Nightmare Fuel / Luigi's Mansion

Per wiki policy, this page is Spoilers Off. Tread carefully.

Luigi, being Luigi, usually hasn't run into his fair share of frights over the years, but when he's put on the front lines of fear in this game in order to save his bro, this becomes the exception.

Examples Include:

General

• The Boos are not the shy and silly ghosts you were used to: they hold a "mysterious power" and except for their revenge on Mario Brothers, their intentions are a mystery. They are so powerful that Luigi can only catch them in lit rooms.
• Compared to the sequels with their more comedic and lighthearted feel, this game's atmosphere and setting are a lot darker, unsettling, and can give a feeling of claustrophobia, and the funnier moments are noticeably more subtle and quicker than the sequels.
• While it's nice that there's no ghosts to attack you, walking through lit rooms and hallways can be incredibly unsettling due to the complete lack of music or any sounds aside from Luigi's whistling and footsteps. This is especially apparent with the main hallway areas, due to how empty and quiet they are.
• Almost every time you enter a dark room, the music completely fades out and all you're left with is the sound of Luigi's footsteps and his and the ghosts' humming.
• Pressing A at any time when not near an object will have Luigi call out for Mario. This is pointless and serves no real purpose, but as his HP drops, his cries get increasingly desperate and terrified. When you're down to 30 HP or less, Luigi will either say "Mario" in a bone-chillingly frightened whimper, or scream Mario's name in an absolutely horrified voice. These cries can either be humorous or downright terrifying. Especially the ones when he's about to die.
• What happens you're on low health is a little more than unnerving, the music becomes slightly distorted and slowed down, Luigi holds the flashlight with both of his hands and is slouching,^note almost as if he's clinging on to life. he gasps and whimpers whenever he opens a door, and his humming becomes more stuttering and shaky, showing that he's getting more and more scared as he loses health. All of this, combined with the way he yells for Mario's name in this state, makes being on low health completely dread-inducing.
• While most portrait ghosts look goofy, they also look vaguely human enough to be unsettling. Some of their descriptions explain describe how they died, and most of their demises are even more uncanny than their designs, like Henry and Orville who were never found after playing hide and seek for too long or Mr Luggs "eating himself to death".
• The boss ghosts introduce themselves by coming out of the ground or from the sky and fix your TV screen while laughing or screaming. Their backgrounds also give the impression you are stuck in a parallel dimension.
• The Nintendo logo screen. No, really.
• The title screen is even worse. It is a disturbing silence followed by the letters suddenly appearing and the music suddenly playing. After the shock effect, you only hear a theremin sound fade away in silence… If this scares you, you're not ready for what's coming.
• The game select screen in the British English version. In the upper left corner, there's a text saying "Come in, the mansion is yours". Wait, and the text changes. "Come in, the mansion is ours".
  • The American English version instead has "Welcome to your mansion" which fades to "Welcome to our mansion."
  • Also, there's the caption on the "Quit" Menu:
    "You'll be back." "And we'll be waiting."
• The pause menu too; it has a door with Luigi's shadow hanging on it, creepily.
• The game itself is one thing, but this scene from the early version◊ is quite another, due to Luigi looking literally scared to death, possessed by a ghost, or downright depressed that he didn't manage to save his brother.
  • The other ending pic. It's a bit less creepy, but Luigi looks just as terrified: see here◊.
• The official Game Over isn't less creepy. Luigi falls to the floor while the screen goes black and white, the music plays, and then the words "Good Night..." appear on bloody red letters. Which slowly go black and white themselves. This comment under the old music track video resumes all the implications behind Luigi's defeat:
  "This is what your failure has brought you: you've killed Luigi, Mario's fate is sealed, the Ghosts able to trick even more people to come to the mansion. Mario never returned to the Princess's Castle to save peach, gets kidnapped by Bowser, Bowser takes over the Mushroom Kingdom. The Toads in the mansion have nothing to come back to. Game Over."
• The shrill sound of the doorknob when Luigi's unable to open a door as he turns said doorknob, followed by him pushing it forcefully, can be quite unsettling to some players.

Area 1

• The first encounter with a ghost. You walk into a dark mansion on a stormy night, greeted by a pitch black room with only a few candles. You turn on your flashlight and walk up the stairs, and try the double doors. you find that they're locked and then suddenly a demented giggle comes from downstairs. You head down, and an orange floating orb holding a key appears and floats back and forth while bells sound in the background. Then it notices you, makes a little squeaky gasp noise, dropping the key, and floats up the stair and into the double doors, mysteriously putting out every candle just by the ghost being close to it, and then explodes into little orange clouds on contact with the door. A little finisher to the scene is a zoom in on the key on the ground, with a little jingle.
• The talking paintings in the first room after the foyer. They shake before they talk, which gives a creepy shaking door sound, they threaten Luigi, and then one says "Here they are now!" And the music is this too... Thankfully, this is after you get the Poltergust, but still…
• The Anteroom that comes after isn't a nice place neither: the second you close the door, it's covered in vines, and its only furniture are three tables with jars on it. This is also the first place where you encounter Purple Punchers, who are a bit more aggressive than Gold Ghosts, and unlike the Parlor, who had the oppressively loud music, this is actually the first room where you can only hear ghosts humming…
• Your first introduction to Chauncey is this: after you capture Lydia, a cutscene happens where the camera zooms in on a door whilst the cries of Chauncey himself can be heard along with a creepy music box tune...
  • When you enter his room, the usual "dark room" music is accompanied by another creepy music box tune… The game wants you to realize that the baby ghost is not less powerful than adults.
  • If you don't understand it at first, you'll get it the hard way: you explore the room like you usually do, looking in furniture and vacuuming all coins, then you (accidentally or not) move the rocking horse. The door suddenly covers in vines while Chauncey wakes up and wants to play... by going near you and throwing creepy teddy bears at you. You try to defend yourself with a balloon and manage to paralyze the baby for one second, but his heart doesn't show like the others; after whining, he shrinks you down in his cradle, sending you rocking horses on a broken nursery tune. Finally, Chauncey appears and cries, his face looking more like a Nightmare Face than a baby crying; then, he winks and gives a punch on an invisible bag.
  • The music that plays when you fight him isn't much better than the aforementioned music box; it is a perfect balance between goofy and scary. When you suck him up, it changes to this track which sounds like a seizure in musical form.

Area 2

• This area introduces the infamous grabbing ghosts. Unlike the childish Gold Ghosts and Purple Punchers, who surprise Luigi by screaming behind him and make funny cackles, or the goofy Garbage Can Ghosts, these ones are more discreet when they show themselves for a good reason: they grab Luigi's neck, leaving him defenseless. While the pale ones content themselves with merely immobilizing Luigi, the others are worse: they strangle Luigi from behind. They are also used to attack in groups, meaning that during the time you try to free yourself from one, a second will reach you, making these horrible noises in the process. They are even worse in the Mirror Room, where they lock you in and only appear on mirrors.
• Trying to capture Mr. Luggs, the ghost in the dining room, is downright disturbing. The fact that this enormous ghost is spitting fireballs, then calmly going back to his meal once the candles are relit, is just disturbing.
  • Before you find the key to the dining room, you can hear the very inhuman sound of his eating every time you pass by it. Even worse if you skip catching him and clear the area, as the sound of his eating can still be heard in the now completely silent and deserted hallway.
• If Luigi sprays ghosts with one of his elemental attacks without vacuuming them up, they fade away to nothing. Slowly. And their animations look like they're flailing around in pain while it happens. Sometimes they'll even whimper in fear just before they vanish.
• "The product of the mansion's fear and despair" and boss of this area, Bogmire, is one of the most unsettling ghosts in the game. Unlike any other ghost, the guy doesn't even have any features that defined if he was alive or not, looks less like a portrait ghost than a corrupted version of the funny ones you've seen in your adventure, and while his description can be seen as a parody of "edgy for the sake of being edgy", he still holds a lot of mysteries and doesn't have any humorous elements outside of it...
  • His introduction settles the tone: after having discovered the Graveyard entrance (yes, because you fight him in a graveyard) and having fought wacky skeleton ghosts who went out of their graves, the isolated one starts to glow. You get closer, then a bolt of lightning touches the grave and Bogmire comes out with a Scare Chord played on an Ominous Pipe Organ. After that, the Graveyard becomes some sort of battlefield, then... something between shadows and slime comes out.
  • After that, an ominous battle music cues... and it becomes eldritch itself when you suck him up.
  • Like explained above, the "shadows" are between this and some sort of slime you have to suck up and throw on him. There is no explanation about how he can make these things.
  • Last but not least, there's a mechanic in the game where if you push X, Luigi whips out the Game Boy Horror and can analyze things with it; one of these things are the hearts and inner thoughts of Portrait Ghosts, which can give you an advantage. Normal ghosts and Boos don't get any, along with King Boo and Boolossus. Who else? Bogmire. He's the only Portrait Ghost, save for the Boo bosses, to never get any programmed text or speech, and no heart thought. You'll never know what he's thinking... or even if he's thinking at all...

Area 3

• The painting of the helpless Mario? Seeing him banging his fists while King Boo was laughing in the background was terrifying. Luigi can only hold his hand out while shaking his head in muted horror from the lion head statue he's peeking out of.
  • Additionally, the fact that the brave, usually composed Mario is actually screaming in terror for his brother to help him...
    Mario: "Get me outta heeeeere!!"
  • Mario's whole predicament in the game. Think about it. Somehow, King Boo managed to trap him in a painting and Mario is totally helpless to escape. All he can do is hope his brother comes through for him in the end. At the same time, he's probably horrified at the thought of his beloved brother facing a haunted mansion alone and knows if anything happens to Luigi, there's absolutely nothing he can do about that either.
• In a similar vein to the Mirror Room, the Projection Room: imagine, if you will, an empty room with a projector that suddenly turns on, and you see shadows of invisible grabbers on the screen that you have no idea where they are. Good luck trying to sleep through the night after that!
  • Speaking of the Projection Room, vacuuming the projector screen will suddenly cause it to snap back and hurt Luigi, revealing a massive picture of a boo with the phrase "Get out of here!" on it. It's quite an effective jumpscare, as the only other time it happens is if the "Monsters" poster on the second floor hallway is vacuumed, but it's nowhere near as huge or unexpected as this room.
• Considering the nature of the ghosts (and the mansion itself), one can wonder what rituals are done in the Astral Hall. The fact that the room itself prevents you from progressing to the next is goofy, but also unsettling. Speaking of the next room...
• The Observatory Room. Maybe it's the fact that it seems like you're actually in space, the fact that there is actually a fake moon in there, and that the outside music actually plays in the room, pretty much confirming that you're in an alternate space.
• Madame Clairvoya. Some would say that there's nothing really scary about her, but... well, one would think that the idea of being trapped in a painting forever would be a case of And I Must Scream, but she actually asks to be put there. She likes that? True, Professor E. Gadd did say that some of the Portrait Ghosts were portraits to begin with, but still...
  • More disturbingly, it could be that Madame Clairvoya is just that terrified of King Boo that she specifically asks Luigi to put her back in her painting so she does not have to put up with him any longer. If that's the case, then that means even some fellow ghosts are afraid of King Boo, and are willing to trap themselves in a painting for all eternity to escape him.
• The Safari Room can be disturbing for the sole reason it has tigers as carpets and realistic looking taxidermy deer heads. While they're fine at first, the fact nothing happens in this room only makes them creepier. Like any of these rooms, you look in the items, and when this doesn't work, you vacuum everything, and in a disturbing Shout-Out to Evil Dead 2, the heads nod like if the animals were still alive.
  • It doesn't help that in the 3DS remake, the deer heads' eyes glow red and just stare at you.
• If you didn't catch enough Boos, one of these that compose Boolossus will show in front of the door leading to the balcony. Your Boo radar noise may shiver you in the dark corridor (at least in the Nintendo Gamecube version) and you may already know that Boos are darker in this game that they usually are, but the conversation Luigi has with this one in particular easily gives the impression that Boolossus, outside of its battle form, is a Hive Mind of some sort.
  • Also, the moment when they push you back to the Hall happens all of the sudden; even worse, the game passes in first-person view for this sequence. King Boo does the same if you go to the Secret Altar's room before having the key with the same surprising result.
  • Even if you have the required number of boos, it's possible your boo radar will blip on for just a second, before quickly going silent again. It's long enough to notice, but short enough to miss. It's almost as if the radar is warning you of a boo being present, but said boo flees quickly enough that the radar can only blink for a second...
• The Boolossus ritual manages to be unsettling too: the fifteen Boos composing it form a circle around Luigi, get closer and closer, then fly in the sky. After this, you can hear a sinister cackle, then a giant Boo with glowing eyes falls from the sky: while Luigi sees it ready to stomp him, you can see a giant ghost ready to jump out of your TV screen. Then, when the battle starts, you understand why it is called Boolossus.
  • During the cutscene, the music mimics the Game Boy Horror's Boo Radar noise for an astounding effect.
  • While the giant ghost is impressive, the reason why it is considered the hardest boss is because of the many Boos composing it and their synchronization. They are so quick that they seem to be everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Like usual, the music makes it worse.

Area 4 and ending

• The scariest part probably is when lightning strikes the mansion and cuts the power off. So every single previously lit room was now a miniature hell hole of never ending ghosts and can only be stopped by finding a portrait ghost looking at himself in a mirror and you're never told which room is he in. A little over half of the rooms of the mansion have mirrors. Thankfully in the 3DS remake, E. Gadd elaborates on this by mentioning he's likely in a room with ""clothes and a mirror", narrowing it down.
  • Made better by a couple small things: some rooms, while dark, don't have ghosts (such as the Foyer), and you can technically make a room safe for yourself by sucking up all the ghosts in it. The lights don't come back on, but the ghosts stop spawning. Also, a player may remember the parlor, anteroom, and wardrobe room that appeared to be a dead end for just a key to an earlier door and think to go back there — but this still means that, even if you know where to go, you still have to go from the third floor back down to the first, and then through more ghost-filled rooms from there.
  • If you check the Secret Altar during the blackout, King Boo has disappeared. Once the lights come back on, he's back staring at Mario's painting like nothing happened. It's never explained where he goes or why, and it's extremely easy to miss since you have no reason to backtrack to the Well at any point.
  • There is a lighting oddity in the Telephone Room in which Luigi's shadow appears as if he were dangling from a rafter by a noose. It's mostly the fact that it's an almost unnoticeable effect that appears for only a split second that makes it scary. Thankfully, it was fixed in the 3DS version.
• When you enter the Guest room, you discover it is upside-down. At first, it looks like the furniture is glued on the ceiling, but the chandelier is on the floor, like if the ceiling was placed where the roof is supposed to be, and the chest appears upside-down on the roof. After the portrait ghost has been sucked up, the room reverts to its original state, but not without an earthquake.
  • Speaking of the ghost sleeping in the bed, Sue Pea doesn't take intruders' presence well, considering the room shakes when she says these words:
    Sue Pea: "…Do not try to wake me… GOOOO AAWAAAAY!!!"
  • While she's a Shout-Out to The Exorcist, her description is a legitimate dread for any parent, or anybody who takes care of children in any way:
    "What was supposed to be a short nap turned into eternal sleep for the young Sue Pea."
• King Boo's monologue at the end of the game conveys his utter hatred towards Luigi. What's worse, he remains completely calm, until he turns to Luigi… or since it's in a temporary First-Person Perspective for the entire monologue… turns towards you.
  "Don't imagine that I'll flee… I'll fight you like a true Boo! Now join your brother… inside the painting!"
  • Then, after the dialogue, Mario's painting transforms into Bowser and swallows Luigi, who desperately runs to avoid this fate.
• The giant Bowser mecha^note or corpse if you buy into the theory that Bowser is dead in this game King Boo uses to attack Luigi. And then its head blows off when you fire a mine at it…
  • In addition, the Bowser suit is also terrifying in that it comes directly from nowhere. While there are offhand mentions of Bowser, plus the Red Herring in that he may have been the Big Bad, not King Boo, his sudden appearance — which proves to be a hell of a Jump Scare for Luigi — feels almost as if King Boo is personally digging into Luigi's greatest fears, Bowser presumably being one of them. In addition, King Boo's portrayal of him is also very disturbing; the typically hammy, Boisterous Bruiser of a king, depicted as a bloodthirsty, feral beast whose head can come off at will... not to mention, when his head does come off, it starts floating around with no pupils, and starts firing ice balls at Luigi. Scary and unexpected in a Mario game.
  • Then there's the music; a chaotic, demented version of the regular Boo-catching music. There's this weird noise in the background, which one YouTube commenter described as sounding like Mario screaming for help, and another as sounding like King Boo laughing at you from inside his mecha.
  • Then there's the theme where King Boo is exposed, which is an even more warped and sped-up version of the final boss theme with these weird synth noises in the background.
  • And then, the cherry on the cake: when you capture King Boo, the Bowser suit collapses on the ground lifeless and without its head, as if it died from decapitation….
• Getting the worst possible rank in the game treats you to this lovely tune which sounds like a perfect mix between the victory theme and the Game Over music.
  The haunted mansion disappeared without a trace…

---