Mook Horror Show / Video Games

• When there is a hacker in a multiplayer game, the other team will experience this trope, as they swiftly get cut down left and right by an unstoppable killer.
• Ace Combat has this as a staple of the series once the player has progressed enough. What makes it interesting is that the enemy never know your callsign, only your insignia, leading to a variety of nicknames:
  • Ace Combat 04: Shattered Skies: After the furball over the Comona Islands, in which Möbius One can land a hit on the Yellow Squadron and force them to withdraw, the Eruseans start looking out for the "Blue Ribbon". This culminates over Megalith, their last holdout, when they see the entire squadron bearing ribbon insignias and freak out.
  • Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War has this as a stronger focus, helped by an in-universe fairy tale about a demon rising from the North Sea:
    • After the sinking of the Hrimfaxi at the North Sea, the Yuktobanians begin calling the squadron the Demons of Razgriz. It's not a nickname either - the bad guys seemingly believe the squadron to be real demons. It gets to the point that merely mentioning the squadron among Yuke ranks is enough to cripple the morale of entire battalions. President Harling decides to play on this after they rescue him by officially designating then Razgriz Squadron with a new all-black paintjob.
      Yuke Soldier: HELP US! IT'S THE RAZGRIZ!
    • A specific example is after the death of Chopper, as the player's squadron fight all the more fiercely and the Enemy Chatter becomes panicked.
    • The game also features the mission "Powder Keg", wherein the player's squadron is sent to take out an enemy weapon supply base out in the jungle. They start off rather confident that they can drive you off, but as you continue destroying the entrances to the base, they start getting more desperate and afraid as fires and explosions rock the base, destroy their supplies, and kill many of their men. By the end they're in a complete panic just before your last bomb completely destroys the entire facility.
  • Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown has this happen around the time the first Arsenal Bird is destroyed. By this time Trigger has a new emblem featuring three clawmarks across his old one, so he's dubbed "Three Strikes"
    Osean Ground: If you see Three Strikes in the sky, count to three and the enemy's gone!
• Occasionally, That One Player becomes this to their gaming community. For instance, Dslyecxi, founder of Arma clan Shack Tactical, is treated as a terrifying specter of a man who can approach, make a kill, and escape without warning. Name-dropping him in a match is a great way to suddenly cause the other side to start making mistakes out of fear of him and his reputation. There's also been a few cases where he panicked the other team so badly just by his presence that they started killing each other by mistake trying to kill him. Please note that in at least one such instance, he had been confirmed down and out in the game for several minutes and his opponents were still causing friendly fire casualties because they were that worked up and paranoid after Dslyecxi had spent the prior 10 minutes or so picking them off one or two at a time.
• Assassin's Creed II has two separate instances where Ezio's main targets, Templars, are heard talking about Ezio Auditore da Firenze. The first man is completely paranoid, trying to talk himself into calming down ("He'll... he'll leave. He'll get bored, I'm sure...") and surrounding himself with guards. The second has a near-panic attack when he finds out that Ezio is simply in the same city that he is.
  • While Ezio had yet to establish his reputation as a supernatural combatant, both targets had actually been in Ezio's presence — the first had been one of the would-be killers of the Medici brothers, the second when Ezio trailed a conspirator to a secret meeting only to be revealed and escape — so they knew already how close he had come to them before; in the time between the targets he'd also developed a reputation as the Assassin.
  • In both the first game and the second, guards will throw down their weapons and flee in absolute terror after watching Altaïr or Ezio tear apart their comrades without so much as being scratched in return.
  • In the case of the second target, it is all the more satisfying, considering you're sitting on the ledge right above him.
  • Or, in the case of the first, the game encourages you to hide inside the well he's currently pacing around.
  • A commonly heard reaction to seeing Connor in the third game is "Oh, Hell. We're gonna' need some help!" Said Redcoats could end up torn to pieces in seconds. It is also entirely possible to leave a few bodies hanging from the branches of trees in your wake, or thin their numbers by luring a bear to them.
• In Asura's Wrath, the soldiers that witness Wrath Asura destroy their armies are absolutely terrified of him, and can only watch in horror as he rips through everything in his way.
• This is a staple of the Batman: Arkham Series' "Invisible Predator" sections, where Batman takes on groups of armed enemies by stealthily picking them off one by one. As the fights wear on, the mooks get more and more terrified (you can even check their elevated heart rates via Detective Vision) and start behaving more erratically. And to make matters worse, their boss is often there to berate them via loudspeaker for their failure (Joker being the worst of the lot since, as seen by the page quote, he actually seems to enjoy pointing out to his men how utterly screwed they are). Joker has been usurped as the worst person to ever be on Mook Mission Control duty by Scarecrow in Arkham Knight. He doesn't angrily berate his men for their incompetence. He doesn't gleefully taunt them about how screwed they are. Instead, he gives them a very detailed and "educational" lecture about the exact psychological nature of the fear they are currently experiencing, and how it will haunt them for years to come and perhaps the rest of their lives. No wonder he was only allowed to do this once in the entire game. All other times you are in a Predator section against militamen, it's the Arkham Knight himself on the radio. Or Deathstroke, after the Knight is defeated.
• A video game mechanic in the Batman Begins games has you messing with the enemies' environment (using batarangs to break the lights, opening steam valves, activating heavy machinery, or simply performing stealth takedowns on their fellow mooks when they're not looking). When you max out their fear meter, Batman automatically steps out into the open as you see, from the mook's POV, a terrifying glowy-eyed demonic Bat Man.
• In Bionic Commando (1987), Area 12's baddies go into a panic when they spot SuperJoe.
• The preview trailers for Krieg the Psycho, the sixth confirmed playable character in Borderlands 2, show bandits being obliterated by his hulking silhouette in a dark crimson area, particularly as part of experiments being used on him.
• At the beginning of Breath of Fire III, a baby dragon wakes up deep inside a mine, and then, under the player's control, proceeds to wreak havoc, slaughtering most of the miners it comes across and others who try to stop it. It is eventually captured, but when it escapes captivity it transforms into the main character, Ryu. Later, it's revealed that the mine incident was a nightmare for those that barely survived the ordeal.
• Ryu awakening the Kaiser Dragon for the very first time in Breath of Fire IV. It was a Roaring Rampage of Revenge as a result of Sociopathic Soldier Rasso taunting him the deaths of innocent women and children Rasso tortured. Rasso eventually reaped what he sowed, and the rest of the Imperial troops couldn't do a thing before the Kaiser slaughters them all. The only survivor was Captain Ursula (who, while on the same side as Rasso, abhorred his actions), and only because Nina gave Ryu a Cooldown Hug to finally calm him down.
• Brutal Doom: Lower-tier demons like the zombies or imps have expressions of fear, pain and anguish as your character rips through them.
  • In the ending sequence of Brutal Doom 64, an army of demons enters the room after Doomguy kills the Mother Demon. Doomguy simply pumps his shotgun, and the demons immediately turn tail and run away.
• A simple but nonetheless notable game feature in City of Heroes. Sometimes an assassin's strike from a stalker will terrify enemies nearby, stopping them from fleeing.
• Some soldier enemies in Cannon Dancer run away from player character Kirin upon first sight, They are so terrified of him that, if there's a wall or obstacle preventing them from escaping further, they will squat down in place and put up their arms in front of them while trembling uncontrollably. In the 4th stage (set on a sinking battleship), the moment Kirin sets foot on the ship some soldiers jump off into the ocean, preferring that rather than try fight him.
• Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3: The Imperial campaign gives you not one but two levels where you get utterly curbstomp an entire map with a ridiculously overpowered unit, rewarding you with the fearful screams of your enemies. The Shogun Executioner is a building-sized Humongous Mecha with three torsos and three giant swords that can step on any enemy, slice any building dead in one or two hits, and doesn't need an Anti-Air attack because it just needs to walk into air units to kill them. Enemies can only really deal Scratch Damage to it, but it does accumulate... good thing Tesla weaponry heals the monster.
• If you go for the "Don't Fear The Reaper" ending in Cyberpunk 2077 then V is this due to cutting down Arasaka's best left and right with no help, and some of the last defenders are so afraid that they try to run away, surrender or reluctantly engage in combat with V whilst pathetically begging "I Don't Want to Die." If you're sufficiently leveled and geared then it's likely you'll be killing almost everything in one or two hits while they'll barely scratch you. The entire sequence is similar to Johnny Silverhand's flashback sequence from the beginning of Act 2 but with a much better outcome if you succeed.
• While his status as a hero is questionable at best, it's practically a given that Jackie Estacado from The Darkness rips apart his opponents with complete animal brutality. By the end of the first game, all the mooks beg desperately for Jackie to spare their lives. This is even more noticeable in the sequel, which has you performing deeper levels of brutality. Lampshaded in-game, when Jackie recounts what using the Darkness does to a person.
  Jackie: Once the Darkness gets ahold of you, you start to lose control. You start to wonder what the fuck you're doin'. Time slips away from you. And then, all of a sudden, its like you're sitting in a theater, watching a movie of your own life. You're up there, on the big screen, big as life. You're a fuckin' movie star. And you're killin' all the bad guys — tearing them limb from limb. And you feel good. You look good. Fuck, you ARE good. And then you realize somethin'. Everyone else in the theater — they're screamin', 'cuz they're watchin a horror movie. And you're not the hero. You're the monster.
• In Dead Space 3, after Isaac Clarke's love interest, Ellie, is apparently killed the scared man who had until that point just been desperately trying to survive goes away for awhile, as Isaac begins relentlessly slaughtering his way through Necromorph and Unitologist alike. The Unitologist radio chatter reveals their panic, because no matter what they throw at Clarke, he won't stop coming.
• Destiny has a Grimoire entry presented as a Cabal tactical analysis of several recent firefights with the Guardians, all of which ended with the Cabal units being wiped out. The most notable is one wherein the Cabal troopers managed to kill the Guardian, only for said Guardian to immediately rez thanks to their Ghost, call in reinforcements, and kill them all. The Guardians don't even seem to be taking the fighting seriously, as one of the after-action reports notes that the survivors of one encounter saw the Guardian fireteam "foraging for equipment, dancing, and performing acrobatics with light vehicles." The report concludes that unless they can figure out some way of neutralizing the Ghosts, they're doomed to lose the war via sheer attrition. The whole thing drives home how it feels to be on the wrong end of a Guardian fireteam; they can't be reasoned with, they don't feel pity or fear, and they don't stop, ever, until you're dead, and once they've killed you they'll steal all your stuff and throw an impromptu dance party over your still-warm remains.
• Destiny 2 brings back Saint-14, a Boisterous Bruiser known as one of the Last City's greatest heroes for his one-man crusade against the rapacious Fallen who want humanity exterminated. Then comes Season of the Splicer, in which the spotlight shines on the House of Light, a breakaway Fallen faction that wants peace with humanity and has been granted refuge in the City. But Saint-14 only knows the Fallen as blood-soaked monsters, and is willing to say as much to the face of Mithrax, the leader of the House. Mithrax responds by telling Saint-14 the legend of a monster of their own, a thing that hunted his people and slaughtered them relentlessly, who could be killed but never for long, and whose shadow the House of Light now lives beneath every single day... a monster called "the Saint." This shakes Saint-14, who's uncomfortable with being feared, and is the beginning of a chain of events that ends with him becoming Bash Brothers with Mithrax.
• In the Deus Ex: Human Revolution DLC "The Missing Link," the Belltower soldiers will become gradually more and more terrified of Jensen as he pushes through the ship and Rifleman Bank Station, cutting down and shooting and blowing them up as he goes, and they know they can't stop him. Notably, they're just as terrified when he's getting around totally unseen. It's made very clear that it's still an example to them, because Adam is a heavily-augmented super-soldier who, upon being forcibly woken from cryo-sleep, managed to kill five armed soldiers single-handedly after being surrounded and it still took eight more soldiers to bring him down. Now he's loose in the complex, he has all his gear back, and they don't know where he is. Hell, even if you keep a low body count, the soldiers will remark that that just means Jensen is "more resourceful and more dangerous".
• An interesting point to Devil May Cry 4 switching away from Dante's perspective from the first half lets the player see the beloved hero as presumably everyone else does; a cocky, stylish, unstoppable killing machine that does not consider you a threat in any way and is wholly justified in doing so. Dante proving That One Boss, far and away more dangerous than anything else Nero goes up against, lets the player see what it's like being on the receiving end of Dante's Showy Invincible Hero shenanigans.
  • The opening cutscene really serves to sell this. A mysterious man in a red coat smashes through the ceiling, murders your leader, and then assaults an army of trained swordsmen and slaughters the lot of them. He barely speaks, and when he does, it's only to mock you. When you shoot at him, he shoots your bullets out of the air. And this is the guy you played as in the last few games.
• Diablo III has a scene where the men in Maghda's Coven are hinted to see your character fighting them as this when you go on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge against them following Deckard Cain's death:
  Coven Member: He's/She's unstoppable! No mortal could slaughter our brethren with such ease!
  • A journal you find in Act II called "The Feared Hero" confirms that the remnants of Maghda's coven are scared shitless of you:
    Dark Cultist: We camp, lying in wait for a hero of incredible prowess. My gut churns with the suspicion that we are simply fodder. I have heard tales of this hero wading through our ranks, slaughtering us as if we were children. I will not sleep again tonight, I fear.
• Corvo from Dishonored. Using the Flash Step power to get behind an enemy makes them wonder "where'd he go?", and then you can strangle them unconscious, slit their throat, shoot them in the back, or feed them to a swarm of rats, and if you're good enough at sneaking about, you can do all that without them seeing much more than your terrifying visage and their life flashing before their eyes. That skull mask he's wearing is enough to reduce most bystanders to tears. And that's not even mentioning that you can use severed body parts as thrown weapons.
  • The idle chatter that the assassins have make it absolutely clear they're scared by how skillful Corvo is. God only knows what the ordinary mooks think of him, seeing as they don't have access to supernatural powers.
  • The stealth Pacifist Run is if anything even more terrifying. The targets, as far as the public are concerned either vanish or have their crimes exposed without anyone realizing Corvo was even there in the first place. In the Mansion mission, Corvo can sign his name on the guest book and the guards can't even decide if it was a bad prank or if Corvo really is good enough to sign his name and then not be noticed at all.
• Doom:
  • In Doom (2016), several chronicles located in Hell detail how the player character, dubbed "the Doom Slayer," was considered the most terrifying thing in all of Hell because of his tendency to rip and tear through absolutely everything he came across. It's eventually revealed that they only stopped him by dropping an entire temple on his head. And even that only lasted so long.
  • Its sequel Doom Eternal shows that the demons are still pissing terrified of the Doom Slayer. As well they should be. Just use your Super Shotgun's Meathook to pull yourself towards one of the Imps and watch it throw up its arms in cowering terror as it realizes it's about to get a brief and horrifying demonstration of proper chainsaw technique. As shown in this trailer, even the humans he's trying to save are terrified of him: both ARC and UAC staff show obvious distress as the Doom Slayer walks through their facilities, treating him with instant unquestioning respect and a considerable degree of abject fear, basically permitting him to do what he wishes. Even the armed guards stop short when they realize what's happening. He is never once treated as anything other than something to be feared. As described in an off-the-cuff observation by Ben Croshaw:
    "It was like the start of Halo 2, but if Master Chief was a bear."
• In Dragon Age: Inquisition, as you progress through the zones you pick up letters written by your enemies in camps you overrun. You get to read the terrified reports of enemy lieutenants who've seen you in action, and the slowly degrading sanity of enemy commanders whose entire operation is being razed by your implacable advance.
• In Drakengard 3, this is how most human soldiers react to Zero effortlessly slaughtering their friends left and right.
• While most of the enemies you fight in the original Drakengard are too Brainwashed and Crazy to be frightened, the game makes no bones about Caim being a bloodthirsty psychopath who's only slightly better than the enemies he kills, and on the occasion he does fight a non-brainwashed enemy (for example, child conscripts that Caim coldly slaughters just like any other enemy before him) they react with a more-than-appropriate amount of pants-wetting terror.
• The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim casts you as a mook horror show. Sure, normal bandits and enemy soldiers will charge you at any time, but they don't matter. No, the Dragonborn scares the Dragons. When you fight and kill your first Dragon, as the beast dies you'll hear this:
  Mirmulnir: Dovahkiin?! No!!
• Enemy Mind is a side-schooling Shoot 'Em Up where the player controls a mysterious entity that has to proceed through the level by possessing the pilots of enemy ships and turning them against their allies. In-between waves, the player can hear radio chatter of the other pilots freaking out over this weird...thing that keeps turning their allies against them.
• In the game The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay there are a few instances in the course of the game which turn the situation into this for the guards in the prison. But none so much as the moment when Riddick gets into a fully kitted out battle armour with chainguns, rockets...
• By the middle stages of Fable, anybody who witnesses the level of damage the Hero of Oakvale can deal is vocally terrified, even if the Hero is halo-and-butterflies Good and beloved by all the townspeople. Non-hostile bandits tend to beg for their lives when he looks at them.
• In Fallout: New Vegas, according to Boxcars, the Powder Gangers view The Courier as an equivalent to The Grim Reaper when they are vilified by them for slaughtering their attack on Goodsprings.
  • Joshua Graham has this effect on both Caesar's legion (for the mere thought he might still be alive) and the White Legs (he is the reason they haven't overrun Zion). This was a hold over from his "Malpais Legate" days as he destroyed anyone that stood in the way of Ceaser's Legion.
  • You can invoke this if you have the Terrifying Presence perk.
  • Any post-Old World Blues random encounters double as this and Robotic Reveal. Imagine that you're one of the Legion, tasked with bringing down a profligate who, after going off the grid for weeks, has finally turned up somewhere southwest of Vegas. Your team tracks him through the wilderness, noting that his footprints are heavier than normal and that he must be carrying an extra load. You find him wandering through the desert at midday, seemingly unburdened by either the extra load or the sun, and scope him down with the anti-material rifle (why they sent this with you for one man, Caesar only knows). His head finally centered in the crosshairs, you pull the trigger, expecting a grisly red mist and the muted thump of a fresh corpse on the sand. Instead, you’re treated to the metallic WHANG of a ricochet and the cold gaze of a newly-forged demigod. As he closes the distance to your contubernium with inhuman speed, you have just enough time to doubt the anti-material rifle was enough.
• In Fallout 4, you can become this to members of Sinjin's gang by leaving calling cards on their corpses, wearing the Silver Shroud costume, and speaking in-character as the Shroud. If you speak as the Shroud in the final confrontation, all of Sinjin's mooks run in terror.
  • Played with during the mission Hunter/Hunted. You get treated to watching the Gunners losing handily to an assault from a Courser, who you are in turn pursuing. You hear the commander getting more and more desperate as the Courser rips through their defenses.
• Far Cry 2 turns into this once you get a decent reputation. Just listen to the Enemy Chatter.
  "Oh God, it's HIM! What do we do!?"
  • Even more in Far Cry 3, since the protagonist is a drug- and/or magic-powered killing machine who has escaped sure death numerous times and tears through swathes of both pirates and later better-equipped privateers with little difficulty, sometimes without any of them even being aware of what's going on until his machete is being stabbed through their chest; little would one suspect the name "Snow White" to inspire sheer unadulterated terror among that sort of crowd. Even if your reputation is low, foes tend to panic if they find a body and fail to find the killer.
  • And in Far Cry 4, the only thing more terrifying than the Son of Mohan is the two-ton bullet-proof walking tank of death that he brought to play. You can make the elephant grab the nearest soldier with their trunk and slam his body into the ground. Or ram the elephant into a car with enough force to kill everyone inside.
    • Also, multiplayer Hunters have the power to turn invisible, use elemental powers, and can summon eagles / bears / elephants. If you're currently playing a golden path mook and your enemy isn't a noob, you may beg for mercy now.
      Narrator: Fun Fact: Elephants love the taste of blood.
• Once Cloud mounts the iconic Hardy Daytona in Final Fantasy VII Remake, we see a small scene from the perspective of a Security Officer and how he feels about the skinny, glaring guy with Occult Blue Eyes who just hurled a six-foot sword directly at him.
• This is a major theme and gameplay mechanic in Ghost of Tsushima, tied in with the game's Karma Meter. If you play as the honorable Samurai you were trained as, enemies will face you head on and in numbers, obviously making battles more difficult. But if you play as the Ghost, enemies will be subjected to the mother of all Mook Horror Shows as you stealthily sweep through their camps, quietly murdering them in cold blood or using theatrics to terrorize them to the point of madness, with the result that many enemies will just straight up run for their lives if they see you. Its easier and arguably more effective at driving the Mongols out of Japan... but is that really how a samurai should be acting, even in such trying times?
• Lampshaded by Zoe in Ghostrunner when she comments how ridiculously outmatched and underequipped the Keys really are to deal with Jack. You can have a lot of fun just deflecting all of their projectiles and jumping around them while they stand helpless.
• In God of War III, you get to witness (and control via Quick Time Event) Kratos brutally killing Poseidon from the latter's POV. It's every bit as disturbing as it sounds.
• Granblue Fantasy:
  • In episode 13 of the anime, the Empire's soldiers get stomped by Djeeta's crew off screen. Instead, several character's have a horrified look on their face, and Katalina covers Lyria's eyes so as not to see the carnage the rest of Djeeta's crew is causing to the soldiers. They then run out of the cave with their tails tucked between their legs.
  • Also occurs in the Shadowverse collab events when the imperial soldiers have the misfortune of trying to take down Mordecai, a powerful undying warrior.
• In Grand Theft Auto V, Trevor's introductory mission has him fighting a whole platoon of Lost gang members. Once you've killed a certain number of them, the remainder will immediately drop their guns and run for their lives. You can either let them flee, or kill them for the "No Survivors" condition being checked off at the mission's end.
• Gundam:
  • The intro to an SD Gundam G-Generation game featured a bunch of Zakus getting hunted and killed, Predator-style, by the Gundam Deathscythe.
  • Journey to Jaburo's intro had the original Gundam do much the same, though it starts partly Predator-style (shooting one Zaku through a high-rise, ambushing the second with the Hammer) and ends partly Superman-style (charging the third Zaku with beam saber in hand as it futilely fires its machine gun).
  • The PS2 title Gundam: Zeonic Front can have Mission 06: Trojan Horse turn into one if the player is careless. the player controls multiple teams of Zaku on a mission to gather data, but if discovered by White Base the enemy will unleash Amuro Ray piloting the RX-78-2. Quick demise usually follows as Amuro picks off your entire team one by one while counting his kills. The player can ever hear the iconic Newtype Flash Sound as their team dies one by one.
• In Half-Life 2: Episode 2, the G-Man coldly and bluntly tells you that the Vortigaunts (aliens from the first game that were aggressive toward you, but are now your friends in the sequels) barely had any experience with humanity, with their first experience being "a crowbar coming at them from a steel corridor".
• In Halo games, the Grunts will say things like "He's everywhere!" and run away when you kill a lot of them at once. The books also go into their point of view every so often, and they tend to be exactly that scared (if not more so). Additionally, Covenant troops often are heard referring to the Master Chief and his fellow Spartans as "demons", both in and out of the games.
• In The Horde, some of the cutscenes show that unlikely hero Chauncey has a reputation as a ruthless and terrifying warrior among some of the Hordelings.
• Hotline Miami is literally nothing but this taken to the extreme. Gameplay consists almost entirely of killing faceless goons by the buildingful. An expert player can beat a level in under a minute.
• If you take the violent route in Iji (straining poor Iji's already fragile sanity), you can read the logs the enemies leave behind. They vary between fear of the grunts, astonishment, and anger of the officers struggling to maintain the discipline.
  • Even in a Pacifist Run you'll find logs freaking out over this human anomaly just waltzing through the aliens' defenses without even killing anything (plus the fact that Iji is likely holding onto enough weapons and ammo to supply a small army.)
• In the promotional materials for Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast, it tells of a previous mission to Tatooine where Kyle Katarn left a single survivor. The author of the message, a New Republic intelligence agent, expresses anger that said sole survivor was too traumatized to offer an vital information.
• Pretty much the only purpose of Waddle Dee is to be cannon fodder for Kirby's latest destructive ability. Except for those armed with spears or parasols, their only way of hurting Kirby is to bump into him. And they often panic and try to escape, given the chance.
  • In Revenge of Meta Knight from Kirby Super Star; while Kirby infiltrates Meta Knight's battleship and destroys it from the inside, his henchmen progress from calm self-assurance to complete havoc. (Except for Sailor Waddle Dee, who's panicking from the start.)
• In The Last of Us, Joel and Ellie, as they trek across America, begin to get a reputation as the "crazy old man and girl" who are unstoppable killing machines. In fact, in a sequence near the end of the game, when Joel is noticed, the human enemies start running away rather than rush in and attempt to gang up like they have done up to that point. And the best part? Joel was impaled only a short while ago and is severely weakened. The guy can barely walk on two feet and still sends people running for the hills.
• LISA: At the end, Brad Armstrong literally becomes one, tearing through 4 waves of an army plus their big boss whilst transforming into a Joy Mutant.
• The introductory cinematic for the Raptor in The Lost World: Jurassic Park (Console) consists of a terrified hunter running for his life while being pursued by a pack of raptors, an Aliens-style motion detector/radar screen indicating just how screwed he is.
• In Mark of the Ninja, this actually works as a gameplay mechanic. Usually, when a guard comes across a dead body, or sees you attack one of his fellows, he sounds the alarm. However, certain particularly brutal kills (such as hanging guards with the chain you use as a Grappling-Hook Pistol, hitting them with a portable spike trap or feeding them to flesh-eating bugs) causes an enemy to enter a terrified state where they can't sound the alert, just scream helplessly and fire blindly, often mowing down other enemies. If you're feeling particularly cruel, you can also accomplish this by dropping a corpse in front of a guard below, who will get scared absolutely shitless by the sight of his dead buddy plummeting on the floor in front of his very eyes. More generally, you are a blade-wielding Stealth Expert sneaking about casually dismembering the mooks in horrible fashion, and the target you spend the first half of the game hunting down is eventually reduced to cowering in a heavily secured panic room and pleading for his life as you cut down his guards and disable his automated defenses.. Really, it's Mook Horror Show: The Game.
• In the Mass Effect 2 DLC "Arrival", the Project guards pretty much start panicking the second Shepard wakes up and then starts slaughtering his/her way through the entire complex by him/herself.
  Scientist: Readings indicate that Shepard is resisting the sedatives. Must be a glitch in the system...Oh shit! It's not a glitch. SECURITY!
  • Even before that, during the Korlus mission, you tap into the Blue Suns' radio early on, letting you listen to their increasing panic as you slaughter your way through their base.
  • Any mission that involves the Eclipse or Blue Suns mercs tends to have com chatter from their bosses getting more and more freaked out as Shepard and co. effortlessly end everyone in their way. The Blood Pack on the other hand...
  • There's also strong indication that this is how the Omega mercenaries viewed Archangel. Of the three gang leaders, only Garm (the Blood Knight Krogan in charge of the Blood Pack) isn't freaked out by how close Archangel has come to killing him. The other two are really pissed and afraid by his attempts on their lives, not to mention desperate enough to team up.
  • Also during Arrival, during the fight for Object Rho, particularly notable if you're going for the "Last Stand" achievement.
    Random Guard Chatter: Shepard won't go down!
• The tradition is continued in the Mass Effect 3 DLC "Citadel" as you slaughter your way through the Mysterious Figure's army of mercenaries.
  Random Merc Chatter: Guys, I think we chose the wrong Shepard!
  • This time it's also extended to Shepard's crew. Note, in this DLC, the entire ME3 squad + Wrex and Cortez are participating in the slaughter — subverting Arbitrary Headcount Limit (although Shepard him/herself only brings two squadmates as usual) — which consist of some of the most badass people in the galaxy.
    Random Merc Chatter: But they've got a krogan! Why don't we have a krogan?
    Wrex: Wouldn't want to be you, princesses! HAHAHA!
    Random Merc Chatter: I think that turian with him/her is Archangel! How the hell are we supposed to kill him?!
    Garrus: [Boom, Headshot!] You're not.
    Random Merc Chatter: Shit! That's a Prothean over there!
    Javik: And that's a future corpse over there!
  • Additionally in the combat mission on Mars, Cerberus mooks (humans enhanced with Reaper augmentations) will exclaim "Holy shit! It's Shepard!" when Shepard attacks.
    • The revelation that the mooks have been indoctrinated and can no longer fear for themselves implies that the Reapers are terrified of Shepard. This is pretty much confirmed in the Leviathan DLC.
  • In the Multiplayer, the Cerberus troops start off professional, but as you kill more and more of them they get decidedly less so. For instance, earlier on, they'll say "Taking casualties" in a calm, professional manner. As you slaughter more of them, they'll scream that same line in panicked terror.
• Max Payne:
  • The first Max Payne gets like this by the end. There's nothing like tearing through a building of guards and hearing their boss respond to their messages over the PA, "What do you mean, 'he's unstoppable'?"
  • This happens in parts of Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne with Mona as the killer.
  • At one point in Max Payne 3 at the tail end of tearing through a base full of Elite Mooks, one of them drops his gun, drops to his knees and begs for mercy. There's also a minor mook-on-mook variation when Max lets Serrano loose on the doctor.
• In the very first Medal of Honor game, if you blew your cover in the U-Boat mission, Kriegsmarine officers would yell, "It's Jimmy Patterson!" and attempt to mow you down in a panic.
• The scene where Gray Fox slaughters the guards in Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes. It makes a point of zooming in on one mook's face as he fires blindly at the invisible thing slaughtering his comrades so the player can see the absolute fear in his eyes, before said invisible thing runs him through and leaves him bleeding to death on the floor.
• Enemies in Metal Slug often scream and run away when they see you coming. They do this automatically if you use a continue.
  • The first game pulls this off on the player in the ending: A surviving enemy tosses a paper airplane, and the view follows it as it flies through the game's stages... littered with the bodies of the scores of soldiers you've slaughtered over the course of the game.
• Artyom's efficacy at combat or stealth in Metro Exodus is remarked upon by NPCs on multiple occasions. If he manages to sneak past most of the Children of the Forest camps without raising an alert in the Taiga level, then NPCs at one of the last camps will comment on how impressed they are by his slipperiness. On a related note, if Artyom manages to eliminate almost an entire outpost of bandits or oilmen on his own, then the last survivors of his assault will lay down arms and attempt to surrender.
• Metroid:
  • The Metroid Prime Trilogy, particularly the first game, highlights it if you read some of the Space Pirate's mission logs, increasingly desperate recordings of how "the Hunter" is tearing through their forces.^note This includes, appropriately, the encryption on the logs themselves, which the player might not even have realized were encrypted. This monster is of course Samus Aran, the player character.
  • Metroid Prime 2: Echoes's recordings are even more tragilarious because the pirates on Aether are already under attack by a "Dark Hunter," and then... "Another Hunter, this wearing the traditional colors of Samus Aran, made planetfall today. Horrific as it may sound, there are TWO of them now."
• The developers of Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor and its sequel Shadow Of War cite the Batman Arkham series as a shining example of good combat and purposefully invokes this trope.
  • While chopping Orcs to bits is enough, Talion can use the surrounding environment to terrorize them. Like unleashing Morgai flies or Caragors on them. Getting your Hitstreak/Might meter enables more direct terror methods like setting Orcs on fire, freezing-shattering them, setting yourself on fire, slowly hacking them to pieces, start teleporting, or raising up undead Orcs. Enough brutality thins the frequent huge militias the player fights to fair numbers. Without Meter you can come out of stealth and brutally stab an unlucky Orc causing witnesses to run and gives you a Meter bonus, allowing you to follow up with another vicious execution.
  • Orc and Olog Captains are randomly generated and have brilliant AI, meaning they can develop exploitable fears based on their interactions with you; Like being set on fire, seeing mind-controlled Orcs betray his group, a Caragor, a rival Orc, watching their comrades being brutalized or mind raped— Oh yeah! Did we forget to mention you can turn an Orc into a mentally disabled vegetable in the middle of combat?
• NieR has The entire second playthrough. Just entire cutscenes with shades talking about how "that man" is going to come and none of them will be left.
• NieR: Automata: The enemy robot mooks will occasionally chatter with either vengeful rage for what you've done to the rest of them, or about as much terror as a monotone robot voice can express due to what you've done to the rest of them. This apparent display of emotion by the robots rattles 2B quite a bit.
• No More Heroes has the Dark Side mode: the screen turns black-and-white (except for red for Travis's katana and the inevitable bloodshed) and all mooks in the area start cowering away from Travis as he walks menacingly towards them and systematically murders them for the duration of the mode.
• No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle: Travis' new Dark Side move allows him to transform into a tiger. While you're in this form, Mooks go from trying to beat ten shades of shit out of you to tripping over themselves in their efforts to get the hell away.
• The waterwraith in Pikmin 2 is a rare example of a boss horror show. Throughout the dungeon, the waterwraith has been terrorizing you with its relentless chase. It's completely invincible, and will kill any pikmin on contact, all while making an unholy gargling noise. Most players consider it the scariest thing in a game with no shortage of horror (seriously, look how long its page is. What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?) But on the final floor, where you have to face it as a boss, you have purple pikmin with you now. It is terrified of that "thud" sound that they make when thrown. Once you get it into its second phase, it is completely incapable of harming you. Its only movements are to either run the hell away, or to cower in fear of that noise.
• Piratez: An indirect case with the 'The Attack Of Violent Flare Females' article in the Solar Courier, which covers a typical raid mission observed from the enemy perspective. It focuses on how scary and overwhelming the pirates are, but also lampshades the typical player behavior of throwing light sources at random all over the place, which makes sense from the tactical perspective but probably looks puzzling in-universe.
• In Project Sylpheed, Katana becomes this for the ADAN forces. He begins the game as a rookie who is barely able to take out a small enemy cruiser. After a few weapon upgrades and some player experience, he can (and if you want all the achievements, will) be the most effective weapon on his side, tearing through enemy fleets and having entire fighter squadrons directed his way, with most of the enemy ace squadrons either dead or resigned to not being able to touch him.
• [PROTOTYPE] has its main character Alex Mercer pull more than a few horror-movie tricks in cutscenes, just in case his powers weren't already scary enough in-game. They include Offscreen Teleportation, shrugging off being riddled with lead, leaving fingerprints and footprints in his targets' blood after he's done with them, popping back up after being "killed", mimicking people without inducing suspicion until he feels like it, and being oddly nonchalant about an enormous bullet hole in his face.
  • Hell, the intro features him tearing apart an entire Blackwatch squad, rather easily.
  • Moreover, the fact that you can later have people gunned down by accusing them of being you demonstrates the panic and paranoia you sow among the mooks even outside of your murderous rampages.
  • And if you sneak into an army base, you can orchestrate it yourself, silently consuming and taking their places one by one, until there are none left.
    • Oh, as if watching your buddy get lassoed from across the room, yo-yo'd to death, and his liquefied remains getting slurped up through a proboscis sticking from a hoodie-wearing nobody's stomach wasn't worrisome enough. The fact that said nobody's Immune to Bullets is just gravy.
  • And then the sequel swaps out the From Nobody to Nightmare protagonist for a Scary Black Man Papa Wolf whose raw, vengeance-driven fury looks like something Kratos might invoke. Now give him an even better ability to disguise himself, new powers that include turning mooks into living hand grenades, the ability to rip vehicle-mounted weapons from their mounts and use them against his enemies and a tendril power that strings their mutilated bodies up to walls and buildings and...Oh, boy.
• In Resident Evil 4, Leon comes across an Apocalyptic Log written by the murderous, parasite-controlled villagers that have been hounding him. It frames him as an unstoppable killing machine that is going to slaughter every single soul in their village before he's done. They're not....entirely wrong about that.
• Scarface: The World Is Yours sometimes requires this if the player wants 100% Completion. Shoot ten out of twelve gang members who hang out at the gas station? The last two frantically run away. Many times Tony ends up mowing them down as they are trying to hijack a car and flee.
• Shadow Complex, definitely. You are just this one random guy who is going through the base and slowly taking it out. Many of the guards at first are like "it's just one guy" but later on they realize how much damage he's doing. And then there's the ways to kill enemies — normally, sneak fisticuffs, headshots, grenades, missiles, ground pounds, environmental factors... all while you slowly advance from civilian to a Powered Armor badass.
• The opening of Shadow Hearts: Covenant involves a unit of German soldiers invading the French village of Domremy. They enter the church, only to hear something taking out the rest of the unit outside. Then a massive, winged demon smashes through the window and proceeds to mop the floor with them. The last thing you see is the demon casually strolling away, and transforming back into beloved protagonist, Yuri.
• In Sleeping Dogs (2012), Wei Shen can cause any enemies around him in a fist fight to flinch by grabbing one of their friends and breaking their leg with a stomp to the side of the knee. He can also use the environment to do things like set mooks on fire, impale them on hooks or electrocute them. Typically, the drug bust side missions involve beating down a certain number of guards to hack surveillance devices and end when any remaining guards run for their lives.
• This can be initiated in Sly 2: Band of Thieves and Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves with Murray's Guttural Roar, which makes all enemies run away from him in fear for 6 seconds.
• This is done in Spec Ops: The Line, only there is no Hero. First, there are the scared cries of enemy combatants during battle. Later, in one scene, a character is shown dying of terrible burns to the airway from a white phosphorous attack you dropped on him. With eyes wide with terror, he just gargles out, "Why?" Near the end game, there is a whole memorial to all the men who've been killed. It's covered in dog tags and American flags. The pictures of the Player Character and the support NPC are found on it. The grief and hate is nearly palpable.
• Splinter Cell:
  • Sam Fisher gets this sometimes. Especially prominent in Conviction, in which the enemies are occasionally people Sam likely trained and know exactly what he's capable of. Even the less professional mercenaries can be heard loudly challenging Fisher in order to psych themselves up. Too bad it also gives away their positions, and is just irritating enough for the player to want to kill them to shut them up.
  • In Chaos Theory, doing things around mooks like whistling in the dark, destroying lights, knocking their comrades out/killing them and leaving the bodies for them to find and throwing cans and bottles around gradually builds the enemy's fear to the point where they fire blindly at where they last heard the noise or run away screaming. The interrogations also generally have Sam using threats of bodily harm to scare mooks into giving up information.
    Sam: [after being asked if he is a spy] Yeah, the real kind, not the tuxedo kind. I'm the kind that makes you bleed all over your Andretti unless you give me information!
    Mook: Oh, God!
    [...]
    Sam: [being refused information] Are you crazy? We're on the sixtieth floor.
    Mook: Wha— What do you mean??
    Sam: You know, it's not true that you go unconscious before you hit the ground. You see it coming the whole way.
    Mook: You— You wouldn't!
    Sam: You wanna convince me not to?
• Happens in StarCraft when fighting the Zerg. The cinematic The Amerigo makes especially heavy use of this, and in the tie-in comic books, Marines often panic when fighting them.
  • StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm, especially, takes the trope to a whole new level, thanks to Kerrigan becoming a Game-Breaker / Humanoid Abomination / One-Woman Army in addition to still leading the Swarm. Not to mention that, while no longer as villainous as before, she is still remembered by her enemies as one of the biggest mass-murderers in the Starcraft universe...
    • One mission actually has Kerrigan teaming up with Raynor's Raiders to free Jim Raynor from a high security prison spaceship. Horner suggests sending Ghost Agents (or Tosh and a spec-ops squad) for stealth, but Kerrigan tells him not to bother. She then proceeds to gracefully waltz in through the front door, wave of Zerg following her. Nightmares ensue for the Dominion forces keeping the spaceship. And probably some of the Raiders, too.
    • There's also the final unit upgrade mission, starring Ultralisks. You get to roll through a city with the biggest, meanest combat monsters the Zerg have to offer, and they will not stop, even as Mengsk launches warhead after warhead into your forces, panicking and screaming to his men to fight for their lives.
• Star Fox 64 has the Area 6 mission, a difficult but target-rich stage in which the four Arwings and support ship of the StarFox team blasts their way through Venom's fleet and orbital defenses. The whole time you're listening to Enemy Chatter, which becomes increasingly desperate as they throw everything they've got your way and nothing stops you.
  Caiman: They're through the second line!
  Commander: Fire! FIRE! Don't let them through!
• One of the trailers for Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II shows the chained-up Starkiller about to be executed by Imperial stormtroopers. He uses the Force to free himself and knock out the lights. The guards start looking around, shooting at any shadow in near-total darkness, while Starkiller picks them off one-by-one. The last guard starts backing off towards the door, his every shot deflected, until Starkiller impales him with his lightsabers.
  • In both installments of this series, it probably isn't a fun prospect being a Stormtrooper ordered to take out a renegade Sith.
• Star Wars: Battlefront typically has players in the role of a common stormtrooper, clonetrooper, battle droid, Rebel soldier, etc. However, it's possible to bring important named characters from the story to the field, such as Jedi Knights, Sith Lords, bounty hunters, and Rebel heroes. This is what it looks like when the average trooper encounters a named character.
  • Star Wars Battlefront II (2017) has a battle mode called Ewok Hunt, in which the Stormtrooper team must survive a night in Endor. The Ewoks can see in the dark, whereas the Stormtroopers cannot. And each time a Stormtrooper is killed, that player joins the Ewok side. The Ewoks are finally vindicated: instead of cute teddy bears, they are a terrifying and formidable presence striking from the darkness.
• Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin has the main protagonist Jack finish off his opponents by turning them into crystals and destroying them in a plethora of horrific ways, ranging from simply shattering them with a punch to ripping their maws open and tearing them apart. He's so brutal that upon seeing him in action for the first time, most of the townsfolk are horrified comparing him to a demon even though he's technically protecting them.
• In the original Arcade version of Strider, there's a random chance some of the Russian soldiers fighting you gets cold feet instead, falling into their backs when Hiryu stares at them and crawling away in abject horror if the player/Hiryu approaches them. Funny enough, turn Hiryu's back on them and they will gather enough bravery to madly rush at him for a cheap attack.
• Team Fortress 2: Most of the "Meet the Team" promotional videos are interview-style showcases of the RED team members doing what they do best against the BLU team. "Meet the Spy", by contrast, is a more conventional short shot from the BLU's perspective as they try to figure out which one of them is the RED Spy while the Spy picks them off one by one.
  • And in "Meet the Sandvich", a BLU Soldier and Scout are beaten to death (offscreen) by a RED Heavy.
  • "Meet the Pyro" does this as well, somehow made more disturbing by glimpses of how the Pyro apparently sees the carnage he creates.
    • The Pyro ups the ante even further; even his allies, including the mentioned RED Spy, are terrified of him (or her).
• The extensive Enemy Chatter in Titanfall make it clear that this is in full effect for the hapless Grunts. The mix of shock and terror in the grunt's voice after his squad gets wiped out can catch you off guard, and if you corner them with your Titan, they sometimes drop their weapons or go into the fetal position. If you kill a grunt dragging his injured comrade to cover, the other freaks out.
• Lara Croft in Tomb Raider (2013), having spent the better part of the game scared out of her mind and trying to survive a bunch of crazed cultist maniacs out to murder her and her entire expedition, begins turning the tables on her tormentors, to the point that by about the midpoint of the game the mooks give a collective Oh, Crap! when they see her coming and refer to her as "The Outsider". Especially when she picks up the grenade launcher, and beginning with her assault on the Solarii compound to rescue Sam, Alex and the others Lara begins actively hunting them down, making it abundantly clear that she is all out of fucks to give.
• Some trailers for Total War: Warhammer and its sequel have featured this:
  • For the first game, we have the Warriors of Chaos and Vampire Counts trailers.
    • The first is shown from the perspective of an Empire soldier who's the Sole Survivor of a battle with Chaos as he haplessly struggles to get away from an offscreen enemy while flashing back to the horrifying warriors charging into battle and chopping up his allies. Then at its apex, the trailer closes on him about to be Hammered into the Ground by Kholek Suneater.
    • The second shows a Witch Hunter and his underlings being ambushed by the Undead, lead by Mannfred von Carstein. While haunting music swells, the scenes of Vampire armies besieging human and Dwarf cities is intercut with the Witch Hunter fighting for his life while Mannfred slowly advances on him, cutting down soldiers right and left without even looking at them. Finally, it's just him and the undead, and the Vampire appears behind him out of nowhere, then the Witch Hunter is Forced to Watch while Mannfred raises his men as Zombies to fight in his army.
  • The Dark Elves trailer for the second game features a near-direct homage to Vader's scene in Rogue One with Malekith confronting and cutting down some steadily panicking High Elven red shirts using his sword and magic powers in similar fashion.
• Transformers: Fall of Cybertron features Grimlock's levels, which feel very much like playing as the horror movie monster. His alternate mode is a robotic fire-breathing Tyrannosaurus rex, gigantic even by Transformer standards and completely unlike anything ever seen or conceived of on Cybertron. He's also got a reputation planet-wide as an anger-fueled berserker, and nearly impossible to control even for the long-suffering Optimus Prime. Battle-hardened Decepticons collectively go into blabbering panic at the sight of him, and even rocket launchers and laser cannons hardly faze him. His finishing moves include ramming a twenty-foot-long sword (larger than his enemies are tall!) through their chests or heads, crushing them underfoot, biting them in half, melting them to slag with his fire breath, or just beating on Decepticons with other Decepticons.
• Valkyria Chronicles' Chapter 4 battle has as its victory cutscene the heroes raising a drawbridge underneath an Imperial armor company. There's shots of the enemy tanks scrabbling to stay on the bridge and an infantryman hanging onto the bridge for dear life before the slope becomes too steep and they fall off.
• The Tenno are this to both the Grineer and the Corpus in Warframe. Oh, sure, enemies might start to charge at you when a mission starts, but watch closely and you'll notice that the longer a mission runs, the more enemy soldiers flee at your mere presence, firing over their shoulder in their retreat. In fairness, a single Tenno can effortlessly infiltrate and slaughter an outpost or ship with over 150 personnel, performing feats such as aerial acrobatics, turning invisible, elemental summoning, resurrecting the dead, or defying death itself. On top of that, most Warframes have access to some kind of ability that allows them to simply destroy all opposition in a radius of up to 20 meters. Now consider that most Tenno operate in teams of four. No wonder Grineer and Corpus troops start panicking and fleeing at the sight of one. Notably, this fear response does not appear in robots or infested enemies, but it does show up in the Corrupted, implying that even total brainwashing wasn't enough to keep these soldiers from realizing they should be shitting themselves in fear and running at the sight of a Tenno. Perhaps the best example being the Grendel Prime and Gauss Prime double-feature trailer, which treats Grendel as a horrifying all-devouring monstrosity (which he is) and Gauss as a cocky and unstoppable menace (which he also is).
• It's entirely possible to pull this off in Watch_Dogs, particularly during gang hideout missions where lots of armed enemies are around, but so are lots of cameras and items that you can hack, including the mooks' own explosives! In some cases, it's possible to take down all or almost all of the enemies without even setting foot in the main part of the area: just follow the cameras and take out every last one of them by detonating the grenades strapped to their belts, or causing fuse boxes to explode as they walk by them, or dropping shipping crates on their heads. If you want to go for the more traditional route, start the mission at night and cause a blackout, then run in take them down with your billy club or shoot them in the head with a silenced pistol or machine gun, then set down explosives near the bodies so that you can blow up any remaining patrols when they come to investigate, all without ever being seen. Nobody is safe from the Vigilante...
• William J. "B.J." Blazkowicz gets this treatment in Wolfenstein: The New Order, but taken further in Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, when his ability to come back from any injury earns him the moniker "Terror Billy".