Follow TV Tropes

This is based on opinion. Please don't list it on a work's trope example list.

Following

Nightmare Fuel / BlazBlue

Go To

Per wiki policy, Spoilers Off applies here and all spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned.

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/hades_izanami_centralfiction_arcade_mode_illustration_2.png
"What I crave is the death of all..."

"Wait... did this nightmare fuel used to be... HUMAN...?!"
Ragna, during his encounter with Arakune in Calamity Trigger Reloaded

Ragna wasn't kidding. While BlazBlue isn't the Trope Namer, that doesn't stop it from having a disproportionate number of scary moments.


  • From Calamity Trigger, Ragna and Nu fusing together and forming the Black Beast. Nu's childish giggling does not help at all.
  • The more one thinks about it, Ragna in general can be this in spite of his Butt-Monkey status. The entire planet is terrified of him for the death and destruction he has caused. In the manga, he's spoken about in hushed tones and terrified whispers while he was eating with Tao at the restaurant.
    • We even get to see small glimpses of his assault on an NOL base. Long story short, the entire floor was covered with corpses. This was also shown in the short story, Memory of Blue. The narrative describes the entire fight as a one-sided slaughter. Nothing the NOL could do even phased him, with the encounter ending with hundreds dead and the complex destroyed.
      • To add to this, the text makes it clear that a single NOL branch has enough power to equal an entire country!
    • To make matters worse, He is the Black Beast! He's ultimately the monster that wreaked havoc on the world 100 years ago, and he has the potential to become that same monster again on his own. Is it any wonder Hakumen wants him dead?
    • This arguably reaches its apex in Chronophantasma where Izanami has Ragna impaled by Nu to make him utterly lose control! He becomes a small version of the Black Beast and proceeds to thrash Jin and Mu-12 simultaneously. These two have both become immensely powerful in the course of the previous two games, and yet a minor version of the Beast is all that's needed to wreck them so badly that Celica needed to heal them from near death! If that's just a taste of what the Beast is capable of, be very afraid.
  • The Kisaragi family. Yes, the one that Jin, the Deuteragonist of the series, is a member of. The way they carry their tradition is a double-edged sword in that while it has a large number of influencial leaders and soldiers, this environment inevitably breeds Greed and Envy among it's countless members, with many of them hiring assassins to kill one another. Sounds just like a typical Big, Screwed-Up Family but what makes this family utterly horrifying is their treatment of Jin, their next future heir.
  • The Yayoi family counts, as well. While they don't have the terrifying Social Darwinist tradition of the Kisaragi family, they do have a very, VERY disturbing way of keeping their lineage strong. How? Why, through INCEST (read: in-breeding), of course! It's been specifically stated that Tsubaki's father, the current head of the family, is in a mad delusion to keep this tradition alive, and he still wholly believes the family WILL get stronger despite multiple protests from the other Duodecim and the NOL itself. Then, when you realize that Tsubaki's obsessive love and Single-Target Sexuality towards Jin and the fact that he calls him "Nii-sama"/"Big Brother", it has some seriously disturbing implications - one of those is the fact that the moment she fell in-love with Jin, it was a Love at First Sight, and from that moment on, she labeled him as her "Nii-sama" to claim her incestuous possession of him that he is hers, and hers alone. Thankfully though, they're not actually related so that might alleviate some of the horrific imageries.
  • Nu-13 is usually a stoic Robot Girl, always speaking in a robotic monotone, finishing her tasks with surgical precision... unless Ragna is around. She then regresses to the personality of a young girl, and turns her Yandere index up to 13. It's absolutely mortifying.
    • And there's the part in her CF arcade mode where she meets Naoto. She initially thinks Naoto is Ragna, but once she sees that his presence is similar to Ragna, she's completely PISSED. This is one of the few times we actually see Nu completely off her rocker, and it is horrifying.
    • Remember in the True Ending of Calamity Trigger, when Noel saved Ragna from her and Nu fell into the Cauldron? Well, Nu also remembers. By the time she finds Mu in her Act 3, she attacks her believing that she is Noel and vows to make her pay for both denying her wish to be with Ragna and for killing her in CT, sadistically promising to make her suffer what she went through when her soul was in the Boundary for what felt like an eternity.
  • Depending on how you interpret Ragna's Badass Creed, his Astral finish kills his opponent utterly.
    "There is no hell, just darkness..."
  • What Relius did to his daughter Ada and his wife Ignis is horrible, turning them into lifeless killing machines For Science!
    • And if the trailer for Act 2 of Centralfiction is any indication, we may have to witness how Ada was turned into Nirvana on-screen. Please let it just be a glimpse...
    • As of Carl's Act 2 Arcade ending, thankfully it's just a glimpse, but boy is it a terrifying one. The only thing we see is Ada's top half of her body. And the fact that she already looks mechanical, making it much more unsettling. Poor, poor Carl... Making it worse: Picture Nirvana. Now realize that, in the linked image, it looks like Ada's head and most of her torso are still organic. Pretty sure anyone would be scarred for life after seeing THAT.
  • We finally get to see exactly how Ragna lost his arm, and it is not pretty. Seeing a young Ragna, his arm cut off, surrounded by a ring of fire as a Yukianesa-possessed Jin looms over him, all while Terumi's silhouette watches with twisted amusement is beyond freaky. Picture here.
  • In Carl's Bad Ending, he confronts Hazama, who beats him and props Carl up where he is helpless, then begins slowly tearing Nirvana apart. Carl desperately pleads for him to stop, but he continues and breaks her into pieces. Hazama then grabs Carl by the collar, sickly grinning and delivering a brutal Breaking Speech to him, before finally throwing him against a wall and killing him. The whole scene is both awesome and terrifying. Picture here.
  • Ragna's Bad Ending is a definite example. Ragna's Azure backfires from overuse and turns him into a new Black Beast. He can do nothing as he ravages across what's left of the world and destroys it. The chilling screams of the people he devours do not help.
  • Arakune. Just... Arakune. Everything about him.
    • A bit more detail... Arakune Was Once a Man, but after trying to tap into the power of the Boundary and experimenting on his own body, he began to degenerate. Now he's nothing more than a black mound of goo, smelling of trash, filled with bones and disgusting insects, and eating anyone he comes across. His speech is fragmented, and he swings between insane laughter, paranoid rambling, nihilistic threats and tortured screams. As of Continuum Shift, he seems to be regaining his sanity in short bursts, mostly warning Litchi to stay away from the Boundary. And even at his craziest, he's aware that the is SOMETHING wrong with him, but he can't quite place it.
      • Just when you thought it couldn't get worse, it did. If you were too distracted by Arakune's Creepy Awesome factor, or his Woobie points above and possibilities that he's learned his lessons once Litchi probably cures him, Chrono Phantasma finally turns him into the terrifying monster he's supposed to be with his new Astral animation. Remember how nothing happened when he hit the opponent? Now something does happen, and that something is very, very grotesque even for BlazBlue standards: the opponent gets sucked into (read: devoured by) Arakune and is trapped in a giant spider web. Then all of a sudden a bunch of HUGE eyeballs pop in from the background as a swarm of spiders, with the exact same eyes on their backs, begin to crawl out of the huge eyeballs and close in on the opponent, covering the screen in the process. Once the screen is completely covered by spiders, you hear a Sickening "Crunch!" as the Astral Finish display pops up. Once the screen clears, nothing is left. Yes, you know what just happened. That poor soul just got eaten alive by spiders. And now their blood is raining down on the screen. Holy. Shit. Prime phobia trigger for Noel.
      • A close-up of one of the spiders in question. Sweet dreams.
      • Those aren't spiders... those are centipedes.
  • The Black Beast. The similarities it shares with Giygas DO NOT HELP.
  • In Continuum Shift's True Ending, Ragna and Terumi fight, with Terumi shutting down Ragna's Azure to make the fight into a Curbstomp Battle. After Mu-12 is completed and sent to destory Amaterasu, Ragna insists on fighting to the end, and invites Terumi to play. At this point, Terumi goes fucking insane and beats Ragna to within an inch of his life, screaming at him to just die, with Ragna struggling to stand and from the sound of things choking on his own blood. Terumi has done plenty of horrible things by this point, but even when doing some of his worst actions he retained an air of Black Comedy and evil glee. Here, he completely drops the jokes and just goes all out. He isn't enjoying this like his other evil actions, he just wants Ragna to die, painfully, and seeing his sadism in full force is really disturbing.
    Terumi: "Ouroboros!! Picked a great time to grow a pair, huh? YOU'RE gonna play with ME? I don't think you understand how this shit works!"
  • Makoto's bad ending is royally messed up. Relius Clover captures her and subjects her to mental torture, to the point where she is crying out for him to stop. By the time he's finished, her soul has been completely and utterly shattered, leaving her with no willpower to do anything anymore.
    Relius: So friendship is the core of your soul, eh? No, there must be more. Let's go deeper... deeper...
    Makoto: Ah... it hurts...
    Relius: Why, look! Discrimination... abuse... betrayal and hatred. It would seem you actually hate humans... hahahaha...
    Makoto: Stop! I don't want to remember! I don't want to relive those times...
    Relius: There's more...!
    Makoto: Oww... it hurts, it hurts! Please, stop! I... I never did anything to anybody, so why... why does everyone hate me?! I was just... just...
    Relius: Pain... violence... loneliness... par for the course... aha, but what's this...?
    Makoto: Don't! Please... not that...!
    Makoto: NOOOOOOOOOO! Please... please stop it! STOP!
    • There's a particularly chilling portion of this ending where all we hear is Makoto sobbing, pleading with Relius to stop, and a few times mentions what he's doing is hurting her, while he ignores this and says he will go on. What makes that even worse is that their character portraits aren't shown at this time, amplifying the effect of us hearing a rape in progress.
      • You may ask yourself, "Is there any way this ending can get worse?" Watch it with the Japanese voices on. See that Big "NO!" Makoto gives in the dialogue above? In the Japanese version, she screams bloody murder.
    • Even the Help Me Professor Kokonoe segment is chilling due to Makoto still begging for mercy even after she's entered Kokonoe's lab.
    • It's implied by his last comment that he intends to turn her into something like Ignis. She's still fully concious as the ending goes black. Yikes.
    Relius: You've just given me the fulcrum I need to topple your soul, and reshape it however I choose...
  • Want more? Use his Astral Heat (Puppeteer's Altar). The opponent is trapped in one of Relius' labs and restrained in some way. If you'll notice, the walls are smeared with the blood of past subjects, who are hanging above on swinging crosses, the shadows of which can be seen. Relius then nonchalantly alludes to what he's going to do to him/her and the doors slam. All you can hear over the announcer is the death cry of the victim. For even more horror, some of the "experiments" are particularly gruesome. While Hazama's just dying of boredom ("Not like I don't deserve a hundred times worse..."), it's heavily implied that some characters are brutally killed or abused. Many of the characters are literally bound into torture implements or positions. Platinum is trapped in a barrel skewered by swords. Carl and Nirvana are strung up like literal puppets. Yeah, he's that kinda person.
    • His Astral Finish on Rachel isn't especially gruesome, but is rather tragic if you think about it. Nago and Gii, despite the abuse she heaps on them, are clearly very loyal to Rachel. During the Astral Finish, the two (or at least Nago) are forced to keep her bound so Relius can do whatever he wants to her.
  • Some say that nightmares can begin with a sense of safety. In that very case, the combination of Litchi and Arakune's Bad Ends count. We were lured into a sense of happiness and heartwarming that we saw Arakune still has enough heart and care about Litchi's welfare, trying his best to remove her from his curse, and she is able to live on her life normally without any memory of him... in which we later learn that the corruption within Litchi is similar to Alzheimer's disease. Without a cure, it will continue to rot her until she dies, and all Arakune took was memories of him, and without his memory, Litchi becomes unmotivated to find the cure and blissfully unaware of it, awaiting the day she withers and die with her memories being jumbled here and there, or at worst, become the next Arakune and then start eating everyone nearby until someone kills her. Now then, when your choices are keep making bad decisions of continually working for Obviously Evil guys to pursue the cure as it's the only way or forget the cure and then get inflicted with this... Her desperation and 'obsession' would look justified, you don't want to get into her situation! At least those bad decisions still let you be in full control, not show that you actually like working for that bastard and show remorse sooner or later...
  • Carl's entire story. Even if he does become a adult, even if everything is okay for Carl, the kid's gone through enough crap to rival Ragna. He dropped out of the Academy after his father integrated his sister into Deus Machina: Nirvana and left her half-done for the boy to finish, and was effectively abandoned to grow up on his own terms making a living as a vigilante. On top of that trauma, it is implied that Nirvana amplifies the bloodlust of its wielder and stymies other emotions to that end, leaving him cold and emotionless on missions and a broken wreck that distrusts the adults around him otherwise. While Bang and Litchi did comfort him to a degree, he nearly broke all over again when he realized that Relius' improved detonator doll was built using his mother's soul. The kid's about as stable as Shinji, and who can blame him? And let's not even get to what becomes of him much later on...
  • Mind Eater is a form of geas that, while it allows the subject to somewhat freely express themselves, any command that is issued by the controller will be executed whether the subject wishes to cooperate or not. After overtaking Kazuma and slaying Tomonori (the latter is somewhat justified, as Tomonori was trying to kill Kazuma to prevent the merge) alongside his role in the Black Beast's creation, Terumi deserved no less... not that he took his rehabilitation very well, mind you.
    • Nine knew a more advanced form, called Ruby: Mind Eater, that further overwrites the subject's will, reducing them into a warped puppet of the controller. This technique was used on Tsubaki, and had she not been saved by Jin, Noel, and Makoto, her mind would have been totally consumed until she became the Imperator.
  • In a nutshell, anything and everything involving Yuuki Terumi!
    • But let's go into specifics, shall we? To kick things off, Unlimited Hazama (as CS arcade boss) default theme is always Endless Despair, so you know right away he's not messing around. Then the fighting starts. His pure sadism, incredibly painfully looking moves and distortions, and his incredibly joyous laughter as he's ruthlessly beating down his opponent is a terrifying sight to behold. Even it is meant for comedy, this video shows off just how insanely sadistic the bastard is.
    • As of recently Terumi is now a separate playable character from Hazama and he's even more barbaric and cruel. His fighting style's pretty much all about crushing his opponents and destroying their hopes and dreams into tiny pieces. His Astral Finish has him summon snakes on to his opponents and then turn into the Black Susano, ending their lives while laughing manically. His special moves drain heat, and his win interactions has him stomping on his opponents mocking them.
    • And then there's his role in the story proper. You already have an idea of just how brutal and sadistic his fighting style is, but his actions are so, so much worse. Put simply, Terumi is more than just an utter bastard. He's the bastard to end all bastards. He's committed so many atrocities and caused so much suffering that he's lost count, especially due to all the time loops, but one thing is certain - he enjoyed every single second of it. He enjoys viciously mocking and belittling anything that isn't him, even going so far as to be both racist and sexist. He enjoys lying to and manipulating others, be it for his own personal gain or simply because he can. Even his own claim that he hates lies is itself a lie, one that he knows full well, takes advantage of, and finds funny all the same. He enjoys beating the crap out of and even killing people physically just as much as he enjoys doing it emotionally and spiritually. He thrives on every sort of negative thought and emotion imaginable. And no, that's Not Hyperbole. Yuuki Terumi is the separated will of a godlike entity who is literally Made of Evil. You name it, if it's negative, it sustains his existence and makes him stronger. As revealed after he regains his true form as Dark Susano'o, his ultimate goal is to rule the world with an iron fist as a God-Emperor, transforming an already Crapsack World into a literal Hell on Earth where people fight, suffer, and die for his amusement while fearing him as the one and only god. There are absolutely ZERO redeeming qualities about this man. He's a bloodthirsty, egotistical, psychotic devil who wants to tear the world a new asshole purely For the Evulz, and there are no lows he will not stoop to in order to accomplish that goal.
  • Azrael is walking, talking Nightmare Fuel. The fact that Hakumen, the very same Hakumen who can cut through time itself and is the de facto leader of a group of six beings considered to be the strongest warriors on the planet, flees from him rather than fight him should tell you everything you need to know about him. And don't get started on what he's like when he really starts getting worked up and into a fight.
  • Armageddon itself. With Relius having stripped the limiters from every cauldron in the world, the seithr is overflowing and overdosing everyone from the top of the hierarchical cities downward, with all the terminally corrupted disintegrating where they stand. Imagine seeing black smoke spew forth from a volcano, but everyone it washes over just disappears before your very eyes, and you have a good idea how horrifying it would be. And then there's the sea of seithr in the lower elevations, so given long enough there would be nowhere left to hide. This is such a nighmarish scenario that the plan to activate the Lynchpin is preferable to allowing this to continue!
  • Downplayed example, but Izayoi's Slasher Smile in the opening of CPEX is quite unsettling, mostly due to the fact that it's completely out of character for Tsubaki...
  • Celica A. Mercury isn't Nightmare Fuel by herself - she neighbors Litchi and Makoto in terms of niceness and lacks a violent bone in her body, Inazuma Kick notwithstanding. Neither is Kokonoe accounting for her Power Nullifier incontinence with built-in dampeners and Ex Machina: Minerva. The problem cycles back around to Kushinada's Lynchpin - Kokonoe evoked her for precisely three reasons, those being to blot Ragna off her radar so she can track down Terumi, to obscure a small party of agents so Izanami cannot monitor or intervene freely, and to use her as the warhead for the damn thing! Even worse, Shuichiro Ayatsuki originally built the Lynchpin with this very fact in mind! It's telling just how horrible things have gotten that Nine built the original Nox Nyctores (of which Celica actually wielded Nirvana) and sacrificed the souls of thousands of war victims as a workaround to this thing.
  • The Great Magister Nine, once a celebrated member of the Six Heroes; she ended up betrayed and killed by a teammate she herself forced into the group out of necessity. But Terumi wasn't quite done with her yet. She is now a revenant brought back from the dead to serve him...or so it was believed. Initially she was just Brainwashed, at the end of Chronophantasma she is released from her mind control by Izanami, and set loose upon the world, releasing her limiters and allowing her to showcase her true, resurrected form. In Central Fiction we get to see exactly what this entails: she has Black Eyes of Crazy, a much darker-looking Robe and Wizard Hat as her attire, and a shift to a more condescending and domineering personality compared to the Nine we saw in flashbacks during the Six Heroes story in Chronophantasma. Her bio makes it perfectly clear that she is out to destroy the world.
    • Even more frightening is how similar she and Terumi have become. Though Nine would be loathe to admit it, she and Terumi have become much alike. Having seen the "truth" of the world, she has become extremely nihilistic and seeks to destroy the world. She has also begun to imitate some of Terumi's traits, being more prone to malicious taunts, Evil Laughs, and taking a disturbingly sadistic glee in her psychological torture of the heroes. Also, in contrast to the emotionless glare she gives most characters at the end of their arcade runs, Hakumen's, Hazama's, Nu's, Amane's, and Arakune's endings replaces it with an absolutely terrifying Slasher Smile. Clearly, her time in the Boundary and as Terumi's puppet has had a detrimental effect on her sanity.
    • And now Act 2 shows just how warped she has become. Nine's ultimate goal in destroying the Amaterasu Unit is to create a world where only she and Celica can live happily, while everyone else can suffer and die for all she cares. She's become so broken by learning the truth that she's willing to kill everyone, even people she once called friends, all for the sake of her sister, whom she doesn't realize would be heavily opposed to her plan because she's an All-Loving Heroine. In this light, it really makes it seem as though Nine is selfishly clinging onto Celica as an excuse to try and desperately mend her broken mind, and keep what little sanity she has left. Because she's become super-overprotective of Celica, this also means that Nine hates her own daughter Kokonoe for trying to use Celica to activate Kushinada's Lynchpin, the one thing she didn't want to happen 100 years ago.
    • And now Act 3 reveals exactly how she intends to destroy the world. By collecting all 9 of the Nox Nyctores, she will be able to call forth Take-Mikazuchi to completely destroy the world in an instant. However, when she calls it forth, she is going to call it forth in a completely berserk state. What makes it frightening is that she is fully aware of this. She is fully aware she will be summoning a mindless beast of destruction upon the world. Made even worse when you remember that Nine once considered Take-Mikazuchi too dangerous for anyone to use.
  • Hades Izanami. Every single aspect of her character is designed with the sole purpose of invoking the primal fear of death, and her obsession with it. If an event in the plot involves the loss of lives, you can bet that Izanami is involved somehow. The Ikaruga Civil War? Nothing more than a setup to provide Izanami with thousands upon thousands of souls to sustain and power herself up. She serves as The Caligula during her reign as Imperator. After all, what sort of value does human life have to a "Goddess of Death"? Her very existence is even fundamentally wrong by the BlazBlue universe's standards, being the negative aspects of the Origin's (the girl within the Amaterasu Unit's) personality given corporeal form and inhabiting the body of an Artificial Human. To reiterate: the de facto queen of the entire world is a Humanoid Abomination who fancies herself a god, and wants to turn said world into a desolate wasteland where absolutely nothing can survive. Even Izanami's fighting style is enough to make one's skin crawl. She utilizes darkness, the ghosts of the dead, and even time itself in her attacks, all of which are excessively brutal and look like they might actually kill the opponent. Her facial expressions only ever consist of Thousand-Yard Stare, Psychotic Smirk, Wide Eyes and Shrunken Irises, Slasher Smile, or flat-out Nightmare Face as seen in the page picture.
  • At the end of each arcade play in Act 2, there's The Stinger consisting of what seems to be the girl inside Amaterasu trapped inside something with tubes connected to her.
  • For all his talk about how he's nothing like his father and never will be, Act 3 shows that the apple really doesn't fall far from the tree with Carl's story, sending his characterization into a full 180 in the creepiest way imaginable. It's shown that when he actually does decide to piece together the truth, his methodology and line of deductive reasoning is exactly the same as Relius. This means that he eventually just starts seeing people as merely things to be used and discarded when no longer necessary. For starters, he only fights Relius just to see how Ignis is made, after which he simply comments that she's well made. Uh kid, that's your MOTHER you're talking about. By the time he reaches Noel in the end, he just tells her to shut up and just let him experiment on her, and that she doesn't have a choice in the matter. Not "kill", despite that being what would allow him to save Nirvana. "Experiment". Like Hibiki, he intends to torture her while she's still conscious until he gets results. It gets to the point where Nirvana has to step in and stop him. First, Carl assumes it's a joke, but when she refuses to move, he gets PISSED and demands that his sister move aside in a cold, commanding tone, as if he no longer sees Nirvana as his sister, but a malfunctioning machine that refuses to obey orders. Although Noel gets away, Carl muses to himself that things are getting interesting while sporting a Psychotic Smirk and laughing maniacally. He's officially gone insane from trying to find out the truth.
    Carl: Hmm? Step aside, sis.
    Ada: ...
    Carl: ...Get out of my way, NIRVANA.
  • Hibiki Kohaku is now officially this as of Central Fiction. Beneath the calm, collected assistant of Kagura Mutsuki is a batshit-insane killer who secretly wants to murder his master. When it's pointed out that his true desire is to kill Kagura, he angrily and childishly denies it, despite it being made painfully obvious that he's been engineered since birth to be a natural born killer whose only purpose in life is to be a tool for the Mutsuki family to use. His sanity really starts taking a turn for the worse in Act 3, where his murderous intent completely overrides his sense of rationality. He arrogantly states to Kokonoe that he'll become an Observer just to kill Noel, even when such a feat has been stated numerous times to be impossible. The real kicker is when he finally confronts Noel and attacks her in order to fulfill his wish. Even though he knows that nothing can truly harm her, his warped mind comes to the conclusion that if he kills her enough times, she'll have to die eventually.
  • If you finish Act 3 with every round being a Distortion, Overdrive, or Astral Finish, the ending credits will suddenly be interrupted by static as Phenomenon Intervention occurs and you face one of three secret bosses: Unlimited Nine, Unlimited Izanami, or Unlimited Ragna.
    • The stage where you fight Unlimited Ragna is most definitely this. It's called "Judgment Day", and it's a horrific amalgamation of Blockaded District and Take-Mikazuchi's stage, with the Embryo floating in the background. Since the Embryo is in the backgroundnote , it is heavily implied that both combatants are back in the real world. Then it hits you: every single living being on the planet had its soul converted into seithr to form the Embryo in the previous game. It's literally Hell on Earth - a desolate wasteland where nothing can survive. Izanami won the previous game.
  • Azrael's Act 3. Him alone is bad enough, but then he teams up with Arakune of all characters. With a battle-monger and the co-king of Nightmare Fuel together, things are bound to be bad. And, yes, it's bad. Azrael confronts Bang and Nu in a battle. When he inevitably wins, he has Arakune devour them when they are down. For Bang, the screen turns to black as Arakune skulks forward. The sounds we hear next are Arakune's psychotic, distorted voice and presumably him eating Bang. When the screen turns back to normal, Bang is nowhere to be found. For Nu, this happens immediately after the battle, leaving things to the imagination on how she got eaten. Why? To get their Nox Nyctores. Though this is undermined by Azrael kicking Arakune out of the screen right before the fight (or, in case of his final fight - Terumi - right at the beginning of the cutscene).
    • His ending is even worse. The proverbial Devour Hour just so happens to attract the attention of Terumi, which is exactly what Azrael wanted. He then proceeds to beat the ever-loving shit out of Terumi. You heard that right: Terumi got beaten to within an inch of his life by someone who isn't a main character, and he was forced to give up. It doesn't stop there, though. Azrael then begins interrogating Terumi about "the realm of the gods", to an image of Azrael with glowing red eyes and an intense Slasher Smile, and as he speaks his tone grows increasingly hammier and maniacal.
  • The console opening animation contains lovely scenes such as Carl getting his eye shot out. Keep in mind that this is happening to a kid who's at least no less than 14.
  • SUSANO'O.
    • Just when you thought Terumi couldn't be more terrifying, he outdoes himself and manages to rival Izanami and Arakune with this new One-Winged Angel form. To give you an idea of how terrifying he is, he killed Hakumen to get this form. He one-shots Hakumen straight through the back using a Hihiirokane-empowered Ouroboros strike, which allows him to cut straight through Jin's soul, yank it out, and destroy it, leaving Hakumen nothing more than a limp, empty husk. Once Terumi enters the unit and transforms, he becomes a completely different person altogether. Gone is the bloodthirsty maniac we've come to know, love, and loathe for years. In his place is a cold, efficient, divine killing machine hellbent on destroying everything in sight. The Susano'o unit itself gets corrupted by Terumi's essence as he completes himself, and we get to see exactly what the Susano'o unit really is: a terrible monster that believes its path of destruction is the will of the gods. The unit now sports a mask with Glowing Eyes of Doom and jagged teeth which are permanently locked into a Slasher Smile of epic proportions, making it look not to dissimilar to Venom. Its shoulders which once had eyes now sport teeth as well, also locked into those same terrifying grins. He sports a Sickly Green Glow everywhere around his body, even leaking through the armor itself. His fighting style has been changed to match Terumi's love of brutality, but instead of being openly sadistic he now goes for raw power and ferocity, using wild claw and tail swipes along with highly flashy acrobatic movements to show how awesome he is.
    • One of the first things he does? Kidnap Noel and assimilate her. A terrifying thought on its own, but what's truly scary is doing so makes him completely immune to phenomenon intervention. Susano'o just took his one genuine weakness, the Master Unit rewriting events, got rid of it, and came out almost completely invincible were it not for Ragna's Soul Eater. It's a genuinely scary thought that if Terumi had fully reestablished his link to the Susanoo Unit there would have truly been no one capable of stopping him.
    • One of his winposes has him steal the defeated opponent's soul and crush it with his own hand, making sure its Deader than Dead.
    • Just the fact that his sole motivation for being as evil as he is and committing all the atrocities he did as Terumi, is because he wants freedom. Most characters who long for freedom have spent their lives in servitude and want freedom so they can live comfortable, self-sufficient lives of their own. But because Susano'o is a very violent, constantly-pissed-off Mad God, he takes this basic human want and cranks it up to the maximum and darkest possible extreme. He is fueled by petty rage against his sister Amaterasu, so his idea of freedom is "being able to do whatever the FUCK he wants" without anyone or anything holding him back or telling him what to do. Not "mere" mortals, not gods, not even fate itself.
  • While it might not seem like much, but some of the later games' stage names get kind of unsettling. We go from names like Halloween, Cathedral, the Gate, Hanging Gardens, Monorail, pretty basic stuff. Then Chronophantasma gives us "Asphyxiation" and "Fetal Movement".
    • And if that's not enough, Centralfiction gets worse with "Soulless Monument", "the Gate -Not Possible-", "Apocalypse" and "Judgement Day".
    • You also know how most stages come with a neat little proverb attached to them? Something motivational like "Laughter is the best medicine" for Taokaka's Continuum Shift stage? "Sacrifice", the stage for Susano'o, has "Abandon hope, all ye who enter here."
    • BLUE, as pretty-looking of a stage it is...it's associated description is just "This is a force", like it's straight up indescribable. Fitting that it's out in the Boundary.

Top