This is based on opinion. Please don't list it on a work's trope example list.
With a
darker atmosphere than
Yume Nikki, this game
certainly has its share of unsettling moments and surreal images.
- Deep in the body area is the "Mother" ("Childbirth" or "Dying Girls") Event and perhaps the most disturbing thing in the game. You enter a room and are surrounded on all sides by small, black-haired girls placed symmetrically around the room and a giant one crucified to the wall. One by one, they explode into masses of blood and guts on the floor. Finally, the girl on the wall slowly melts and her organs spill out while the screen goes to static. You're forced awake once you interact with her, only to notice that there is now blood in your real room...
- The Candle World Kaibutsu. Even if you have the broom effect, it still moves three times as fast as you.
- The Fetuses. They're strange red creatures with one too many mouths and with only one goal in mind, to catch you. If they do, they vanish in a red haze of static, disabling any effect you have equipped in the process. They are found in the deeper areas of the body world, which is also full of horrific white... growths with bloodied mouths.
- The endgame takes them to a new level. If you play as Rust, they are found everywhere, not just the mouth world. If they reach you, they slowly corrupt Rust and disfigure her body. Since you lack any effects, you can't defend yourself against them, and worse yet, when they have a clear path to you, they rush at you at three times the normal speed. The first time this happens makes for a very potent jump scare.
- The giant, black and orange computer in Oreko's house, that she is sometimes seen working on. It's huge and looks like something straight out of a kid's nightmares. Worst of all is that when you first encounter it, there's no way you'll know that it's just a computer, just that it's especially terrifying in a game already filled with unnerving things.
- The one-room "world" simply named "insides"
◊ is the body of some large, deranged creature that's looks to be screaming in pain. The only way go further is to enter one of its "mouths" or use the sewer-hole to the side. - The Corrupted School Events:
- When you enter the school this time, the front-desk Kaibutsu are absent. First warning sign. When you walk into the first room, you're greeted with red static and Sabitsuki-lookalike Kaibutsu wielding iron pipes. The children that normally populate the halls are replaced by slim, white stalk-things with bloody eyes. If you manage to get to the end of the path, you find Smile... who promptly hammers you while he laughs heartily.
- And Rust's version. The Kaibutsu are replaced by giant Fetuses — large, one-hit kill versions — that just form out of nowhere. Any Kaibutsu that appear get turned into giant Fetuses as they scream painfully. And in the final room, Rust turns into one of the Kaibutsu herself, and interacting with Smile makes Rust kill him with the iron pipe.
- The Nightmare event — which certainly lives up to its name — that occurs when you pinch your cheek to wake up, and is triggered by an erosion counter of 250 or more points. You'll find yourself in bed, unable to move, as blood spreads out from your door and the room becomes fogged over. The screen distorts as a Sabitsuki-lookalike Kaibutsu enters, makes a beeline for your bed, and pipes you, forcing you to stand up from your computer. It's made even worse by the music, which is best described as a chaotic rumbling. Sabitsuki even pinches her cheek after the event is over, though notably Rust doesn't.
- The blood-splattered town ("Hole") accessed in the alley where one can also access the asylum, Sugar Hole restaurant, and the dead hole, and where one has to go through to obtain the handgun effect. The town is splattered with blood and populated by vaguely humanoid blob NPCs, and the music is an eerie sort of thumping with heavy breathing-like noises in the background.
- It's made even worse by the resident randomized event there, accessed by going up at the first intersection and dead left. You enter a transition room where the light darkens, the music stops and is replaced by an even eerier, darker track that makes one's skin crawl. Beyond that is a blood-splattered room home to particularly disturbing sights: most of the time the room is blocked off, and beyond the cones one can see things like a Kaibutsu beating a hunk of gore, a Cleaner standing menacingly with a chainsaw in hand, or three NPCs standing in a row by a fire. Occasionally, if the player turns around to go back, one of the blob NPCs will be suddenly lurking in the path. Thanks to the atmosphere the music gives off, this event is one of the more disturbing ones.
- One of the random effects of this event is when there are no cones blocking off the blood-splattered room, but when the player turns around to go back, is caught by one of the now-distorted blobs running at high speed. Sabitsuki is then transported to a "maze", effectless, where you must evade more of the distorted blobs (or get kicked back to the start) and enter a door. The screen goes black as Sabitsuki's footsteps indicate she is walking a distance, and when she exits — using another door in the town that one could previously not enter — her face is shadowed over and she's wielding her iron pipe.
- Getting this event as Rust is arguably worse — the blob NPCs avoid you, and when you walk through the door, you suddenly come out at maximum damage level (one demon before Rust's death) no matter what level you were at before.
- Pretty much the entirety of the endgame. You have to traverse the world as Rust and collect three empty boxes from three particularly disturbing locations with horrifying implications (one of them being from the Dying Girls area), as Rust is torn apart by the Fetuses. And that's not even getting into what you have to go through to get the third and final ending of the game, or the final area just before that ending, or what happens during the ending itself.
- From version 0.19 on, the "Vomitgirl" area, the imagery and sounds make it very uncomfortable to explore. There are several cryptic statues of faceless women (all in "suggestive" situations), a red, pulsating mass can be seen in the background, and if you enter a hole, you are greeted with a huge statue of a vomiting girl and a music track that may count as Sensory Abuse.
- The "Blood, Pus, Rust" event, which is pictured above. You enter a room that is covered in one massive blood splatter. If you try to get Sabitsuki to enter the door at the other side, your effect will be de-equipped and you can't access the next room. If you try to exit from where you entered, Sabitsuki will vomit blood and swiftly collapse to the ground before waking up. You might then notice that there is actual blood on Sabitsuki's computer...
- You can actually access the other side of the room of you are playing as Rust. You will be led to another version of the Childbirth event, except the Onigo will rapidly decay when you enter. The large Onigo will already have a bloody hole in her stomach, and interacting with it will give you an empty box that is used to access the third ending.
