Nightmare Fuel / Cyberpunk 2077

YOU ARE OURS.

As an M-Rated Techno Dystopia, Cyberpunk 2077 has tons of Nightmare Fuel. Let's just say Night City wasn't voted "the worst place to live in America" for nothing.

For moments related to Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, go here.

Unmarked spoilers below!

Main Game

• The varying degrees of Body Horror on show in the E3 2018 trailer, from the girl with the lower half of her face removed◊ to the airline passenger shooting flames from his eyes and mouth, can be hard to look at.
• The general savagery and anarchy of Night City - or even most cities from this universe - would also be horrific to someone from our time. If you don't have enough money for the police or Trauma Team, you're screwed, there's no social security net, and it's ruled by criminals and horribly corrupt corporations. Even if you're a high powered Corpo, all it takes is one mistake for your entire life to be ripped apart, your money and housing confiscated and all your implants disabled.
  • The gameplay reveal video shows more facets of life in Night City that are not for the faint of heart, from gangs who subject themselves to Body Horror in an attempt to become more machine than man to heavily-armed paramedics who will just as soon shoot you as treat you.
  • Royce, the leader of the Maelstrom marauders encountered in the gameplay reveal, is a prime example of the Facial Horror the Maelstrom gang exhibits. Everything of his face from his nose up just isn't there, and is replaced with a metal divot with an array of mechanical eyes that makes him look like a cross between a human and a Sentinel. That had to have required removal of part of his frontal lobe, which explains his Hair-Trigger Temper if you read up on effects of damage to that portion of the brain.
  • The Scavenger Gang at the very start of the demo is an implant harvesting gang that has no care whatsoever for the fact that they are brutally mutilating and killing people just to harvest their cyber implants. The hideout that Jackie and V raid for a specific person is littered with corpses that were taken apart and left mutilated. The sheer brutality and the fact that Jackie and V don't seem phased by it all speaks volumes about the brutality of the setting as a whole. Implant harvesting gangs are a regular occurrence.
  • One of the Police Scanner missions is for an Assault in Progress at what looks like a rave where Scavs are harvesting cyberware from the attendees. Digging through the area will find evidence that the Scavs set up the rave themselves and sent a bunch of messages to the teenage children of a bunch of wealthy families to lure them there so that they could be killed and harvested for their expensive implants.
  • It's a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment near the start of the game, but right outside Vic's clinic, you can see a little child (who can't be older than eight or ten) sitting alone, casually playing with a handgun. And none of the adults around you are giving the child a second glance!
  • Perhaps more unnerving is the fact that despite how terrible it is, how easily one can encounter death or even a Fate Worse than Death, Night City is still considered the city everyone wants to live. Why? One simple reason: Opportunity. If you want to make it big, you come to Night City, but you do so with the understanding that you'll either make it big or literally die trying. If you want to live a (relatively) longer, safer life where you die of old age, you stay the hell away. That's your choice in this world: either live as an impoverished bottomfeeder or bet your life on the lottery ticket of "making it big".
• The Old Net. Fearing that the Net would have been used to solidify corporate rule even tighter than it came to manifest, Rache Bartmoss released the DataKrash virus and essentially destroyed the globalized Net as it once was. While a few sections were able to be salvaged, the Old Net quickly became a digital maelstrom of rogue AIs and other virtual threats. Accessing the Old Net is dangerous and overwhelming enough that it can result in madness or outright cyberpsychosis for the unprepared, even without the AIs getting involved.
  • Between the Old Net and its localized replacements stands the Blackwall, a digital barrier deployed by the international cybersecurity agency NetWatch to keep the self-aware (and potentially malicious) AIs at bay. There are a few instances in the game of people managing to breach the Blackwall, and implications that some AIs are able to breach it in return. Either way, it's clear that the Blackwall is simply not as effective as claimed, and that the world is much more susceptible to the threats in the Old Net than it believes.
  Bryce Mosley: Any idea how many attacks from behind the Blackwall we neutralized last year?
  V: Want me to guess?
  Bryce Mosley: So you don't know. No one in Night City knows, outside of us. And no one wants to know. People imagine it as a great border wall, a one-time solution to protect humanity forever. Whereas it's more like a torn-open trash bag taped over a busted window.
  • It's also not helped by one important revelation: the Blackwall itself is an AI. While it is considered a stopgap solution by NetWatch, and is at least trying to work as intended, there is still every possibility that it will attempt to turn on humanity like some of its Old Net counterparts.
  • There's also brief mention of netrunners being caught on the wrong side of the Blackwall when it first came online, trapping them in the Old Net with no way to safely jack out or survive in cyberspace indefinitely. NetWatch appears to have done this deliberately, too, hoping to get rid of a few troublemaking hackers even if it meant subjecting them to a horrific death.
• You get to witness your own cybernetic implants being installed. While Gory Discretion Shot is used to hide the worst of it, getting a new ocular implant still entails watching as the Ripperdoc removes your eye before seeing a first-person perspective of the prosthesis being placed into your skull.
• The E3 2019 trailer gets quite violent near the end, with V slicing up one mook with arm-blades after nearly being choked to death, then getting hacked by another, causing said arm-blades to malfunction and his vision to distort.
• Our first glimpse at Adam Smasher. In the original tabletop, his design was something out of a Saturday morning cartoon. His new design on the other hand is the stuff of nightmares.
  Adam Smasher: You look like a cut of fuckable meat. Are you?
  • When Yorinobu and Smasher enter the room with a hidden V and Jackie, Smasher positions himself to look directly at them. If you have the Threat Detector implant, it reveals that he knows they're there but refuses to say anything, because to him it would be more fun for them sweat in fear and try to make a run for it.
  • And when he is actively pursuing you later during "The Heist", you get a firsthand account of the pure amount of brute strength he possesses. You and Jackie just managed to escape the Arasaka-infested parking deck of Konpeki Plaza...and then Delamain points out that they're being pursued. Cue Smasher literally dropping in out of seemingly nowhere and body slamming the Delamain taxi with enough force to send it spinning out of control, and all of this so quickly that Jackie only manages to get out a "Sweet Fucking Jesus-" in the short instant between seeing Smasher and the impact.
  • In the flashback segment Love Like Fire, we get a glimpse of just why Smasher is The Dreaded of the Cyberpunk universe. The segment gets off to an exciting start, with Johnny addressing his fans for the last time before embarking on an action-packed assault on Arasaka Tower. You mow down goons with a chopper-mounted grenade launcher, before switching to an overpowered pistol with stylized reload animations once you're on the ground. The mission goes well as you plant the bomb and upload a message-carrying virus to the Arasaka mainframe, easily overcoming any resistance... up until Adam Smasher arrives. He doesn't even flinch as Johnny fires upon him, shrugging off rounds that could kill a normal man in a single shot. While Johnny initially manages to flee back to the helicopter, Smasher catches up and shoots it down. He then confronts Johnny, showing no hesitation to shoot off his arm.
  Adam Smasher: Told you, Johnny boy. Told you I'd end you some day.
• Love Like Fire also highlights just how nightmarish the aftermath of the Arasaka Tower raid was. There's a brief section where Johnny is being stretchered out into a waiting van, all while sirens blare, panicked screams fill the plaza, and flames consume the building's upper floors. The next scene has Johnny being interrogated in a facility outside Night City, with his interrogators demanding to know how he acquired fissile material. Through a window behind them, you can see a mushroom cloud rising up over the city. It's a harrowing reminder that for all his motivations to fight Arasaka, Johnny still committed an act of nuclear terrorism.
• The introductory tutorial to the "Braindance" mechanic is about figuring out what happens during one such record. A robber intends to record the robbery to be sold on the Braindance market, but it goes wrong resulting in his death. After manipulating the recording V finds out that the robber was shot in the head & killed instantly by his gang-mate in a setup so he could make more money by having a 'flatline' recording of a person dying. V feels the sensation of a swift death, and has to barely stomach it down due to how spontaneous and unexpected it was.
  • One for the Braindance mechanic itself, but the device is based around a real life diagnostic machine used to intentionally trigger seizures in a safe environment.^note In fact, the effect was replicated rather too well, and after an epileptic reviewer put out a PSA CD Projekt Red immediately apologised, and patched out the problematic effect. This implies that the method of getting your character into these records is via causing seizures.
  • The illegal braindance that V buys from the dealer in "Disasterpiece" is the closest to the video game equivalent of a snuff film. The whole braindance is from the viewpoint of an unseen person being scavenged for parts. The braindance thankfully ends before it gets too graphic, leading to a horrifying variant of Nothing Is Scarier, but the intense atmosphere and sheer viciousness, as well as the screams of sheer agony from the man on the braindance make for something truly disturbing. It gets more horrifying though when you use the braindance editor, where the sound layer reveals that the room was set up to muffle the screams of the poor guy so nobody could hear, and the visual layer reveals that this guy was a netrunner and that the Scavs jacked him directly into the Blackwall. Worse? The fact that V had to buy this braindance, along with the names of several other of his available braindances, show that humanity has gotten so horrifically bad in the year 2077 that there is a market for braindance snuff films.
  • One gig has you retrieve the raw braindance of the murder of a preacher's child to find clues about the murderer. If you question the editors, it's clear they deal with way too many child murder BDs to point you to the exact one you're looking for and you just grab them all.
  • If you look at the in-game 'net on some computers, you can find a website called The Shuttle Dock that's devoted to some truly depraved pornographic braindances. It starts with snuff on the "Red Room" page, complete with one where the description simply says that it's illegal in the NUSA and they'll only provide the details upon deposit. There's a page for "Hard Candy", in real life a known search term for child pornography, and the page offers more snuff, including a braindance of the military carrying out war crimes in a village. And one braindance on offer apparently features somebody who got a Vagina Dentata implant.
  • One questline lets you create a braindance of a convicted murderer being literally crucified. For public consumption.
• Jotaro Shobo, the guy you take on in the gig "Monster Hunt", specializes in truly horrific snuff BDs, involving him raping and torturing joytoys to death, and looking upon his computer will reveal him to be fiendishly creative in coming up with "scenarios" for the viewing pleasure of the likeminded scumbags he sells them to. It's little wonder that the Mox has put a hit out on him, and should you take him alive and take him to the fixer, she'll turn him over to the Mox themselves, and one can safely assume that they will not be merciful with him. In addition to this line of work, Jotaro is also a vicious pimp who has connections to human traffickers, Scavs, and even border guards, who will happily send clanless nomads and other vulnerable people to him that they deem won't be missed.
  • You can find a list of some of Jotaru's BDs in Club Ho-Oh during the gig where you kill or abduct him. They're just titles without descriptions, but the titles say it all; among the choices for the discerning connoisseur of the most depraved stuff in the setting are BDs titled 'Arachnophobia Unleashed,' 'Body Horror 12,' and 'Rotted Alive.'
• Medical technology has advanced to the point of being able to keep someone alive with no arms, legs, eyes or mouth. Where have we seen this before?
• After the Arasaka heist goes wrong, V is shot in the head and left for dead in a landfill. Even when they're pulled out, the biochip that's now stuck in their head is slowly erasing their personality, "killing" them in the process. Combined with the fact that V just lost their best friend, it's no surprise that they end up a broken mess when they're finally brought home from Viktor's clinic.
• Sacrum Profanum/Losing My Religion details the special kind of horror the Maelstrom frequently inflict on their victims: kidnapping them then mutilating their bodies, installing experimental cyberware, or leaving it half-finished just for kicks. The monk you find pleading for his brother's life is wailing about how his body has been defiled and V reacts in horror at the unfinished state of his new robotic arm, half-attached and barely functional. During Regina Jones's Cyberpsycho hunt quests, you can find a Valentino that suffered a similar fate and went mad from the process^note though take him out non-lethally and she expresses hope he can still live normally because of his relative youth and the recency of his procedure. If this sounds familiar to you, Maelstrom must have taken the idea from Black Ghost and run with it on their victims.
• Regina Jones's Cyberpsycho hunt quests really emphasize the sort of desperation and horror that cyberware can bring. Even the most unlikely, inexplicable, and shockingly mundane reasons can set someone into a murderous rampage, much more systemic abuse by corporations, trauma, and wealth inequality.
  • Seaside Cafe takes the cake as one of the strangest, saddest ones. Regina informs you of gunshots at a popular seaside cafe, currently reserved for a bougie private event. By the time you arrive there, there's a crew of onlookers recording the scene of the crime and your target, where security and a newly-wedded couple lay dead and ripped apart. There's one person crouching and weeping, "She's lost her mind!" Suicidally curious onlookers, you might think? Think again: it's a set for a post-collapse soap opera complete with the ridiculously over-the-top and unbelievable twin-switch revenge plot. The target was put into a medically-induced coma to install her new cyberware, woke up too soon, and couldn't distinguish reality from the script, murdering her "sister" (co-star), the director, a cameraman, and two security guards in a murderous rage. If you take her in alive, Regina worries what will happen when she realizes the massacre wasn't fake blood and body doubles...
  • Bloody Ritual is as nightmarish as the name implies. While most of the Cyberpsycho missions are set in fairly mundane surroundings, this one takes place in an alley clearly prepared for some sort of dark ritual. Amidst the arranged lights, painted ground and bloody remains of a sacrifice are the usual bodies, this time in the form of Maelstrom gangsters. One of them is still clinging to life as you approach, muttering something about "Lilith" as you approach before dying. A shard on his body states they were offering a live sacrifice to "the abyss", seemingly referring to the Old Net. A cyberpsycho with glowing red eyes then emerges from a freezer, which has been positioned in the middle of the ritual site like an altar. On her body is another shard, implying that the ritual was intended to bargain with AIs in the Old Net, offering a blood sacrifice in exchange for being reborn in digital form. The experience of jacking into the Old Net seems to have been what drove her to cyberpsychosis, but there's also the possibility that an AI may have been involved. Lilith is alluded to a couple of other times in the game, implying Maelstrom may have been onto something.
  • What are the final findings of the research group Regina was working with? No single cause, but a collection of botched or experimental cyberware installs, substance abuse, and a host of different kinds of psychological trauma which can be traced to the oppressive Crapsack World they live in, all exacerbated by the patients having been fitted with combat-grade cyberware that is way too pervasive in a civilian population.
• One gig called Eye for an Eye from Padre tasks V with eliminating a corporate executive who got away with killing a sixteen-year-old girl in a hit and run accident. Why did she get away with it, despite the police knowing she did it? Because her car insurance covers vehicular manslaughter. That's right, in the world of Cyberpunk, life is so cheap and society so thoroughly messed up, that wealthy people can literally pay to be let off the hook for running someone over with no consequences other than a higher insurance premium.^note Bonus points for this imitating Real Life: China's laws against vehicular manslaughter are outright dystopian; kill someone with a car and pay a single manslaughter fee, but cripple someone with a car and they live, and you have to pay for their medical expenses for the rest of your life. Gee, the ratio of vehicular deaths to injuries in China is higher than the rest of the world... The woman V is sent to kill isn't even fazed once she learns why V is there, feeling absolutely no guilt or remorse. Believing wholeheartedly that she did nothing wrong since her insurance covered it, and even offers to bribe V to let her live.
  V: Vehicular Manslaughter Insurance... what a world.
  • Similarly, Biotechnica's lead scientist is a textbook sociopath who uses nomads as guinea pigs and cries crocodile tears to save her own skin. One of the Cyberpsycho collection jobs is in fact one of her victims, and a few other crime-in-progress hotspots are hired corpo-sec goons silencing media folks.
• River's questline involves finding the lair of an insane cult leader, who has been preying on kids through a help website and kidnapping them for his sick fantasies. Through the technology of braindancing, we get to see how horrible his childhood was as an indirect result of corporate exploitation and the resulting malicious insanity that he developed. He used his victims as literal cattle in his factory farm, stuffing them with the same toxic chemicals that his family had to inject in their cows.
  • Did we mention that he didn't learn how to be a cult leader on his own? You find shards in his house that give instructions on how to take abusive control in a relationship. In the corporate future, there are books for sale on how to manipulate and abuse others and get away with it.
  • One other particularly disturbing detail is that said Serial Killer created a honeypot site called 'Drugs Are Bad' that serves as a cult-like grooming/recruitment centre for his victims. It also describes itself as Night City's only non-profit organisation for helping drug-addicted teenagers, which, given the Wretched Hive that we're talking about here, is distressingly likely to be true.
  • We also discover that River watched a drug addict murder his parents, and tried to force him to kill his mother.
  • One of the more disturbing parts of this quest is reading the e-mails between River's nephew and the serial kidnapper. It's horrifyingly realistic how the kidnapper grooms Randy by forming a romantic relationship with him whilst feigning empathy for his family's situation and his father's death, making a distressed and grief-stricken River talk about how much he regrets not having been there for his nephew more. When you read over the e-mail in which Randy agrees to meeting Anthony in real life, both V and River are appalled by Randy's non-chalant compliance.
• The Peralez quest-chain is Paranoia Fuel incarnate. Imagine you're a wealthy family into politics, trying to run Night City's first totally clean campaign for years. Corpos are constantly trying to enter into "mutually beneficial" arrangements, your crooked opponent is trying to cover up the death of the previous mayor, and you've just recently suffered a mysterious break-in where you remember shooting the intruder but then... nothing. You just pass out and don't remember a thing. As V continues to investigate the Peralez family, you find things like their security company leaving a massive spy room in their house and they've been watched in their own homes for months, maybe even years, a surveillance van that has been watching over them, and disturbing logs about changes in behavior in ALPHA—the Peralez family. In culminates in you learning the horrifying truth that technology has advanced so far that you can remotely gaslight and brainwash someone into false memories, forgetting events, and being unable to trust their own eyes or their loved ones. The saddest part is how it ends: you get disturbing, panicked messages from the couple and then are suddenly blocked from messaging it again and then there's their epilogue videos. Agree to reveal the truth to Jefferson, and in the epilogue he calls V in a panic claiming that his wife, Elizabeth, was in with "them" and is planning to drug him; play it safe and hide the truth from him, and he talks about how "they" have changed him again and Elizabeth was the one to notice.
  • It really hammers in just how wretched Night City is. If it's an urban rumor that's too bleak and horrifying to be true? It's true.
  • Your final meeting with Jeff has the conspiracy directly hack into your brain to deliver a warning before he shows up, and the mysterious Mr. Blue Eyes then proceeds to watch over your entire conversation from a nearby balcony. One particularly disturbing little detail is that he's flagged as a friendly NPC, meaning that V will automatically lower their gun if they try to aim down the sights at him - the implication is that they used the hack to make you physically incapable of harming their agents. All your power, all your cunning, and these entities - whoever they are - make it clear that they can effortlessly bring you under their control just like they did the Peralezes.
  • The lack of a resolution to the quest actually makes it more unnerving because literally nothing was solved. The most we get is a noticeably unnerved V and Silverhand briefly talking about what it was all about. Johnny speculates that this was all the work of a Super AI while V half-jokingly posits that it could've been aliens. There's a silent agreement between the two that one thing is certain: Whatever's going on, there is a force operating in Night City more powerful than any gang or corporation, that only a small handful of people are even vaguely aware of. And it does not like to be noticed.
  • Among the things that Elizabeth says about Jefferson's manipulated memories is that she asked about visiting his brother's grave, and he says that he's an only child. Thing is, you can find "Antonio Peralez" among the markers in the columbarium. So unless this is some unrelated Peralez, those manipulating the Peralezes minds has Un Personed Jefferon's brother from his own mind, and, considering that Elizabeth still remembers him, quite possibly JUST BECAUSE THEY CAN.
    • And, considering how they protect their secrets, one has to wonder about the eventual fate of anyone else in Jefferson's family who know about his brother - the Peralezes do have a daughter who's been studying in Europe. Of course, that's what ELIZABETH says, and who knows what's been implanted in her mind...
  • Phantom Liberty manages to make it even worse. The scrambled and corrupted red lines when being "talked to" turn out to be very similar to when you're communicating with Songbird or are near something being controlled by a hostile AI beyond the Blackwall (like the Cerberus), which implies that it's indeed an AI using the Peralezes for its own ends like Johnny said.
    • And to add extra fuel to the Paranoia; Johnny points out that the Antenna on the roof is old gear the likes was in use by Millitec. We know that Rosalind Myers used Songbird to experiment and manipulate the Blackwall. We know that she is a former CEO of Millitec and we know that Millitec has a 'Soulkiller'-like program on its own. Myers could be grooming her own perfect little puppet-king. The fact that this is one of the least horrible possibilities is pretty terrifying in and of itself.
• Evelyn Parker's fate is peak nightmare fuel not because we see it, but because of what we hear from it. After the botched heist, she had to resort to prostitution at Clouds in order to hide herself, had her brain damaged by the Voodoo Boyz and was further abused by Woodman, who had no qualms in taking advantage of her in her vulnerable state like the utter scumbag he was. Eventually, she was later exploited and sold to a group of scavs who film snuff braindances and judging by the bruising and blood marks on her inner thighs they clearly raped her as well. As mentioned above, despite not seeing what really happened to her, you know her experience was traumatic and nightmare-inducing when Evelyn later drives herself to suicide due to PTSD.
  • There are actually hints as to what happened to her. There is an office with a computer that has plans for braindances and two of them match the use of a woman who's description fits Evelyn. The first involves allowing her to escape only to be recaptured over and over again. The second involves allowing her to jump out of the window in a suicide attempt only to have a net there to prevent her death and to take her back.
  • Hell, the VDB cyberattack on her during one of her client sessions is nightmarish enough to stand on its own: Out of nowhere she just starts screaming in pain, clutching her head and writhing as her confused and terrified client looks on. She eventually tries to run for the door, but only makes it halfway before she falls, then she begins crawling as if somehow leaving the room will make it stop. Instead, the attack jolts her to her feet, and she slams into the wall, still screaming, before she finally collapses into a semi (if at all) conscious heap, still convulsing on the floor. Ladies and gentlemen, THIS is what happens when the Voodoo Boyz nuke your brain.
• Speaking of Maelstrom's excessive use of cyberware for their bodies, especially their faces, expect peak nightmare fuel when their cyberware that's implanted on their face are removed. For instance, you can see that one of the gang members have it's face shoved deep inside except one's lower jaw. That is a certified Squick moment right there.
• The "suicide" and "cyberpsycho" quickhacks. Imagine being compelled to take your weapon and kill yourself with it, without being able to resist. Or being forced into a berserker rage, without knowing friend from foe.
  • All of the quickhacks can be outright nightmarish, especially at high levels. You have a wide array of horrible ways to kill people before they're even aware of you, and they can quickly spread like wildfire. If you've hacked the security system, you can potentially kill everyone in a building that can be spotted by the security cameras. In more than a few cases, you can effectively wipe everyone in a building while standing across the street with no one understanding what is going on.
  • In the case of the Suicide quickhack, in the moments before they take their life, the victim may quickly warn their allies of what is happening. They know they are moments away from killing themselves due to no fault of their own, and they know they can't stop it: all they can do is use what time they have left to let their chooms know what's happening and hope they don't also fall victim...
• At the beginning of Act II, after getting the bad news that the Relic is going to kill them, V returns home to sleep, only to wake up that night to Johnny Silverhand's digital ghost standing in their room demanding smokes. As if having the ghost of a famous rockerboy/infamous terrorist living in your head isn't bad enough, the ghost then attacks you, and for a few moments, seems to take control of your body. The first thing he does? Try to rip the Relic out, even though it would kill you both! And when that doesn't work, bashing your head against a window! When you try to take the Omega-blockers to quell him, Johnny makes you drop them, dares you to commit suicide, vows to take control of your body, and taunts you all the while.
• Starting Act II, there's a random chance that while looking in a mirror, V will see Johnny's reflection instead of their own. On top of the fact that this shows that V's condition has progressed to the point where their brain is beginning to believe they are Johnny on a subconscious level, Johnny doesn't even offer any of his usual smarmy commentary and instead stares directly at you in a way that manages to be be genuinely unsettling.
• One particular side quest starts somewhat inconspicuously, with V being hired to meet with someone and help him take out some guy who murdered his wife. As you progress in it, you find out that this man you were hired to kill has been taken out of prison under the condition he acts in a braindance reenactment of the Passion of Jesus; the catch? The crucifixion is real. You eventually talk to him and get to know him better, and learn that he wants to go through something this horrific because he genuinely regrets all he's done and believes that by dying like this, he can redeem himself and serve as a message of sacrifice to the rest of the world. V is understandably unsettled by this and you can try to have them talk him out of it, but he decides to do it anyway. In the last quest of this storyline, just before he begins filming the braindance, he asks to see V and confesses to them that he's afraid, and asks if you'll stay with him till the end; that roughly translates into being the one who nails him to the cross. This already presents you with a dilemma (do you do something horrifically cruel and inhumane to this man as a last wish from the only one he could call a friend, or do you refuse to do something so monstrous, and deny him even that?), but should you agree to it, the game makes you manually nail him to the cross with button prompts, each and every strike of the hammer, as you listen to his agony. The whole thing is so fucked up even the braindance producer is visibly horrified by it and honestly wants you to get it over with as fast as possible, and Johnny uncharacteristically hangs back and refuses to utter a single word during or after it.
• V is a pretty scary individual all on their own. No matter what Lifepath they take, they are a ruthless, manipulative, heavily armed and augmented mercenary that has a really short fuse and can easily flip out if they can't be bothered to act civil in a tense situation. And having the digital ghost of famous Rockerboy Johnny Silverhand in their head, the same Rockerboy that was responsible for blowing up half of Night City with a portable nuke and killing more than half-a-million people either influencing their actions or downright trying to possess them, is not doing anyone any favors.
  • While there is some catharsis in slaughtering a group of gangoons or corpo assassins just as they thought they finished their dirty work, thinking of it from said gangoons/corpo perspectives can make them seem outright terrifying. Imagine you just finished mopping up some gonk who thought they could get the better of you. You're expecting a "job well done" from your boss...and then out of nowhere, a few of your buddies suddenly get a shock to the system.^*Short Circuit Quickhack Another simply falls unconscious,^*System Reset Quickhack and another literally just explodes.^*Detonate Grenade Quickhack You look to your last choom, hoping the two of you can figure out what scopmuncher is doing this...and he just looks at you in sheer terror as he draws his pistol and blows his own brains out in front of you.^*Suicide Quickhack And then you see her as her active camouflage^*Optical Camo Cyberware disengages, and she stands from her crouch as a pair of massive, razor-sharp blades extend from her forearms^*Mantis Blades Cyberware and charges you. You try to bring your weapon to bear, but you cannot move.^*Cyberware Malfunction Quickhack Is it another hack? Or are you just that scared? Either way, the last thing you see is the murder in her eyes as she chops your head clean off your shoulders. And this could be V in the endgame.
  • High-level Sandevistans are easily cause for nightmares themselves, especially when paired with Monowire, which can slice apart entire groups in one go, or a lethal katana. Oftentimes, by the time you notice your chooms are getting slashed apart, it's far too late, as you're probably right in the middle of getting slashed apart yourself, as V is moving far too quickly for all but those on speedware themselves to even stand up to.
  • On that note, V's Relic malfunction attacks can be pretty nightmarish for those who have suffered through severe medical issues such as a heart attack or seizure. At the most mild, V will suddenly cough up blood and experience severe glitch-like auditory and visual hallucinations, and at the worst they will literally seize up and pass out, and, in-universe, at least, these attacks come completely without warning, the only indication being the beginning of the hallucinations. At times during the attacks, you can hear V trying to encourage themselves to breathe, and the auditory hallucinations sometimes become so bad it sounds like some sort of alarm-like digital screaming than mere glitches.
• Dubai: Sand and Death sheds more light on the aftermath of the Mideast Meltdown. The city of Old Dubai was hit with five thermonuclear bombs, which left most of the region as plains of glass and radioactive sand. Even eight decades after the nuclear exchange, survivors live a brutal and difficult life where few dare going outside without a hazmat suit, any dwellings need to be surrounded by windowless concrete bunkers at least 13 feet thick, and life expectancy is only thirty years. Yet people still come, seeing it as an asylum from corporate interference.
• If you choose to send Jackie's body to Viktor, you find out later from Takemura that it was stolen by Arasaka and subjected to Soulkiller for "questioning". While that's bad enough by itself you see the results of it later in both the "Devil" ending path and the others after connecting with Mikoshi... Came Back Wrong doesn't even begin to describe it. He's blissfully unaware of everything (even his own death) and only able to repeat a few words and phrases that he's spoken to V before, but if you ask him about his death during the rooftop scene he gets up from his chair, leans against the edge of the roof and sighs saying that "Misty knows, Misty always knows." implying that for a (very) brief moment he's coherent and directly trying to respond to V. And after that he goes right back to doling out canned responses like before, meaning that he's not conscious in any way like Alt, Johnny, etc... due to it being heavily implied that he's severely degraded because he was dead for too long before Soulkiller was used. Jackie is gone, and his engram is little more than just a recording.
  • The Devil ending is mostly an exercise in ever-building misery as you wonder just what the hell you sold your soul for, but it has one more dose of nightmares in it for you: during the 'solve the cube' tests that you continually, infuriatingly, can't ever seem to get right, there is one time where you almost solve it, but the last turn won't take for some reason. So you twist, and twist, and pull until the thing breaks in half in your hands, and the insides are lined with the Devil Tarot face while ungodly screeching blares into your ears. The relic is gone from your brain. Where the (perhaps literal) hell does this come from?!
• 107.3 Morro Rock Radio's host Maximum Mike (voiced by Mike Pondsmith) often talks about various mysteries, rumors and conspiracy theories of the Cyberpunk world. True or not, some of them are genuinely creepy.
  • There are a few references in the game to the city of Busan in Korea, the population of which was killed off by a biological weapon during the Fourth Corporate War. However, the city was highly automated, and rumors persist that robots are still maintaining the city 50 years later. That alone is a creepy enough image, but it goes further. Mike claims that apartment buildings in Busan have been torn down by the robots and replaced with warehouses, implying that they've evolved beyond maintaining the city to reshaping it for their own mysterious ends.
  • In the Badlands outside Night City, a Nomad came across a group that had seemingly been torn apart by wild animals... in a setting where most wildlife has died off, especially large predators. Mike compares the account to one he received from a mercenary friend of his who was sent to Romania to search for a corpo's missing relative. The merc's group camped in an old village, and were kept up all night by howls out in the woods. They initially dismissed it as wild dogs until shortly before dawn, when they were attacked by werewolves. Mike believes that the creatures originated from a secret corporate lab, likely created by Biotechnica. The same Biotechnica that just so happens to have a major presence in the Badlands. The idea of designer lifeforms going amok is far from the most audacious occurrence in the Cyberpunk setting, meaning that the accounts may not be as absurd as they seem. Especially when Biotechnica's in-game website openly announces that it has successfully spliced human brain cells into wolf embryos.
  • It's common knowledge that NetWatch maintains the Blackwall, a digital barrier protecting the world from the rogue AIs on the Old Net. However, a netrunner associate of Mike's claims that NetWatch originated from the Vatican. This seems like an odd claim, but the netrunner has apparently heard the Blackwall singing in Aramaic. Said netrunner has outright come to believe that the Old Net is Hell incarnate, and that referring to the AIs that infest it as daemons is not as metaphorical as it seems.
  • A different segment talks about possible explanations for cyberpsychosis. This includes some comparatively grounded conspiracy theories, such as cyberware manufacturers deliberately allowing a certain failure rate in their products, resulting in a steady occurrence of cyberpsychosis-induced violence that drives sales of defensive cyberware. However, Mike also raises the possibility of digital madness leaking out from beyond the Blackwall, possibly including AIs reaching out deliberately. While this may seem like another absurd claim, it is actually implied to have been the case (or at least a possibility) with one of the cyberpsychos that V fights, who was conducting a ritual trying to reach one of the AIs. The AI's name being Lilith only furthers the Demonic Possession parallels building on from the aforementioned Hell comparison.
• A little shack hidden away on the Heywood shoreline contains a lot of corpses, mostly random civilians but also including one who clearly had combat implants and has a gun lying next to him. A shard found on the body contains an archived conversation between a former Militech special-ops soldier and his old handler. It reveals that, believing in the throes of cyberpsychosis that he was still in the jungles of Brazil under orders to use terror tactics against the civilian population, the soldier (Leo Wood) had started capturing and torturing random people to death while recording their experiences to produce braindances which he then scattered throughout the area in an attempt to demoralize the population. Clearly horrified by what he's hearing and unable to get Leo to stand down, the Militech captain on the other end of the call makes a decision...
  Militech Cpt. #84590: Soldier!
  Leo Wood: Sir!
  Militech Cpt. #84590: I received intel of an enemy unit approaching your position.
  Leo Wood: What are my orders, sir?
  Militech Cpt. #84590: We cannot allow them to learn the details of Operation Terror.
  Militech Cpt. #84590: You cannot be captured alive.
  Militech Cpt. #84590: Do you understand?
  Leo Wood: Yes, sir.
  Leo Wood: Thank you, Captain. It's been an honor to serve.
  Militech Cpt. #84590: Godspeed, soldier.

Phantom Liberty

• In the Official Trailer for the Phantom Liberty expansion, V suffers another attack from the Relic, only this one is apparently far worse than previous ones in that Johnny is being affected as well, implying the Relic is dangerously close to killing them both. While this is thankfully merely a side-effect of So Mi hacking into the Relic in order to get in contact with V and serve as support, it doesn't make the implications any less horrifying.
  • If you pursue "The Tower" ending exclusive to the expansion in the main game, you learn So Mi's hacking of the Relic serves as Foreshadowing of what happens to Johnny. He's not disentangled from V and then erased like he is in "The Devil". His engram is destroyed outright.
• The existence that is Dogtown, i.e. the Pacifica Combat Zone. Picture a miniaturized Night City surrounded by walls on all sides and in a constant state of battle 24/7. There are no gangs and the NCPD steers clear of it, and for good reason; the whole area is ruled by BARGHEST — a military organization consisting of deserters and ex-Militech soldiers, led by Kurt Hansen, the founder of Dogtown and its brutal militant dictator. The place is so bad not even the corpos want anything to do with the place.
• Early into the expansion, you learn how So Mi was able to contact you. Turns out she hasn't just been using some advanced netrunning skills; she's using the Blackwall to reach you. While this gives her technological capabilities the likes no one has ever seen, it also turns her into a massive security risk. Slider, a netrunner for the Voodoo Boys, even compares her to a walking megaton bomb with a lit fuse and explains why: Getting in close contact with the Blackwall is risky enough, but the rogue AIs behind it are the textbook definition of A.I. Is a Crapshoot as they view all human life as "useless, broken code" that needs to be erased.
• Before Firestarter, you need to install a high-tech facial cyberware that shapeshifts your appearance and even influences your personality to sell the deception. Which would be great, if the anesthetic didn't prematurely wear off and you got to watch flashes of the ripperdoc peeling your face off and grafting the pulsating mask on the hole.
• What being hacked by exposure to the farside of the Blackwall actually does to people. As it turns out Alt eliminating the Voodoo Boys was relatively calm and merciful compared to what other A.I.s from beyond the Blackwall do to humans. While connected to So Mi and using her Blackwall Pulse ability you can see the digital artifacting over the bodied of afflicted enemies and hear the distorted screams as their minds are violently ripped apart. Even someone prepared like So Mi is being slowly torn apart by the A.I.s who take piece after piece of her with every visit.
• "Somewhat Damaged" - Jesus Fucking Christ. You get this mission if you side with Reed, and it is absolutely terrifying. In an attempt to pursue So Mi, V ventures into the underground and comes across an abandoned Militech facility. The bunker itself is dark, dilapidated, and disturbing. The lack of music and the atmosphere almost make the whole place feel like a mish-mash of Resident Evil, Metal Gear, Alien: Isolation and Five Nights at Freddy's. And then it gets worse. At one point, V has to disable terminals in different sections of the bunker to override the lockdown and open a steel gate to proceed. But the moment they disable the second terminal, a spider-like robot known as Cerberus, controlled by So Mi under the Blackwall's influence, appears from the ceiling and viciously pursues V. From that point on, the game quickly turns from an Action RPG into a Survival Horror.
  • For the rest of this Stealth-Based Mission, V has to get through the bunker while playing hide and seek with this murderous killing machine. Because unlike all other enemies in this game, this one cannot be damaged or affected by quickhacks at all. Have a Sandevistan installed? Disabled. You are no longer an unstoppable Solo down here. The moment this thing finds you, consider yourself fucked; it has the speed of a panther and can one-hit kill V with its surgical drill tail. It doesn't help that the mini-map is also disabled during this mission, which means you can never tell where it'll appear next until it's too late. The AI using So Mi's distorted voice to taunt you while it stalks the base doesn't help the situation either. Much less So Mi herself frantically yelling for V to run and hide.
  Cerberus: Do not fear death. You have nothing to fear when you do not exist.'
  • And then there's So Mi herself. Once V reaches the control room, you get to take a closer look at what she looked like when she was taken over by the Blackwall. Her ungodly expression and distorted voice made it look like she was being possessed by a demon, a far cry from the Netrunner you've met at the beginning of the DLC.
  • There's one section where you're trapped in a room with Cerberus, which slowly and methodically searches the room, while all the doors are barred shut by 'electronic fire'. If you try to open one of the doors while Cerberus' back is turned, it impales you from behind.
  • To add to this, you also get glimpses into So Mi's past and they're not pretty. You see how she first ended up with NUSA and her being sworn in, which is fine, but you also see what a toll diving into the Blackwall took on her mind, you see her waking up screaming and you see how in a moment of weakness she was "convinced" to undergo extreme cyber augmentation.
  • This same bunker contains blueprints for a submachine gun and a cyberdeck that utilize the horrific powers of the Blackwall AIs, and they're just as terrifying as this sounds. Using them is accompanied by the AI bound into the system mocking you, the target, and all of humanity in its deep, merciless and downright demonic voice, while the poor sods on the receiving end are dying in agony, screaming their synthetic lungs out as their bodies are being fried from the inside by malevolent code. From what the AI is saying, they're creating engrams of their victims and sending them beyond the Blackwall.
  • Throughout the bunker, you can find datashards that were left by netrunners working for Militech back when the bunker was still operational, tasked with probing the remains of the Old Net in order to round up and "cage" the rogue A.I.s present there (similar to the one kept within the neural matrix). The idea of a ruthless MegaCorp like Militech having those A.I.s in their pocket is creepy enough, but on terminals around the bunker, you can find strange garbled transmissions containing fragments of sentences, like "can you hear us?" and "we're coming for you, just hold on". Then it hits you; those transmissions are from those same netrunners who were trapped on the other side of the Blackwall when NetWatch put it up. With their connections severed before they could jack out, there was no way for them to get back from the digital hellscape they were trapped in... and as mentioned above, it's implied in background lore that NetWatch did this deliberately in order to get rid of some particularly troublesome netrunners, effectively killing two birds with one stone.
  • And if you think this mission is already terrifying without a background music, you'd better think again. The music that plays when the Cerberus was looking for you is outright nightmarish. Combined with the clanking footsteps of the Cerberus and it's taunts through So Mi's voice, it only serves to make you even more nervous as you hide from the machine and hoping it doesn't find you. Ironically, the music itself was titled as "You Can't Hide From Us". How fitting.
• The gig "Talent Academy" tasks V with stealing data on corpos and exposing them. In order to get said info, they need to sneak inside the eponymous academy. The second you get inside, you see the 'athletes' the corporation is making bank off of. They're not seasoned veterans of the game, they're not even rookie players. They're prepubescent kids. Worse, they've all been given experimental chrome, some of which has dramatically malfunctioned. To reiterate, a corporation is passing off literal kids as talented future athletes and implanting them with potentially crippling and/or fatal cyberware, exceeding the level Black Ghost could have done.
  • You can encounter one of the kids from the academy with his father after the gig is complete; while V can express relief that they were freed from such exploitation, the father will chew you out for ruining his kid's chances in life.
• The DLC has new bonus bosses called Cyberjunkies who are similar to the main games Cyberpsychos, the main difference is their insanity is caused mainly by Phant a new street drug that among other things can cause cyberpsychosis, much like the cyberpsychos above some of them are tragic monsters
  • One of the cyberjunkies is a former graduate from the Talent Academy above, apparently the long term effects of their treatments caught up to him, he's become a Psychotic Manchild wearing a kids backpack, telling a Madness Mantra about his abuse at the academy and his body has a datashard with a message from his mother disowning him and his subsequent breakdown.
  • Another junkie is an apparently normal woman who took some Phant, murdered four people, had a My God, What Have I Done? moment and started murdering anyone around out of fear of being punished.
  • Another is a former MegaCorp scientist who actually tried to make Phant less dangerous only to go crazy from exposure to the chemicals.
• "The Tower", a new ending added to the main game with the DLC, is considered by many fans to be even more depressing than the game's original darkest endings, "The Devil" and "The Reaper", all thanks to one thing: being a very Cruel Twist Ending. To elaborate:
  • Reed proposes to ship V off to the best rippers in all of Europe. Johnny already doesn't buy it and spends the remainder of the ride out of Night City scolding you for trying to get rid of him. Hearing him sound so genuinely hurt is heartbreaking rather than terrifying, but the terrifying part comes the moment V closes their eyes while saying goodbye to Johnny for the last time. As it will also be the last time V can say there's a friend by his side.
  • Eventually, V wakes up. The sun is shining outside, grass is growing, and the skies are blue, all incredibly rare sights in the world of Cyberpunk. Reed comes in and tells him that the surgery was a success: Johnny is gone. If it all sounds too good to be true, that's because it is. And that's when Reed reveals that because of the operation's preciseness and riskiness, V has been in a coma FOR TWO YEARS. And as for what's happened in those two years? Well...
    • Arasaka has dissolved under Yorinobu's failed reign, resulting in the corporation's return to Japan. Because of the power vacuum left behind, however, Militech has essentially taken over Night City and transformed it into a militarized state overrun with soldiers and mechsuits.
    • Because of the endless lack of rent being paid, you read a message stating that your apartment and everything in it has been auctioned off, including Nibbles if you managed to adopt them. Though the ending thankfully implies that Rogue ended up adopting your kitty.
    • Every single one of V's friends has moved on with their lives and left him at the back of their minds, including whoever you romanced. V can check their holo to see that each of their closest friends has left dozens of text messages increasing in worry and frustration and twice as many missed phone calls. River and Panam in particular did not react well to V's disappearance at all, with River becoming a paranoid criminal resorting to shady dealings with Trauma Team to afford rehab for Randy and Panam becoming so furious at V that calling her leads to Mitch phoning you to explain that she never wants to talk to you ever again.
    • Though just as painful for many players is Judy revealing that in the time V's been gone, she got married. While it may be comforting seeing her be happy after everything the game put her through, it is still very heartbreaking to hear if you were rooting for her and Female V as a couple, especially considering how she is very obviously not in a rush to bring you back into her life.
  • The procedure leaves V completely incapable of using combat implants. Visiting Viktor at the end reveals that attempting to use combat implants could result in a range of physical consequences for V, from electrocution to burning alive to pure insanity. And considering how having combat chrome is an absolute necessity in Night City, not a single character believes V will last very long should he return. It's such a problem that even a pair of juvenile street thugs manage to beat V close to death and probably would've killed him had Misty not shown up.
  • While the final scene of the ending is meant to be incredibly bittersweet considering V has received a new lease on life and, according to Misty, can actually use being nothing more than a face in the crowd to their benefit by starting a new life however and wherever they choose, one might realize that they could still be indebted to the NUSA and Militech for everything they did in Dogtown and could still be forced to disappear from the public eye much more easily should they believe such a thing to be necessary, much like what happened to Songbird. Ironically, the two ways V might have softened their relationship with the NUSA (by turning Songbird over and losing access to most implants) means that V could be left alone simply because Myers can use Songbird however she likes, and V is simply too much of a weakling to be considered a threat now.
  • While Adam Smasher wasn't mentioned directly, the possible indication that he is The Unfought in this ending adds more fuel to the fire, and may continue exist to reign the terror whom even the best Solo that isn't him would never be able to fight him, let alone defeat him overnight, even when his employer corporation Arasaka was reduced to its insignificance.
• Everything about the eponymous Mr. Blue Eyes, Cyberpunk 2077's own version of The G-Man, starting by his sightings. His most prominent appearance is directly giving out V's last assignment in The Path of Glory - a heist on the orbital space casino named the The Crystal Palace. However, those with a keen eye will notice that he appears during several different instances along the campaign, such as appearing on a balcony as mentioned earlier during the Dream On quest overseeing your meeting with Jefferson Peralez. Most recently however, he makes an appearance in the NCX Spaceport during Songbird's final in Phantom Liberty, where you can see him through a window on the construction site, looking straight at you, before walking away. He, then, makes one final appearance after V carries Songbird on the tram, where you can spot him standing amidst the destroyed terminal, holding an umbrella and watching you.
  • Very, very little is known about Mr. Blue Eyes, but it's very clear that he is a man who has a significant amount of power over Night City's politics, considering he seems to be directly involved with whoever, or whatever, is controlling Jefferson Peralez. His appearances at NCX further seem to imply that he's stalking you and knows your every move. His intentions, much like himself, are shrouded in mystery.
  • Interestingly, however, if you ask Songbird who got her flight out of NC, she says that she does not know, but that it was a proxy wearing an expensive suit and with blue eyes, who talked to her about the Blackwall. This, combined with the Blackwall interference V gets during Dream On, heavily imply that he either has a massive interest in the Blackwall, or worse, he might be working with something from beyond it, if not being outright controlled by it.

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