Nightmare Fuel / Fire Emblem

Caption: "The world was plunged in a nightmare."

As though the ever-present risk of losing your units for good wasn't enough to fill you with dread, the Fire Emblem setting has many disturbing elements to keep you unnerved well after the battle has ended.

Titles with their own pages:

• Fire Emblem Gaiden
• Fire Emblem: Awakening
• Fire Emblem Fates
• Fire Emblem: Three Houses
• Fire Emblem Heroes
• Fire Emblem Engage

Examples from two or more entries:

• In general, some of the characters' death quotes can be this, especially the ones that abruptly cut off mid-line. In later games, the character's eyes will actually close as they finish the line. The Tellius games in particular have some very disturbing death quotes, here are a few examples. (Note that Tormod and Rolf are children.)
  Tormod: No… Move… Listen to me, body… Move… Muarim…where are you? I’m…done…for…
  Nephenee: The world… It grows… so…dark…
  Geoffrey: Queen Elincia! My queen, where are you?! I can’t see… Blood is in my eyes… Your Majesty… I’ll be right…there…
  Rolf: …So this is what fate…had in store for me… I’m so cold… I still had…a lot…to learn. Oscar… B-Boyd… Shinon…
• Pray you don't get a Game Over in The Binding Blade, The Blazing Blade, The Sacred Stones^note All three games having the words "GAME OVER" imposed over a fiery background, or Path of Radiance^note A static image of Ike's Regal Sword engulfed in flames, with huge, bold text reading "Game Over". The music that plays during these scenes, along with the blazing crimson background, is very disturbing. The Path of Radiance Game Over screen is arguably the worst out of the ones listed here, as the bright crimson flames juxtapositioned with the pitch black background in combination with the scary harpsichord of the music instills a frightening feeling towards the player, making it as though you failing the chapter resulted in The End of the World as We Know It.
  • Shadow Dragon^note Consisting of an abandoned Falchion on a battlefield full of destroyed flags and abandoned weapons, Thracia 776 ^note An abandoned blade and helmet on a cliff edge depicted in deep blue with the word "FIN..." below it, and Radiant Dawn ^note A monochrome image of a cloudy battlefield with numerous weapons and Lehran's Medellion left abandoned on the battlefield, with melancholic music in the background aren't very pleasant either.
• The concept of the Nosferatu spell: That cute little Mysterious Waif Girl just got her face smashed in by a massive battle axe, then casts this spell which drains the life energy of her enemy and instantly heals the wound she just suffered. Oh, it's a Light spell. It also has a creepy sound effect when cast.
  • Later games make it a Dark spell, though the Tellius games revert it to Light (and then Awakening switches it right back to Dark, before Three Houses turned it back to Light). Still somewhat creepy, though.
• The whole idea of the Berserk status. Someone hit by a spell from a Berserk staff will be sent on a blind, murderous rampage, attacking anything and everything that comes remotely near them. Let that sink in.

Examples from specific entries:

• Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War:
  • The sound effects of the Loptous and Naga Spells are creepy as hell and can't be properly rendered by an emulator. Made worse by the former conjuring an evil dragon with glowing red eyes out of it.
  • Ditto for Fenrir and Meteor spells' sound effects, the sound of incoming danger from a distance spells impending doom for anyone unlucky enough to get hit. The Fenrir spell in particular features a creepy monsterous face staring at you in the middle of a pitch black background with what could be described as demonic sounding noises. The Meteor spell is arguably less scarier, consisting of a high-pitched noise in the middle of a pitch black background followed by a comically big explosion.
  • The way the Battle of Belhalla came to life. Think of it: not only is your leader incinerated to death by the Emperor (and after a Tear Jerker of a scene in which he gets to see that his wife has been brainwashed into marrying said Emperor), but then the whole army that you're a part of is bombarded by a storm of meteors. And you're unable to escape because the Royal Guard has you trapped in there. Seriously, not cool!
  • The worst thing is that among the few characters that survived (mostly the girls) often had a terrible fate. Erinys died of illness, Brigid suffered from amnesia, as seen below, Silvia and Lachesis go missing, and Ayra has possibly died in the battle, which could make her the only female victim of war from Sigurd's army. Tailtiu had the worst fate though, as she was captured and physically abused by her sister-in-law, Hilda, for years, taking it for her little daughter Tine and died from both depression AND failing health from the beating.
• Fire Emblem: Thracia 776: The graphics for the Hel spell◊ (pictured above). The image of a demonic-looking woman being embraced by skeletons in a hellish atmosphere is just a nightmarish sight to behold, especially in comparison to its Genealogy equivalent. Here's a still view of it!◊
  • In Thracia 776, you can actually steal the tome for yourself if you capture an enemy Dark Mage carrying the spellbook or use Tina's Thief staff. However, no one in your party can actually use it, not even Salem, your only dark magic user; it also cannot be sold, due to being a Prf weapon. While it's obviously the case given how the Hel tome has a character lock designated to it so that it can only be used by enemy Dark Mages (making it so you cannot have an easy way of softening enemies for easy capturing/killing), you can alternatively interpret the Hel tome's status as an unusable and unsellable weapon because it is seen as an Evil Weapon that is too nightmarish and demented (especially when you consider the graphics for the spell in Thracia 776, as seen above) for anyone other than Loptrians to use, and the shopkeepers likely have the same feeling, which explains why they don't want it when you try to sell it to them.
  • In one of the game's chapters, there are the stone statues of EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER that canonically died in the Battle of Bellhalla. Alec, Naoise, Arden, Lex, Midir, Dew, Jamke, Chulainn, Claude and Beowolf, pretty much every male apart from Oifey, Shannan, Lewyn and possibly Azelle is dead.
  • While it's clear that Brigid, like her twin sister Edain, survived the battle, she got amnesia and became a swordmaster known as Eyvel, and at one point, she also gets turned to stone, which can only be fixed if you go through and complete Chapter 24x. By Chapter 25, if she isn't recruited and alive, she'll become the Deadlord Draco. She will never get her memory back, or reunite with Febail and Patty, her children.
• Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade:
  • Zephiel's Slasher Smile....which is accompanied by a horrifying musical sting, and is also the last shot in the game...
    • What makes this worse? This is a reference to The Binding Blade, where Zephiel becomes the main antagonist. However, this is only hinted at the end of The Blazing Blade, meaning that it's likely that you will have absolutely no clue what the game is telling you here. So after you beat the game and save the world, the last shot is of a man you went through hell to save turn evil... and you have no idea why.
    • Actually, the entirety of Zephiel's family in The Blazing Blade is pretty much this and Tearjerker. Being held up by insecurity with a manipulative mother (Queen Helene) and a jealous and abusive father (King Desmond), and the latter even attempting on one's life is seriously not fun on its own. It gets even worse when you consider the ramifications this causes 20 years later.
  • In the last chapter, you have to fight many previous bosses that you already killed (and one guy who got offed in a cutscene... that you may not have even witnessed if you didn't meet the requirements for the side chapter it leads up to, making him a Giant Space Flea from Nowhere). To make things even creepier, none of them have the ability to talk. No Trash Talk, no Boss Banter, nothing. When you kill them, they still say nothing, but they smile as if in gratitude.
    • If you look closely, the portraits for these revived bosses are a bit discolored. When you kill them, the portraits get a little color back.
  • The (admittedly badass) animation for Nergal's attack, Ereshkigal — it's a hellish vortex of dark magic, and the noise it makes... It's a serious step up from the standard-issue dark magic used in the game.
  • The final boss. It is a regular fire dragon, summoned by Nergal via with a incantation, even as he lays dying. The result of this action brings about a raging and hateful beasts that is even more pissed at you for slaying 2 of it's kin as soon as it got out of the Dragon's Gate. Fighting the cursed thing is very intimidating; it's just a regular fire dragon, yet it fights even better than other bosses in the GBA trilogy, it's appearance sticks out for frightening reasons, and will always kill anyone with the game with only two breaths of it's vile flames.
• Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones: Orson's conversation with his wife at the beginning of chapter 16. The joyful, carefree way in which he talks to her, in contrast to the empty look in his eyes and of course the fact that his wife is nothing more than a corpse that can do nothing else but repeat the word "darling", over and over again. It's uncanny in the most creepy way.
  • It's made worse by the fact that Ephraim and Eirika find her later, and they're appropriately horrified when they see her. Monica is never even shown on-screen, but everyone else's reactions to her sure are.
• Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance:
  • The theme for the Serenes Massacre is... very unsettling.
  • The Feral Ones are what was once Laguz, a race capable of transforming into hawks, tigers, giant cats, and other animals. They've been locked into their transformed state with the use of a potion that makes them lose all sense of reason and also drastically shortens their life span. It can also be given to Beorc (humans) for the same effect, sans transformation. Bertram/Renning, a Beorc, is seen starting to go through this transformation, and it turns him into a very unsettling Blood Knight. And then there's his lovely dialogue for when he fights Ike:
    Bertram: Kill...me... ...KILL...M-ME...
  • The basement room of Gritnea Tower filled with countless Laguz corpses. The dialogue and the music leading up to it are unsettling enough, but then the characters see the actual room. While you don't actually get to see what's inside it, their description of the sight does not paint a pleasant picture.
  • The music "Puzzling Truth" sounds very disturbing and signals the part in the story that shit's gotten real. If there's any song you wouldn't want to hear in a dark alley walking home at night, it would probably be this one. Here's what it sounds like. Enjoy sleeping tonight.
    • A Grave Fate is even worse. Bonus points for playing in the opening of the Endgame.
• Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn:
  • The blood pact. A cursed contract that binds the signer to the contractor's service. The one who is in possession of the contract can invoke a curse to the other party's nation if the other party does not do as the holder wishes. And killing the signing party does not dispel the curse. The only way to break the curse is to kill the contractor and then tear the scroll containing the contract. Lekain used it to bind Naesala and Pelleas to his service until Sanaki took charge of things, and prior to that, Ashnard had manipulated his father into signing it, ultimately resulting in Ashnard killing his father and taking over Daein.
  • The result of the contract during Radiant Dawn's story is not pretty. Not only is the Dawn Brigade powerless to stop Lekain's atrocities, but they're also forced to fight for Lekain and effectively enforce Daein's rule the same way Ashnard did. Micaiah is so desperate to win that at one point, during a skirmish with the Laguz Alliance, Micaiah's last resort is to lure them into the bottom of a canyon doused with oil and setting fire to it in a last-ditch effort to wipe out the Laguz Alliance. If not for Tibarn's timely intervention, we'd have in our hands one of the most gruesome massacres in all of Fire Emblem, rivaled only by what took place in the first part of Genealogy of the Holy War.