Nightmare Fuel / Elden Ring

"Join the Serpent King as family... Together, we will devour the very gods."

Elden Ring might seem more like a typical High Fantasy than some of FromSoftware's previous outings, but forces much darker are lurking just beneath the surface.

Unmarked spoilers ahead.

• Deathblight, the Suspiciously Similar Substitute to petrification in the Dark Souls games, is outright horrifying. At least being turn to stone is generally depicted as quick and painless compared to being stabbed inside-out by a sharp, thorny tree.
  • That's not the worst part though. A quick examination via mods reveals that these aren't trees, but nests made from a certain unknown pale-white insect that hosts various maggots, not unlike an unguarded piece of meat left too long out of the fridge.
• Anywhere the Scarlet Rot has touched turns into a nightmare; a twisted, rotting version of itself. An entire region of the map, the Caelid Wilds, has fallen victim to it, turning into what looks like a landscape of viscera, pus, and rot.
  • This includes demigods and people:
    • Malenia was born cursed, as the envoy of the God of Scarlet Rot, and has progressively and slowly rotted from the inside since birth. The disease has claimed her limbs, her eyes and probably her sanity given how she has to remind herself who she is throughout her boss fight, and she infects anything she touches. She holds in the Scarlet Rot by sheer willpower but at any moment could lose control and ‘flower’. She did this in Caelid, hence why the whole area is covered in rot. From birth, she has been suffering horribly through no fault of her own, knowing she was eventually going to die horribly and could at any moment flower into a ‘goddess of rot’.
    • Radahn was infected with the rot by Malenia, reducing who was once a powerful, yet heroic, intelligent and kind figure into a mindless flesh-eating husk, whose feet have rotted off and who attacks you with no more reason than any of the other insane soldiers you’ve encountered. Your boss fight with him is basically a Mercy Kill to ensure he can go out with some dignity.
    • Poor Millicent was born of the rot, and you find her quivering in agony, and she is only able to have some kind of passing life because of your intervention.
  • It's also possible for an unaware player to be sent deep into Caelid from the very start of the game. In lieu of mimics, some chests are rigged to unleash a mist that will transport you to a distant location if you stand too long in it. One particular chest in Limgrave will send you into the heart of a mid-level dungeon in Caelid, where immediately upon entering you will be bombarded with attacks from enemies you can't possibly hope to survive against. And if you're lucky enough to find the entrance and leave (Which you'll have to if you actually want to get back to Limgrave, seeing as teleports are disabled in dungeons you haven't beaten yet)... you will find yourself lost in the very middle of Caelid's hellish, rot-eaten landscape. Such an experience can give a new player Paranoia Fuel about every chest they encounter afterwards.
    • On at least the PS5 version of the game, several of the notes the players can leave behind for others to read in the crystal mines will read, "I want to go home!".
  • The Lake of Rot is very unnerving at a first glance. If standing on the shore, the player will gaze upon an endless pool of bright-reddish rot that seems to go on forever. Though the area itself is straightforward, stumbling upon this sight brings to mind a layer of hell.
    • Even worse is the Flavor Text for some items state that the Outer God of the Scarlet Rot is apparently sealed under said lake.
  • The mere fact that you can just walk into Caelid is horrifying all on its own. There's no great knights, no unbreakable wall, no seal containing the rot, it's just a place you can go without anyone or anything to stop your entry. It's like everyone but the under equipped and scattered Radahn soldiers have just given up trying to contain or defend against it, and just left.
  • The Scarlet Rot is SPREADING. Caelid already takes up a sizeable chunk of the Lands Between, and it threatens to overtake everything. Oh no.
• Going underground into the Ainsel River will eventually lead you into an anthill full of giant ants. The ants themselves are pretty creepy, but what's really horrifying about that area is the fact that the anthill is full of hundreds, if not possibly thousands of human corpses.
  • And that's not even the end of it. Going even deeper into the river will lead you into the Uhl Palace Ruins. Hanging from the ceiling at the end of this section is a massive Eldritch Abomination that looks like a cross between a centipede and a human skeleton. The damn thing somehow notices you as soon as you've entered within a square mile of it and will relentlessly pelt you with summoned meteors until you can find a way to get close to it.
    • This creature is implied to the offspring of Astel, a boss you’ll encounter later. Horrifyingly, Astel, an eldritch space abomination which levelled a whole city can reproduce.
  • A side passage here will lead you to a cliff that overlooks the Lake of Rot mentioned above. It's likely the first time you will have ever seen it and even if you have no idea what it is the sheer wrongness of it is obvious.
• Following the Monstrosity of Sin in Dark Souls 3, Miyazaki once again revisits hand-based body horror with Caria Manor. Inhabiting the front gardens of this old decrepit manor are the Fingercreepers - grotesque creatures resembling gigantic disembodied hands, cut off at the wrist and stitched together, giving them just a few too many fingers. Their size ranges from about knee-height to being large enough to hold you in their palm (which, having a grab attack, they can). As their name implies, they skitter about on their fingers like enormous arachnids, somehow invoking feelings of arachnophobia despite not actually being spiders. Oh, yeah, and just like spiders, they can cling to walls, dropping down on you as you pass by. And if you think you can just look up and avoid be surprised, think again - several of these hands are actually buried under the dirt palm-facing-up, and will burst from the ground as you walk over them, like trapdoor spiders snatching their prey. For the larger ones, this is a grab attack, and while it's not difficult to wiggle out without too much damage, it'll still leave you watching the ground for stray fingers... leaving you unaware of the ones on the walls falling down on your head. Essentially, take everything that was terrifying about Wall Masters and Floor Masters from Ocarina of Time, and apply the standard Soulslike Dark Fantasy paint over it.
  • In the Mountaintops of the Giants (a very late-game area), you can find a third variant of these. Except they're big enough to engulf giant trolls. You first notice one of them falling out of the sky and crushing one of the giant crows previously seen in Caelid, the bird that dwarfs you looking utterly puny beneath the giant hand monster.
• The loathsome Dung Eater immediately became the stuff of Internet jokes once he was first introduced in the story trailer, but in game, he is a whole load of Nightmare Fuel and Nausea Fuel all wrapped in an unnervingly filthy package. You first find him show up completely uninvited to the Roundtable Hold as a passive red spirit, resting in a room caked with blood and rotting corpses. Roderika makes mention of his spiritual presence and can only describe him as a Humanoid Abomination, constantly surrounded by the tortured screaming of hundreds of souls. He himself is oddly serene despite only ever talking about causing as much death and despair as possible through spreading the Seedbed Curse, which is flatly noted in its item description to prevent souls from returning to the Erdtree and leaving them forever cursed. Why does he do all of this? He just hates everyone and everything and wants them to suffer as much as possible. The word "loathsome" is not only appropriate for this being, but it doesn't even begin to describe how horrifying he is.
  • Eventually, he will drop this spine-chilling bombshell of a threat when he invites you to kill his corporeal body. He never elaborates what he means by this, but considering his reputation (not to mention his very name), one can only imagine the worst...
    The Dung Eater: I can kill you, and defile your corpse. Then the pox will truly be your own.
    • Blackguard Big Boggart, a petty criminal whom you can befriend, used to be cellmates with this guy, and witnessed first-hand how he "defiles" corpses (namely, the corpse of Boggart's best friend, who he killed in order to do so). The sight was so horrific that Boggart claims to have never felt more afraid in his life. If you get Boggart to move to the Capital Outskirts, he just so happens to set up shop in the exact spot where the Dung Eater wants to fight you, and, well, the Dung Eater has to find some way to pass the time while waiting for you to show up...
  • Even worse, you can choose to help the Dung Eater in his quest to spread misery throughout the world. Feeding him 5 Seedbed Curses will cause him to produce the "Mending" Rune of the Fell Curse, which you can then use at the end of the game to restore the Elden Ring, unleashing its curse on the whole world. The description of the rune states that the curse will last "eternally," leaving every single soul permanently severed from the Erdtree and condemned to eternal suffering when they die. This ending is so bleak and frightening, that even the narrator's voice is trembling in disgust and horror. "A cursed blessing to all" indeed.
    • How the Rune itself is created is the stuff of nightmares. The Dung Eater is restrained to a chair, and when fed the last Seedbed Curse, the screen goes dark and the Dung Eater starts screaming in agony. When the image returns, the Dung Eater is dead, with blood pooling beneath the chair and the Rune of the Fell Curse floating in front of his corpse. Either the rune tore its way out of his body, or he gave birth to it.
      Dung Eater: HRAAAAAAAAGH!! Agh... ah... Ah! WAAAAAAH!! AAAAAH!!! *gasp* Hey... *gasp* *gasp* UNLEASH IT UPON THEM! A CURSED BLESSING TO AAAAAAALL!!!
  • Another unsettling detail about the Dung Eater is the thing hanging from the chest piece of his armour. A sun medallion, tainted pitch black, bearing a face. Though it isn't exactly the same, it certainly brings to mind the sun insignia on Solaire's chest. The Dung Eater may be intended to be read as an Evil Counterpart to our favourite jolly cooperator.
  • Worse still, if you dig into Japanese folklore, you get a worrying indicator of where his name came from. According to Japanese mythology, there is a spherical organ known as the shirikodama, located in the anus, that houses a person's soul. Several types of Youkai specifically target this organ, ripping it out of a victim's body to consume it. In fact, in Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice there's an enemy with a grappling attack where he will rip something out of Sekiro's backside, so this wouldn't be the first time that "dung eating" was referenced by a Fromsoft enemy.
  • Ironically enough, the Dung Eater can suffer a nightmarish fate even he finds horrifying. Seluvis' (nightmare fuel in his own right as mentioned later on this page) potion can be applied to him, turning him into a puppet. The Dung Eater desperately tries to assert his identity before falling silent for good. The description of the resulting puppet even says that he is in such utter despair over his situation that it should make you feel bad even for someone like him. He's one of the best spirit summons in the game, too, so you have every incentive to do this unless you're planning on going for his ending (for some reason).
  • A more creepy and subtle element of the Dung Eater's personality is that he's an insane narcissist. If you defeat him when he invades you in the Capital Outskirts, he'll come to the bizarre conclusion that the only way you could have beaten him is if you are also him. He also seems to view himself as having kinship with the Omens, to the point that his armor is modeled off of their mutilated bodies. Part of the reason why he wants to spread his Seedbed Curse is so that everyone else will be "blessed" with Omen physiology.
• The first phase of the fight with the Fire Giant involves the Tarnished smacking away at his exposed leg. Eventually, you do enough damage that the Fire Giant's leg graphically snaps, causing him to crumble to the ground, roaring in agony. The Fire Giant's solution to this troublesome predicament is to rip off his goddamned calf and incinerate it.
  • Like his brethren, the last Fire Giant has the face of his outer god, the Fell God, upon his chest. A giant single eye glares from where the Giant's heart should be. A wide maw of teeth gapes from where the Giant's stomach organs should be. This is how the influences of the Outer Gods manifest in the corporeal world, as if pushing out from beyond another realm of existence into this one. And, as stated above, Godwyn has shown qualities that imply he has become about as powerful as the Outer Gods, with his dead features spreading across the Lands Between.
• Stormveil, the castle of Godrick the Grafted. It’s one thing to hear about grafting, it's another to see rooms full of prized limbs hanging like trophies, the endless bloodstains, kitchens full of human torsos being cured and cooked right alongside the beef and fowl, and the piles of rotting limbless corpses that the Grafted decided weren’t fit for eating. All this in a castle that just looks wrong, a place not meant for mortal inhabitants. It comes off as a sort of inverse Anor Londo; a place too majestic for humans to have built or used, but replace the glory with malice.
  • And for the love of the Golden Order, do NOT go beneath the castle. Two utterly massive, inexplicable abominations dwell beneath. One of them is the Ulcerated Tree Spirit mentioned below. The other, lying immobile in a cave behind the Ulcerated Tree Spirit, is... a thing. This bizarre abomination looks like the desiccated corpse of a tremendous giant squid, albeit with a hollow-eyed human face on its mantle. It doesn't do anything to you, but that doesn't mean it's not dangerous: It's somehow related to the cursed Rune of Death and, despite being dead, is still somehow alive in a fashion, as poor Sorcerer Rogier's bloodstain nearby it shows. Somehow, the thing sent him up into the air and did something to him that left his lower body crippled and decaying, and imprinted into his mind a fascination with seeking the Rune of Death ^note it's actually the animation for getting killed by the Death Blighted status effect... which tracks, considering this strange abomination's obvious connection with Death. It's an experience more suited for Bloodborne than a standard fantasy setting, and indeed, this encounter is what sends you on a quest to reveal the deepest, darkest truths of Elden Ring's universe. It’s also causing the castle itself to ulcerate and rot, with big thorn filled holes covering the outer walls and even some of the equipment used by the castle soldiers.
    • Even worse, it’s implied that the thing is the remains of Godwyn, Queen Marika’s son (and who was the first demigod to be killed in The Lands Between). But how that is possible is up in the air, as you find Godwyn's physical remains in a different location underground…
    • Speaking of Godwyn’s physical remains, let’s talk about his corpse for a second. It isn’t a corpse as much as a bloated mass of flesh, with a weird squid face with its eyes open, a mermaid’s tail, and death blight branches growing all throughout his body. All while uncontrollably growing into a blight across the Lands Between.
    • A good theory as to just how this abominable face exists beneath Stormveil when you find Godwyn's actual dead body so far away would be that it's a sort of replication created by Deathroots, considering those were created by Godwyn's body merging with the roots of the Erdtree itself. How the Stormveil face bleeds when struck is an entirely different matter either way.
    • YouTuber Zullie the Witch has made a video detailing the extent that Godwyn's infection of the Lands Between has reached. Godwyn's dead eyes are everywhere; where there are tree roots, you might find single eyes staring back at you. This includes in Farum Azula, a location that has no physical connection to the Lands, implying that Godwyn's infection can reach beyond the roots of the tree he is stuck in. Animals and monsters are also affected; the crabs in the Leyndell moat have Godwyn's visage growing from their backs, and the Basilisks' fake eyes visually echo Godwyn's eyes, as well as sharing other features with the Death-Prince (e.g. limp hair, finned appendages). In fact, Godwyn has gotten so out-of-control that he might be on par with the Outer Gods, who also "engrave" their features onto mortals, such as the Fire Giant bearing the face of the Fell God on his abdomen.
• Godrick the Grafted himself is as disturbing as his home. Stealing the arms and legs of Tarnished for... some reason, grafting them to himself, and eventually doing the same to a dragon head requires elaboration. The man doesn't just rip off the dragon's head and attach it to himself. He takes his axe and cuts off his hand, howling in pain before he takes the bloody stump where his hand used to be and slides it into the neck of the dragon. And many a player will go Oh, Crap! once they see the dragon's head start to move once grafted onto Godrick's body.

  Godrick: Forefathers, one and all! BEAR WITNESS!

  • Let's talk a bit more about Godrick grafting that dragon, shall we? First of all, the amount of physical strength that it would take to yank off a dragon's head is already terrifying. As for what comes next, we never get to see exactly how grafting works, but we get a rough idea of how it's possible: During that cutscene, it's revealed that Godrick's blood is infectious. Whether it's due to his divine blood or all the self-experimentation all he has to do is stick a bloody stump inside of any living creature and that being now belongs to him. The dragon head revived in seconds completely able to use its fire breath, and that was a rush job.
  • It gets worse: In a shack on Stormhill, you will find Roderika, a young woman who was part of a group of pilgrims who went to offer themselves to become grafted, and the only reason she isn't with them is because she chickened out; she considers this "cowardice" to be personally humiliating. People are giving themselves to Godrick willingly!
  • Godrick's body is...gross. From a distance, the lord looks like simply a large man but upon closer inspection you get to see that he's made up of dozens of body parts that clearly don't belong to him, all of which come together to form a vague shape of a muscular and deformed human that shambles towards you. The closest descriptor that Roderika can give to what he's become is a spider.
    • Under the robe, you can see that Godrick isn’t simply a large man. His head is the only part of his original body remaining. The rest of his body has no rhyme or reason to it, simply being a troll’s chest with various limbs attached to it everywhere.
• Ulcerated Tree Spirits. These abominations look like massive, many-toothed serpents made of what seems to be a combination of decaying tree roots and rotten flesh. Incredibly fast, unpredictable and tough to beat, even at higher levels, they have a nasty habit of showing up completely unprompted in seemingly empty locations as a surprise miniboss encounter. The worst thing about these is that they show up from very early in the game. Players who have selected the Stonesword Key can even encounter one of these in the tutorial dungeon! Though that assumes you can survive the gauntlet before this boss when you've just started out.
• Castle Morne might not be as big or as fancy as Stormveil, but what you find inside definitely leaves an impression: an utter mass of corpses stacked up on each other right in the middle of the castle, the corpses of soldiers hung on nooses on the castle walls, and the Misbegotten celebrating happily after their very bloody and very successful Slave Revolt. In other places around the world, you'll usually find Misbegotten mutilating human corpses.
  • For some added horror, there's a torture chamber inside of Castle Morne, and it looks to be fairly well used. Despite what some of the NPCs you encounter might claim (that they had a positive relationship with the Misbegotten), there may well have been good reason for the Misbegotten to have turned against their masters.
  • The buildup to Castle Morne is plenty horrifying. You're told by Irina, who is blind, that something gruesome happened and people were being torn apart all the way to the path leading into the peninsula. At first, it sounds like she's describing werewolves but then you find the true culprits: the grotesques and malformed Misbegotten. Misbegotten can best be described as some kind of weird chimera of birds, wolves, humans and some kind of sea creature due to all the barnacles and scales. The idea that these creatures were ever "under control" seems far-fetched already.
• The Two Fingers look like a straight up Eldritch Abomination, with huge festering wounds and bizarre tendrils. Their appearance and name make it clear they aren’t really giant fingers, it's just that "two fingers" was the closest descriptor mortals could make for the rotting, gurgling, twin-headed flesh mass.
  • Creepy as the Two Fingers are, the Three Fingers are even worse. If the Two Fingers are akin to angels in this setting, the Three Fingers are clearly their demonic counterparts. They're found far, far below the Capital, in an ancient crypt filled with fairly recently deceased corpses. Locked behind a "door" that appears to be still warm magma. There, in a chamber without light you see them. Three, spindly, flaming fingers that somehow howl at your presences before stretching and embracing you, burning the player with the Frenzied Flame. After the cutscene, you resume play in a black chamber. If you walk forward it's revealed that the Fingers are gone, as if they weren't even there. What makes this encounter so scary is that if you haven't found the right items or spoken to a handful of very specific NPCS, the Three Fingers seem to come out of nowhere, narratively speaking, with them disappearing just as abruptly as they're introduced.
    • Even worse, despite their minor role, interacting with them has consequences, they will cause you to burn the world down in a bad ending.
• The "Lord of Frenzied Flame" ending. Jesus CHRIST. By siding with the Three Fingers, the player can choose to become the Lord of Chaos. At the end of the game, they collapse while screaming in agony, their head is engulfed in a vortex of fire, turning them into a being made of Frenzied Flame that proceeds to completely obliterate the Erdtree and extend the same fate to the rest of the world, rendering it an ashen wasteland.
  • Perhaps the worst thing about the Frenzied Flame is that only Tarnished can be affected by the Madness status effect it causes. If you see another Tarnished using Frenzied Flame spells/gear they are almost certainly a virtual Serial Killer specialized in invading and murdering other players.
  • You may first encounter Frenzy during your exploration of the Weeping Peninsula. You find an eerily quiet village filled with people frozen in the midst of clutching their heads. Then you get close to one and they start moving, revealing a golden glow in their eyes as they try to attack you…
  • The Frenzied Flame Village in Liurnia stands out as a particularly harrowing place to visit. When first seeing it from a distance, there seems to be a regular abandoned tower in the middle of a ruined village. Then the Eye of Sauron shows up and an unearthly howl fills the air. Even worse, your Madness gauge will skyrocket as long as the "Eye" can see you, so players have to take full advantage of cover of the nearby ruins. But then it becomes clear everything there is pretty much Frenzied themselves, even the rats in the nearby ruins are infected with it and can build up your madness with their bites, to say nothing of the Trolls that are infected as well. And when you finally get to the tower and reach the top, you see what's creating the "Eye": several villagers channeling the Frenzied Flame at once. Fortunately, killing them all ends the threat of the tower permanently. That leaves you free to explore what the tower was guarding — namely, the Frenzied Flame Village, where everyone is in the grips of the Flame. Then once you get past the village and go up the hills to the nearby church thinking it's a place of succor, you get invaded. By Festering Fingerprint Vyke, a tough as nails invader whose spear inflicts Madness and who uses a bunch of Frenzied Flame incantations. These portions of the game are practically designed to make you fear the Frenzied Flame, as it's clear whatever you are, the Frenzied Flame can burn its way into your eyes all the same.
    • Vyke, by the way, was close to becoming the new Elden Lord you want to be… until he encountered the Frenzied Flame. Now he’s simply a madman trying to kill whatever he can.
  • The game seems to go out of its way to remind you the Frenzied Flame exists at every stage, and how bad it is. You’ll encounter it as early as Limgrave, Liurnia has a whole questline related to it not to mention the village, you’ll find it in Mt Gelmir, and even if you don’t explore the sewers of Leyndell, you’ll meet Shabriri in the Mountaintops of the Giants who will try to tempt you to backtrack and seek it. All the merchants you meet? Their eyes are yellow. Because of the Frenzied Flame. You’ll even find it as late as the Consecrated Snowfield! You’ll be making your way to the tunnel on the map, or to the portal leading to Mohgwyn Palace, only to come across some ruins… only a troll to spot you, roar at you, and start firing Frenzied Flame at you… while the Frenzied Flame infected trolls, villagers and rats all suddenly are made aware of your presence and start going out of their way to kill you.
  • The Frenzied Flame seems to be able to bring people back to life as some kind of vessel for it. Shabriri somehow possesses Yura’s dead body, makes it to the Mountaintops of the Giants which are blocked by Morgott before you kill him, and somehow knows about Melina, trying to tempt you to become the Lord of Chaos.
  • Then there’s Hyetta. She seems innocent enough when you enter Liurnia, simply asking to be given some kind of grape.. until you realise she has the exact same character model and voice as a character you earlier saw dead. Then you look at the grapes closer and realise they are human eyes from people possessed by the Frenzied Flame. Then you realise her questline deliberately has you seeking out areas ravaged by the Frenzied Flame, such as the shack of her old self’s father, or the aforementioned Frenzied Flame village. She says she’ll become a Finger Maiden, but it’s the Three Fingers she’s a maiden for. She is actively encouraging you to seek her as your maiden so she can lead you to the Three Fingers. She then disappears.. only for you to find her outside of the door leading to the Three Fingers in the Leyndell catacombs, giving you instructions on how to accept the Frenzied Flame.
    • The worst part of Hyetta’s quest? The ending. Once you accept the Frenzied Flame, Hyetta has you burn out her eyes with the newly accepted Frenzied Flame to become your maiden, causing her to audibly scream in agony, before she gives you the words of the Three Fingers - to destroy the world with the chaos flame and undo the mistake of life.
    • If she’s killed, all she drops is a Frenzyflame stone, even before you give her any grapes, further lending credence to the idea that somehow Irina was reanimated by the Frenzied Flame. Perhaps the original Hyetta’s spirit lives on similar to Shabriri’s, possessing dead maidens to lure Tarnished to the Frenzied Flame.
  • There's the aftermath of what overuse of the Frenzied Flame does to the eyes: They turn yellow and shrivel, becoming more like a grape than an eye. And then you see what happens to those directly touched by the Three Fingers, as in the case of Vyke. His eyes are half-melted and covered in glowing yellow fingerprint-like swirls.
  • How you find the Three Fingers is also disturbing on its own. After you defeat Mohg the Omen, resting at the Grace in the room allows you to talk to Melina - and she'll ask you not to seek the Three Fingers and become the Lord of Frenzied Flame. You might dismiss her warnings, but entering the hidden catacombs reveals hundreds, if not thousands of corpses, all clutching their eyes, and unlike, say, the pile of bodies found in Ainsel River, every single one of the corpses is individually unique. What makes the matter worse is that this is seen at every single level of the crypt, making the descent a truly harrowing experience. By the way, you aren’t alone. You’ll also hear rather sad music in the crypts. Then upon descending further into the crypts, you’ll realise it’s not the in game soundtrack, but a damn Frenzied Flame zombie that stops playing the song and suddenly starts shooting fire at you. Just how long have they been stuck down there? When you finally reach the grace at the bottom, you can once again talk to Melina, and this time she begs you not to do it, her voice even trembling as she tells you that a Lord who rules over no life is no Lord at all, telling you outright what to expect should you continue down the nightmarish-looking door at the end of the room. The amount of warning signs the game throws at you so overtly, as early as Limgrave and as late as the area before the Haligtree, makes it clear that what lies beyond this path is the worst thing in the entirety of the game - in a game with Rykard, Mohg, the Scarlet Rot and the Dung Eater, set in a land stuck in a cycle of never ending war and never ending life - which speaks a lot on just how nightmarishly bad the Frenzied Flame really is.
    Melina: If you intend to claim the Frenzied Flame, I ask that you cease. It is not to be meddled with. It is chaos, devouring life and thought unending. However ruined this world has become, however mired in torment and despair... Life endures. Births continue. There is beauty in that, is there not? If you would become Lord, do not deny this notion. Please, leave the Frenzied Flame alone.
    I ask you, one more time. Please. Seek not the Frenzied Flame. As one who strives to become a Lord, deny not the lives, the new births of this world. Those who would are not fit to be called Lord, when the land they preside over is lifeless. The Lord of Frenzied Flame is no Lord at all... When the land they preside over is lifeless.
    • Melina's words, should you choose to claim the Frenzied Flame, are both very sad and absolutely bone chilling:
      Melina: You... have inherited the Frenzied Flame. A pity. You are no longer fit. Our journey together ends here. And remember... Should you rise as the Lord of Chaos, I will kill you, as sure as night follows day. Such is my duty, for allowing you the strength of runes. Goodbye, my companion. Goodbye, Torrent...
    • This gets a follow-up in the "Lord of Frenzied Flame" ending, (provided you accepted the Frenzied Flame before Melina sacrificed herself,) as we see Melina open her sealed-shut eye, revealing it to be a gloamy blue colour, affixing the player with a look that positively screams Tranquil Fury, and promises to give you exactly what you deserve... And considering that this line is basically the only ray of hope in this ending, you better believe that things are horribly grim at this point.

      Melina: Lord of Frenzied Flame... I will seek you, as far as you may travel... To deliver you what is yours. Destined Death.

    • It gets even worse, if that was even possible. The Nomadic Merchants who you've been finding across the whole game? You can find a set of their clothing in the same area, and the item descriptions tell us that once, they were once united as the Great Caravan. However, upon being accused of heretical beliefs, they were rounded up and buried underground. Verbatim; "Then, they chanted a curse of despair, and summoned the flame of frenzy." Those kindly, if occasionally paranoid merchants you've been talking to the whole time? They were the ones responsible for bringing the flame of frenzy to the world. Some of them even attack you with frenzy spells if you make them hostile! Not to mention, all of those corpses once belonged to that Great Caravan. Sobering to think that these innocent people gave up and decided, if the Lands Between deems them heretics, they might as well be.
    • And finally worse still, combined with the point below, Mohg saw fit to seal this with an illusion of himself. And the wall of magma was created by Morgott, to further seal the Frenzied Flame. To reiterate: The game's equivalent of Satan himself saw fit to work with his brother, a fervent follower of the Greater Will and rival to his Mohgwyn dynasty, to seal the Three Fingers and their Frenzied Flame.
• And while we're on the subject of Mohg, let's rap about HIM for a moment too. Mohg the Omen is both frightening on an impersonal level - he leads a cult of murdering knights obsessed with blood and is the setting equivalent to Satan- and on a personal level, where he's a predatory half-brother to Miquella, who Mohg attempted to force into his bedchambers and might have raped, and who Mohg seemingly killed and placed within a chrysalis so as to turn Miquella into a god he could control, and then usurp Marika.
  • One of his agents is also likely the first characters you'll see upon entering the open world, lending the implication that Mohg has interest in you.
    • Varré may actually have killed your maiden! And hence, he is the reason you are maidenless. Meaning that he will be the one guiding you, towards his ends, and hence Mohg’s ends.
  • There's also the fact unlike most other factions in the game, Mohg's Knights aren't on the decline. Godrick and Morgott's empires are decaying and vestigial, Malenia's forces are stretched thin and literally rotting away, while Radahn's men are preoccupied being insane survivalists and fighting The Rot which has completely overtaken their territory. Mohg on the other hand is actively adding to his forces (which might well include you should you prioritize PVP), and his men are cognizant and capable, on top of utilizing one of the strongest strategies in the game. He has Tarnished Bloody Fingers and Sanguine Nobles. Throughout his palace, you can find countless Albinaurics he has enslaved into his army, experimenting on them using Cursed Blood, to turn them into deadly fast and lethal warriors. He also has blood zombies, dogs and giant crows at his disposal all ready to unleash on enemies. On top of that, it's highly likely that unless you go through with Varre's questline, you might never even find him, since the only other way to access his palace is by finding a very out of the way portal in the Consecrated Snowfield. The same portal that it’s implied he used to spirit Miquella away to his palace with. Meaning that even after you become Elden Lord, you've got one big problem waiting in the wings - and far fewer Tarnished available. And worst of all, the only other Demigod who has any shot at combating Mohg's claim to power is Rykard, the other being who can be considered the equivalent of Satan, who is also adding to his numbers (when he isn't devouring them, at least.)
  • How does Mohg perform his blood attacks? He somehow pierces an outer god known as the Formless Mother and uses her blood to throw at you, somehow making you bleed in return. This outer god likes being wounded for some reason. Why is never explained. If this is the kind of god he serves, what was he planning to do to poor Miquella??
• The Windmill village may not be all that dangerous, but it is pretty damn unnerving. The player comes upon a village where, in the distance, is a cacophony of slightly grating singing. Just inside the gate is a spirit begging not to be skinned alive, and a little way up the road is a huge crowd of women dancing and singing with abandon. The most unnerving part is that they don't even attack you at first, only taking notice of your presence when one of their dogs or the occasional non-dancing woman spots you and they all stop dancing to pull out rusty blades and try to kill you.
  • Not far from the Windmill Village is a single-windmill farm featuring a circle of dancing women. At the center of the circle is a strange, lumpy pile. If you get close, the women won't attack you, instead continuing to dance around the pile... from which charred corpses rise up, one by one. The corpses will approach you, swell, and explode. The women will keep dancing as they do - even if one of them is caught in the blast. Unless you directly interfere, they never stop dancing.
  • The Windmill village goes from "unsettling" to "downright horrifying" once you find a ghost who begs to not be skinned, claiming that his hide is filthy, and then shortly thereafter find a Godskin Apostle, who's explicitly wearing the skins of demigods/gods. Since the Apostle is found at the top of the village, and all the dancers are female, it doesn't take long to come to the realization that the women of the Windmill Village and the surrounding settlements killed all their men and presumably skinned them.
• The Wormface enemies are horrific. As the name implies, they are giants with uncanny proportions whose face has been replaced by a writhing mass of worms, and this has led to them screaming and gibbering so loudly that they can be heard from a mile away. The sheer cacophony when sneaking around a ruin full of them is deeply disturbing.
  • And in case the normal body wasn't bad enough, it only becomes worse if you use mods to view their model without their "clothes". For one thing, the worms that make up their namesake? They aren't tentacles at all; they really do appear to be worms, and they sure look like they're burrowing either into or out of the creatures' faces. And then there's the matter of the mouth, which takes the form of a tube-like indentation in the midst of the worms. For the smaller Wormfaces, identified as the males in the code, this hole is empty... but for the larger female ones, it's filled with a grotesque mass of writhing yellow worms. Oh, and the cherry on top of that last detail? Even if you're examining the models in a paused freecam mode, those mouth-worms will keep moving.
    • By the way, the large ones have a grab attack where they can eat you. Your corpse doesn’t even fall back on the ground, you just get the lovely sight of your character being eaten head first by these disgusting creatures.
• Abductor virgins. Imagine a mobile, living torture device in the shape of some Boschian mockery of an angel statue, and then imagine it SPROUTING TENTACLES OUT OF ITS INNER CHAMBER AND DRAGGING YOU IN as its grab attack. Made even creepier by the fact they make no sound at all except for the grinding of metal on metal blades when attacking. And if the regular enemy weren't bad enough, you can get trapped (hence the name) in a high-level area early game with two of these enemies as a single boss, while you are most likely highly underleveled. Have fun.
• Deathbirds. Field bosses who come out of absolutely nowhere at night, and look like half rotted gargantuan baby vultures with uncanny human faces. They often scream by opening their beak extremely wide in a very creepy way. As the name implies, they are linked to the cursed rune of death in an unclear but nevertheless disturbing way.
• The Godskin Noble and Godskin Apostle are gruesome and vile creatures who kill gods and demigods, then skin their corpses and use the remains as clothing. If you look closely, you can see the FACES of their victims still attached to the skin they are wearing. In battle, their movements and attacks are utterly grotesque. The Godskin Noble inflates his skin-suit, using it to wildly careen around the arena, while the Godskin Apostle stretches and distorts his torso to use as a living weapon. If you want to be especially gruesome and have a strong stomach, you can even wear the skin-suit yourself after defeating their astral projections.
  • For added horror, take a look at the Godskin Swaddling Cloth that you get for beating the spirit versions of them in Spiritcaller Cave: it's made of a baby's flayed skin.
  • It gets worse, reading the item descriptions reveals that the Godskin Apostles once had a lot more power than they do now. In fact, they were the original owners of the Rune of Death and used it to murder probably hundreds of minor divinities to steal their power. They were only stopped by Maliketh the Black Blade stealing Destined Death from them. Given how horrifying they are now, just imagine what they were like when they still had the power of the Rune of Death.
  • Much like the Frenzied Flame, the Godskin cult is a reoccuring element in the game. You see their artifacts and incantations in several unrelated locations and they don't seem to have a home base of any kind. Unlike the Frenzied Flame adherents, Godskins behave much like an actual cult in that they're actively trying not to gather much attention. They move behind the scenes and take over small areas, like isolated towns and caves, and then just stay there gathering power. That self-awareness they have makes them much scarier than if you just saw Godskins casually walking along the road, engaging with regular army.
• The Volcano Manor is a dark and gruesome location. Its labyrinthian hallways are dimly lit and cramped, filled with many torture devices and no shortage of Albinauric torture victims. Some of the Albinaurics are still restrained within torture devices, alternating between meekly pleading for their lives (or to be mercy killed, perhaps), or letting out ear-piercing screams that will attract the attention of other Albinaurics in the vicinity. Said "other" Albinaurics are bound in tight sacks with only their hands sticking out, crawling in a frenzy towards anyone who crosses paths with them.
  • It's even worse in context. The sacks on their heads are torture devices called Black Dumplings. The dumplings enhance the fear and pain of those forced to wear them inevitably driving them insane. The item description notes the Dumplings are used when torturers aren't trying to get information, when they only want to cause suffering. The player can also wear it to get an attack rating boost.
• Rykard, the Lord of Volcano Manor, one of the demigods, and the main image of this page. In his lust for power, he has willingly allowed himself to be eaten by a God-Devouring Serpent in a mad quest to achieve immortality and wage war against the gods, becoming an unholy abomination with the body of a serpent, yet with hands coming out it, and Rykard’s face almost grafted onto the serpents neck. When he makes his appearance in the battle, he proceeds to pull a sword out of his dead serpent-body's mouth. Said sword is composed of dozens of bloody, writhing victims whose arms and legs are STILL MOVING on the blade. Even worse, when Rykard reveals himself, the wounds on the serpent open up as well, revealing hundreds more writhing limbs just underneath the skin of the serpent.
  • Rykard’s voice. Jesus Christ. His voice is horrible, serpentine and nasally, he’s clearly struggling to speak in his serpent body and yet still manages to capture a feeling of pure and utter malevolence. Worse still, he seems to be ENJOYING his new form.
  • The battle itself feels like you are descending into a level of hell. You enter the arena, a giant, volcanic cavern filled with grand chandeliers, showing Rykard’s status as the lord of the horrible and giant manor you just made your way through, and yet, there are also mounds of what must be hundreds of corpses that Rykard has presumably devoured or killed surrounding him. Once Rykard declares his intent to eat you, the entire arena fills with flames, and Rykard proceeds to bombard you with the fiery souls of the victims he has already devoured while he smashes his sword at you and tries to eat you with his snake body.
  • There’s the nature of Rykard’s transformation. It clearly wasn’t one sided. Rykard was clearly a power hungry, nasty individual before, enough to want to be eaten by a giant snake to subsume its power, yet, somehow it’s doubtful that Rykard wanted to physically devour the entire world and eat anything he could get his hands on to assimilate its power before. The serpent clearly cursed Rykard with its horrific and unending gluttony.
    • Perhaps most horrifying is that Rykard’s gamble to become the most powerful creature in the world of Elden Ring worked. Rykard has by far the highest HP in the game, far above bosses like Malenia, the Fire Giant and the Elden Beast. He’s near impossible to fight on normal terms. The only reason that you are able to stop Rykard is because someone fortunately made a weapon that was specifically designed for killing his serpent god body and left it for you.
• If you're following Ranni's questline, you'll eventually cross paths with Astel, Naturalborn of the Void. This cosmic entity is said to be a falling star that wiped out the Eternal City. In a world of bizarre and grotesque creatures, Astel takes it to a completely new level. His appearance is unlike anything else in the game; he has 6 humanoid arms attached to a lengthy, colorful umbilical-cord like body (which is actually made up of celestial bodies), two pairs of dragonfly-like wings, and a gigantic, cracked human-like, laughing skull complete with a pair of gigantic mandibles and a mass of something with a eye-like organ moving inside it. The creature is simultaneously completely and utterly alien, yet clearly malevolent with its laughing skull face, its third eye constantly staring at you and its creepy long arms. It’s incredibly uncomfortable to be around in its boss fight by sheer presence alone and it’s hard to fathom how a creature like it even came about in the first place.
  • Design-wise, Astel is extremely similar to a Great One. Those who have played that game may freak out upon seeing Astel, thinking that a Great One has somehow washed ashore in the Lands Between. (And given how little is revealed about what Astel is and how it works, can we really be sure it isn't...?)
  • The way it fights is rather unnerving too. The way it clanks its mandibles together is really creepy, as is the fact that when it teleports, it could be teleporting away to shoot a giant laser at you or it could be teleporting towards you to do its one shot grab attack.
  • As mentioned before it’s implied that this thing can reproduce. You see numerous creatures that look like Astel throughout the world that fire meteors at you before you meet grown up Astel.
  • Oh, and the worst part comes when you explore a random cave in the Consecrated Snowfield, because what is the boss of that cave? Another Astel! There are three possibilities, none of which are pleasant: The first one being that Astel is so skilled at gravity magic, he can exist in two places at once (or, potentially, more than two); the second one being that he can create illusions of himself with no discernable way of telling them apart from the original (and potentially no guarantee that killing the original destroys the illusions, like with Dark Sun Gwyndolin); and the third and by far the worst being that Astel isn't so much a name as it is a definition of the biggest and oldest Malformed Stars. Regardless of the answer, the game doesn't elaborate...
  • The Stars of Darkness variant has extra creep up it's sleeve; dropping it to half health will switch Astel's theme to it's second phase, which goes unheard while fighting the Naturalborn variant. It's an escalating series of horns and droning instruments that drive home the unknowable cosmic horror that Astels represent in the setting.
• Let's talk about Deeproot Depths for a moment, shall we? Where, oh where, to begin with this terrifying place? For starters, it's a place deep beneath Leyndell, accessible by traveling through the sewers, a terrible place in their own right. The whole place just has a very off vibe about it; the air is thick with a dark miasma and the water is a very unsettling white. The scary starts to kick in when you realize that those huge shadowy roots you can see in the distance are that of the Erdtree, itself. The area is populated with the giant ants of the Ainsel river in one section and the other, which just so happens to be the ruins of the Nameless Eternal City that was destroyed by Astel (that's right, there's THREE of them), is nearly overflowing with Basilisks and Mausoleum guards that can easily take you down if you're not careful. But icing on the big creepy cake is The Prince of Death's Throne at the top of the area, reachable by traversing narrow and winding roots. This is the final resting place of Godwyn's corporeal form. His corpse is horrifically twisted and blackened, the wounds he received when he was murdered plainly visible. But the worst part is his face, it seems to be identical to the large face that can be found beneath Stormveil Castle... but the eyes are open...
  • One of the creepiest parts of the Deeproot Depths are the lore implications of the ruins there. The Grace Point is called "The Nameless Eternal City" so it's an underground civilization like Nokron and Nokstella. But the fact that this one is nameless and completely deserted while the other two aren't points to two possibilities: This place was destroyed so utterly that no one living there was able to carry on it's history or this particular city is so unbelievably ancient that it not only predates every other faction in The Lands Between including it's sister cities, but also fell so long ago that it's transcended myth and has completely vanished from knowledge. According to Astel's Remembrance, the answer is both.
  • Deeproot Depths is so out of the way and hidden that it has a very Moria-like feel to it. Like human beings haven't been down there in centuries at least and we're not welcome. The first indication of this is that the path to get to Godwyn is fraught with danger in the form of huge ants and bottomless pits, not soldiers or mages. The aforementioned Nameless City is like a monument to how humanoid life no longer has dominion over this place.
• The Subterranean Shunning Grounds. In a wide, open world, the Shunning Grounds are a cramped, maze-like series of pipes and tunnels underneath the Royal Capital. You can find all sorts of horrors here, from the cursed Omens to the above-mentioned loathsome Dung Eater. It's very easy to get lost in the various pipes and tunnels, and fighting enemies in the dark, cramped corridors is nerve-wracking with little space to maneuver. Even the most open part of the Shunning Grounds is incredibly dark and requires you to navigate treacherous pipes while dodging ambushes from imp sentinels. One particular room of the Shunning Grounds is easy to fall into, and nearly completely pitch black. As you struggle to get your bearings, a horrifying monster with dozens of human arms and legs grafted onto it emerges from the shadows, attacking you with deadly poison sprays and wild, unpredictable melee strikes. Enjoy!
• What has happened to the normal, everyday people of the Lands Between. Imagine the usual horrors of an unending civil war, with all the death, starvation, and destruction. Now imagine that war raging for a thousand years... and no one can die. Most of the people living in the Lands Between have gone insane from the violence and the starvation, with both peasants and nobles reduced to ghastly, emaciated husks roaming the roads or desperately digging in the ruins. The soldiers that you encounter have long since lost their minds, and only remain functional by sticking to their previous orders. The only sane people seem to be a few powerful nobles, foreigners, and Tarnished travelers like the player. Everyone else is cursed to wander as aimless, starving, maddened zombies forever.
  • Particularly horrific is that you can come across numerous crucified bodies across the lands. Get close to some of them, however, and you can hear agonized groans and cries of pain, implying that those poor souls still haven't died yet.
  • At least in the Dark Souls series, being Undead is bad, but some Undead are given some semblance of importance, allowing the gods of Anor Londo to try and find someone willing (and gullible enough) to sacrifice themselves for the First Flame. Here? Being undead with a lowercase U doesn't mean much of anything, and becoming one of Those Who Live in Death means little better than being an animated skeleton.
  • While the good endings lead to hope for things to actually return to a state of relative peace and prosperity (and the narrator implies this happens), it still doesn't mitigate the fact that there are so few living civilians in the Lands Between and, considering the sheer number of massive corpse piles strewn about (something of a FromSoft trademark, really), the Lands Between is so thoroughly depopulated that it'll take many generations to restore the civilian population to any reasonable degree. Nevermind all the other problems that will still need to be dealt with by the would-be Elden Lord - Caelid alone has the spreading Scarlet Rot to contain and exterminate, and the rest of the continent is barely any better, considering Everything Trying to Kill You, the magic academy filled with what are basically mad scientists who have completely lost the plot, and so on and so forth... Sure, this is still better than the absolute shitshows that were Lordran/Drangleic/Lothric and Yharnam in that there is some hope left that doesn't potentially involve just burning everything to the ground and starting over, but that's not a huge consolation...
• Glintstone miners appear to be infected by the very rocks they mine, turning to stone in the most Body Horror way possible, making them resemble the miners in Stonefang Tunnel from Demon's Souls.
  • It’s worse than that, as item descriptions show; everything in Liurnia too close to the crystals on the ground is undergoing a crystallization process, from flowers to fireflies. Sorcerers are not safe from it either, no matter how high off the ground they created the Academy. Sorcerers who research the primeval current and 'see beyond the wisdom of stone' also seem to undergo more dramatic changes. Primeval Sorcerers Azur and Lusat are encrusted with crystal and their heads are completely replaced with a green spire and a blue sphere respectively. Neither of them speak, but they impart some of the most powerful sorceries in the game when you meet them. The same sorceries that started them down their paths to begin with. Worst of all, it appears that is it quite literally Alien Kudzu, having come from an Outer God.
  • Azur and Lusat are barely able to move or interact even though they do have small hand movements showing their still alive. The reason for this is explained in the description for their helmets, the Glintstone consumed their brains. And yet, this somehow didn't kill them.
• Go near a bat nest and you might hear a soothing song in Latin. Investigate and you'll find the singer being a harpy. The song itself is called the song of lament about the state of the Lands in Between.
• While not as outwardly horrific as other parts of the Lands Between, Crumbling Farum Azula is pretty unnerving, especially for those with a fear of heights. A floating mass of stone and walls surrounded by pillars of tornadoes and hundreds of dragons, it’s both oddly serene and off-putting, especially since you cannot see the bottom of whatever is below. Overall, it just gives off a general feeling of wrongness.
• At some point during your adventure, you may decide to pop back into the Roundtable Hold, only to find that things are... off. The lights have gone dark, the grace at the table is dimmed, and none of the usual inhabitants are anywhere to be seen. This in itself might already be unsettling enough... Except after nary a few seconds, combat music suddenly ramps up, and a glowing red invader charges around the corner and relentlessly attacks you! The Roundtable Hold is one of the few areas in the entire game where you're explicitly told that combat is not possible, meaning it's not at all unlikely for one to begin to relax once they decide to return... To then have someone randomly attack you for no discernable reason ^note The perpetrator turns out to be Gideon Ofnir's lackey, Ensha of the Royal Remains, who up until this point has done nothing but silently lean against the door frame to Gideon Ofnir's room and teach you an emote, meaning you likely won't have a single clue that he's after a certain key item and will make an attempt on your life once it comes into your possession. can be incredibly shocking.
  • Despite the dark atmosphere, one may notice the Roundtable Hold that you're summoned to is decrepit and there's blood spilled around the place. It's not that you were actually teleported to the Fortified Manor, since the round table in that place has no grace above it whatsoever; this is the invader's version of the Roundtable Hold, a refuge without its ceasefire enchantment to prevent slaughter.
• The Fell Twins miniboss on the path to Altus East tower. You're crossing a bridge with a lone Leyndell soldier with a torch ahead, when suddenly black fog descends around you. The next thing you see is the dead body of that soldier - and two Omens approaching you from the distance.
• If you snoop around the ruins by Seluvis' rise, you'll stumble upon an illusory wall leading to a basement full of puppets; braindead characters who don't move or react. At the back of the room is a second illusory wall next to a message that reads 'Seluvis' puppet. Do not touch.' Inside the room is a puppet clone of Sellen standing next to an unkempt bed. Though not explicitly stated, it's hard not to see this dungeon filled with predominantly female dolls as some kind of creepy sex dungeon cellar. You can also engage in a quest for Seluvis where he asks you to give the puppet making potion to Nepheli. If you follow through with it, she becomes his new "favorite puppet" which you can only obtain from the implied true puppetmaster Pidia's corpse once he dies. His old "favorite", Dolores, who is normally found on the corpse, will be added to Seluvis's puppet shop instead.
• The sheer evil and Transhuman Treachery the Academics from Raya Lucaria displayed is chilling. From their sneering distaste for outsiders, to letting their lethally dangerous creations loose into the lake below simply to be rid of them, to how they made normal people mine the fatally lethal glintstone, to how they threw away thinking and feeling Albinaurics like it was nothing, to their sociopathic army who they allowed to kill and pillage to their hearts' content. Two of their alumni, Sellen and Seluvis, get up to some extremely evil acts either on or off screen. And as beautiful as Raya Lucaria is, it’s absolutely covered in cages and they seemed to utilize multiple Iron Virgins which suggests a taste for torture. Raya Lucaria comes off like a bunch of disconnected megalomaniacs who toyed with the world as they pleased, especially compared to the much more down to earth Town of Sellia.
• The cinematic introduction to Rennala's fight. The Tarnished enters a completely dark room, until there's a small light in the distance which turns out to be candles held by an army of small creepy baby-faced homunculus scholars, created as replacement for the real scholars who forsook her. And for the entire first phase, said baby-faced scholars are Rennala's flunkies, singing a horribly creepy lullaby.
• You're traversing the Consecrated Snowfield. The perpetual heavy blizzard already makes navigation difficult, and you've only got your compass to help you. If you make a wrong turn, you can easily wander into an area where the game spawns spectral Dragonkin Soldiers out of thin air to lunge at you and threaten to knock you off your horse! And, yes, it can and will send more than one at you! The Roar Before Beating is a lot more fearsome when you can't initially tell where they're coming from.
• The Capital of Leyndell at first looks like the most organized of the Legacy Dungeons. Guards are on patrol and most buildings are intact, save the one a giant dragon fell on. Then as you approach the lower parts of the city, you start encountering putrid corpses roaming around, an Ulcerated Tree Spirit pops into existence right above you and it becomes clear all those houses are abandoned and sealed with gold-hued corpse wax. Everything gets worse once you reach the sewer, the shunning grounds where all Omens are banished.
• West of the Altus Plateau is a relatively small volcanic subregion called Mt. Gelmir, the headquarters of Rykard's once-pious Inquisition who rebelled against the Golden Order. It's so utterly forbidding that it feels like an intrusion of hell into the Lands Between, a bleak land of bare, volcanic rock covered in fortifications and thousands upon thousands of gibbets containing corpses (and occasionally living creatures) of all shapes and sizes who hang like sides of meat in a massive, charnel forest. The very first locale you encounter there is an outpost of the Leyndell army, presumably built as a garrison for their campaign against the Volcano Manor. Except... something's off. All of the soldiers there save for a few seem to have died, and the few that are alive don't notice you at all... because they're too busy feasting on the bodies of their fellow soldiers.
  • These soldiers by the way, are all infected by the Frenzied Flame. There’s even a damn TROLL outside Volcano Manor infected with the Frenzied Flame!
  • Just climbing up the mountain is a horrific experience and really sells how horrible the battle with Rykard was for the soldiers of Leyndell. You encounter Abductor Virgins, Marionettes, Finger Creepers, a Grafted Scion.. all of which Rykard probably unleashed on these poor soldiers. The whole region is an utterly war torn shithole beyond repair, full of things that want to kill you, before you can even get to the horrifying Volcano Manor.
    • It gets worse! Morgott mainly was content to keep his forces in his capital, but what Rykard was doing was so terrible (and if you look at Volcano Manor, you’ll know) that he felt compelled to go to war with him. By contrast, he never once stepped in with his twin brother's insane blood dynasty. What did Rykard do to force Morgott's hand? Was it the "blasphemy" that Gideon Ofnir talked about when you ask him about the shardbearers?
    • And just as the cherry on top of it all, the battle between Morgott's and Rykard's armies is described as the absolute worst battle of the entire Shattering. Note that one of the battles is the one between Malenia and Radahn, meaning that whatever happened at Mt. Gelmir was apparently worse than a battle that permanently ruined the entire region of Caelid!
• The Mountaintops of the Giants is unsettling because you're basically traveling through a mass grave. All the weird monoliths you see are dead, decayed and apparently petrified giants. Each of which is so weirdly proportioned in addition to being huge that you start to wonder what these freakish things might've looked like. And then you find the Last Giant. A strange, red-haired monster man that has the outline of a face on his torso and is apparently completely nude and just wrapped in his own braids. Nothing in the game looks remotely like him and it's suddenly easy to see how the Giant War dragged on so long in the backstory.
• The plight of the Albinaurics is horrifying. They're in the middle of what amounts to a genocide during the events of the game. In Liurna their village has been burnt by Gideon Ofnir and his Omen-Killers, Volcano Manor is rounding them up to torture to death For the Evulz, and freaking Mogh is somewhat nicer as he's 'only' forcing them to be his mutated Slave Mooks and afflicting them with painful Lovecraftian Superpowers. Their only hope is to escape to the promised land of the Haligtree.. except the Haligtree's leader, Malenia, is having her Plague Master powers spiral out of control following her brother's kidnapping and the Haligtree is rotting away and becoming infested with the Kindred of Rot. Also, if the player wants to get to the Bonus Dungeon they have to kill the only knight trying to defend the Albinaurics. The worst part is that while the game's ending is overall happy, there isn't even a hint things will get better for the Albinaurics barring player headcanon.
• Marionette soldiers are unsettling, plunging deep into the Uncanny Valley especially since there are some hints they aren’t really as “mindless” as the sorcerers want people to believe they are. Their spasms and erratic, desperate flails as they take damage are also as creepy as they are lethal to anyone close-by.
• Despite being the most 'normal' of the realms, Limgrave is not without its moments of bizarre Surreal Horror.
  • In stormy weather, particularly heavy gusts of wind will drop entire packs of ravenous wolves out of the sky onto your head, as if the climate itself is trying to kill you.
  • While groups of crucified people can be found all over the map, most players will first notice them below the place where they first start out in Limgrave. While they can't do anything to you, it's still bad enough seeing these decaying husks during the day. At night, however, they start letting out blood-curdling screams and howls. It's especially creepy when you're early in the game and can't figure out who or what is making those noises.
  • One of the very first things you see when you arrive in Limgrave is an absolutely massive knight on horseback. He's freaky enough just seeing him plod around like it's a normal thing, then if you try to fight him? Oh boy! He proves to be an exceptionally strong midgame boss that's just hanging around in the starter area.
  • Perhaps the most disturbing thing about Limgrave is that despite it seeming like a nice early game fantasy area on the surface, beneath this surface is a land in complete and utter disrepair, with no order to speak of, ruled by a madman who grafts the limbs of his citizens to himself for power.
• Chariots are frightening for several reasons. They race up and down their catacomb lanes quickly, do insane damage on contact and will chase the player down if they round a corridor. The escape sequences where you can hear it approaching behind you fast are nerve-wracking.
• Goofy as they are in name, the Mad Pumpkin Heads are... unsettling. Not only do they absolutely tower over the player character and have a humongous flail or maul, but their helmet description implies it's the only thing keeping them sane. They can be found in the overworld pulverizing corpses, and sometimes they will repeatedly bash their head into the ground as if desperate to escape the helmet, which only raises questions about what's happening to them under there if the helmet is keeping them sane.
  • Whenever they bash their head into the ground, a gray fluid sprays from it. It's not Alien Blood, as if you hit them anywhere else you'll see that they bleed normal red blood. So just what the hell is it?
• Those goddamn land octopuses on the beaches. Despite Elden Ring being decidedly grounded in traditional fantasy (at least at first), these things look like something out of Bloodborne. They're also absolute tanks, so most players will likely immediately book it in sheer terror after hitting them once.
  • Oh yeah, these things have a healing attack where they eat their own arm.
• Runebears have earned themselves a well-deserved reputation among players as the most feared non-boss enemies in the Lands Between. They're not as disturbing-looking as Land Octopi or Fingercreepers (in fact, they're quite majestic), but they're the Lightning Bruiser trope incarnate - house-sized behemoths of fur and muscle that will chase you down with horrifying speed and horrifying ferocity while you vainly attempt to chip away at their gigantic health-pools before they tear you apart. Even the game itself tends to encourage you to avoid rather than engage them, outside a rare few direct fights.
• Field bosses don't sound too terrifying on paper. However, some of them can surprise you on your first encounter. That enemy you tried to sneak up on, thinking was just another one of the bunch? Nope, it's a boss you probably aren't even remotely prepped for. Good luck.
  • Notoriously, the very first enemy you'll see after leaving the starting area is a golden armored knight. Expecting a regular enemy? Too bad. This is a Tree Sentinel, a Field Boss that will easily crush a player without a firm grasp of the rhythm of Soulsborne combat.
  • One of the most terrifying encounters of the field boss kind comes from the one called the "Bell-Bearing Hunter". The good news is that he only shows up at night. The bad news? He can show up at certain spots where you'd expect a merchant to be. He manifests out of thin air, towering over you in armor covered in thorns, and initiates a ferocious set of attacks. There is no warning, no words said. Just a complete unknown trying his absolute hardest to kill you.
    • His name is enough to tell you just how bad news he is. A bell-bearing in this game is an item containing the entire repertoire of a merchant, usually obtained from their long dead corpses or by killing them. The Bell-Bearing Hunter didn't just pilfer his.
  • Night Cavalry is a recurring Field Boss that, as its name suggests, only spawns at night. Passing through its area during the day will show you an ordinary field strewn with the bloodstains of other players it's killed. There's no obvious reason so many would have died, except maybe a message on the ground about a Boss...that doesn't seem to be there. The worst case is backtracking through its area at night, leading to a familiar path suddenly having a boss in it.
• The Erdtree Burial Tree Watchdog boss. Found in some catacombs, everything about these clockwork stone statues is just... creepy. From its stilted movements to the way it moves by floating to its uncanny appearance, something about it just feels off. They also hit extremely hard, which is terrifying all on it's own.
• The giant crabs and crayfish. Not only do they tower over the player, but they are very well detailed and can move surprisingly fast. Sometimes they may suddenly pop up out of the water. Since they are actual real-world creatures, they can be more unnerving than the various monsters.
• Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the current scenario The Lands Between faces is the simple fact that there are no longer any good options in terms of demigods taking control. The few good ones have either gone insane from the Rot (Radahn), waiting for their brother who is likely to never come and even if he did is a walking wasteland (Malenia), has been placed inside a cocoon and may or may not have any free will (Miquella), or is just too flat out stubborn to try and change the status quo (Morgott). Of the rest, one is technically dead and alive and is responsible for the walking dead that roam the world (Godwyn), insanely grafting bits onto himself to gain strength (Godrick), has merged with a giant serpent and is devouring champions to gather ever greater power (Rykard), or is an insane bloodmage who is obsessed with creating a new dynasty using their sibling (Mohg). The only other demigod on the list is Ranni, and she's neutral at best. This is why the Tarnished were called back to the Lands Between, as just about anyone would be better than the many, many terrible options currently available if the status quo is maintained.
• Blaidd can't be killed. That's it, that's the entry. To provide context, if you're feeling a little murder happy or just want to test out your skills and decide to go challenge the 10 foot tall wolfman in the woods you're already in for a hard battle. After that's done, if you reload the area he's right back where you left him. Good as new, as if nothing happened. There's something extremely unsettling about it, especially if you already find the lycanthrope to be a little creepy. In a setting where almost everything else you kill stays dead, Blaidd alone refuses to stay down. The fact that there's a legitimate lore explanation creates a situation where you're dealing with a uniquely terrifying foe.
• Queen Marika herself. While she's subject to Alternate Character Interpretation to the extreme, one interpretations of her is as a deeply callous woman who throws an entire continent into an unending Forever War that would kill most of her children for the sake of her own freedom (or to put it another way, get rid of the only thing holding her accountable). Even with a more positive reading, it's undeniable that she dismissed her children as potentially useless tools to be discarded if they failed, and resided over a regime that persecuted countless innocent people and enacted several genocides, with no true contender to her throne.

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