Per wiki policy, Spoilers Off applies here and all spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned.
Nothing says "creepy" like a destroyed battleground full of Keyblades where countless warriors lost their lives in the ultimate battle. Gee, thanks Nomura.
- Vanitas. Sure, he doesn't seem so scary at first, but then when you see what his mask has been hiding. Vanitas looks just like Sora. He has the same face, and the same voice. When Sora speaks, his voice is full of hope and light and energy. But Vanitas... he just sounds so... evil. As if his voice is dripping with darkness. And it's so wrong in so many ways.
- Vanitas's voice alone deserves mention. It bounces from casual sadism to monotone apathy to spiteful disdain, and the sheer speed at which it does so is unsettling. This paired with the fact that he's not Going Through the Motions like most other characters do means that his voice comes off even creepier than it would've otherwise.
- The final boss of Aqua's story is Vanitas... possessing Ventus' body. He speaks with both Ven's and Vanitas' voices and looks as if Ven's head has been crudely photoshopped onto Vanitas' body, which lends an unnatural, disturbing quality to him.
- At the end of the game, Aqua almost goes mad from the isolation, to the point that she's on the verge of letting the Darksides finish her off.
- Ventus' No-Holds-Barred Beatdown at the hands of Master Xehanort ends with the former being frozen alive. Then he falls off a cliff, parts of his Keyblade and armor shattering as he collides with the cliff's face. Aqua just barely manages to catch him, and although he avoided being shattered like a glass statue, he's clearly in great pain.
- The Unversed, while not as disturbing as the Nobodies, have the colorful appearances of the Heartless, but none of their cute aspects. Several Unversed take on the appearances of harmless items (like a pumpkin) apart from their creepy features and powers. Their only consistent features are their red eyes, dagger like appendages, and the Unversed symbol.
- The Magic Mirror from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is pretty creepy.
- Watching that soulless, eyeless floating mask fully rendered in 3D is pretty self-explanatory. Getting to fight it as a boss is even worse due to the illusions it creates, and it being giant-sized.
- Now, which of these illusions is the real Magic Mirror? Oh yes, it's the one with the Psychotic Smirk.
- Even worse when you remember that the Mirror doesn't want to fight you, and is being forced to attack you against its will.
- The Keyblade Graveyard:
- As the Keyblade Graveyard is a Field of Blades in which each blade represents a Keyblade wielder's heart, it's essentially a graveyard for Keyblade wielders. The number of lives that must have been lost in that place is staggering. Compounding this is its music; which while hauntingly beautiful is essentially a funeral dirge.
- The tornadoes chasing players down don't help matters. They're massive, difficult to avoid, and each one of them leads to a battle in a freaky alternate dimension with some of the most powerful standard enemies in the game.
- The ruins of the Land Of Departure:
- Seeing the heroes' home destroyed is quite creepy, especially if you run into them in Ven or Aqua's story first and have no idea how it got that way.
- And then there's the very real possibility of getting ambushed by the horrifyingly-strong Mysterious Figure on the way there, if you don't know that visiting that world at that particular time is the way to trigger the battle.
- During the Final Episode, we are finally shown the "certain knowledge" Aqua was given after being given Keyblade Master status: should the Land of Departure fall to darkness, Eraqus' Keyblade should be used on a secret keyhole hidden behind his throne. Aqua does this, and the castle transforms into Castle Oblivion. Seeing such a lively place, where light and darkness coexisted and was renowned for being a haven for Keyblade wielders, transformed into a terrifying maze...but that was probably the point. Those who envisaged the transformation "trick" possibly realized that designating the place as a haven would naturally attract untold enemies on its doorstep, so they put up a failsafe that were the place is to go down, it will sentence its attackers to oblivion (and it won't be painless).
- The secret ending of Final Mix:
- After an entire secret episode spent in isolation in the Realm of Darkness fighting Heartless, Aqua runs into something rather startling — the Castle of Dreams, corrupted by the darkness and surrounded by evil-looking clouds. It doesn't help that a somewhat distorted version of Destati starts up at that exact moment.
- The 'Dark Hide', the boss from the secret episode, is fought in total darkness. It stalks Aqua from the darkness when it appears, only its red eyes visible, before the camera shifts to its perspective as it attempts to pounce. Plus, when it finally comes out where you can see it, the boss is enormous - it's at least as big as a Darkside, but much, much faster.
- The cutscene before the battle starts from the boss's perspective. You then see the red light from its eyes appear and zip across the clearing. When the eyes first appear, it looks like they're looking at you, not Aqua. The perspective also often switches to the boss's whenever it attacks during the first phase of the battle.
- The Realm of Darkness itself is pretty unnerving, with its mile after mile of complete emptiness, aside from all the powerful Heartless, and the structures that look unnervingly like someone's insides. Not to mention the bleak theme music.
- When you defeat Master Xehanort in Terra's penultimate boss battle, you can hear him say, in a faint yet distinctly chilling tone, "Only now... have I truly won...". Considering how emotionally charged the cutscene before the fight was (featuring probably the most believable voice acting Jason Dohring does as Terra), the feeling of triumph is quickly dashed by that one short line and what comes after it. Though it's at least made a bit softer by the True Final Boss of Terra's story, which is pure Catharsis Factor, the aftermath of that battle, sends it right back to nightmarefuel. Plunging into an Eldritch Location, and your only method of transportation and escape appears to be failing...
- Aqua is neck lifted in the final episode. Not only is it unnerving to see one of the main characters have this happen to them; another level of horror is added when one realizes that it is essentially Terra doing this to her.
- There's one part of the final battle in the final chapter where Xehanort's shadow holds Aqua down while Xehanort stalks towards her in a very threatening way. The game lets you mash the button to try and break free, but Failure Is the Only Option, so you have to watch Aqua futilely struggle as Xehanort raises his weapon...
- Heartless aren't as widespread in this game as they are later. People losing hearts isn't that much of a problem. Then, when you first get a game over, it hits you; unlike the standard lifeless body with floating heart implying you became a heartless of later games, there's just a lifeless body. That's right, you're not facing being turned into The Heartless with a chance, however slim, of coming back, you outright die.
- Of course, it's not any better when the Heartless do show up. The first time you see the Heartless, it's in a flashback where Ventus is nearly killed by Neoshadows and Xehanort decides to create Vanitas. They show up again in Final Mix, where Aqua has to constantly battle against Heartless as she wanders the Realm of Darkness. Not only are these Heartless composed of the terrifying Pureblood Heartless, they are extremely powerful and can kill Aqua rather easily.
- If Xehanort wasn't creepy enough, one of his reports says that originally his Grand Theft Me was going to be on Ventus.
- Something subtly creepy is definitely how easily Xehanort manipulates Terra. See, right up until he reveals his true colors, nothing he says is actually wrong in the slightest.
- Yes, Vanitas is Ventus' darkness given form. Xehanort tore the darkness right out.
- Yes, there does need to be a balance between light and dark. So that the x-Blade can be forged. Though, that last part is merely Xehanort's wish - the first half is legitimately right.
- There’s something very... off about the Mirage Arena. There’s nobody there aside from a single real Moogle (most of them in the game are digital ones). It also has some potentially horrifying implications about Ventus’ darkness. That being the Unversed there are incomprehensibly more powerful than any other fought in the game and when you fight each of the Unversed rounds, you start to realise just how dangerous Ventus could be if he were a truly evil villain of darkness .
