Per wiki policy, Spoilers Off applies here and all spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned.
And the creepy kid is the least of your worries.
The Digimon franchise usually shies away from explicit character deaths, except for Digimon themselves and for the very, very rare backstory or antagonist human, and just showing humans even getting injured is typically a Cerebus Syndrome moment for a series. However, Survive is the series's foray into Survival Horror and a Deconstruction that shows that trying to not die against hostile Digimon can end very poorly, with your choices potentially getting people killed on screen and the deaths treated realistically with dread and trauma instead of glossed over. This ends up giving the story strong horror elements.- In a rather unusual twist for Digimon as a whole, if you expect the villains to just toy with human children or Digimon or commit lesser crimes like razing villages for burgers or turning people into easily reversible dolls or zombies, don't even think about it. Every other major antagonist encountered outright attempts murder, and the killings have apparently been ongoing for decades. That's right. Whatever happened to Takuma and co. is not a one-off case — it's not uncommon for children who entered the local Shrine or tunnel to end up being Human Sacrifices, and the only survivors who went back to their world in one piece were those who had partner monsters.
- Also a Tear Jerker, but the realization that all deaths are route locked can be way more haunting than the deaths themselves. It seems like someone took Leomon's view on fate and played it to the most literal and grim conclusion possible. In Digimon Tamers, Leomon meant how anyone can Screw Destiny and become their own man. Here, it translates to anyone can go insane and die and there's nothing you can do to save these people. In a horrific usage of Branch-and-Bottleneck Plot Structure to create Controllable Helplessness, the game sometimes even gives you dialogue options to bring people under Sanity Slippage back to their senses and at least several characters are aware that something is horribly wrong with them, but the deaths are fixed on each route so nobody can really do anything. It's especially horrific when Aoi or Kaito undergoes a three-part-long breakdown and there are multiple consolation attempts to break them out from their funk, but you know that in reality, they were already doomed as soon as you chose your route.
- The tutorial section of the prologue is pretty grim. As soon as you boot up a new game, you're treated with some ominous background music, followed by what appears to be a pair of siblings running for their dear lives from a strange creature that can't be called a Digimon. They use their own Kemonogami, a Renamon and a Gabumon, to fight against it, only for them to not even so land a scratch on it, and the sister bails her brother to escape back to the real world by opening a portal. She was then dragged off by a bunch of hands, lets out a blood-curdling scream and was seemingly never heard of again. It's a stark contrast compared to the more welcoming beginning stages in Habu "Habumon" Kazumasa's other works like Cyber Sleuth, and evokes a sense of helplessness rather than a hopeful and uplifting tone.
- Even worse, we find out the sister was not dead. Rather, she was trapped for thousands of years within the other world equal to 50 years of real life time and her soul was stolen, rendering her catatonic and unable to say anything bar one-liners and is only kept in check by her Renamon taking the form of her brother. Oh, and as we find out later on, she could theoretically escape since she can open a portal back to the real world using it. But her soul was stolen by the Master, and her chance of escape is rendered close to nil.
- Any time Track 36
plays during the game. The incredibly ominous orchestral, droning music makes it very clear that something is wrong with the situation, and anything can go wrong if the player makes a step in the wrong direction. Even when there isn't any risk of danger (e.g. the night at School section of Part 12 in the Truthful Route), this theme can still play, which can easily give the player a sense of dread, a sense that anywhere they go may not be a safe haven for Takuma and his friends... - One very important detail early on in the story is that after Koromon evolves to Agumon and beats Gotsumon in battle to save Takuma, Agumon warns him not to go into the fog out of fear of what may happen to him (as proven when Ryo gets killed off later). Agumon, the monster of Courage and Bravery, is outright terrified of this ominous fog. This should tell you just how frightening the Kemonogami World actually is when even Agumon is scared of the horrors of his world.
- The first encounter with Haru in the school in Chapter 1. During a rather tense moment as Takuma and Minoru are looking around the webbed-up school, Minoru suddenly notices something behind Takuma. With all the spider webs, most players would probably be expecting a Dokugumon or Arukenimon to appear right in their face to Jumpscare them... only to find Haru standing at the stairs. Players will probably sigh in relief and assume, "Oh hey, it's that kid from the prologue, he can probably help!"... only for him to perform a Jumpscare with his eyes and mouth replaced with black voids as he suddenly vanishes. Thankfully, he turns out to be just a harmless Tagalong Kid for that time being, but still.
- In general, the webbed-up school in Chapter 1 can be this (especially to arachnophobes), as not only Aoi ends up getting captured by the Dokugumon, but Minoru and Falcomon, and/or Ryo and Kunemon can also be abducted should the player do certain actions, potentially leaving the player down their entire team sans Agumon and Labramon for the boss battle of the chapter. While it's thankfully non-fatal if the player loses them, it's still a massive Paranoia Fuel-inducing wake-up call that if the player does anything wrong, their allies may not live to tell the tale...
- Speaking of spiders, there is one type of constant Free Battle map which consists of an Arukenimon and varying numbers of Dokugumon. The worst Nightmare Fuel offender, however, is a map at the start of each route's part 11 with an Arukenimon and seven Dokugumon, where two of the Dokugumon spawn right behind one of your deployment areas. In the Truthful Route, several of these Dokugumon can even have a higher level than the Chapter boss (which is level 84; the Dokugumon on that map can spawn at level 89).
- Ryo's gradual descent into insanity, and his subsequent death, marks the point in the story where both the cast and the player sees just how nightmarish their journey could get. Seeing Ryo hallucinating his dead mother, only to realize that she wasn't really there just before he gets grabbed by the hands and crushed in their grip — complete with black blood splatter on the screen — is terrifying. Even in the scenario where he survives, Takuma is visibly shaken in fear that this might happen to anyone.
- You can pick up a few Perceived Memories stories in the Moral and Harmonious Routes where random children get lost in the other world, thought they saw their mom only to be dragged off to the fog and die, with their Kemonogami partner screaming in agony and dying (at which the description on the monster's POV is not pleasant). They're eerily reminiscent of the moments leading to Ryo's death.
- The entirety of Part 5 might as well be called "Nightmare Fuel: The Chapter". To wit:
- Shuuji's abusive behavior towards Lopmon reaches its peak here, and seeing just how unhinged the guy can get (not only towards Lopmon, but the others too) can be pretty unsettling.
- Arukenimon's illusion attack towards the group in the sewers is Paranoia Fuel to the max. Not only does it make the children see illusions of their partners saying their worst fears, a very real Seadramon might be hiding beneath the facade, ready to attack.
- Oh, and it gets worse. The illusions of the children's monster partners aren't even the main attack — that's to keep them busy. Rather, she was attacking Shuuji with an actual hallucination attack magnitudes worse than the others experienced. Only Shuuji can see most of his own hallucinations and not the other children, but from his babbling, they're implied to be things among the lines of his father scolding him for his inferiority. What we do see though, are fake visions of Arukenimon telling him to sacrifice one of his friends and a MegaSeadramon being dispatched to deal with him. There's no saving him past that point, he just dies and (usually) there's nothing you can do about it. It's a level of Mind Rape attempted by only a handful of Digimon villains like the D-Reaper and even fewer are this successful at it.
- Desperate to have Lopmon evolve, Shuuji starts to physically abuse him until he finally evolves... into Wendigomon. While Wendigomon is indeed very powerful, capable of one-shotting MegaSeadramon, he then turns his attention to Shuuji, grabs him, and eats him, leaving nothing but black blood stains on the screen and the floor. Worse, if you listen very closely, you can hear Wendigomon chewing on him.
- The worst of all of this is the fact that Shuuji abusing Lopmon is not even a wholly conscious choice on his end. If it really was for any other reason, be it power or frustration, he would be just a Jerkass at best and a Hate Sink at worst. He's very obviously going insane even way before thwacking Lopmon, and it's not just the poor bunny monster, either — he constantly gets into arguments with others that can easily break into fights, keeps insisting himself to be the leader yet fails to see that everyone else defers to Takuma or Aoi because they're not completely off the rails, and he has no concrete solution to the hostile monsters other than essentially telling people to coop up in the school and die. It's very uncomfortable to watch his on-screen breakdowns even if he's not abusing Lopmon.
- In Chapter 7, Renamon's rampage in the city is terrifying, with the cast trailing behind recently murdered monsters. At one point, a part of the city is covered by Dokugumon corpses which have yet to disappear to show just how recent they are, and it is not a pretty sight. And as we find out later, Renamon not only has thousands of years of experience, but seemingly has her further evolution states unlocked by default. Did she evolve into something like Taomon or Sakuyamon and wipe the floor with them?
- The Downer Ending available at the end of Chapter 8 is very bleak and awful. If you choose the bottom-left option to go back home, you'll be greeted with an early bad ending where Takuma goes back home; ditching Agumon, Miyuki, and the rest of his friends; with Agumon especially looking broken and in tears. In the next scene, we see Takuma and his mom being forced to relocate from their home because of an impeding natural disaster, and he notes that such relocations are not uncommon. The exact details are not shown, but it's heavily implied to be Just Before the End and that the Master is satiating his century-long grudge through destroying both the human world and the Kemonogami World via their synchronization. What cements this bad ending as truly horrific is how unlike Shuuji's abuse of Lopmon and Aoi/Kaito's degeneration into insane monsters, this is a conscious choice made by Takuma rather than him suffering from insanity or grief, and once it's made he refuses to go back. There's something very dark when a Digimon game gives a chance for the franchise's trademark goggle-headed hero to cross the Moral Event Horizon and be spat upon as a Dirty Coward who doomed his friends and both worlds to a certain death.
- Fans who watched Digimon Adventure might remember Piedmon as a cruel and sadistic but Laughably Evil Monster Clown. There's literally nothing funny about this Piedmon, who unlike his Adventure and Ghost Game counterparts doesn't even have the patience to turn people into keychains or playing cards but instead jumps straight to flat-out murder with little provocation. It goes From Bad to Worse as Bolboutamon, who extends it further into wiping out the Human and Kemonogami Worlds too.
- The Kenzoku you encounter towards the end of the game regardless of the route. They're basically the closest this game has to the franchise's overall Outside-Context Problem that are Digital Lifeforms, as seen before with for example the D-Reaper, Mecha Rogue X, or The Eaters. Those previous examples at least gave one the reassurance that each form they took had a very well defined power in comparison to everything else. The Kenzoku, on the other hand, can look almost identical to others of their same type, but far more often than not, even if they look identical, their elemental resistances are borderline random, and even having the same appearance makes it hard to tell at first whether they're as powerful as an Ultimate, Mega, or even Super-Ultimate. The Kenzoku, by comparison to their predecessor counterparts in the series, effectively have no real defined shape in mind, and can come across as being beyond comprehension as a result of their seemingly randomized battle stats and levels. Last but not least, unlike the D-Reaper or the Eaters, we don't find out what they even are.
- Chapter 10 shows that Renamon can be very frightening if she wants to. After the Master ropes her into gathering sacrifices as a last-ditch attempt after Piedmon's gang goes to shambles, she creates a library and assumes her Haru form to bait Kaito and Aoi in. The whole complex is dark and foreboding, and Takuma finds himself facing multiple Kenzoku disguised as his teammates. Special mention goes to the fake Saki, who, once exposed, tells Takuma that she will kill him with a smile on her face. And this is just the Moral Route; in the Wrathful and Harmonious Routes it's even worse. She specifically targets either Aoi or Kaito; who are in a vulnerable, grief-ridden state; and shows them illusions of their greatest fears (that they failed to save Saki or Miu), which understandably outright destroys whatever little sanity they still have. Even Renamon herself thinks it's way overboard when she twists some already depressed and unstable people into the worst versions of themselves while she only wanted to wear them down so they'd become suitable offerings for the Master and she could get her girl back.
- All of the Perceived Memory stories end with people being swallowed by the fog and dying. The Wrathful Route and the Harmony Route stories take place in ancient Japan and the Moral Route story around World War II, suggesting that these incidents have been occurring for centuries, rather than the past 60 years as we thought, and the 60 years mark is just when the Sovereign Beast's seal on the Master wore off and he became capable of killing random children as opposed to the ordained sacrifices. Knowing that the fog is actually the Master's work, just how long has he been taking random children and killing them to satisfy his hatred against humanity?
Moral Route
- Possessed Miyuki does her best to imitate The Exorcist. She has very unsettling yellow eyes and makes very deranged expressions. Worse is that not only does her voice become deeper with extra echo effects, at several points the possessed body speaks in the Master's voice, a raspy old man's voice, and her title card becomes "The Master". She also acts nothing like Miyuki, being more like the Master acting through her body, attacking and killing innocent Digimon in the amusement park and impaling Jijimon through a black tendril. Jijimon only gets killed because he shields Takuma from the Master's attack — if he hadn't interfered, it would have been Takuma who died.
- The penultimate boss is the Master fusing several Kenzoku onto Miyuki's body as a last-ditch attempt to take full control of her. It's a massive blob monster with multiple arms restraining her, and her head is covered by a blindfold resembling a Kenzoku's head.
- At one point in the fight against the Kenzoku Miyuki, the Master impales Renamon with his Kenzoku hands, with black blood splattering onto the screen and a squelch sound being heard in the background as the Master kills off Miyuki's partner right in front of her. It's made worse by how unlike the other murders the Master attempts using Miyuki's body, she is completely aware of him killing Renamon because she regains consciousness right after Renamon dies. Despite the fact that Renamon doesn't stay dead for long, Miyuki's blood-curdling scream in response to the horror makes it pretty disturbing. On top of that, Renamon isn't even the intended target — the Master wanted to kill the professor. Had Renamon not leapt in to take the hit, the Omegamon fusion would not have happened because Gabumon would have died too, and there would have been no way to save Miyuki and/or stop the Master's rampage.
Wrathful Route
- Saki's death in the Wrathful route is this. While it is somewhat obscured by the fog, you can see the hands taking her and raising her up before crushing her into the ground; her terrified screams and the subsequent squelch, along with the black bloodstain on the floor, can haunt your dreams.
- Piedmon beating Aoi and Labramon to the point of near-death in the Wrathful route is another one. It's horrifying to see Aoi's kindness in healing the near-death Piedmon being repaid with her being choked and then beaten, with the clown taunting her and Labramon on how he can't wait to see the other children's expressions when they see them. You can actually even see red on Aoi's face, hands, and sides, which indicates that it's either blood or her being hurt so badly that it tore some of her skin off, exposing her flesh. Whatever the case, from the characters' reaction to the scene, how deep her injury is said to be, and the slashing sound effects used when Piedmon is beating her, it is quite the nightmarish scene, not to mention just how dead Aoi looks.
- The backstab from Piedmon then leads to Aoi dark biomerging with Labramon to become Plutomon (a Digimon with ties to the Olympos XII, i.e. the Illiad server's equivalent to the Royal Knights), who kills Piedmon in retaliation. Now that Plutomon's killed Piedmon, time to rejoice, right? Wrong! Now Aoi is so far off and insane that she intends to bring forth harmony and cooperation by absorbing her friends and everyone else, then remaking the two worlds in her own image. Watching Aoi, whose motherly personality has been a constant presence since the start of the game, become so utterly twisted is as heart-wrenching as it is nightmarish. Oh, and unlike Shuuji's Wendigomon prior (and other Dark Evolutions for that regard), Plutomon is a completely sapient manifestation of Aoi's grief-induced insanity who carries out her Assimilation Plot willingly — her body might had been turned into a barely recognizable monster, but her mind is pretty much Aoi's and not those of a rampaging beast. Plutomon's appearance also lacks the sheer wrongness seen in other Dark Evolutions and almost looks as natural as any other Mega, making you wonder how much darkness Aoi has been baring inside her starting from Ryo's death. It's one thing for Lopmon to turn into a self-aware monster who can't control his body, but it's another for a kind and caring person to become so dead, twisted, and broken that she biomerges into an insane being hellbent on enforcing harmony by absorbing other people and killing anyone who dares challenge her.
- The horrific implications of Aoi-Plutomon's Assimilation Plot. Haru/Renamon describes all the Kenzoku she killed on the way to the Master as having their "mind, body and soul all gone". That's right. Aoi isn't simply trying to absorb billions of people and monsters into her — she's trying to kill all of them and is too insane and broken to care about the consequences.
- The Wrathful Ending. Unlike the Harmonious route, which ends on a more uplifting, if bittersweet note given the losses the cast underwent in that route, it sounds less like an ending for Digimon in general and more like a setting from a Shin Megami Tensei game. The very first thing players see when the ending rolls around is a damaged city with smoke rising over the buildings. To make matters worse, if you save your game there, the name of that area is "World of Chaos". Not only are many people jealous and angry at those who have Kemonogami partners themselves, but Takuma mentions that some use them for ill purposes, if not making the same mistake Shuuji did. Society has gotten so bad that there are actual isolation camps for anyone with a Partner Kemonogami, and you even get to see a cop beating the crap out of a poor kid just because he's partners with Gomamon.
Harmonious Route
- Miu's backstory, as revealed in the Harmony route, is that she had someone stalking her back when she still lived in the city. To add in more Squick, Miu is only 11 years old and said stalker was a Stalker with a Crush that tried to lie and claim that he and Miu were a couple. The stalker only stopped after Kaito noticed and beat him within an inch of his life, making Kaito's overprotectiveness over Miu suddenly a lot more understandable. There's no wonder Kaito is an overprotective big bro to Miu — he's horrified.
- Miu's death is just as bad as Saki's. While the screen fades to black the moment it happens, this painful death is just as crushing as what happened to Saki, and Kaito's subsequent breakdown doesn't help either.
- Unlike Aoi's gut-wrenching Sanity Slippage, Kaito is terrifying after Miu's death. He's a far cry from the perceptive but brash young man he was, instead becoming a ticking time bomb threatening violence every word he speaks. At several points he almost looks as if he wants to just punch Takuma and Aoi to near death like he did with Miu's stalker when they're only trying to console him. It's telling that Dracumon and Labramon's best recommendation for dealing with him is to leave him alone. It becomes even worse after Renamon tricks him, turning him into a deranged wreck going around punching innocent monsters who have nothing to do with Miu's death left and right and even being willing to kill Takuma and co. because they failed to save her.
- Piedmon and Dracmon's fusion isn't gory or disturbing, merely resulting in the creation of a very powerful monster in the form of Boltboutamon. What makes this fusion so disturbing is Piedmon's inclusion and the fact that said form is powered by Kaito's hatred. It's more or less Piedmon exploiting Dracmon and Kaito, and to make matters worse, as shown near the route's ending, Kaito does not have complete control of Boltboutamon. The second his hate is gone, Piedmon's personality takes over Boltboutamon, and he goes on to absorb not just Kaito and Miyuki, but also the Professor.
Truthful Route
- The Kenzoku are even more creatively vindictive than they are in the previous routes — rather than simply taking the form of party members or amusement park monsters, one ambush in the second island now takes the form of Miyuki. Not simply deploying her body around, flat out impersonating her! Even Takuma is almost fooled by this until Shuuji warns him that it's not her. And then there's the Dissonant Serenity that all Kenzoku impersonations have. The Master never resorts to deploying his minions in a way that outright impersonates his real target before this, so he must be very desperate at this point.
- Renamon is even worse than she is in the other routes — rather than the usual trick of luring several hostages into a Library, she gets straight to business by taking Haru's form and baiting the entire party into the shrine where Ebonwumon is. Then she drops her friendly demeanor and starts lashing out in an incredibly deranged manner, beating the professor and threatening to offer him as a sacrifice. The Master likely starts feeling truly threatened when the children get Baihumon's good side, and it shows when his minions start acting way more pragmatic and underhanded than usual.
- The Truthful Route's Part 12 is Lighter and Softer in heavy contrast to what's usually in this section of the game and one of the very few sections of the game that is devoid of any sort of real danger, but it quickly degenerates into horror that night when Ryo, Minoru, and Saki spot a ghost running around, who Takuma finds out personally was the young man who was Zhuqiaomon's partner. That night, outright paranormal activities appear all over the school, manifesting as clickable objects titled "???", and the party's partner monsters bar Agumon seem to vanish. Turns out there's still no real danger and it was just Suzaku Boy trying to reach them, but Zhuqiaomon himself isn't that merciful. Not only does he hate humans over Suzaku Boy's failure to kill the Master, viewing it as a betrayal, he also brainwashes all of the group's partner monsters, making them hate humans like him. They get snapped out of it quickly, but having to see Falcomon and Agumon speaking in a tone different from usual while threatening to kill their owners is pretty horrifying.
- Suzaku Boy states that Fanglongmon Dark Evolved into the Master after Haruchika's hatred corrupted him and the boy put himself into the driver seat with Fanglongmon's personality obscured. The end result is a monstrosity who not only willingly desires the destruction of both Kemonogami and humans over a century-old grudge, but is also a Physical God with unfathomable power. Plus, it's just terrifying that the irrational hatred of a young man can drive even a supreme monster insane and turn it into some barely recognizable... thing.
- Turns out Human Sacrifice rituals for Kemonogami were performed routinely in the Kamakura Shogunate era centuries ago, when Japan was in a constant state of war and the clans were willing to throw their own young men to the other world so they could attain greater power. Given how Haruchika is so hate driven to the point that he wants to kill all of humanity as revenge after being sacrificed, and his sister, who supposedly used him as an offering, actually refused to let him die, only for her work duties to keep her away from him, the implication is that whatever happened in these rituals was not pleasant, at least not as simple as throwing the offerings to the other side of the gate.
