Horrifying The Horror / Video Games

Horrifying the Horror in Video Games.

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• Baldur's Gate II:
  • In Shadows of Amn the Big Bad's dragon, a massively powerful epic-level vampire, is sent running when the player character's Superpowered Evil Side first surfaces. You can even rub it in her face later on.
    I was not the one that fled our last encounter, Bodhi. Sorry if I... scared you.
  • Early in Throne of Bhaal the PCs stumble upon a vampire ring. Vampires, for most of the base game, have been tough opponents. However, at this point in the saga, the party is supposed to be so beefed up, they do what they can to avoid the PCs. They still face the party, though.
• The Binding of Isaac: There's a share of items that can cause temporary fear on enemies, making them run away from you, but the one that really fits this trope is the item called "2spooky". It causes Isaac to take an incredibly nightmarish appearance and enemies that get too close will immediately suffer the fear effect. Yes, the face is so scary that you can literally terrify Satan.
• Bug Fables: The final area's enemies are bizarre, otherworldly-looking, powerful creatures only known as "Dead Landers" that terrify the heroes, with the game's bestiary telling anybody who encounters them to "Flee on sight." According to Word of God, even they are afraid of the gigantic Dead Lander Omega that watches over the place.
• In the single-player campaign for Dawn of War: Dark Crusade, there's a moment in the Chaos Stronghold mission when Eliphas the Inheritor, a champion of the Word Bearers legion, a daemon-worshipping Ax-Crazy super-soldier from hell itself tries to whisper to your commander. If you are playing as the Necrons, he attempts it... and then recoils in surprise and horror when he finds out that Necrons don't have souls, and then just coolly vows to destroy you utterly, as if you are an affront to everything he believes. Later on as you are tearing through his defences, he communicates with you again and the Lord seems to whisper something to him (we hear nothing), causing him to reply curtly "No, that cannot be so." Brrrr.
  • All Orks dedicate their entire lives to fighting war, they are violent, thuggish, and Ax-Crazy to the extreme. Their morale is incredibly hard to drop, but when it does hit zero, they'll panic and cry out "WE'Z ALL GONNA DIE!!" In the setting, the Nightbringer instilled the fear of death in every race except for the Orks (because they were the youngest race). Your men have just instilled the fear of death in a race of green-skinned psychopaths who shouldn't by definition be able to. Gets even more awesome if you're playing as the Imperial Guard.
• Dead by Daylight: "The Unknown" is a grotesque, horrifying, and disconcertingly malicious Tulpa, the manifestation of various creepypasta-style urban legends that has racked itself quite the body count before it was inducted in The Entity's game. Unlike nearly every other Killer, The Unknown did so completely involuntarily, and was actually taken during the middle of one of its hauntings, initially mimicking a human voice calling for help in order to taunt its prospective victim, only to actually start screaming for help as it found itself being dragged into The Entity's realm.
• Deltarune: The epilogue of Chapter 1 makes it quite clear that Kris is a Creepy Child when you're not playing as them. Chapter 2 has an obscure "Weird Route" that substantially changes the story by having Kris emotionally abuse Noelle, during her brief time as a Guest-Star Party Member, into using her ice magic to kill — not just defeat, but kill — as many enemies as possible for the sake of "becoming stronger", eventually culminating in freezing Berdly,, possibly to death, with a One-Hit Kill spell. Afterward, Ralsei and Susie, who were absent during these events, note that Kris looks seriously freaked out, suggesting that, despite their behavior at the end of the previous chapter, they do have a line and you just crossed it.
• In Doom (2016), the various codex entries indicate that the demons of Hell are absolutely terrified of Doomguy, whom they fearfully call "The Doom Slayer", due to one of his previous rampages through Hell from before the start of the game, during which he utterly wrecked the place and slew even its strongest demons.
  They are rage, brutal, without mercy.
  But you. You will be worse.
  Rip and tear, until it is done.
  • In a great piece of Gameplay and Story Integration, several of the Glory Kills show the demons in Doom Eternal have a look of utter terror on their faces (especially the Arch-Vile) as the Slayer tears them apart. It's not just the rank-and-file demons who fear the Slayer. For all their tough talk, the Hell Priests are utterly mortified of the Slayer, with one desperately bargaining for his life before his untimely decapitation.
• In Dragon Ball Xenoverse if Broly is fighting Super Saiyan God Goku, Broly will freak out, roaring out "What are you? WHAT ARE YOU?!", with Goku replying "I'm in a world of power you will never know."
• The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim:
  • Dragons are winged beasts of death and fire whose very speech is volatile magic, and who cannot truly die like mortals can... unless they encounter a Dovahkiin like the Player Character. Dov Ah Kiin, or "Dragonkind Hunter Born," are extremely rare beings who appear mortal, but possess the Aedric soul of a dragon, and are capable of killing dragons permanently by consuming their souls. Hence why one of the combat tracks that plays during dragon fights is titled "The One They Fear," and your first dragon kill's reaction when it realizes what it just antagonized.
    Mirmulnir: Dovahkiin?! NO!!
  • Something else about dragons is that they're immortal beings for whom death is normally just a temporary measure. But the first mortals to learn how to Shout devised the "Dragonrend" Shout, Joor Zah Frul, "mortal," "temporary" and "finite." Blasting dragons with Dragonrend forces immortal beings to understand the concept of mortality, which is such a Brown Note that it leaves them temporarily unable to fly or Shout themselves. It's also key to defeating Alduin, a veritable Beast of the Apocalypse who finds Dragonrend appalling.
    Alduin: Nivahriin joorre! [cowardly mortals!] What have you done?! What twisted words have you created?!
• FAITH: The Unholy Trinity has Optional Boss Tiffany, who pines for Big Bad cult leader Gary Miller. She attempts to do one of the cult's rituals on herself, but overloads the ritual and becomes the Rejected Vessel. Notes from Gary found after killing her state that Gary found this quite jarring and is quite happy Tiffany is dead.
• Fallout: New Vegas:
  • This is part of the fun of the Terrifying Presence perk, which gives you special dialogue options to initiate combat. For example, you can do this when you meet Vulpes Inculta, the leader of the Legion's frumentarii, an Evil Genius spymaster who commits atrocities like the massacre of Nipton. If you confront him in the aftermath...
    Vulpes: I want you to witness the fate of the town of Nipton, to memorize every detail. And then, when you move on? I want you to teach everyone you meet the lesson that Caesar's Legion taught here, especially any NCR troops you run across.
    Courier: I'll wear your head like you wear that dog's.
    Vulpes: Legionnaires! We have a problem!
  • In an Evil Karma ending in which the Courier sided with Mr. House, this is part of the reason why your boss so lavishly rewards you — he's terrified of you, and tries his best to appease you.
  • The Courier in is easily this by the end of the Lonesome Road DLC. As they depart the Divide, its various horrors — Marked Men and Tunnelers, the latter of which can easily take down Deathclaws — leave them alone.
• Played for Laughs example with this scene in Final Fantasy XIII-2.
• Alma, the Anti-Villain from First Encounter Assault Recon inspires terror in anyone who sees her, but even she runs away from The Creep in F.E.A.R 3.
• The Force Unleashed II: Supplementary materials reveal Darth Vader spliced a clone of Starkiller with Darth Maul's DNA, creating a being called Maulkiller. Maulkiller quickly went insane and had to be terminated. Maulkiller struck fear into all who faced him, including Darth Vader himself.
• In Grand Theft Auto IV, Niko, a freelance hitman for basically every mob and gang in town, who was also a child soldier in a horrific war, is still freaked out by Eddie Low, a completely batshit insane, sexually sadistic serial killer.
• Jurassic Park: The Game: Both Raptors and Dilophosaurus flee when they hear the call of the Troodon.
• The final boss in Kirby: Planet Robobot is Star Dream, a hyper-advanced, omnipotent, reality-warping supercomputer who can very easily create an Apocalypse How Class X-5 scenario. During the final phase of its battle, pausing the game will show some flavor text from Star Dream's point of view. In it, the boss attempts to analyze Kirby, only to realize that the small pink orb's power can only be calculated as infinite. The rest of the text is Star Dream recalculating its own chance of survival down to around 0% as it desperately begins erecting barriers around itself in the actual fight.
  "Its energy signature far exceeds that of the Invader Armor, our combat mech. The nearly infinite power within this life-form is astounding. Calculating probability of survival... It doesn't look good."
• After the final battle of the Golden Ending route of The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel IV, the godlike being Ishmelga, the source of the curse of Erebonia, retreats to another realm. Rean pursues Ishmelga, and finds him trembling in absolute terror of Rean, begging him not to come any closer. Ishmelga offers him a Deal with the Devil just to spare his own life, but Rean is having none of it and cuts him into two, fully destroying the curse of Erebonia for good.
• By the Leviathan DLC for Mass Effect 3, Commander Shepard is the only thing the Reapers can really be said to fear. Bear in mind that the Reapers are a billion-year-old unstoppable force of hundreds or thousands of Eldritch Abominations that can, in many cases, throw down with entire fleets by themselves or in small numbers. And even though they're winning, they are afraid of you, although this generally manifests as them dropping all other efforts in order to attempt to laser you to death.
• Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor: This is a gameplay tactic. The orcs are ruthless, slave-driving, cannibalistic, industrialist murder machines whose sheer ugliness (especially when they cheat death) drives men mad. You make them shit their collective leather trousers. Many orc captains have specific weakness, and will outright flee in terror if the conditions of one of their phobias is activated. Some captains are even afraid of you specifically, and will run as soon as you show yourself. As for mooks, there's a high-profile takedown called Brutalize that stealthily sneaks up to an orc, only to abandon all subtlety and tear the poor fellow ten new ones as all the other nearby orcs flee in terror at the sheer viciousness of your murder.
  • The sequel, Middle-earth: Shadow of War continues the above gameplay examples, and there's also Carnán. Celebrimbor was an immensely powerful and skilled One Elf Army in life, a smith second only to his grandfather Fëanor, and after crafting the New Ring as a wraith he becomes powerful and arrogant enough to take on Sauron himself. His advice to Talion upon meeting Carnán? "Drop your weapons and kneel."
• In Mogeko Castle, Mogek-ko does this to King Mogeko, who created Mogeko Castle, in the Normal End. When he tells her Yonaka got away, she angrily tells him that she'll have to play with him, causing him to burst out crying.
• A humorous example in Mortal Kombat 1; Reptile/Syzoth is a very capable fighter whose true form is that of a hulking, acid-spitting lizard monster. He can swallow people whole, tear them apart with his sheer strength or just inflict horrible injuries with his acid breath, to say nothing of the fact that he can turn invisible to catch his prey off-guard. He's one of the good guys, though, and quite Adorkable at that. So why does he qualify for this trope? Because after witnessing his ability to turn invisible, Johnny Cage compared him to the Predator and, after the events of the main story, invited Syzoth to his place for a movie night to show him said movie. It scared Syzoth shitless.
  Syzoth: Why did you show me that Predator film!?
  Johnny Cage: *Laughs* After all we've been through, that was scary?
• In Monster Hunter, this is Deviljho's biggest noteworthy feature. Other monsters of comparable size and menace actually run from this thing, not because of its appearance, but because of its bottomless appetite. Exaggerated with Elder Dragons, whose presence renders entire maps completely deserted except for either the most diminutive of wildlife—or Remobras.
• At the end of Mother, the protagonists use Maria's lullaby to defeat Giegue, a near god-like alien whose very presence has thus far thrown the world into chaos. As the song grows nearer to completion with each iteration, Giegue is reduced to screaming incoherently for the protagonists to stop. Of course, it's less likely that he's afraid and more so that he's deeply disturbed that you're bringing back memories of his dead adoptive mother by singing her lullaby to him. This probably leads poor Giegue into becoming an Eldritch Abomination later on in EarthBound (1994) when he becomes Giygas, the Universal Cosmic Destroyer.
• In Persona 3 once your party is leveled enough and you decide to return to earlier floors, you'll find out that Shadows there, which you might have experienced quite some trouble fighting before, are terrified of you. They flee, squeaking, at the sight of your party. It makes them kind of cute even.
• Persona 5: When going around Mementos, if the player is significantly higher level than the roving Shadows, should they catch sight of the player they will immediately begin fleeing.
• In Pizza Tower, the fourth boss Fake Peppino morphs into a massive bloblike abomination during the final segment, becoming an Advancing Boss of Doom when playing as Peppino. If playing as The Noise however, he can instead terrify Fake Peppino into submission by conjuring a Nightmare Face of his own and screaming at it until it scampers away, allowing him to make his way to the end with no disturbances.
• Alex Mercer of [PROTOTYPE] may be a shapeshifting man-eating Humanoid Abomination and the stuff of New York's nightmares, but even he is shocked and disturbed by the sight of Elizabeth Greene's gigantic One-Winged Angel form, composed entirely of human flesh, crashing upward through the middle of Times Square and killing everything in sight.
  • Let's not forget The Reveal. The one responsible for the outbreak was the original Alex Mercer. The current Alex Mercer was an amalgamation of The Virus, the original Mercer in his death throes, and lots of other victims. After learning the reason why the original Mercer did what he did (out of spite), apparently The Virus was disgusted.
• R-Type: The Bydo are a powerful bioweapon, specifically engineered to feel nothing but hatred and animosity towards all non-Bydo in the universe. Their campaign in Tactics 2 has them enroute to the home world of an unknown civilization, only to encounter something that makes the entire fleet do an abrupt about-face and run. Sadly, we never get to see just what could terrify the Bydo.
• Appears to happen in Resident Evil 7, when Lucas begins pulling out his own fingernails on camera, and is told to stop off-screen by Eveline, the bio-organic weapon responsible for all the horrors in the game.
• The Secret World:
  • Addressed almost by name in the mission "Who Horrifies The Horrors?" in which the newly-arrived Dark Woods Horror sends the normally-fearless werewolves fleeing in terror.
  • The Talking Heads are known and feared by all Illuminati employees, with even Kirsten Geary dreading their seemingly limitless vision and unknown powers. However, the sudden appearance of Lilith has them sounding the alarm, prompting a very tense mission briefing from Geary, who isn't at all comforted by the fact that the Talking Heads sent word directly to her in order to make it clear how serious things are.
  • The Black Signal is a monstrous Filth-spirit haunting the electronic systems of Tokyo, mind-raping and tormenting innocents on a whim... but even the memory of Lilith is enough to send him into a blind panic.
  • Bong Cha, Voice of the Dragon, serves as an impressive manipulator of probabilities throughout the game, so poised and skilled that not even the sudden appearance of Lilith phases her. However, Daimon Kiyota leaves her disturbed and ill-at-ease; despite being the Dragon's apparent ally in Tokyo, she frequently muses aloud how unaccountably frightening he seems to her, noting that his angles are "all wrong" and his backstory doesn't seem to make sense. Quite tellingly, Kiyota ends up replacing her as Voice Of The Dragon.
  • And finally, even dreaded Lilith herself fears the Nephilim; upon discovering the rebel angels descending on her from above, the expression on her face is one of pure deer-in-the-headlights terror.
• In Silent Hill 2, all the eldritch abominations that plague the titular town and have no problems attacking you, will run away as soon as they hear the scraping of Pyramid Head's sword. If you turn off your radio and light and start dragging that same sword, you'll be able to keep them away.
• In Star Control 2, the Ur-Quan are a huge, implacable race of slavers that think they're the only species in the universe with the right to travel through space, have locked hundreds of other races under "slave-shields" on their homeworlds, and aren't above exterminating a race completely if even a few members misbehave. They're currently at war with a huge, implacable race of murderers that think they're the only species in the universe with the right to exist, and have wiped out hundreds of other races. One single intelligent Dnyarri is enough to make members of either race wet their pant-equivalents.
  For the first time in generations... we fear.
• Star Shift Origins: The light and darkness are primordial cosmic entities that have been in conflict since the start of the universe. They are terrified of the First Ones and their potential to control time, so much that they formed a truce and went into hiding until the First Ones destroyed themselves with their own time powers.
• Stellaris:
  • The Prethoryn Scourge is an extra-galactic biological Hive Mind that intends to eat everything in the galaxy. Its mere appearance is sufficient to have the entire galaxy unite to declare war on it. However, if a civilization is psionic, they can communicate with the Scourge, which reveals the Scourge is fleeing an even more powerful force, which it calls "the Hunters". Suggesting an alliance will result in the Scourge laughing at you for thinking it's even possible to defeat the Hunters.
  • The Extradimensional Invaders are an army of Energy Beings from another universe that apparently feeds off of fear and pain. But if your civilization has contacted the Shroud, the Invaders are given pause. They'll still attack you, but conversing with them reveals they are a little disconcerted that you've contacted the Shroud and are still alive.
  • The Crisis Aspirant makes the Shroud itself fear them with good reason. The Aetherophaesic Engine would destroy the entire galaxy, and killing The Shroud with it. Horrifying the entire realm into joining with the rest of the galaxy in trying to stop them.
• In the H-Game Succubus Prison, Vinum may look like a toddler, but do not be fooled, she's the eldest of her succubi sisters and is more than capable of backing that up, but even she is afraid of a certain someone, someone that makes even a usually-fearless Vinum shit her shorts... Who is that someone...? The White Demon◊.
• King Boo, or Big Boo as he's called in Super Mario 64 DS is terrified of Wario, and claims that he even has a face "that could scare a ghost".
• Team Fortress 2 has a cast of hardened killers ranging from Stoic to Laughably Evil, all remorseless killing machines, but they're all scared of the unrelenting psychosis and seeming glee of the Pyro, as the Heavy Weapons Guy puts it.
  I fear no man... but that thing... it scares me.
• Total War: Warhammer, Total War: Warhammer II and Total War: Warhammer III feature some units that have the Fear (enemy units suffer a morale penality from being in melee with it) and its upgrade Terror (enemy units suffer the same morale penality, will run away sooner and have a chance of briefly running away when charged by the unit) traits but, unless they also have Unbreakable (morale will never drop), they can still suffer morale loss (and be made to flee) from other means such as taking heavy damage, being under fire, having their general killed/flee, etc...
• In Tower of Winter from Tailormade Games, the final boss The Heart of Winter is a Mechanical Abomination that's responsible for the decades long winter that's been happening. Your character's ending if you defeat the Heart of Winter depends on some of your choices during the game and how much health you have remaining after the fight. If you had only chosen to fight the weaker enemies and end up with full or nearly full health after defeating the Heart of Winter, you get this ending (the following is just an excerpt from it) on how the Eldritch Abominations that created the Heart of Winter deal with you:
  Despite the sudden change, there are no monsters approaching you. Even the mightiest ancient monster have hurriedly fled from you, like wild beasts seeking to escape the eyes of a predator.
• Undertale has two specific examples:
  • First of all, there's the weakest character in the game, the local Almighty Janitor, Sans. When you sorta-befriend the Big Bad, he will tell you to stay away from him, as he's caused him "more than his fair share of resets." And if you go for the No Mercy route, you will find him blocking your path as the toughest boss in the game, so tough that even the presupposed epitome of horror in the game , The Fallen Child is visibly wary.
    You feel like you're going to have a bad time.
  • And then there's YOU, the player, who will absolutely terrify the Big Bad in No Mercy. Complete that path, and the player character will butcher him to nothingness, despite him pleading for his life in tears. As well, you can be this to the opponent above, judging by his unique dialogue if you kill him and reset the game twice for no other reason than to fight him again. Of course, that's just one way of interpreting it — given his lack of voice acting and very unreadable demeanor, they could just as easily mean he's impressed, surprised, or just outright disgusted.
    ... that expression that you're wearing... ... well, i won't grace it with a description.
    ... that expression that you're wearing... ... you're really kind of a freak, huh?
    • Furthermore, if you complete a Genocide run, reset the game, and do another Genocide run, the Fallen Child will express disturbance at your actions and request that you do not do it again. Again, this may simply be disgust, as they remark that you are "possessed of a perverted sentimentality."
    • Considering the previous point, anything that can scare YOU in this game applies as well.
• The Malkavian from Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines is scared witless by the Cabbie and deeply disturbed by Mr. Ox. Exactly what these two characters are is unknown, but they've managed to unnerve a vampire otherwise able to laugh off just about everything else the game throws at you, and probably are nothing good.
  • The end of the game strongly hints that the Cabbie is actually Cain, aka the original vampire.
  • The Ocean House hotel level is pretty much this trope done to you. No, not the Player Character, you.
• Warhammer 40,000: Mechanicus: The Wake-Up Call Boss, Void Admiral Agrolekh, who is a Destroyer Lord and therefore quite monstrous even by Necron standards, finds Adeptus Mechanicus tech-priests just as horrific as the Imperium finds Necrons.
  Agrolekh: What is this? Flesh and steel combined... a mockery of both! Their every footstep a blasphemy! What manner of galaxy is this to which I have awakened?
• In the world of The Witcher, Geralt is this to the various things that go bump in the night. It's best encapsulated in the song used in the trailer "A Night to Remember" for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. It's essentially an Ironic Nursery Tune sung by monstrous parents to their children about the big bad Witcher.
  Wolves asleep amidst the trees
  Bats all a-swaying in the breeze
  But one soul lies anxious, wide awake
  fearing all manner of ghouls, hags, and wraiths.
  Birds all silent for the night
  Cows turned in as daylight dies
  But one soul lies anxious, wide awake
  For the Witcher, brave and bold
  Paid in coin of gold
  He'll chop... and slice you
  cut... and dice you
  Eat you up whole
  Eat you whole

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