Nightmare Fuel / Burnout

• Impact Time is a neat little function that makes crashes feel rewarding. However, it also has introduced some horrific sounds that is a sudden tone change from the rest of the gameplay loop: slowly blinking turn signals, Heartbeat Soundtrack, a woman screaming as she's about to collide with an oncoming truck, etc.
  • While the retail version is no slouch either, the beta version of Burnout 3: Takedown featured even more horrifying sound effects for Impact Time that wouldn't be out of place in Silent Hill or Postal and might even bring back memories of the menu theme from Destruction Derby 2 for the PlayStation. In one of them, you can hear the EKG monitor flatlining and a reversed church bell ringing, signaling that your driver has passed away in midst of the crash.
• Hell, the early presentation of Burnout 3 shows that it was originally meant to take a darker turn than its predecessors, particularly the "Crash + Burn" development phase. Its teaser trailer does not feature the iconic rock music and is instead accompanied by the eerie Drone of Dread and police sirens, and primarily focuses on cars crashing and the aftermaths showing their wrecks scattered all over the intersection, along with a female scream and a continuously blaring horn after a serious accident. All just to drive the point home that there are consequences to illegal street racing, and there is more to it than what Burnout 1 (inspired by none other than the already nightmarish Thrill Drive, by the way) once told you.
  • A minor-but-related case: before "Takedown" was christened, the development team had drafted several subtitles for the game besides "Crash + Burn", including "Fuel Injection", "Seek and Destroy", "Carnage", and... "See You in Hell". What was up with that?
• While the horror aspect is majorly overlooked due to the Rule of Fun, Burnout 3 also upgrades the Crash Mode by adding the Crashbreakers. Cause enough damage to civilian vehicles and, as if it wasn't enough, you can finish it off by pressing the B button to blow your car up, sending the surrounding wreckage flying across the intersection. You may also do this three times in a single event by hitting the tanker truck hard enough for it to explode, touching the Crashbreaker pickup and then activating the Crashbreaker at the end. No One Could Survive That!
  • It's arguably worse in Revenge, as the dirty yellow filter can make the events resemble less like a little kid causing mayhem with their toy cars and more like a Middle Eastern terrorist bombing that is being run as a show.