Nightmare Fuel / Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass

Things like these do not belong in a child's imagination.

The specter of Death follows me wherever I go.
I am haunted by memories of Death's icy touch on my shoulder.
I know one day I will fall into an abyss so deep I will not be able to claw my way out.
Would you like me to repeat that? (No/Yes)

Despite the cutesy exterior, Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass takes inspiration from both EarthBound's more disturbing aspects and Yume Nikki, and it shows. Whether it be the titular eldritch antagonist or the many Nightmare Zones scattered throughout the game, Jimmy's adventure will have him face many horrors.

As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.

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Main Story

• The Big Bad of the game is the titular Pulsating Mass, which provides a stark contrast to the game's cutesy exterior, even before those layers start peeling away. It is a pulsating mass of something that hates Jimmy and wants to corrupt and destroy his dream world- to this end, it corrupts and possesses many of the denizens, turning them into zombies with Body Horror galore. It is massive enough that the final dungeon is a Womb Level taking place inside of it. And even worse: it is heavily indicated to be a representation of Jimmy's cancer, and as such, it can never truly be defeated.
• The Goons recruitment exam involves jumping down a chute that sorts them based on whether they're worthy. Jimmy and three other Goon candidates pass and enter the lower level of the Goons' hideout, while one of them (Information Guy) has failed. When you leave the Goons' hideout you can find the failing candidate has been dumped outside the hideout onto the rocks that he's messily impaled on. It's a jarring contrast to how the previous Information Guy was killed cleanly.
• At the very end of the demo we see that the Queen Bee and her guards have disappeared. All that's left is a strange green trail leading into the next room, hinting at some gruesome fate. In the full game we find out what happened to all the bees. The Pulsating Mass has mutilated them, leaving body parts strewn about the hive. In one room there are horrifically mutated corpses that appear to be fused with the pulsating mass. The enemies you fight in the level are all undead versions of the bees with green goop bleeding out of their bodies, with the exception of Drones, which appear to be nothing but lumps of flesh with eyes, a mouth, and wings. The boss of the level, Queen Bee, appears to be a veiny, skinless humanoid... thing, tearing itself free from a giant, pulsating bee abdomen.
• After the murder mystery in Wharf Dog is seemingly solved, Jimmy can walk outside the club into the nearby alleyway where he finds the Pulsating Mass-possessed dog, the true culprit. The dog then mutates into a long necked, fleshy monstrosity with a gaping open mouth, green drool, and sharp teeth.
• In the Ashby's mall, Jimmy jumps through a TV screen into his favorite show, Jonathon Bear's Playtime Forest. The level is very cutesy, with all of the plants and trees made of wooden props. But the further in you travel the more the scenery changes into a hellish nightmare, Jonathon's animal friends turn into nightmarish, bloody monsters, and at the end you have to fight a giant, mutated Jonathon Bear, with one skeletal arm sticking out of his fur, a small eel-like creature protruding from his left eye, and many sharp teeth.
• The final dungeon and showdown against The Pulsating Mass:
  • The last area is the Central Hub, now having been taking over by the Pulsating Mass. As a result, it is one giant Womb Level with organs and eyes everywhere, and filled with grotesque enemies like the Flesh Orb.
  • One such enemy is a parasitic worm that attacks by invading the body of one of your party members and inflicting a unique status effect that will kill them immediately after a set number of turns. Thankfully it wears off after combat, but it's an especially horrifying aspect to the already visceral dungeon. Poor Lars...
  • When you're facing The Pulsating Mass, everything seems hopeless - it's taken the rest of your family, leaving only Jimmy and Buck to fight it, The Secret Knowledge is out of your hands, and the Mass has begun the process of assimilating the world into itself, starting with the Central Hub, which has been turned into a fleshy Eldritch Location. And The Pulsating Mass itself isn't a slouch, either - while you fight it, it takes on the forms of your family members in a manner similar to that of Giygas. Special mention goes to how when it imitates Andrew or Helga, it can inflict a unique status effect on Jimmy - Heartbroken. The final boss theme, "Organic Nightmare," is one of the most disturbing themes in the game, with a Heartbeat Soundtrack, heavy breathing, and organic pulsating.

Nightmare Zones

• The first sign that the game is not as cheery as it seems is in the Whisper Weaver's Cavern in Giant Garden. Unlike the cheery outside area, the cavern is dark, gloomy, and filled with giant spider webs and green goo. Your field of vision is very limited, as well, and the enemies are initially only seen as eyes in the dark (though the effect lessens when they reveal themselves as the goofy enemies of the outside). When you can finally enter its lower floors much later in the game, you will find that the lower section is populated with creepy Giant Spiders, and the titular Whisper Weaver boss is a disturbing humongous spider with a particularly ugly Nightmare Face and Slasher Smile.
• The Bonus Dungeon in Wilted Lands is definitely a case of this, what with hallways randomly changing upon reaching a dead end, the near silence of the location except for the ungodly roars of... something, and the uncomfortably claustrophobic hallway that forces Jimmy to squeeze himself through as it shrinks, all leading up to an Optional Boss called Slither, a giant snake with Black Eyes of Evil and Tears of Blood.
• Ebeezil's Domain, a cold, dark, and lonely world where everyone who wanders into it is said to be doomed to wander forever, dreaming without sleeping. They all become the Sleepwalkers, creatures with Black Eyes of Evil. Ebeezil himself can never fall asleep, for if he does, the world will be destroyed.
• Turnbuckle's Mansion is a Haunted House where the gameplay suddenly shifts to an Adventure Game-esque room escape sequence. The mansion is filled with toys abandoned by their owners who have become angry at humans, and one of them, Pollyanna, is a Creepy Doll who will play hide-and-seek with you while jump-scaring you. At least one human woman has fallen prey to them, and her corpse can be found in the bathtub.
• The progression of Grimclaw throughout the game is pretty unsettling. At the start of the game you just see an innocent bird circling around its nest atop the peak of the mountain, but after you come back to Homeflower later in the game, you now find it undulating painfully and creepily in a ball in its nest, no longer flying idly around. When you climb up the mountain where he resides, you find a bunch of birds who have also been zombified, as well as Pud, a creepy humanoid creature with a Nightmare Face. When you finally encounter Grimclaw in person, he is fully corrupted by the Pulsating Mass, with his wings fleshy and veiny, and three disgusting leeches using it as a host.
• The entirety of Mr. Cat's Lair:
  • When Jimmy hears from the villagers in Smile that Cordelia has gone missing, It doesn't take long to discover a cave not too far from the area she was last seen. Once inside, you're greeted by Mr. Cat's home, completely vacant, and with the cabinet's doors wide open. The player can step inside the cabinet to embark on an absolutely dread-inducing trip through a nightmarish mansion, packed with telephones that yield no answer, a hallway vandalized with manic scribbles referencing "The Skin Thieves", and an unsettling replica of Smile populated by dark, stringy, humanoid creatures. Of note is that "Skin Thieves" is the music that plays when the Pulsating Mass or something related to it interacts with you.
  • At the end of this ghoulish hellscape, you find yourself in an empty room with a single ringing telephone. Answering it causes the room to become engulfed in an inky black substance, and the monster behind all this, Mr. Cat, to reveal himself. After the ensuing boss fight, you travel through one last hallway, and enter the final room, where the game wastes no time in capping it all off with one final Gut Punch. The final room is a child's bedroom, with a chilling trail of blood leading from the bed straight to a closed cabinet, containing the mangled remains of Cordelia. From that point, the game automatically transitions to an absolutely heart-rending scene of Cordelia's family mourning their lost daughter.
  • Most horrifying of all are the implications brought about by finding Cordelia's clothes outside in the hallway. And her body was found in a bedroom...
• The Asymmetrical Cavern near the Giant's Feet. You enter a cave with no music, and there's nothing there but some glitchy TV screens. But when you enter the next room you a thrust into a pitch black series of tunnels with a chaotic soundtrack of people shouting different numbers and static. If that's not bad enough at the end of the tunnel you seemingly reach a dead end, but when you exit that room the layout of the tunnel has changed. The world will suddenly shift as though it's glitching out. At one point it looks like you've been teleported outside the cave, but when you try to leave the area the world shifts back into the cave. Eventually you're teleported to a long hallway, where all you can hear is a squishing noise. At the end of the hallway is a bizarre humanoid creature with empty eyes scratching at its exposed brain, but that's not the end of the teleportation madness. Only after repeated warps will the boss finally show itself amidst the rapidly shifting scenery.
• The Tower of the Mad Queen is a twisted, grimmified Alice Allusion where you are first greeted by a giant caterpillar who will give you a riddle and send you down no matter your answer. The dungeon, belonging to the titular Queen, is filled with skeletons, blood, and even some flayed skin stuck to walls. When you have to venture into the caterpillar's mouth to encounter the Queen, she lets you know why; she has gone so insane that she thinks the skin on people's bodies is dirty and must be removed. She then shows off her husband, having been reduced to a skeleton, and a giant, bony hand and arm sticks out of a nearby hole, revealing the demented visage of the Queen.
• Information Isle, the home of the Information Guys. When you get there, the whole place is eerily empty. Then you encounter a zombified Information Guy feasting on the remains of a deer who then tries to kill you, and soon learn that they are infesting the island. You then have to enter a dark, creepy tunnel where the Totem that transformed them all into zombies lies in wait.
• The Accelerated Dynamics building seems innocuous at first- you are attending a luncheon along with several other characters. Then you leave and can enter an elevator to go up... and the lights start flickering while the elevator shakes and lets you out, where you are met with a maze of cubicles and creepy flickering screens that turn on and off, and it becomes apparent that you have entered another Nightmare Zone. Other horrors include a soundtrack that manages to make office sounds (like keyboard typing) unsettling, several corpses- two of which are hanging from windows and four of which have black things coming out of their mouths- and, for a more conceptual horror, seeing the once friendly Mr. Grouse warped into a greedy Corrupt Corporate Executive who has no problem killing Jimmy to keep his illegal arms dealing a secret.
• The Temple of the Inward-Looking Eye seems like just a place where the Sacred Lantern inhabitants worship, but using the Vampire form on the mirror takes you to another dimension where an Apocalypse Cult resides. The temple has an underwater section where three bodies are hanging by chains, and they disappear when you return to the area; later on, two more bodies suddenly pop up and beg you to stop the ritual that the Black Prophet is enacting to bring about the end of the world.
• The Halls of Greed is a more standard optional dungeon with a seemingly normal boss at the end: The Golden King. Normally he doesn't really attack you, and if you win the fight as is you don't really get any money out of the battle. However, if you use any of your Video Game Stealing abilities to steal the mounds of gold from the king during the battle, his true form starts to show itself. The more gold you steal, the more a fleshy structure gets revealed underneath the layer of treasure, to the point that if you manage to steal all the treasure from him you'll be greeted by a living mound of flesh surrounded by multiple eyes and green and red organs.