Nightmare Fuel / Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords

They do not call him the "Lord of Pain" without a reason.

Knights of the Old Republic II as a whole is significantly darker in theme when compared to its predecessor, or even other Star Wars-related media as a whole. Its bleak atmosphere and grey morality are what truly make it stand out in the franchise, and it doesn't come without a few chills.

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

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• The first two stages make up an exercise in creepy. In the optional prologue, the player controls T3-M4 on the shattered wreck of the Ebon Hawk, the only other occupants of which are another droid, one nearly-dead Jedi, several corpses, and something in a sealed cargo room that won't stop banging on the door. This is eerie enough, but when the player finally takes control of the main Player Character, it's to regain consciousness on a remote mining station and discover that someone or something has systematically crippled the station and murdered everyone else there while you were unconscious. Right around the time the tension is at its highest, the PC meets the HK-50 assassin droid responsible... and, although the extensive dialogue that ensues makes it abundantly clear what went down, the PC isn't able to do anything about it until quite a bit later.
  • "Mocking Query: Coorta? Coorta? Are you dead yet?"
  • Just the thought of Peragus is scary enough. You're on a mining planet and there's almost no way to escape until a ship appears...only it's full of assassins and dead people, with a powerful Sith Lord having done the killing. Escaping is basically going through a minefield. So there's almost no way out. It's definitely like something out of a horror game. Not to mention that, as the Security Officer says in one of his holo-logs:
    Peragus Security Officer: The next one a' you Juma-heads to try and smuggle a blaster or so help me any sort of military-grade frag weapons into my facility is gonna take a long walk out the airlock! Why? Because in case you forgot, Peragian fuel explodes at high temperatures! That's what blasted that chunk out of Peragus II and created this asteroid field!
  • So, in short, the entire mining station as well as the asteroid field around it can literally explode simultaneously like a space-based powder keg, with you deciding whether or not its you that destroys the facility to throw off their Sith pursuers or the Sith-controlled Harbinger ship destroys it with a stray shot instead.
  • Made worse: the thing that won't stop banging in the cargo room on the Ebon Hawk? That's HK-47. From his perspective, he's trapped and has no way out, so he just resorts to banging endlessly, hoping that he'll be able to eventually break free. Now picture that scene if you're incredibly claustrophobic. Also made worse when you realize that the HK-50 is probably the one that shot him to pieces.
    • Going through The Harbinger is the worst part. It's littered with corpses and invisible Sith Assassins that pops up every now and then, especially when you enter a dead road. And Darth Sion is skulking around and of course he shows up in the worst part, the long, empty hallway with flickering lights. The unsettling music makes the whole level creepier.
    • And if you use cheats to enter the Harbinger without recruiting Atton or Kreia, you get this scene without the dialogue, just Sion standing there, looking at you.
  • HK-50's audio recounting of the engineer's last moments. The voice actor did an exceptional job at conveying pain when the droids start burning through his leg.
  Maintenance Officer: Five droids... burning through the outer door... t-they're forcing their way into the bay... please, someone, they... oh, oh no, t-they're through! OH MY LEG! THEY'RE BURNING THROUGH MY LEG! Argh, STOP! STOP! PL—
  • So, remember those stories HK-47 told the player in the first game of his prior owners, where he was a Doom Magnet for everyone who had the (mis)fortune of accessing his assassination protocols? Yeah, not so funny on the receiving end, is it? And worse? HK-50 WAS IMPROVISING. Everything that HK-50 does on Peragus is all done on the fly. And within just a couple of DAYS, Peragus is a rock full of corpses, and all without HK-50 even firing a shot (aside from by proxy, when killing Coorta and his goons).
• Korriban from the second game, where the Sith academy is abandoned. The door to the colony is collapsed, but there's clearly a reason you landed in the Valley of the Sith instead of there. There are decaying bodies lying around. The person you went there to find is lying dead inside a torture cage. And then you're attacked on the way out by Darth Sion. And before you even enter the academy, you're attacked by invisible giant reptiles if you try to loot the random corpses laying randomly on the ground. Because they are only invisible, this means they're always there, watching you go about your merry way.
  • Not to mention the constant attacks of Sith Assassins while you're in the Academy. Since they spawn in Stealth mode, the implication is that they're always there, but unlike the lizards, these guys are always there, following you. And, much like in the Harbinger, they tend to appear when you hit a dead end, so you turn around and you have several invisible assassins attacking you where there was nothing before.
  • If you try to head out the other side of the Academy to learn what happened to the colony, you'll open a couple doors in a narrow corridor, only to find that the exit has collapsed and you can't go out that way. So you're forced to turn around and head back — and suddenly, the doors shut on you as Sith Assassins appear in the cramped hallway. Very few doors behave like that in-game, so it's a very sudden Jump Scare.
• Every one of Sion's appearances. Especially the medical bay log on the Harbinger that has the doctor going along normally before stopping to look at something offscreen with shock, then the camera shorts out and you hear screaming followed by Sion's deep, gravelly voice saying "I have come for the Jedi."
• Kreia invading Atton’s mind can be pretty unnerving to watch, especially since he's aware she is and futilely failing to stop it.
• The Tomb of Ludo Kresh, being an example of both a Mind Screw for the player and a Mind Rape for the character. To sum up: Creepy BGM? Check. Distant screams heard when within the tomb? Check. Inability to regenerate force points? Check.^note If you're Light-Sided, at least. Dark Side players replenish so quickly their Force reserves are effectively bottomless. Illusions of your past trying to drag you to darkness while real monsters try to kill you? Check! Especially horrifying is when your entire party turns on you with this line delivered in a Creepy Monotone: "Apathy is death."
  • Made a Funny Moment if you have HK by that point: "Staaatmeeent: Aaapathy is deeeeaaaath."
  • Especially creepy is the fact that losing to a few of the illusions in there won't kill you, but it will give you a lot of Dark Side points and leave you with a few hit points left, although there are some illusion-events that can kill you after futilely asking Kreia for help for your failure to defend against the hostile illusions. Any of the non-illusory monsters you face while in there will kill you.
  • "The visions. The visions! They thought to trick me by taking the form of my fellow Jedi, but my discipline is so strong - I tricked them back. One fell to the shyrack, and the others fell to my lightsaber" ― Nebelish's datapad found on his body.
    • What Could Have Been and a peek at the game files just makes this worse. Take a very close look at Nebelish; the character model didn't change much. Yup, that was supposed to be Dustil Onasi you encounter dead or gone insane in that tomb. Good thing you didn't have to deliver that news to the admiral, assuming an LS Revan.
• Though you're on a safe side, while you're on the surface of Telos you can look towards the containment field on the edge of the map. The sky is black and you can see lightning. It makes you wonder exactly what the sections of the planet that haven't been restored yet look like...
• Darth Nihilus. Literally everything about him. He's described as an aberration of nature who devours entire planets and doesn't care who he devours. He sails a fleet of dead ships held together by his sheer force of will and staffed by nearly dead servants kept barely alive just to do his bidding and begging for death. If not for the Exile, he would have devoured the Jedi, then the Republic, and all sentient life in the galaxy, including the Sith, and then moved on to the next. What makes it worse is that he speaks one of the few languages in the game that isn't subtitled as if it was some unholy Black Speech. It's hinted that he is speaking the language of the True Sith.
  • His outfit is pretty scary too: totally black robes and a mask made of bone. It only makes it scarier when you hear from Visas that he doesn't have a body because he's devoured himself and all that remains is his malicious essence, using the Force to keep his physical shape. He's essentially an evil soul-eating Sith version of a Force Ghost!
  • The way he speaks is especially creepy. Even with the weirdest of alien languages, they at least sound like speech, or at the very least, something natural. Nihilus? His voice is like a warbling, strange hiss that doesn't sound even slightly natural.
    • What doesn't help at all is that, when alien characters speak in an alien language, like Wookies, Twi'leks or Hutts, it's translated in subtitles for players to read. Nihilus offers no such courtesy, and instead only produces unintelligible noises the player is left to interpret by themselves
  • The implications with Nihilus' force drain ability. The force, especially when it comes to force ghosts are treated like souls in the setting. And Nihilus is viewed as a black hole of the force and feeds on it. Unless it's stored and released upon his death, it could mean that being drained by him is the same of having your soul destroyed and leaving you Deader than Dead.
  • On the other hand, by listening closely to his horrifying scream in this audio clip, you can hear human screams, both male and female. This could imply that being drained will leave your consciousness trapped within him forever, and him being a Humanoid Abomination diagnosed with Horror Hunger, is this fate any better than being obliterated?
  • Nihilus becomes so powerful by the end of the game that the only reason he doesn't immediately annihilate the protagonists when they invade his ship is because they are too small in his view to bother noticing and only large stations filled with life to feed on grab his attention anymore. At that point, only the Exile even has the slightest hope of stopping this abnormal being and if they fail, the galaxy is done for.
  • If the above doesn't stir you, then this fanmade video of him consuming the entire life energies of Katarr, both sentient and non-sentient, succinctly showcasing of how he... it earned the namesake "Lord of Hunger" to consume Katarr in its entirety, save for Visas, whom, as she often says in conversations with the Exile, was the only known survivor of that horrific catastrophe...
    Colonel Tobin: There is nothing to be done, except wait. If you go to him, he will destroy you, and your last moments shall be of shadow and pain. There is, nothing, to be done. By coming here, you are already dead.
• The cut-scene with Darth Sion beating up Kreia. She's laying there after being defeated by Nihilus, completely defenseless as Sion lifts her up and she's emitting a muffled, terrified scream just before he brutally beats the crap out of her with the dark side Jump Scare sound clip playing all the while.
  Kreia: I was cast down. Stripped of my power. Exiled. I suffered... indignities. And fell into Darkness.
  • The only other time Kreia uses the word "indignities" is when she refers to Atton's hum... more "base" urges, which raises disturbing implications about what kind of "indignities" she suffered at the hands of Sion.
  • Really, the beating of Kreia in that cutscene is just BRUTAL, getting as violent as the game's engine allows. Normally, in Star Wars games, you get lightsabers clashing and instantly cauterizing wounds so that Bloodless Carnage is in effect and prevents things from seeming TOO violent. Here, if anything the lack of blood makes it all the worse - you can tell that Kreia is in deep, horrific pain, and all of it without a drop of blood being spilled, without showing any sign of injury in the traditional sense.
• After Kreia kills the Jedi Masters, if the player approaches the bodies, the description for each would say "This master is dead... drained of life. His body is worse than lifeless - it is like an absence in the force".
• The implication Kreia's analysis of the Force has for the whole Star Wars universe. What if the Force really is a cruel entity that continually spawns life and demands war and blood sacrifices to sustain it, fed by a cyclical religious war between two over-simplistic schools of philosophy, playing both sides and manipulating all life so that it has a constant supply of death to feed on? And the best case scenario is continuing to doom the universe to more of the same?
• Kreia's plan to kill the Force using the Exile. The Force has been stated to be the source of all life in the GFFA on more than one occasion. What would have happened if Kreia succeeded? She herself predicts at the very least every single Force user would either die, or have to forcibly sever themselves from the Force, which she earlier described as impossibly painful or imminently lethal. Including herself. And she considers that a fully acceptable sacrifice.
  Atris: She proclaims to no longer follow the Sith. That she is something else. Something that seeks "balance"... through destruction.
• The blunt way Atton describes what he used to do for a living, and why he had to run from it. He had a Jedi prisoner, and he went in for the usual methods to break her, which usually involves murdering a Padawan to effectively Mind Rape a Jedi Master, but she warned him that he was a Force Sensitive, and was going to find himself on the torture table once his bosses figured it out. He strangled her to death, partly out of fear and partly "because I loved her." Hearing all that from such a usually jovial guy is just chilling.
• Malachor V. Its surface is little more than a collection of jagged rocks and huge chasms, with storms up in the sky practically 24/7, and with cracks in the ground that release poisonous gas pockets if stepped on; the only form of life that one can find there is a species of hulking humanoid-reptilian monstrosities corrupted by prolonged exposure to the dark side of the Force. And there are corpses remaining from the end of the Mandalorian wars, all over the place, as well as remnants of ships torn to pieces. And as for the Trayus Academy, well, let's just say that an active Sith Academy full of students and Sith of all kinds that are out for your blood is not exactly the most welcoming place in the galaxy.
  • Malachor is such a raw, bleeding wound in the Force that Revan brought Jedi captives there, knowing the atmosphere alone would break them and make them easier to turn into Sith agents. And there are a lot of cells on that map. Imagine being one of those captive Jedi. Worse, Kreia tells you that Revan not only knew the power of such a place, he/she knew the value of making one, meaning he/she intended for Malachor to become a Psychological Torment Zone for any Light-sided person he/she might wish to convert.
  • How said wound occured. At the end of the Mandalorian Wars, a desperate Exile was forced to activate the Mass Shadow Generator. The Generator proceeds to collapse the planet, and nearly every single object in orbit into Malachor V. The sheer impact of this is why Malachor is such a wound in the Force.
• While exploring the depths of the enclave, and busting open a security door, you can find a datapad bearing this note: 'It's been a couple of weeks and no one has come for me. I can only assume the Enclave was destroyed topside and now I'm buried alive in here. I've tried using the equipment in this storage room to hack, force, weld or blow that flaming door open, but nothing I've tried works, and now I'm running out of food...'
• The Dark Side endings to your party members can be pretty ominous. Atton goes back to being a Jedi-killer and murders the Jedi for their blind compassion, the Handmaiden will be completely consumed by battling, the Disciple basically becomes early Palpatine, Visas goes on a rampage towards everyone that has slighted her, and if you somehow managed to make Mira fall to the Dark Side, which is quite difficult without getting Hanharr as Darksiders usually have him join unless one manages their Dark/Light Side meter carefully before her fight with Hanharr, then she will no longer hold back on killing people. Congratulations, your influence has managed to make everyone who looked up to you into ruthless, Ax-Crazy Blood Knights.
  • When committing Dark Side actions with your party, after the fact they'll act dazed and confused, describing how they lost all sense of control and trailing off as they realize what they just did.
    Atton: I... don't know what even came over me. One second we were just standing there, talking, and then...
    Bao-Dur: What happened? One moment, we were speaking, rationally, and then I felt this rage...
    Handmaiden: The stance of our enemy was unthreatening, more surprised than anything, and then we... then I...
    Disciple: What happened? I.... Why did we just do that? That innocent! They meant us no harm.
    Mira: Why did we... why did I just do that? There was no reason to, but suddenly... suddenly this urge came over me.
• Some of the cut content involving Atton and the Handmaiden should you have more influence with the Disciple/Visas has them be corrupted by Kreia and turned to the Dark Side, and they attack their counterpart on Malachor. They're well aware of Kreia using them, but have fallen so far that they don't care as long as Kreia gives them a chance to kill the one who they see as having taken the one person they cared for. Atton in particular is chilling, returning to his roots as a Jedi-killer.
  Atton: Ready to die, kid?
  Disciple: I won't fight you, Atton!
  Atton: I don't care, I just want you to die.
• Atton's description of the dark-sided Exile's influence is very unnerving if you break into a Telosian man's apartment, rob him, and then murder him when he walks in on you. He suddenly loses all sense of control and can do nothing but join you in attacking a defenseless civilian, and it's only going to go downhill from there.
• A dark-sided Exile's sheer power as The Corrupter. If you're deep enough in the darkness, you can see the effects take hold of the Disciple within the span of a single conversation.
• You may notice that as you progress through the game, the Sith Lord in the main menu will change between Darth Sion, Nihilus and Darth Traya. But what if you go through with a dark side run? Who becomes the Sith Lord on the title screen? YOU!
• In a scene that was cut from the game, if you escaped the Ravager without replacing the charge that detonated prematurely, the warship wouldn't be structurally damaged enough to be blown to pieces and you'd instead be treated to the sight of the Ravager crashing into Citadel Station, plowing right through it and setting off a chain reaction that results in the entire station being destroyed. And if you set Revan to be Light Side, that would mean that Carth Onasi would get to watch his homeworld be devastated before his eyes for the second time. Nice job.

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