocean, leaving Missile ghostly and completely alone.
  • The heart blastias in Tales of Vesperia. Not to mention the fact that Raven uses the energy from his to attack during his Mystic Arte, and then mutters "I thought I was dead..." Schwann's Badass Creed lampshades this, since he says "Burn this life to punish my enemies!" They are using their own life energy as a weapon.
    • Possibly less nightmarish, but still very creepy is the fact that there is a sidequest where you can find all of Raven's... erm... "female fans". The man is practically a zombie. The girls are all quite young and, if their dialogue is to be believed, willing. You do the math.
      • Not so nightmarish at all. He gently turns down the ones who want to truly get serious.
    • Also, cute little Estelle screaming in pain after Alexei hooks her up to the apatheia device. And then she becomes Brainwashed and Crazy.
    • Plus, another Complete Monster, Cumore bites the dust when Yuri drowns him in quicksand. Sand filling your mouth, nose, ears, lungs... It is not a pretty thought.
  • Heart Of Darkness features the young male protagonist trapped in a world populated largely by hostile creatures varying from merely disturbing to outright horrifying, that can kill him in a variety of ways that are remarkably grotesque for the game's total lack of genuine gore... in a game rated E. To be fair, the game may now actually have been intended for children, despite its cartoony art style and goofy sense of humor during the lighter moments... but this was apparently lost on the Media Watchdogs.
    • Some of Andy's death animations may actually drain the blood from your face. You get to watch as the young boy's body is stretched, crushed, bent, and broken in disturbingly unnatural-looking ways that it's clear the developers paid a lot of attention to getting just right wrong. Oh God, the rock worms. And as Heart of Darkness is Nintendo Hard, you'll get to see every animation many times. And hey, remember that time that totally exhausted Amigo dropped to the ground, and his shadow ran up his body like an infection, and he was mutilated, mind and body, into one of the shadow bones fliers that you've been blowing apart with your Power of Life for a while now without knowing where they come from? Heh heh heh. Good times. * sobs*
    • Thanks to the magic of the You-Tubes, a categorized montage of them all is just a click away.
  • The Jeljel level in the Puzzle Game Meteos features disturbingly melting-looking pieces, a heat shimmer in the background, and this spine-chilling, music-box-like tune. Clear the level, and a loud church bell rings. Lose... and you hear a volcano erupting as a woman screams in horror... Compared to how light-hearted many of the other worlds are, it's even more of a contrast.
  • In the last level of episode 1 of Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure is a big funnel, with a giant mouth at the bottom. All you can do is grab the walls, slowing your descent. You'll still slide down slowly, closer and closer to the waiting jaws (The beginning of the second episode takes place in the stomach of the monster).
  • Practically any sandbox game takes on a creepy, Teethercat Principle meets Groundhog Day vibe if you hang out and continue to explore the game world after the primary story line based quest is over. For instance there's a building being constructed in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City that you probably noticed early on in the game. Well after beating the game, knockout out all the side missions, and spending several hours just goofing off in the city, the fact that the building was no closer to be completed was just a little unsettling and as I played longer and longer the static nature of the world became more and more disquieting. Worst still are the handful of actual horror games that use sandbox game worlds where the unintentional Nightmare Fuel of the static, never changing game world meets the intentional High Octane Nightmare Fuel of the game itself. I spent several hours in Batman: Arkham Asylum after finishing the story campaign exploring the island, finding all the secrets and whatnot. After a while it got kind of unsettling that all the dead bodies and damage caused by the story campaign were all still there, forever. You could play the game for months and no one will ever come pick up all the corpses or fix all the damage. And the worst part of it is the total lack of a sense of closure. The main story campaign ends with Batman leaving the island, but dropped back on the island after the main story campaign, removed from any narrative path or sense of purpose for being there you are doomed to walk it forever in some kind of eternal Groundhog Day/Teethercat Principle/And I Must Scream hell.
    • This phenomenon can occur in practically ANY video game if you roam around in it long enough. Even in games that are otherwise not scary at all, the environment and the NPCs that remain unchanged start to become unsettling.
  • The Zombiebots in Metal Arms: Glitch in the System are extremely fast and powerful, have to be killed twice, and the most effective weapon against them could only be used at close-range. Also, their distorted metallic screams are just awful.
    • The intro to the wastelands. After killing the first enemy batch, there are two grunt corpses, heads and arms ripped off, with a huge bloodstain under them, slowly dripping... and if you shoot them they sway as if alive. Then, there is the three-fourths point in the wastelands, when there are two Zombiebots with the player high above them... Many grenade the area, and jump down. To find themselves face to face with two snarling zombiebots.
  • The "Generator Room" level in the first Crash Bandicoot game is particularly Nightmare Fuel-laden. Imagine an enormous, black space with exhaust pipes pumping what appeared to be black gas into the room, metallic platforms hanging over what appeared to be an infinite, dark void, and video screens brandishing a dead-eyed version of Doctor Neo Cortex's face throughout the area.
    • Think about it: there are screens everywhere, and Cortex is moving his face back and forth, as if to say, "I can see you". IT'S A FREAKING SHOUT OUT TO 1984!!! Good night, and sleep tight.
    • Lots of things in the game are Nightmare Fuel. What freaked me out were the Lab Assistant characters. It's explained in the third game that they're really artificial robots with real flesh - that's Nightmare Fuel itself, but they look human by Crash standards in the first game. Their only means of attack (apart from standing there) in one level is to run at Crash with arms outstretched, occasionally generating electricity between their hands. It doesn't help that they return in the sequel, some assimilated into Borg-like space warriors, and the only way to beat them is to push them into a fire shield - and their standard cry is eerily cut off as they evaporate.
    • Also, don't forget the Cannibalistic Walrus Chef from Crash Twinsanity with the emotionless stare on his face, and how he was completely immune to nitro crates, not to mention how disturbingly fast he is."Ahh, yummy! Fresh meat for my pot!"
    • The Mount Grimly theme in Crash: Mind over Mutant is extremely dark compared to the rest of the otherwise cheery and upbeat soundtrack.
    • The Game Over screen of the first Crash Bandicoot is rather tame, but the Game Over screens of Cortex Strikes Back and Warped up the creep factor a notch thanks to the vocal performance of Clancy Brown.
  • The game Croc : Legend Of The Gobbos looks like a cutesy simplistic platformer on the surface...but gets very creepy as it goes on.
  • The camera angles often make you fall off things that you wouldn't fall off if the camera angles worked.
  • The enemies respawn a few seconds after you beat them.
    • The 'rats' in the cave levels do not look like rats at all. They look like Eldritch Abominations.
      • The water sections of this game consist of swimming down what appears to be a sewer, at the end of which you have to get either a key or a gobbo. However, you can't see anything ahead of you until you swim towards it (it's pitch black), you have to swim for a certain period before you reach the end, and occasionally, you will see hidden enemies coming out of the darkness. What makes this worse is that swimming in this game is quite difficult, so you can't swim back quickly enough. The fact that the music cuts out once you are in this section doesn't help.
      • The bosses running in a circle after you is scary considering that sometimes the camera angle will prevent you from actually getting away in time.
  • The Secret of Monkey Island has the contents of the giant Monkey Head. An endless blood red maze of body parts, fungi and lava. What's more is that each room is randomly generated, so you could find yourself without an exit for a while. You can only go through there correctly if you have the navigator head. Straight after this you will find LeChuck's ship which is also quite creepy, particularly the lower floors with the ghost animals.
    • Another such level exists in Jet Force Gemini where you travel through a giant alien insect larva... thing... it's sort of sad when someone can feel relieved when coming out of an anus. Unfortunately, immediately after doing so you are assaulted by the level boss, Twin Cyborg Tailed Praying Mantises who, aside from being That One Duel Boss, are accompanied by orange rocky landscape, lava rivers, and an orange sky where the clouds travel by quickly, giving an apocalyptic atmosphere to the already nightmarishly hard fight.
      • Also, one of the spaceship parts is on top of the giant worms brain! How did it get there? Why do you have to walk on its brain to get ti? What the hell where the developers thinking?
    • Also featured in Ocarina of Time, but to a lesser extent. (See Zelda.)
  • Quest for Glory IV has literal Nightmare Fuel in the form of a Cask of Amon Tillado, a wine that gives the drinker dark visions of the Evil Overlord rising to destroy the world.
    • Also noteworthy are the nightmares you have when you sleep in Erana's garden or under her staff.
    • Completing the Paladin's quest in "Shadows of Darkness", the one involving the ghost chick in the river, quickly turned into nightmare fuel.... After killing the ghost of her murderer, you must wade into the river and kiss her. Only, by this time, she is no longer an, uh, alluring figure. She is, in fact a rotting corpse. Squick
    • Then there's Tanya, the little vampire girl who lives in Castle Borgov, and has eerily blank, glowing gold eyes and white skin, and just misses her mommy and daddy. God, is she creepy.
      • In the first game, the music in the magic shop. (due to the music.) Also, Night Gaunts can be a bit of a surprise the first time you try to sleep in the wilderness at night. The fact that you never see them somehow makes it so much more disturbing.
    • Not just the Quest for Glory series - Dying in the unlit room in the Catacombs King's Quest 6. All you see the whole time are the dots of your character's eyes...and that makes it worse.
      • Legend of Kyrandia has one of these—-this video—-but its not the protagonist's eyes you can see.
      • Catacombs? Heck, how about the Realm of the Dead? Creepy music, check. Nighttime, check. Body Horror, check. A sequence describing how the Lord of the Dead slowly turned from a human being into a death lord numb to all pain and misery for all eternity, check.
      • The thing that creeped me out in King's Quest VI were those weird gnomes on the Isle of Wonder who've been sent to kill any humans that they find. Each of them only has one sense, represented by an overly large nose, pair of eyes, ears, etc. and no other features on their faces. You have to trick them one at a time into thinking you are something other than a human, and if one catches you then they'll throw you into the sea. I suppose the Isle of Wonder is supposed to whimsical and silly and fun, but those guys...so not.
    • The point and click Sierra game Torin's Passage has a tragic Anti-Villain with an oddly creepy yet touching story.
  • Kingdom of Loathing has plenty, ironically enough.
    • The Big Creepy Spider, whose description informs you that "he promises not to kill you, but you're not sure you believe him."
    • Spookyraven Manor in its entirety. Especially the part with the animal skeletons.
    • That line about how your familiar "gets creative with the fish scaler" is extremely creepy, even if it's hurting your enemy.
  • Rayman: Raving Rabbids is creepy enough in concept: Rayman and his friends the Globoxes are kidnapped by deranged, screaming, mutant bunnies (the titular Rabbids), and Rayman must win his freedom by competing in various minigames, most of which involve abusing said Rabbids in various slapstick ways (blowing them up, shooting them with plungers, etc.). "Bunnies are Slow to React" is especially creepy, as it involves playing a marble labyrinth game inside a Rabbid's brain while creepy Muzak plays in the background, including a snippet of Rabbids singing "Ode to Joy".
    • How about the minigame in which you have to force a Rabbid to hit himself with a mace or screaming by touching his brain on particular locations ? Oh, and did I mention said Rabbid had to go through a trepanation for this to occur?
    • And the ending, in which Rayman realizes that he didn't save all the Globoxes, so he tries to go down the hole they were taken down at the beginning of the game, but only gets stuck. THE END. However, in Raving Rabbids 2, he is just fine, so we assume that he soon got out, but what about the Globoxes though? Did they ever get saved?
  • Rayman 2: The Great Escape/Rayman Revolution has The Cave of Bad Dreams and Tomb of the Ancients. The Cave of Bad Dreams is over-the-top scary until you reach the part where the cyclopic monster that guards the treasure chases you with his teeth framing the screen. The Tomb of the Ancients has giant spiders, cackling ghosts that float out of the sewage that ambush you while you're floating on a barrel, and intense music that makes good use of the Scare Chord.
    • The Canopy level is nightmare fuel for arachnophobes. The very beginning of the level has Rayman ambushed by a giant spider that's almost impossible to kill without the powerup you receive later in the level, and the spider even gets its own scary music.
    • The Zombie Chickens. The name sounds silly until you actually meet them in person.◊ The worst part is when you're trying to raft down a certain section in The Tomb of the Ancients and they come after you in swarms...
    • In at least Rayman 2 and Rayman 3, there are some pretty freaky levels and areas, due to those games being Darker and Edgier (well, Rayman 3 is kind of darker and edgier, but Lighter and Softer when compared to Rayman 2). Notable is the chase sequence in the Cave of Bad Dreams as well as the Desert of the Knaaren, but there are also a few others. Though it may be Nightmare Retardant for some, the Cave of Bad Dreams can be pretty spooky, especially with its eerie background music. The little hopping green mini-Jano creatures found there can really make you jump... especially since you cannot face them directly if you want to kill them. The only way to defeat the little green guys is to purposely turn Rayman's back to them and wait for them to gleefully bounce towards him with bony arms outstretched, since otherwise they will burrow underground and pop up behind him anyways(or in the case of a later area, always stay on the opposite side of the pillar as Rayman). It takes some control of a veteran gamer's reflexes to not turn around when you watch them speed towards him when all common sense tells you that if you just turned him around he could defend himself...
    • The Tomb of the Ancients is pretty creepy. Especially if you're careless and you let one of those skeletal arms reaching out of the coffins grab Rayman and pull him in. This causes you to die. Use your imagination. And the Psycho Strings music you get when a giant spider is chasing you, and when there are enemies nearby you get a low-pitched piano chord, but sometimes the chord plays randomly too. Puts you on edge...
    • The zombie chickens◊. They're easy to kill, so their main method of attacking involves a swarm of them emerging from the ground and flying towards Rayman while cackling. It doesn't help that they only inhabit the creepier, gloomier worlds (including a section of The Tomb of the Ancients that is quite overwhelming in that it involves riding a barrel and later swinging on purple lums over instant-death water) and that in some versions they can appear with empty eyesockets.
    • In some versions of Rayman 2, you are given the choice to accept the treasure, or decline it and get the Elixir of Life instead. (in other versions, you automatically get the Elixir of Life instead) If you accept it, Razorbeard gets to take over the world while Rayman gets the treasure and an island all to himself (and gets very fat too). View the cutscene here.
    • And then there's the commercial for Rayman 2, in which we see live-action people who have nothing more than a head, torso, hands, and feet, just like Rayman himself. Sure, the limblessness looks funny on a cartoonish character like Rayman, but with live-action people, it just looks creepy.
  • Non-conventional computer game example: In the "Save the Dinosaurs" game that came with 3D Dinosaur Adventure, if you failed to save all of the dinosaurs in time, the meteorite would hit the Earth, the dinosaurs would cry out in fear and pain, and the guy who gave you the mission would tell you it's all your fault before pulling you back to the present. It was quite creepy.
    • Another scary part of the game was that eventually, you would find your way to the various Mesozoic periods barred by giant arthropods, including mosquitoes, scorpions, fleas, and pill millipedes. If you approached one, an eerie sound that the creepy crawlie's real-world equivalent makes would fill the air. It was rather creepy, considering that most people don't like mosquitoes as it is.
    • For me, what did it was the museum. Completely empty (which is absolutely unnerving) save for the theater area where you get to be chased by a T-Rex in first-person.
      • And they suck away your time when they do so. But at least you can zap them by clicking on them. Nice "laser gun" noise. BYEEOW! BYEEOW!
    • Another creepy part of that game was a section where the player could view videos, with realistic simulations of dinosaurs. One video featured a Deinonychus killing another dinosaur in a bloody fashion. Another featured a Struthiomimus crushing another dinosaur's eggs and eating what was inside.
  • Another non-conventional computer game example: When Demetrios was younger, I played this game who's name escapes me at the moment (it was one of those kids' CD-ROM games that's made up mostly of mini-games and rarely, if ever, has an overall storyline). One of the games consisted of putting together puzzle pieces to reveal a short but funny black-&-white movie. This particular one, however, was anything but. The completed puzzle revealed a picture of a girl holding her pet cat. Pretty normal (even though, if I recall, the girl was wearing shiny black opera gloves that looked suspiciously like they were made from the skin of a crocodile). At one point, some eerie background music played, and the girl gained the eyes, ears, and whiskers of a cat, along with a sinister smile. Naturally, the pet cat freaked out and said "Oooh! Heh heh, nice kitty" and then purred nervously. Not only was this movie scary, this is probably the only unattractive Cat Girl in the Universe.
    • That would be Math Workshop, brought to you by the folks behind Myst and Prince of Persia. No, really.
  • The children's educational game Sim Ant was creepy enough for featuring colonies of ants. The victory condition was eating the opposing colony's queen. This is further exacerbated by potential deaths such as being squished flat, being eaten by a Giant Spider, or mowed down by a lawnmower (it helps that the first time this one happens, the most that'll be going through your head is "What IS that loud whirring noise?").
  • The PlayStation game Gex: Enter the Gecko had the titular character exploring levels based on movie genres. The series of levels based on horror movies contained blood-soaked walls and floors, eerie ghosts that could hurt you unless you stood under a dim lantern, and quiet, creepy music. It only got worse as the game progressed.
    • What, no mention of Rez's levels, with the discordant music, techno-organic motif (the floors in one level seem to be made from a combination of metal and brains), and the giant whirling blades covered in blood that make that horrible scraping noise?
  • Aside from being the king of Family Unfriendly Death, Metal Slug has another nightmarish little element. Normally, you have a gun and grenades. When your character is turned into a zombie, however, that changes to a gun and vomiting blood. In a wide, long stream.
  • Andross in Star Fox 64. Seriously that... thing. He's a huge face and hands, that has an attack that involves him eating your Arwing. Yes. He eats it.
    • Going to the final planet, Venom, from the Bolse Defense Outpost orbiting it (as opposed to Area 6) reveals that the Andross you find on that route is a robotic decoy, which is rather freaky and provided the page image. If that wasn't enough, in the original version, Andross's face appeared after the credits if you beat the robotic decoy instead of the real thing, and the remake takes this further and not only moves his face to the background of the screen that displays the final score right after the credits, but animates it in 3D so he laughs away after you ended up destroying a fake. Of course, he looks normal here, this is mostly scary because the real Andross is still out there wanting to rule the galaxy and the inhabitants of Corneria aren't aware of this.
    • Going to Venom after breaking through Area 6's line of defenses leads to the real Andross. The real one ends up being reduced to his brain and eyes, which are also kind of creepy-looking. Of course, before the fight with his brain actually begins, Andross provides some Nightmare Retardant by making an Incredibly Lame Pun in the form of bragging that "Only [he] has the brains to rule Lylat."
    • Pigma: "Daddy screamed REAL good before he died!"
    • You destroy the forever train by sending him into his own fueling station, with a screaming progression of knowing exactly what is about to happen.
      • What about the boss fight against General Pepper's assimilated flagship...which still has General Pepper in it? The entire fight consists of Star Fox being forced to fight while the poor guy shouts for them to kill him so he won't be fully turned into an aparoid.
    • No love for the original Star Fox? Due to the limitations of the SNES hardware, the game's polygon graphics were decidedly abstract and often trippy. If that wasn't bad enough, the game's sound effects could be unsettlingly eerie, from General Pepper's ominous "Good Luck" to the haunting sound of the Arwing's engine. Not to mention the near Mind Screw of Phantron. Of course, the soundtrack makes for some great Nightmare Retardant.
    • The Awesome Black Hole, the music... Also, according to one of the comments, you can see a ship, somebody speculates that's Fox's Dad's ship.
    • Everything about the secret level Out of this Dimension. General Pepper calls out in vain for the Star Fox team to reply as he still needs their help saving Corneria from Andross, but they've vanished from the Lylat System. The level consists of a wavy background of cartoony stars and planets with faces on them, twisted circus music and paper plane enemies. The end boss is simply a slots machine while a version of "When The Saints Go Marching In" plays. Once you defeat it, you move on to the next level, right? Wrong. The credits roll and THE END pops up while you're still flying endlessly through space until you're eventually killed. The Lylat System is taken over by Andross while the Star Fox team are trapped in a twisted alternate dimention forever. The End.
  • The Old Sorceress's Mansion in Lost Odyssey was pretty damn creepy, not necessarily even because of the creatures you wind up fighting or the old, run-down look of the place, not even because every door you open lets out a ghoulish face or a dark tendril. No, it's because of the profound solitude of the place when you're not in a fight (a theme heavily emphasized by this game), the ghost of the main character's dead child running around laughing, and the extremely creepy piano music that induces yet more of the feeling of being all alone in the world, that makes the entire experience quite nightmarish.
    • What about the Sorceress herself? The "fight" with her essentially revolves around preventing her from committing suicide. While she lets out these horrifying screams.
  • Ivor Beggar's transformation into Ivor Bargain in Viva Pińata. He turns his head upside down, using a different mouth and nose that were formerly his hat.
    • In the game, you recruit adorable pinatas into your garden. You build them houses, name them, even buy them adorable accessories like hats or glasses. They become part of your garden "family" . . . and then some stranger black-and-white pinata who decides they want to live in your garden can come in and eat your beloved, unique pinata, tearing it apart, flinging little pieces of candy about, inspiring the other pinata in your garden (including ones of the same species as the now-dead one) rush over to eat up.
    • Sour Pinatas have to have scared at least one kid. Sour Crowlas and Profitamoles in particular have huge mouths for their size with loads of teeth.
    • Hoshi No Hito and ? would both make for fine Cosmic Horrors. The former is a TV with arms and legs and a floating eye. Try not to think about what's inside the screen too hard. And then there's ?... For the love of god, do not allow yourself to watch his Miss animation. The eye! THE EYE!
  • LittleBigPlanet's third world (The Wedding) seems rife with Nightmare Fuel...if you aren't just impressed by the exellent Day of the Dead decor. Your Mileage May Vary. The most nightmarish bit would have to be Skulldozer, where you get chased by an enormous bull skull on bicycle wheels that continuously screams, is surrounded by red fog, and is being piloted by an insane zombie bride who thinks she's been jilted and is running down the entirety of her wedding reception. Trust me, it makes more sense in context.

  • Falling off a building in Mirrors Edge. If just being in first person wasn't enough, there's the snapping sound. Uuuugggh...
    • Not just snapping. As you fall, you can hear her breathing speed up to harsh panting, and then when you hit the ground, not only do you hear the bones snapping, you also hear a wet sound almost like a 'squish' noise — which would be funny, if you didn't know exactly what the reason for that noise was. HINT: It's your fleshy bits slamming into the ground at god only knows what speed.
  • The Secret Island of Dr. Quandary, also by MECC, starts with you winning a doll at a carnival... which sucks out your soul in a nightmarish sequence that frightened many a child back in the nineties, then warps to an island in the middle of nowhere, where you have to solve the titular doctor's diabolical puzzles and earn ingredients for a potion that will send you home... by forcing the doll to vomit you out. A large portion of the game's graphics, especially the dolls, is right at home in the Uncanny Valley.
  • Several of the bosses in the Turbografx Shoot 'Em Up Monster Lair were downright nightmare fuel-errific, for example the skull with a circle of mini-grim reapers, the fish whose skin came off to form smaller fishes, the wasp hive and queen, the baby vampire/frankenstein hybrid, the cactus jack-o-lantern(nasty buzzing noise when it snaked across the screen), and to top it off, the Final Boss's One-Winged Angel / Clipped Wing Angel form. The game's Nintendo Hard-ness could be nightmarish too.
  • Guitar Hero: Aerosmith. Yes, fucking GUITAR HERO AEROSMITH. The second level's encore animation features lightning, and several creepy images of stuffed rabbits and such, and then a freaking jack-in-the-box with an outright demonic face pops up. Why they decided this would be a good idea, I'm not sure at all.
    • You know the poster for the Kentucky level? It's got two utterly demonic looking sheep ever! Then there's those skelletons from Guitar Hero Metallica but at least that's understandable.
    • The most obvious nightmare fuel is Steven Tyler. The man has always looked a bit uncanny valley, but combine that with the requisite Guitar Hero stylizing and some poor character model work and you get some powerfully creepy stuff.
  • Chibi Robo had the Spydorz. Those things are seriously creepy.
  • Super Robot Wars Alpha 3: "End of the Galaxy". Enjoy it—or not—here.
  • Super Robot Original Generation Lichkeit's Raigoue Game Boy Advance version is far more disturbing.
  • Although NIGHTS: Journey of Dreams is a fairly bright, happy, game, there are a couple of bosses who deserve to mentioned here. First up is Donbalon, who's literally a patchwork/clown/balloon-thing, with a freaking creepy smile. Next is Cerberus, who is bad enough on it's own (being a couple of dogs with spiked balls for bodies), but combine it with the creepy cage-dome/desolate background, and the music, then Cerberus becomes a lot worse.
    • Also in Journey of Dreams, Hellen's Nightmare Sequence is really frightening. At first it seems like it's just a sad cutscene, but after seeing something that reminds her of her mom, her mother's image appears faintly in a store window. She looks at her sadly, this suddenly turns into empty red eyes and a hideous snarl. The glass shatters, and shadow-creatures come out of it and chase Hellen.
  • Chrono Trigger is pretty notable for doing some horrible things with the SNES sound hardware, such as the infamous Lavos cry, the genuinely startling noise many monsters make when they attack you, and the music in Magus' castle, which has a disturbing laughing/weeping noise playing throughout. To say nothing of some of the game's set pieces, like the cathedral or the People Jars aboard the Black Omen.
    • "But...the future refused to change..." The apocalyptic imagery from the bad ending was enough to give a lot of players the heebie-jeebies. Lavos bursts forth from the ground and destroys all the world's militaries in a matter of seconds. The world is destroyed, and only a few manage to escape death. At the end, there is the cry of Lavos, which is the Super Nintendo's attempt to convey to the player a Sound That Man Was Not Meant to Hear.
  • The NES classic Monster Party was released in 1989, back when there were no age ratings for video games back then, and the gory visuals and general weirdness of the monsters was primo Accidental Nightmare Fuel for many a kid back in the day, from the sudden change of scenery in level one to the absolutely creepy ending. They recolored the blood-soaked title screen green, but it's still creepy that way.
  • The Water Dragon in Ōkami. Blood. Augh.
    • Explanation: At one point in the level, you have to remove an orb which is the device that turned the Sea King into the Water Dragon from the dragon's stomach webbing. To do so, you must sever the individual threads of flesh using the dragon's stomach acid. The worst part is that the stomach acid looks exactly like blood. Earlier in the same level, you release a flood of bloody "acid" from a vent in the body and must make it through the next part of the level on rapidly disintegrating water lilies. Ugh.
    • Just about everything in the Haunted Ship level, from the creepy dolls to the ghastly ghost versions of several of the earlier bosses to the hideous seaweed monster with the horrible seaweedy arms of doom.
      • To the point where the Sunken Ship was recently featured in a 'Top Ten Scariest Moments' section in the UK Official Nintendo Magazine. Said list also contained examples from Resident Evil 4, Eternal Darkness, and Dementium: The Ward.
      • At one point early in the level, before you've probably really come to terms with how demented it is, you go through a door... and the spectral head of an onryo with the Spider Queen's Eyeless Face flies straight at the camera.
      • The hand. Sweet mother of potatoes, the hand. At least you can kill that abomination later.
      • Don't Powerslash the dolls. Just FYI. That laugh...
      • The Chest Monsters. Even after you've sliced them in half, they'll still get up and chase you with their creepy hands-with-eyes straight out of Yume Nikki.
      • Then Fridge Horror occurs, this is kind of a mixture of the Water Temple and Shadow Temple, only this is underwater, in a sunken ship, if Amaterasu's powers weren't accessable, and it became day time, you'd very likely drown, and there's no guarentee of not dying alone considering that Rao is Kyubi, the enemy, who'd very likely leave Amaterase for dead.
    • The final boss, Yami. That thing looks scary in his final form. Though he's still kind of creepy before, he becomes Nightmare Retardant for a few seconds... then he starts pulling out high-tech weaponry that wasn't available during the game's era, since he's the creator of technology. Put yourself back a hundred years mentally and imagine he won, and imagine the suffering he could have caused.
  • That One Boss in Skies of Arcadia— a huge, bloblike creature with a translucent belly— in which you can see human skulls swimming around in green digestive fluid. YUCK. Its entire lair is covered in blood and human skeletons, and one of its most devastating attacks involves the thing THROWING UP ON YOU (and said attack can poison your entire party). It's incredibly difficult to beat, especially on your first run though the game, as it loves to poison you with said throwing-up move. And beating it is no relief; right after you climb the ladder it was guarding, you get to fight another boss battle, followed shortly by a mini boss of sorts...
    • From the same dungon, we have the "Mind Stealers": emaciated zombie-like men with giant beetles on their backs that have apparently taken over their nervous systems.
  • Digimon World for the PlayStation has a creepy boss. Getting your prosperity too high will make you face a overpowered greymon. Note that it stalks you until you kill it and was following you home. It doesn't help that it wants your street sign and makes you train like crazy. Beat him but he can be Paranoia Fuel.
    • Want to know what's behind Monzaemon's zipper. It's disturbing squick that is found out through a cheat. There's a Numemon. Yes I repete a Numemon, the ugly slugish crap eater is inside the happy teddy bear. To get him in the same game, bring a Numemon to the teddy bear costume and it will evolve. Worse part, your character doesn't seem to notice something's not right.
    • Completely agreed. The whole game is nightmare-inducing, and the total emptiness (but with screaming in the background) of almost every area doesn't help. At least the torture chamber is optional, though there's a whole sequence in that same zone where you have to run around with a highly radioactive item, and there's a very short time limit before you die horribly.
    Adel: Dr. Stiiiiles... Do you know what else the "Healing" Touch is good for...? It's also good for... KILLING!
    • That reminds me of Summon Night Swordcraft Story's Tear Expy Ureksa which also Brainwashed and Crazy and shows the same look.
      • As an aside, SN:SS came out in first, its Japan release being in 2003; TotA came out in 2006. So technically Tear is Ureksa's Expy.
  • Super Puzzle Bobble / Super Bust-A-Move's American boxarts, SBAM1 for the PS2 and SBAM2 for the Sega Saturn replace Bub and other characters with Nightmare Fuel inducing images: a baby wearing sunglasses that show the gameplay screen while having a red bubble on his mouth, and a guy who has shoved matchsticks on his eyes to keep them open. Look if you dare.
    • And then there's the Deep Ones. Humans implanted with mind control devices and turned into living incubators for alien fetuses, while fully aware of what is being done to them, yet unable to control their own body. Made even worse by researching the Alien Implanter, whose description explicitly states that the subject remains conscious during surgery.
    • In third game, the chryssalids are now changed to brainsuckers who do exactly what its name says. It sucks the brain out of the agent and replace it with an alien organism. It doesn't spread anymore but some of the aliens have gun shooting brainsucker eggs. Take too long for a mission and you can find a colony of them. The hyperworms are quite disturbing too.
  • If you think Bio-Hazard Battle is creepy, try X-Multiply. It's an arcade game by the developers of R-Type where you control a microscopic fighter injected into a human infected by alien virus. The title screen itself...
  • The Tetris clone Lockjaw has Rhythm 20G mode, a mode in which pieces drop instantly and lock to the beat of an eerie rendition of Korobeiniki (the Game Boy Tetris A-Type theme). The music gradually increases in tempo, and at about 3 minutes and 14 seconds (if you can survive for that long), the music is suddenly interrupted by a voice saying, "You're better than I am, you don't really need this music anyway," and then the music suddenly turns into a creepier, dying monotone. If you haven't died yet at this point from speeds reminiscent of Tetris TGM2's Death mode, you sure will now.
  • Some of the item placements in Katamari Damacy are just unsettling. It gets worse with every game. By the fourth game, there are giant whales carrying continents,a giant octopus attacking an oil tanker, and skeleton-men lighting stuff on fire. Yikes.
  • BlazBlue ends up being this way with Nu, who switches between coming on to Ragna with a high pitched girly voice, to coldly telling opponents to disappear as she stabs them with over 13 swords. And when she stabs Ragna to fuse with him into the beast that destroys the world, it is hard to tell whether she is still coming onto him or coldly getting revenge for all of the other Nus that he killed.
    • Morover, Hakumen can appear anywhere and has a grudge against the main character
    • Then, there's Arakune devouring anybody who gets too close that can't beat him, while being too crazy for anyone to understand him, even himself.
    • In Carl's story, the Game Over you get if you lose to Jin. We don't see anything, but it's implied that he freezes Carl limb by limb, ending with his mouth before impaling him. Jin's dialogue makes this even worse.
    • In Lambda's story, her first battle is against Carl. After you win, Kokonoe loses control of her, and Lambda then delivers a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown to both him and Nirvana, and all Kokonoe can do is watch.
    • Nu-13 is, without any doubt, an extreme picquerist, and is sexually aroused when stabbing Ragna repeatedly with her swords to make him bleed buckets, as well as being cut up by him to make herself bleed because of him, so that their blood mixes in pools, which leaves her seconds from having an orgasm. She attacks him for her sexual pleasure; she has nothing but love for Ragna, and does not fight him out of hostility. Her cheery-sounding, high school girl-ish giggling dialogue is openly suggestive that she's getting off every time they're close and bleeding to death together. She loves every second of it with an open smile and desire to be near him as it happens, while Ragna is more concerned with freaking the hell out about being close to death.
  • Tetris: The Grand Master's backgrounds are mostly biology-themed. Level 0-99 are what appear to be blood cells, which aren't too bad. Level 200-299 are what appear to be blood vessels or tentacles. From level 500 onwards though, the backgrounds start going downhill: 500-599 is a bunch of what appear to be neurons, 600-699 are spiked balls of doom, 800-899 is a brain, and 900-999 is a fetus. Some of these images are a little discomforting.
    • Tetris: The Grand Master 3's level 700-799 section has a close-up of the sun as its background. As if being 93 million miles 150 million kilometers from the sun wasn't bad enough (depending on what season and place), imagine being within roughly 10 million kilometers of it.
    • The music for the last section of Tetris TGM2 sounds fit for some of the most violent and horrifying films imaginable.
  • Billy Hatcher and The Giant Egg is rife with this, ladies and gentlemen. You fight an army of crows powered by darkness, and some of the bosses are quite creepy.

  • Final Boss of Phantasy Star IV, that is all.
    • The zombies you find on Dezolis have perhaps the creepiest animation I have seen in any game. The fact that you first find them in an abondoned town, complete with ominous music playing in the background does not help matters.
    • Phantasy Star IV's Garuberk Tower, a living pillar of organs and flesh growing up out of the earth, which has two eyes randomly spaced within its breathing, pulsating walls that must be ambiguously interacted with to open new doors, which are actually fleshy membrane-valves covering tubelike orifices, and the whole thing is crawling with Eldritch Abominations because it's an extension of Dark Force's body and a literal Womb Level, constantly pregnant with foul beings forgotten by the good people of Algo!?
  • Elebits is a funny, cute game from Konami where you have to catch cute miniature critters hidden everywhere in your house or your town. Then you get to the Amusement Park. Oh, nothing scary at all... Except that the park's mascot is none other than Robbie the Rabbit. Considering in what game we already met him, it can be quite... Disturbing to wander around those statues...
  • Earthworm Jim. Almost all enemies. And the hero himself. That creepy snot parachute. And the falling puppies minigame. I can't believe someone could find those horrors funny.
    • Bonus points for a level completely in the dark called Who Turned Out The Lights? And at the end? Giant Eyeballs of Doom. Invincible, natch. Only way to win is to run away and take another exit.
  • Mega Man Star Force: Namely the second game. Towards the end, the bad guys raise Mu into the sky, and EM bodies have been sent out to terrorize everyone. The music that plays on the Overworld is the typical "danger" music played for every other scenario like this. Beat the game, return to Echo Ridge in preparation for the second quest, and... the people are still being terrorized by the EM bodies and Mu still floats ominously overhead, but the music is the cheery Echo Ridge tune now. On an unrelated note, those Grabbity viruses look familiar...
    • Even above that is the Bonus Dungeon. It's a parallel-world version of the various locations in the game, except there are no people. You're seeing what would have happened if the Big Bad succeeded.
    • If mention can be made of Shadowgate, mention must also be made of Uninvited. Seriously, that game is made of nightmare fuel. You wake up after a car crash and find that your sister has vanished, with the only residence in sight a gigantic mansion that turns out to be haunted. To begin with, there's a lady dressed like Scarlett O'Hara who turns out to have a horrifying skull for a face. Which you will see, a lot, because killing her takes a lot of trial and error. It doesn't end there, though; you can also be killed by zombies (accompanied by a closeup of its decaying face with a lot of skull visible), the ghost of a servant who dissolves your flesh by turning himself into acid, and by rabid dogs (who bear a suspicious resemblance to bears) in front of a church, which didn't really help a lot of people who were afraid of being attacked by dogs in the first place. The music accompanying each of these deaths is also about as terrifying as you can get on the NES hardware.
    • Also, from the original game, the island of Mira in general. And with "Castle in the Sand" as its overworld music... * shudder*
      • Duhr was quite creepy, too.
      • And as icing on the cake, how do you even know you beat him? Yes, you managed to beat him in the past in that battlefield level, but it looked like he died for real there- only for him to possess Verus at the end of the game. What makes you think the wizard from Cujam is dead? What if he's still lurking in the Baten Kaitos universe and is going to decide to wander into the parts of the world explored by the first game's protagonists?
    • Wait a minute; I found a picture! Results were much easier when I added Hanaho, which also helped make the game. Click the following link, and take a look between the guns or at the lower right of the screen. The one between the guns is much clearer. http://www.arcadeflyers.com/?page=flyer&db=videodb&id=4908ℑ=1
  • Seiken Densetsu 3: A little-known, but fantastic SNES RPG. The ghost ship sequence. Narm at first, but the sound limitations on the screams make it about a thousand times worse. The "Ghoul" enemies, which you see for the first time here, appear to be attacking you by distending their ribs and scratching you with them. Then there's the "captain's log", which you open only to find "DieDieDieDieDieDieDieDieDieDieDieDieDie..." followed by a shriek. Ick.
    • God-Beast of Darkness Zable-Fahr deserves mention. It appears without warning, puts you on a stone slab in the middle of nowhere, and instead of the usual Awesome Music, you're treated to a slow, creepy drumbeat. Two freaky demon heads attack you with spells, but they prove easy enough to beat. Then a third, far more menacing one appears and revives the other two and the real fight begins. The battle itself is mostly just annoying, but the setup makes Zable-Fahr an intimidating foe.
  • In the german-made flight sim Dark Star One, every sector of space you fly in is actually very small, and no matter how long you fly towards a distant-looking planetoid, you can never reach it. However, there's one sector of space (where the final battle takes place) in which the far-distant asteriod belt can be flown to, mined, etc. For reasons I simply don't understand, this long-distance, uneventful trip from this asteriod belt to the space's exit point scares the crap out of me, to the point where I refuse to make that trip ever again.
  • In the flight sim Freelancer, the space for each of the system's sectors is portrayed with simple starfields and nebulae. However, one of the hidden / easter egg sectors has a vastly different design: the sector is essentially within a giant cylinder. I've had actual nightmares about this, because it's so different and alien than anything else in the game.
  • Inherit the Earth, of all things. Try to intimidate the rat doorkeeper and you'll learn why rat warriors are among the most feared in the land...they overwhelm their enemy, gnaw at them until they're too weak from pain and blood loss to fight back, then get fastened to a stake and left in the sun until their wounds get infected and their skin turns to leather. And, for good measure, that leather is then used to bind their books. And this all comes after the developers of the game were forced to tone it down to make it more "kid-friendly".
  • I have absolutely no clue why, but Dracula actually scared me in the underrated FMV game Dracula Unleashed. It took a little while before I figured out you were supposed to enter holding the cross and all I could do was watch as Dracula would rip my dude's heart out and then throw it on the floor, taking the Damsel In Distress as his undead bride. Or what about a few of those random deaths? Some involve a wolf running up to the player character as the screen fades black, another is when a man yells "I'm Sane I tell you! SANE! SAAAAAANE!" and then the screen goes black. Or when the maniac strangled Hellsing?
    • If you wait too long to fight Dracula, you can go find your friends murdered.
  • Four words: Lemming. Tomato. Ketchup. Facility. Featuring lemmings being systematically squished into blood. That evidently becomes ketchup. And unless you solve the puzzle you can't stop it. * shudder*
    • One of the types of Level Goal looks like the head of an enormous horned demon shooting flames from its nostrils and eye sockets. You have to guide the lemmings into its mouth.
    • The "Menacing!" level. Composed of blood, intestines, and bones. The music is quite menacing, too.
      • That level was actually based on another game published by Psygnosis, Menace* and it was one of the four "special" levels, which were based on other Psygnosis games. Other three were based on Shadow of the Beast 1-2 and Awesome.
  • The SNES game Porky Pig's Haunted Holiday is pretty scary thank to the combination of his graphic and atrocious primitive voice over to his cartonny's horror theme. Like we said in Quebec: we don't want to know it, we want to see it if you want to see it off course, muahaha
    • And while in the subject of looney tunes's game on the super nintendo, Speedy Gonzales Los Gatos Bandidos's game over screen is quite......unforgiving....saying the least.yet again a video worth a thousand word and yet see why i never played this game more than three time shall we ** evil grin** .
  • The Snow Bros. 2 character select screen.◊
  • Descent bosses, their engine hums and ability to teleport.
    • The second boss of Descent II (scary ticking sound), and the final boss of I(big freaky Cyber Cyclops).
  • In Dance ManiaX 2nd Mix, if your Life Meter runs low, the background will flash a picture of a skeleton reaching his arms at you with the word "DANGER" at the top and bottom of the screen. Talk about incentive to not fail...
  • TMNT: Smash Up already seems to have this even though the game hasn't come out! You do know a Foot Soldier is in the game, right? Can't possibly be scary, right? Wrong. Look here, just look at those inhuman looking eyes, the body looks somewhat strange too, and the head looks creepy because there are usually things that represent it, like a realistic looking chin, but this thing just doesn't have one, it looks more like a Shadow Creature than a Foot Ninja! Strangely though, I found myself making the art my desktop background, I guess the Utrominator is slightly scarier...
    • ...Which I will now elaborate upon. Basically, an Utrom usually wears armor to blend in with Humanity, this is what happens when you let an Utrom suddenly become very trigger happy and badass, the suit looks just plain creepy, but it's mainly just the head, and, in the trailers, the Utrom pops out and screams... And it's an ATTACK! Though he is obviously in control, it makes it seem like the machine is trying to hurt the Utrom and the opponent.
      • Something I just found out, the Utrominator is based on a scrapped design for the 2003 series, right here, what's so scary? I read the page, and it says "an enhaced and enslaved Exo suit with an zombie Oot, a version from an alternate era where the Shredder reigns supreme." That makes it slightly more unsettling, because, even though it's not a zombie you're playing as, it's still very, very creepy, imagine playing as it in this form.
      • It's not a scrapped character, they actually used it in the series. Granted, as naught but a background character, but the entire episode was Nightmare Fuel/Tear Jerker material itself.
      • In Hindsight, yeah, you're right, by the way, original poster, right here.
    • A more intentional incident happened in Nancy Drew: Shadow at the Water's Edge: A yurei attacks you from behind! Warning: Unmarked spoiler.
    • Hell, Jedah himself. One of his special moves involves him decapitating himself and attacking you with the blood spray. If you idle with him for a bit, a torrent of blood pours out of his body when he exhales. And then there's his utterly deranged Evil Laugh, which he likes to do while tearing open his own face in one of his victory poses.
    • Just be glad that you never dreamed about Demitri using Midnight Bliss on the fetus.
  • Groove On Fight's resident Mad Scientist M.A.D. has his own personal stage, a drab laboratory with a giant breathing baby-like head hooked up to wires right in the center. It periodically makes a horrifying face and screams.
    • Not to mention that the animal that is with you during the main menu pretty much BEGS you not to delete your town. Justified as it will ERASE him/her and everything else from existince.
  • Fighting Typhon towards the end of Rygar the Legendary Adventure: A multi-headed hydra... Did I mention they are fire-breathing baby heads. Wailing at the top of their/its/whatever's lungs. For the entire fight. Gah.
  • In Portal 2, in one of the Ratman Dens, stand close enough to the wall and you can hear a voice. That voice, paired with the background music, is the reason this troper skipped that room.
  • In Lunar Silver Star Story, there's a cutscene where Lunar cries out "Alex!" a few times, then the screen fades to red, and her cries become distorted. The scary distorted cries then echo, as the screen goes completely red.
  • King Drool, the Big Bad of the Bonk series. In all three Final Boss fights, he takes up about half the screen, amazing for the hardware of the time. I bet this guy gave a lot of young Turbo Graf X players nightmares.
  • One of the night stages in Plants Vs Zombies takes place during a thunderstorm. The screen is pitch black, illuminated only by the occasional flash of lightning, which manages to give the normally goofy game a very creepy atmosphere.
    • Some of the enemies are quite creepy as well, like the Jack-in-the-Box zombies, who look like zombified insane asylum escapees (complete with manic grin and straitjacket) carrying jack-in-the-boxes. Which are rigged to explode. There's something just not right about zombie suicide bombers, especially the zombie's shocked expression right before he gets killed by his own explosion. And then there's the gigantic Gargantuar zombies. If you don't shit bricks when you see this guy coming, you will when it stomps your plants flat in a single blow.
    • And then there's the Game Over sequence, which comes into play if a zombie gets past your defenses: the zombie walks into your house while a creepy musical sting plays, and there's a Big "NO!" punctuated by a horrid "crunch" while the words "The Zombies Ate Your Brain!" appear on the screen in a creepy "horror" font. It manages to be funny and disturbing at the same time.
      • Just so you know, the big No comes after the crunch.
    • The description for the Backup Dancer zombie says "Backup Dancer Zombie spent six years perfecting his art at the Chewliard Performing Arts School in Zombie New York City." ZOMBIE. NEW YORK. CITY. To make matters worse, if you scroll down far enough on the achievements menu, you see China. No living people are visible and the zombies are just standing there...
  • The turn-limit death in some certain roguelikes. The one that really frightened me was Mr. Doom (the Grim Reaper thing) from Chocobo Dungeon 2, I recall freezing and reaching for the reset button as the warning message popped up. The sinister piano music didn't help, either. Much later, no longer a kid, I still get chills when "Something's stirring..." in Pokémon Mystery Dungeon games, since it functionally imitates what Mr. Doom did back then.
    • Turn limit death? How about a bell ringing making people forget almost everything about themselves and their lives? Cid's reaction to having his memories wiped and the creepy people in town who are happy to not remember are both unnerving. especially the people.
  • The original Dune game by Cryo. Upon dying you're treated to am animation of Paul Atreides decaying in the desert, his face staring back at you. Reloading your game shows this animation in reverse.
  • Missile Command has the infamous Game Over THE END screen. The developers suffered nightmares about the game.
  • Star Control 2 - anything involving the Dynarri. What they did to the Ur-Quan. How the Ur-Quan were able to resist them. What the Ur-Quan did to them, and what would happen if it was ever undone.
  • Detective Barbie: Mystery of the Carnival Caper, involved wandering around an empty carnival in the middle of the night. In search of a bound, blindfolded Ken. Set to creepy music. And every so often, the kidnapper would appear as a figure dressed entirely in black, peering at you from around the corner. Yikes.
  • In DJMAX, there are a series of "NB Ranger" songs, in which their respective videos show the titular Power Ranger spoofs going around and beating couples up. Somewhat annoying, but at most it'll leave the couples wanting to kick their asses. What I'm terrified of are the NB Girls, who use rather underhanded tactics to make couples break up.
  • And who could forget the pants-wettingly scary error messages on the Game Boy Camera? Holy crap!
  • In the Japanese version of the little-known SNES platformer Ardy Lightfoot, during the Womb Level, you will come across the skeletal remains of Cathy, with a drop of stomach acid above. This was edited out in the US release, in which she is simply lying there dead, and the acid drop is removed.
  • The SNES fighting game adaptation of the movie Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story features one in the form of the demon, a fearsome armored warrior of sorts wielding a spear. But how it looks is not the scary part, especially since unlike its movie counterpart, it's more colorful. The reason why this can be scary for some is due to how the game treats its "lives." In the movie, Bruce is given three protective mirrors as a perhaps superstitious mean to ward off evil spirits, and those mirrors function as a player's lives in the game. Should three fights be lost, the current stage will darken to a deep, dark blue, and any background animation will cease. The demon will then appear, and the player will have to survive a moment against it with very little life as an attempt to regain the three mirrors, receiving an abrupt game over if defeated. And then there's the music.
    • What's worse is how multiplayer works in the game, namely story mode's. After defeating the stage's enemy, players are forced to fight eachother until one stands, the loser having a mirror taken from him/her. This means that even if you try to alternate and take turns as to who loses a mirror every stage, one of you is going to have to survive the demon just to earn the right to keep going to the end with your friend. And guess who's the last boss.
  • In Disney Extreme Skate Adventure, a mission in the Elephant Graveyard has you performing a particular type of trick (a statuesque) on several elephant skulls. The creepy part comes when the game lets you know that you did the trick sucessfully: the elephant skull's eyes suddenly light up red accompanied by a sudden and creepy chord. Yikes!
  • The burglar's theme in the original The Sims is especially creepy. What makes it worse is that many players never hear it until their first ever burglar visit; it's worth mentioning that this event is COMPLETELY random, comes with NO WARNING WHAT-SO-EVER, and will typically only happen during the night, in game, when your Sims are asleep and the game is almost completely quiet.
  • Disgaea 2 has this in the Worst Ending. It's more obvious in the Japanese Version. Listen all the way to the end and you'll understand.
  • In the first Ninja Gaiden game, the Jaquio's face up close. There's two instances of this in the game, and if you don't want to play the game, this episode of Proton Jon's LP will show it in the first ten seconds of the video.
  • The DOS game 3D Body Adventure. Where do we even begin? There's creepy music throughout, videos that show what a heart attack and brain synapse are like, and then there's a mini-game that looks like it's running on the Doom gameplay engine, in which you go into the bodies of hospital patients and shoot down the viruses and diseases, and you have to do it all in a time limit. The worst part? This game was made for elementary students.
  • DOS4GW Page Fault, Scaring the living shit out of 8 year olds since 1992.◊
  • In Bomberman '94 (known as Mega Bomberman), if you defeat Bagular (the final boss) while riding Rooey (a kangaroo-like animal), you can watch a little scene where both our hero and the kangaroo ride the ship, but due to weight problems, the kangaroo leaves the ship while our Hero argues about taking it with him, in which the kangaroo kicks him back to the ship and then, after you see Bomberman finally leave, the screen flashes white, and then, you hear its cry (the noise they make when you ride them). Normally, defeating the Big Bad without the kangaroo leads to Bomberman jump with a happy face, but if you do doing all the stuff above, he doesn't jumps and stays with a neutral face. Yes, Rooey did one heck of a Heroic Sacrifice, and the fact that it blew up along with Bagular, leads to an unnerving complication that both died, which is Fridge Horror.
  • Video game glitches.
  • The Midway arcade classic NARC had Mr. Big as its final boss. Turns out that Mr. Big is some sort of freakish giant head on a motorized pedestal. He shoots out giant tongues to attack you, and as you defeat him, his flesh disappears and he is reduced to a giant skull attacking you. For a game that was all about Drugs Are Bad (because they are), the surreal Final Boss makes you wonder...
  • Astérix and Obelix XXL / Kick Buttix is very slightly Darker and Edgier than its source, mostly due to the premise: it starts with the protagonist duo returning from boar hunting to find their village burning and their friends kidnapped - they have a good reason to look and act more aggressive than usual. Most of the time, however, the game stays light-hearted... until you reach the bosses, Caesar's "Engines of War". These mobile fortresses, while ridicolous even for the Asterix universe, have a brutal and dangerous appearance and, in later fights, they have a tendency of crushing and bombing the reinforcement Mooks that just happen to be in the crossfire. Nobody dies - they just fly away - but you'll often have your back turned while fleeing from the attacks, so you'll hear only their screams. The boss music, which seems built on a constant Scare Chord, doesn't help matters. If it wasn't that the game is quite easy, for once it would seem like Asterix and Obelix are genuinely in danger.
  • One of the enemies in EarthBound; Smilin' Sam, is a marionette with a disembodied hand controlling it.
  • The accidentally creepy Watson from Sherlock Holmes Nemisis. For whatever reason the makers of the game didn't give Watson a walking animation, meaning he followed you by transporting around and he just keeps staring...
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