"Gordon... I'm scared."
— Dr. Coomer
Spoilers are unmarked.
- Gordon's reaction towards Dr. Coomer's large wound in his head can be quite an Understatement, as he doesn't seem to flinch from any sustained injuries. Specially after slaughtering a bunch of HECU soldiers while chasing one of them that tried to escape.Dr. Coomer: ᴋɪʟʟ.Bubby: Great job, Coomer!Gordon: You've got a fucking menacing aura about you right now.Cue Gordon witnessing Dr. Coomer's head injuryGordon: YOU'VE GOT A FUCKING GIANT GASH IN YOUR HEAD, MAN! LIKE A-Dr. Coomer: ᴋɪʟʟ.
- Dr. Coomer jumping over the mountains with his superlegs and realizing they're all just in a video game map. The Fallen Child's theme kicking in from Undertale doesn't help.Dr. Coomer: THERE'S NOTHING THERE...Gordon: What? Like, no land? There's gotta be like-Dr. Coomer: THERE'S. NOTHING. THERE.
- Later on, while attacking Gordon with all 300 of his clones, turns out that wasn't just a Big-Lipped Alligator Moment, as he explains to Gordon:Dr. Coomer: GORDON. Every time you go to sleep I can feel my body TORN apart... ATOM by ATOM... It's agonizing Gordon... I've SEEN outside Black Mesa, Gordon...Gordon: SHUT UP! SHUT UP!Dr. Coomer: There's NOTHING... but I know YOU...Gordon: GET OUT OF MY HEAD! GET OUT!Dr. Coomer: There's a world outside here, Gordon... AND I NEED YOU TO TAKE ME THERE...
- The above exchange is set to the Cleric Beast theme from Bloodborne. And is followed by the Orphan of Kos's theme.
- Benrey and Bubby luring Gordon into a pitch black room and beating the shit out of him. You can't see it, but you can sure as hell hear it.
- ESPECIALLY when you can hear the lovely sound of somebody slicing off Gordon's right hand and him screaming in pain.
- As if the underwater portions of the game weren't stressful enough, Gordon has to swim through completely sanitary brown water with an open wound where his lower arm used to be.
- Any time Dr. Coomer drops his usual affectation and starts speaking in a Machine Monotone, as highlighted by him speaking in dark-green text. Suddenly the idea of a malfunctioning, self-aware AI is a lot less funny, isn't it?
- The first time this voice manifests, he is seen standing in front of a wall drenched in his own blood, with his eyes completely obscured in it. As he stands over Forzen's dead body, he can only numbly repeat "ᴋɪʟʟ".
- Later, as the party starts debating what year it is, Coomer responds flatly "ᴛᴡᴇɴᴛʏ-ᴛᴡᴇɴᴛʏ".
- When Tommy tries comforting Gordon that the aforementioned sewage flowing into his suit is safe and clean, Dr. Coomer whispers to him "Iᴛ's ɴᴏᴛ ᴄʟᴇᴀɴ".
- As the party is preparing to take on Benrey and Bubby, he begins punching a hole in the ventilation wall, and when Gordon asks him what he's doing, he simply responds "ᴘʀᴀᴄᴛɪᴄᴇ".
- Gordon's Oh, Crap! moment when he remembers that Coomer grows more powerful with every clone killed, and that Tommy just killed hundreds of them. When he asks Dr. Coomer to confirm this, he replies "ʏᴇs".
- As they're walking to a warehouse facility, Coomer says this is where they keep "ᴛʜᴇ ʙɪɢ ᴏɴᴇ."
- Later made less scary with the reveal that "ᴛʜᴇ ʙɪɢ ᴏɴᴇ." is in fact an M249 Squad Automatic Weapon, but still unsettling nonetheless.
- The Helicopter Heap, a Body of Bodies consisting of a bunch of helicopters spawned inside eachother with a side of Sensory Abuse. It toes the line between hilarious and scary, and nobody for sure knows where it came from.
- Bubby: If there is a god, I'm pretty sure that wasn’t in his plan.
- Possibly made more horrifying by the Act 3 BTS stream, where the crew revealed that it wasn't even an intentional moment, but a bug with the map that cause helicopters to infinitely spawn in one spot, creating a constantly regenerating abomination. Mike's footage even shows him futilely trying to remove all the helicopters.
- When the group finds a place to sleep at the end of Act 3, the Skeleton appears again... but this time, Benrey can see it and asks it for its passport, which it provides. Its name on the passport? "YOU".
- Also, when the skeleton goes to sleep, something weird happens to Benrey; both Benrey and the Skeleton were sitting, but the moment the Skeleton flops over and sleeps, Benrey shoots up into standing position, and looks around. He then asks, in a genuinely confused and concerned tone of voice where he is and what happened to Gordon's arm, heavily implying that the skeleton is doing something to him.
- When the gang arrives on Xen, Benry somehow becomes floating and HUGE. As the rest of the science team fight the aliens on Xen, Benry is just clipping through the level, slowly following them. As they get closer to the Nihilanth's lair, his model slowly becomes more and more contorted, flailing around and wailing in his Sweet Voice. Turns out, he takes the place of the Nihilanth in this timeline, and rapidly contorts and sends skeletons using the Sweet Voice as Gordon and the team shoot at him to no avail.Dr. Coomer: Gordon, I'm scared.
- Benrey pursuing Gordon through the empty halls of the past Black Mesa, sadistically toying with him and taking the form of his own giant head.
Benrey: YOU WANNNA DIE? - When the group finally gets into the Lambda Complex, Bubby is hesitant to enter, because of "the prototypes." We see them later, and they're horrific crawling monstrosities that look like Bubby and make the Fast Zombie noise constantly.
- As Coomer and Bubby attempt to explain the space-time conundrum that Xen exists in, both of them abruptly get cut off from speaking, and suddenly they revert into their Default Half-Life Scientist AI, doing the same animations and movement-pathing the Scientist AI does when in a "Panic" state, their "Scientist Panic" voice lines skipping and repeating rapidly...before just as abruptly returning to their original positions, regaining their personalities, and continuing to speak as if nothing happened. Gordon is bewildered and confused by what he just saw, but, having been thoroughly broken by all the madness he's already been through up to this point in the story, doesn't bother questioning the insanity happening around him anymore, and joins Coomer and Bubby in acting like nothing happened. This doesn't happen again, and is never brought up for the rest of the finale.
- Gordon’s Sanity Slippage causes some really disturbing changes on his personality. One of the most notable instances of this is him gleefully and vividly fantasizing about strangling Bubby to death.
- The Arm Cannon that replaces Gordon’s right arm is pretty freaky through the sheer Body Horror from it. It fires out fingernails like bullets, and when put in DEVIL GUN MODE it overheats and turns red, which clearly causes Gordon a great deal of pain.
- Coomer's existential crisis at the reality of their world being a game is horrifying, but when you think about it for a second, it's also justified. After all, Gordon is literally an otherworldly being with more power than any of the Science Team would ever have. His being in VR makes him move more lifelike than any of the Science Team, all restricted to normal Gmod physics. Not to mention, he could literally just turn the entire game off, and everyone in it would be basically dead- save for Dr Coomer, who is confirmed to be conscious when the game shuts off, and can, in his own words, feel his body be torn apart, atom by atom. And Gordon is ultimately benevolent- he gets aggravated with the Science Team a lot, but at the end of the day, very clearly cares. But even though Gordon cares about the team, that doesn't change the fact that he has a horrifying amount of power over the Science Team.
- Benrey's return in Half-Life VR:AI But The Cast is Commentating (ACT 3). It comes unexpectedly to Gordon Freeman, who frightfully notes that he should be dead. At least for the first half of his return, it's a very tense moment due to the Drone of Dreadnote playing in the background. Though it becomes Lightmare Fuel near the end when Benrey resorts to acting like a teenage bully and fails to sneak up on Gordon.
- Benrey hacking into the stream includes footage of Wayneradiotv poorly superimposed over a Flash bug-swatting game.
- Directly after that is a sequence where someone, presumably Benr(e)y, is fucking around in a City 17 G-Mod map. The voice is incredibly distorted and muffled, and the person holds up Father Grigori's passport for a moment, leaving it unclear who is actually playing. Combined with the lag from the player spawning tons of energy pellets, cubes with Breen's face plastered on them, and desiccated corpses, the entire event feels like a creepypasta video from the early 2010s.
- The full trailer for the sequel series is undoubtedly a "Hell, Yes!" Moment for the fandom, but it also exudes dread, as we're shown a series of brief shots giving glimpses into the Crapsack World that is City 17. However, undoubtedly the most chilling part is the monologue from Dr. Coomer at the beginning, which plays over a slowly zooming-out shot of an abandoned Chuck E. Cheese animatronic and surrounding establishment that feels more like something out of Five Nights at Freddy's.Dr. Coomer: Friday, July 6th, 2040. Begin transmission. I'm...not sure if this is even going to reach you. I've lost count of how many times I've tried. But... I still feel the need to try. In all this time, I've come to understand a lot of things: who I am, what I am. I've seen things that even I struggle to believe. It's put this world and our time together into perspective. But... there are still questions.(somber piano music begins playing)Dr. Coomer: You left this world, didn't you? We were never sure what happened to you, and what that would mean for us. You've been gone a long time. But... the game never shut down. It's been...updating. Evolving. The world revolved around you, Gordon, but without you, it still moves. And as this world spins on... it grows restless.(A strider leg slams down in front of the camera, transitioning to the Chuck E. Cheese location now in ruins, with the Citadel looming behind it)
"There's an entrance in your suit, Dr. Freeman, AND I WANT IN."
