Nightmare Fuel / Dead Space

As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.

Don't look behind you...

Stuck in the deepest reaches of space, on a deserted ship. What was meant to be a simple repair mission becomes a heart-pounding fight for survival. And as they all say, in space... nobody can hear you scream bloody murder...

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Before we begin, let's make one thing clear: you are not a marine. You are not a supersoldier, police officer or badass (until the end). You are just the everyman who was on his way to work, but now you're fighting things that killed the marines, many of which have more legs than a bucket of chicken. Your arsenal only has one actual killing weapon, the rest are just hastily repurposed engineering tools. Good luck not dying.

For the remake, go here.

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• The trailer for Dead Space.
  • Hell, just play the damn game. It's like the developers watched Event Horizon and said "Wow, that was great! We should totally combine this with System Shock 2 and turn it loose on an unsuspecting gaming community!"
  • Even better, that spine-chilling rendition of "Twinkle, Twinkle" can be heard in the Greenhouse in Chapter 6 and commons area of Chapter 10, a darkened room littered with corpses and dim lanterns. The fact that we never learn the origin of the disembodied voice singing it just heightens the creepiness. Also, see this.
  • The trailer for Dead Space 2 doesn't help. Here, there's plenty of horror in it. The even creepier song is just the background music.
• The Pulse Rifle should easily slaughter Necromorphs, what with it being an actual gun instead of a repurposed tool like the Plasma Cutter. Instead it's shockingly underpowered, especially when not upgraded. Arming yourself with the only genuine killing tool in the game can end up costing you with how you'll be wasting tons of ammo to desperately deal with that Necromorph who doesn't notice, even with limb shots. It really sells just how important severing their limbs is, and how just reflexively aiming for center of mass or for headshots either does nothing to stop them or actively angers them while you spend precious ammo.
• The Guardians.
  • The pitiful, tortured cry they emit. You may end up trying to kill them as quickly as possible just so you don't have to hear those horrible, HORRIBLE screams anymore.
  • Walking up close to a Guardian will cause it to respond by decapitating the player with the host's intestines. What's worse is you get to watch Isaac feel for the stump of his neck before dying.
  • Immature Guardians are still somewhat human-looking, only really able to weakly flail around their intestines when Isaac gets near. However, they're wailing in pain and agony as you do so, which means that unlike other Necromorphs, they're still alive and feeling every bit of pain from their current condition. To make matters worse, they still scream and moan in their mature and lethal state, and if you listen carefully enough you can hear them sigh with relief when you finally put them down. This means that they're still alive and somewhat conscious after being mutated into some horrifying creature, eternally stuck in one place with their sole purpose being killing any one who gets too close and possibly subjecting them to the infection as well if the body's in good enough condition. And there's not a damn thing they can do about it- they can only watch helplessly, forever.
  • It is the instinct of some players to blow off the heads of Immature Guardians to make themselves feel better, because that always seems to kill them. But as it turns out, some of the Immature Guardians are still alive and fully responsive even if you do this, which means that they've progressed in their transformation enough that you can't kill an Immature Guardian and prevent their Fate Worse than Death until you shoot off both arms and their heads.
• The Dividers.
  • Everything about them, from the falling apart and attacking you, to the vaguely stepping on piles of bones sound of them walking, but most especially the HOWLING.
  • Issac's death sequence from being killed by the head of a Divider. Isaac is decapitated and the Divider climbs into his neck, taking control of his body. Somehow the worst part is when Isaac's arm reaches up to keep the Divider from falling off.
• The Hunter. Up until your first encounter with this unstoppable beast, you have become quite adept at dispatching the Necromorphs through bodily dismemberment. Then Dr. Mercer unleashes this abomination which relentlessly pursues you throughout the game and regrows any limbs you cut off, making it virtually invincible. It is only when you incinerate it with exhaust from one of the Ishimura's shuttles that you can finally relax and catch your breath.
  • The single most effective aspect of the Hunter, besides the regeneration, is the Paranoia Fuel; whenever Mercer unleashes this thing, you'll hear its growls all throughout the level, even louder than the other Necromorphs, as well as its movements through the air vents. It really helps to build up the idea that no matter which room you're in, no place is truly safe from that thing. First-time players might even start thinking it can just show up anywhere if they dawdle for too long (which is thankfully not true).
• While the Necromorphs are a bad case of Body Horror, they are at least made from the corpses of people who are already dead. That 98% of the crew have been killed and turned into monsters is bad enough, but they are not even half as scary as the few unfortunate ones that are still alive. The number of people still sane enough to put together coherent sentences can be counted on one hand.
  • The sanest guy seems to be the man in the fetus-growing room. He's screaming for you to let him out. If you run to the door you'll find it's locked through quarantine, but if you don't you feel like a real heel when the fetus Necromorph spears him from behind hard enough to leave a crack in the glass that your gun can't shoot through. Then the door unlocks. Even though, y'know, the place is still crawling with those awful fetus Necromorphs.
  • The one with the bandaged eyes who keeps talking to the half of a corpse next to her before collapsing is worth mentioning as well. Oh, and you must interact with her so you can get the kinesis module.
  • One of the first scenes in which you find a survivor is during the infamous scene with the empty corridor and the rhythmic banging in the distance. After rounding some corners the first thing you see is the shadow of a man banging his head against a wall. When you approach him he caves his skull in and falls dead on the spot, revealing his visible ribcage and intestines. Then there's also the insane woman that cuts open a living crew member with a saw. As he dies she turns around to your direction, laughs once, and slits her throat with the saw. Others just stand there and laugh.
  • That one guy that you randomly come across in a hallway. He's all slumped forward and he asks Isaac to "Make us whole again" before wandering off and disappearing (most likely a hallucination since the hallway leads to a pregnant and an enhanced slasher).
    • It's not just any guy, but one of the two soldiers from the Kellion (implied to be Chen, as they share the same character model). Note how his uniform looks nothing like any of the staff or people who were on board the Ishamura. Another scary thought: The Marker was already trying and eventually succeeding into making contact with Isaac, when using the appearance of a dead loved one to keep him going, instead of someone he barely knew.
  • Then there's that giggling mad woman sitting alone in a sealed-up living quarter surrounded by corpses. Once you step in, she just sits there giggling endlessly until you walk up to her, then outta the freaking blue she pulls out a gun and blows her head off. The Hunter follows shortly after...
  • The weeping woman in the med bay is just standing there... crying. You can't do anything for her and she doesn't react to you at all. It's heavily implied that either she's actually a ghost and is crying in horror at her own dead body or she just had a twin sister that she loved very much (both her and the body she's next to are the same model).
• The Lurkers... Oh god, the Lurkers... with the tentacles... creeping along the walls and the ceiling... and you can actually hear them crying!
• The ostensibly unharmed-for-now fetuses growing in the tanks... yeah, you can't rescue them or anything! They're just part of the scenery... a really disturbing part of the scenery.
• Remember, stores and terminals only pause you. Happy shopping.
  • You usually won't have any Necromorphs attacking you as long as you take them out before you use a shop and shop areas themselves are generallly safe zones. But in Chapter 3, at the very end, going to the shop triggers a Slasher that comes out of the hallway next to the store. However, for most of the game this doesn't happen because you can hear its scream before you use the store.
• Using a certain workbench will actually cause a Necromorph to bust out of the vent behind you. What makes this truly effective is that up until that point, (as long as you kill everything in the room before using them) you are safe when using the benches. Though this is the only time you will be attacked at a bench in the game, it destroys the trust you had in them to be "safe spots", making every bench afterwards an exercise in paranoia. Nice job developers!
• The title screen gets a mention too, not only because of all the creepy noises, but because it also has momentary and (at first) unexpected flashes of strange alien characters. Going to the main menu is worse, because it has live-action video of what one can only guess is bits of raw meat that's supposed to be a Necromorph. Not to mention the video of the infection spreading to a twitching human hand.
• Near the end of the game, Kendra tells you to watch Nicole's message again. Okay, she really wants to see Isaac again, she's sorry, we've seen this... and then to get to the end of the message where she kills herself. Which means the entire time throughout the game where she's talked to you and helped you she was already dead. The Nicole we've been following was a hallucination created by the Marker!!!
• The Ishimura was packed with some rather unstable individuals, but Dr. Challus Mercer easily dwarves them all in sheer lunacy. It's heavily implied that he's a high-ranking member of the Church of Unitology who was already out of his mind even before the Marker-induced dementia settled in, and he either already believed or came to believe that the Necromorphs were the "next step of evolution for humanity", to the point his fanaticism grew so deranged that even the other Unitologists aboard the Ishimura thought he was nuts and abandoned him. Eventually he became a human enforcer for the creatures, the Hive-Mind in particular, killing crew members left and right to add to the body count, best exemplified when he murders Jacob Temple at the mess hall right in front of Isaac soon after having killed Temple's girlfriend Elizabeth Cross in front of HIM.
  • A bit into Chapter 5, you get an audio log of Dr. Mercer experimenting on a guy behind him in an effort to prove to Dr. Kyne that he's wrong about the Marker. He claims that the guy understands his motives and that he's willing to cooperate. All the time throughout this monologue, you can hear the guy in question screaming in the background. The last noises you hear are Mercer starting up some kind of drill, ready to insert a sample of regenerative tissue. The guy starts screaming... loudly.
  • Everywhere he goes, he changes the different sections of the ship to better match a Unitology "atmosphere"; he dims the lights, places lit lanterns everywhere and, although not by his doing, the area is usually littered with bodies, creating a really unsettling feeling of loneliness. Worse, as the sequel shows, the Church favors this kind of ambience. For Mercer, the Ishimura has become a temple to his faith, a high-tech church devoted to death itself.
  • And then you realize that, maybe, not all Unitologists abandoned him. The even-minded types like Dr. Kyne certainly did, but then you have the cadavers you see at the Crew Deck in Chapter 10, which are all implied to be a result of a mass religious suicide to give the Necromorphs more fodder, which he certainly could've influenced.
  • Finally, his death, which of course is of his own doing, as he surrenders himself happily to an Infector, claiming to be looking into "the face of God". It's absolutely horrifying how willing he is to become another mindless monster in this living hell of a ship, with the only mitigating factor being that, if the player is quick enough, Isaac can find the Infector mid-conversion and kill it before Mercer's last wish comes true.
• The Scream in the bridge's elevator, if you choose to go down. All of a sudden you hear this high-pitch, bone-chilling, heart-stopping scream of a woman.
  • And you never do find out where it came from...
• A rather subtle moment happens at the start of Chapter 2 when you first visit the Medical Bay. You get off at the tram station and find yourself surrounded by dozens of bloody, meat-smeared bodybags. When you come back later after completing the level, all the bags have disappeared... Worse, you can still find some bags flat on the ground in some areas. They were opened, either from the outside... or from the inside.
• Early on in the game, you learn that Necromorphs can use the ventilation shafts to get around. As you go through the ship, you see that 90% of all rooms on board have these vents. You could be attacked at any moment. Sweet dreams!
• The Drag Tentacle.
  • Unlike the Necromorphs, which you can usually hear walking, breathing, growling, etc., the Drag Tentacle erratically comes out of nowhere and makes no sound whatsoever until AFTER it grabs you. Cue a mad panic trying to find the appropriate weapon to try and shoot yourself free before it kills you.
  • Its first appearance. You go into a room and it looks empty until it shows up and drags you by your leg down into the hole from where it came.
• The Twitchers. Picture a bulky Slasher that can not only run incredibly fast, but violently jerk its body around. Have fun using up all your Stasis energy to slow them down!
  • Probably the most terrifying thing about them is their death scene. First they take a few swipes at Isaac, and when he raises his weapon to shoot back, his body falls to the ground in two. Then out of nowhere, the Twitcher STARES DIRECTLY AT THE PLAYER. Sweet dreams.
• The demented renditions of "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" and "Ring Around the Rosie." Listen to those and your childhood will be ruined...
• The Hive Mind. You thought terror was Enhanced Slashers bursting out of the vents right above you? Or a Drag Tentacle pulling you to certain doom? Or a hundred Twitchers charging down a hallway towards you? Oh, boy, are you wrong. The Hive Mind is terror INCARNATE.
  • The best example of just how terrifying this monstrosity is just might be its death animation; if Isaac should fail to destroy the remaining two pustules on the Hive Mind's head when grabbed, a scripted death scene follows. It will force Isaac into its mouth, chew on him for a bit, then pull him out violently, ripping off both of his arms. As Isaac screams in pain, the Hive Mind grips him between its teeth. Another painful scream is heard from Isaac before the Hive Mind tears him in half at the waist, swallowing his upper torso and throwing his legs to the platform. OUCH.
• Get close to the Marker. Did you think it was just a statue or a piece of inanimate technology? Then where is that chanting coming from? What exactly is this thing? Somehow this immobile piece of glowing rock seems more sinister than all the Necromorphs put together.
• Something whispers to Isaac throughout the entire game. Listen closely while you play, usually it's talking about your objective.
• The mere act of just standing still in this game can be unnerving. If you remain idle long enough, Isaac himself will become more and more nervous as he begins hyperventilating and shifting his gaze and weapon around him. As if silently begging the player “Please get me the hell out of here…”
• (bzzzZZZzzt)({{Flatline}})
• Going into an area that's exposed to vacuum is a recurring and harsh example. In this game, Space Is Noisy is heavily averted. Even the music quiets down when you're in space. Now, how do you usually detect Necromorphs? When they start screaming. Guess what you can't hear in space? You'll have your head on a swivel, praying you catch the Necromorphs before they get close to you.
• As postulated by Roanoke Gaming (who does biology reports on fictional creatures, namely video game enemies and Body Horror movie monsters), the reason the Guardians and Exploders scream and jabber to themselves may be because the Bretheren Moons are angry with them for daring to resist being Mind Raped before being killed and mutated.
• At one point, you can hear someone singing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" over your comms. Creepy enough on its own, but unlike every other audio communication you get, this doesn't have an accompanying icon indicating you're receiving one. This leaves it hauntingly ambiguous if some mentally broken is singing into the radio, or if it's another Marker hallucination.
• The ending.