Nightmare Fuel / Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope

For a game consisting of the converged light-hearted series such as Super Mario and the Raving Rabbids series, with Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope being much more darker toned than its predecessor, there's no circle of a doubt it will have a handful of disturbing moments.

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

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Trailers

• In the first trailer, the entire scene is dark for the most part where the Heroes are riding the WM ARC, Mario and Rabbid Peach, along with a Spark named Starburst look through a hologram where it features three Sparks within, which was innocent enough, but then you get treated to a scene where the ominous hand of the main villain, Cursa reaching out and suddenly grabs them and it begins draining their energy, much to the terror of poor Starburst. It gets even worse when you realize that the Sparks are merged versions of Lumas and Rabbids, and the Lumas themselves are in the child stage and they obviously belong to Rosalina.
• After Mario, Rabbid Peach, Rabbid Rosalina, Princess Peach, and Luigi arrive on a planet, they are surrounded by red eyed Bob-ombs and one mook that looks like a Rabbid (also called Stooges), but it has a skull mask, a colored cloak and hollow eyes much like the rest of the variants.◊ and the noises they make, does not sound anything like the real Rabbids would normally make. While one can take comfort that the red eyes on the Stooges and some other foes, just the presence of them in the trailer conveys the darker tone direction that the game is taking unlike its Lighter and Softer predecessor.

Main Game

• The Darkmess Manta's entrance into the scene is creepy; along with the eerie noises it makes as it begins covering Peach's Castle and the land below it in the black goop-like substance called Darkmess. As Mario tries to warn the distracted Rabbid Peach, she ends up being kidnapped by this beast and everyone in the kingdom is in full-panic mode while Peach is trying to calm everyone down, but to no avail.
• When the Heroes first arrive at Beacon Beach, the entire world is dark and dreary and suffers under constant rainfall and at the lighthouse is covered by the Darkmess Tentacle that is seen at the edge of the town.
• And then there is the Jump Scare where the local warden, Augie appears and almost attacks the heroes with a spear, with all of them, especially Luigi and Peach screaming in terror as he almost impales Mario with it, being only a few inches from it actually killing him, and begging them to leave. He does realize that the visitors are harmless and willing to help, though it does not really detract from the scare factor.
• There are also some Bob-ombs under Cursa's control that are wandering through the village, and you can hear the Rabbids inside their houses screaming in fear of them, and they are afraid to go out since Bob-ombs are known for walking up to their victims and blowing up on them. Even if the Rabbids' trademark screams are comedic for the most part, but with a desolate state Beacon Beach is in and living explosives around and about, in this case though, it is one of genuine horror.
• Edge's appearance before her meeting Mario and his friends is pretty ominous, especially for first time players who do not know about her. After the Sunrise Temple is risen from the sea by the Spark named Twinkle, we are treated to a scene where the heroes enter the temple, and it looks like there is someone watching from above. The camera shifts to Augie, who is petrified and staring at the camera before she jumps down to the ground and at this point, we know this from Edge's first-person perspective. The Scare Chord that plays during this scene does not help.
  • What makes this more unsettling is that Edge, who is only seen in a close-up of just her hand and mouth where she shushes Augie and smiles big with her top sharp teeth fully showing with her breathing in a chilling way that Augie slowly sinks into the water before she runs into the temple. He later becomes horrified when he sees her again after Twinkle was saved from Cursa's minions and calls her a Spark Hunter, which Edge corrects him that she isn't.
  • At Pristine Peaks where Edge and Midnite meet again and the former shakes her head in refusal, to the latter's vexation, she does this again, but only this time, Edge does not hush anyone at all, and we see her face in full view where she gives the disturbing exhale, narrowed eyes, and her top teeth showing as she smiles. Brrrr…◊
  • Edge may have given some pretty good first impressions in front of the heroes, though they were initially cautious about her at first, which is reasonable which they never met her before, and she does not reveal anything about herself throughout most of the game, so JEANIE dubs her as the enigma, and they don't know what her real intentions are. Beep-0 stammers when he first speaks to her after Twinkle is saved, she has refused to share her backstory each time they encounter a Spark Hunter, and when Beep-0 was about to interrogate her since she knew of Midnite and Bedrock, Edge's reaction was to '''snap''' at him for prying into her business, which brought much concern to the team. Edge is normally calm, even when angry, but to hear her literally shout, "Listen!" as she calls him out about it is startling, resulting in him stuttering and changes the subject.
  • Edge's familiarity with the Spark Hunters gave a strong indication that she was one of them, and it was building up to The Reveal that not only was Edge a Spark Hunter herself, but she was also their former commander and the Spark Hunters used to be her friends.
    • Also qualifies as a Tear Jerker, Edge explains her reason she left was that the edge that granted her free will allowed her to see how horrid Cursa was and tried to tell Bedrock, Daphne, and Midnite about it, but they instead betrayed her, which had her leaving to save the Sparks from them while also telling them that she figured that the heroes would stop trusting her. How long was she on Cursa's side, gathering Sparks, before she defected to their side that caused her to think that she should not be believed?
  • Even though Edge is still ultimately a hero who defected from the Spark Hunters, she still retains some of her eerie mannerisms, especially with her expressions and unnerving chuckles she lets out for good measure.
• Twinkle gets lost alone in the temple and becomes scared when the heroes arrive and while it is assured that they want to help it, Twinkle is suddenly snagged by the Darkmess Tentacle and dragged into the Darkmess Dimension, with Twinkle crying out in distress.
• After the first battle in the Darkmess Tentacle, Twinkle appears to be fine, until the Stooges arrive and begin chasing it and they have it surrounded and cornered against the wall, with Twinkle clearly shaking in horror. One of them tries to pounce on it, only to be on the receiving end of Edge's Flying Blade which slices through it. The final blow has the minions dissipate by spraying Darkmess everywhere before vanishing. When Edge looks in Twinkle's direction, it screams in terror since it was looking at the very person who wiped out Cursa's minions in front of it and you can tell that it was assuming the worst at this point. It is only fortunate that Edge is only here to help it.
  • That being said, the enemies' defeats during battle are also gruesome, since once they are killed, you can see them dissipating in black substance, and while they are composed of Darkmess, it gives off plenty of implications of blood; only black, but still.
• After Beacon Beach is saved, Augie warns them that the Spark Hunters came earlier and threatened to kill off the locals if he did not hand over the Sparks to them, which actually gave him a reason of sorts to be scared of outsiders. If the player knows of Edge's background and his earlier encounter with her, he is sort of correct about her former allegiance, even though she has already defected.
• Pristine Peaks is shown to suffer under a severe blizzard that is also under some extreme cold which, according to JEANIE, is threatening to render the planet inhospitable to all life if nothing is done to stop it and the lack of visibility makes it harder to detect any sign of ambush.
• At the start of the Winter Palace expedition, Captain Orion is frozen at the doorstep of this particular palace which he was locked out of, and it was pretty clear that someone he knows very well is in danger within that palace and he does not know what happened to her or how long she was trapped inside.
• Even though Midnite is playful and mischievous for the most part, the battle phase switch has her becoming angrier and more aggressive and by the time the battle moves into the final phase, she is noticeably very violent and desperate by this point.
• Palette Prime's forest is also afflicted of the Darkmess Tentacle, which drains the color and life from it which renders it a dark haunted forest which it becomes an unnerving sight.
• The fight between Bowser and Bedrock in Palette Prime is considered this, due to how close they are to a town full of innocent people which puts them in danger, and they end up destroying one of the houses in their scuffle. After Bedrock manages to throw Bowser into the Darkmess Tentacle and follows him, she has this creepy slit pupil look on her eyes and an unhinged smile as the screen closes.
• While the entire Wiggler chase scene at Terra Flora was indeed hilarious, it does become a bit creepy with the fact that the giant Darkmess infected Wiggler was chasing them and trying to kill them, just because it passed by, and we see just how powerful it is when it knocks off a freight car and attempts to derail the train itself with Sullivan and the Heroes still on it. The Darkmess Eyes sprouting on its body is also nauseating to look at.
• Barrendale Mesa is almost completely devoid of friendly life save for Momma, Victor, and a few Toads and Toadette herself and according to its history as JEANIE explains, it was once a cradle of abundance, before the Rabbids arrived and deprived it of its natural resources and abandoned it to repeat their mistakes elsewhere, and it was at the time before the Rabbids were civilized. It is largely inhabited by hostile life forms, mainly Cursa's minions, which is to show how close the planet is to Cursa's Stronghold. No one knows what this planet originally looked like before it became as it is. It is suffering under a severe electric storm that is messing up the machines that Momma had to close her garage and could not help the Heroes, even if she wanted to.
  • The battle music before its restoration is much different than any of the songs before it. The other battle themes have a much happier and energetic feel to them and some of them are epic. But the aforementioned Barrendale Mesa battle theme is notably much more foreboding and tense since you are in dangerous enemy territory and that goes further to say that this planet is the closest to the stronghold of an Eldritch Abomination that seeks to wipe out all life and sap the energy of not only the Sparks, but every single planet in existence. Yikes!
• Daphne is by far one of, if not the most, dangerous adversaries that the Heroes have ever faced; in fact, the players were introduced to Midnite and Bedrock at the same time the Heroes do, but for Daphne, the players are introduced to her long before the Heroes actually do. Her extensive thorns are only seen helping Bedrock escape after her defeat, and she is properly seen during the cutscene where the Spark Hunters return to Cursa. Daphne has more success with capturing the Sparks than Midnite and Bedrock, who do not have any to offer. Out of all the Spark Hunters, she was the only one who thoroughly enjoyed watching the innocent Sparks be completely drained of energy, laughing at their expense.
  • It is even more jarring over the fact that she did not even care about Midnite and Bedrock enough to give each Spark to them (she had only three of them, by the way) to at least spare them the harsh punishment from Cursa. Just her smiling at them and shaking her head at them after they received serious repercussions for failure suggests that she is only looking out for herself.
  • There is also the fact that Edge described Daphne as the "downright sneakiest, dirtiest, most devious" of the Spark Hunters. She was confident in facing the first two Spark Hunters, but with Daphne, she is visibly concerned about having to deal with her. This is the former leader of the Spark Hunters saying this.
  • After the windmill is restored, the Heroes get a transmission from "Momma", inviting them to some party, which only Edge has a funny feeling that something about the transmission seemed off, which indicates that she is the only one who knows that is not really Momma speaking through the transmission due to how blatantly out of character she sounds, but since she has already garnered suspicion earlier, she is hesitant to tell them about it. Upon entering, Daphne takes off her Momma disguise and imprisons the heroes in the Darkmess Dimension.
  • Just before her battle, Daphne gives the Heroes some particularly choices that involve if they would either give up, have her use Momma as target practice, or just try and save her, not that it would matter since she is confident that no matter what they do, they will fail.
• The Last Spark Hunter isn't any better in regard to unnerving moments as well. Unlike the other planets that the Heroes visit, Melodic Gardens which is known for being the musical world with its harmonious nature, somehow became completely silent, but what is even worse is that according to Allegra and other inhabitants, if it remains silent for too long, it will fade away to nothingness, and one can only imagine what could possibly happen to the people who live there if that were to occur.
  • It gets even worse when JEANIE tells them that the air density has changed so drastically that the WM ARC won't be able to gain the push to leave its atmosphere due to the presence of Darkmess there and with Melodic Gardens' existence on the line, they would have to fight for their lives to restore it to normal and leave safely.
• When Allegra mentions Kanya to the group while describing her as terrorizing the Sparks, whom she calls the Fallen Stars, you would expect Edge to know about Kanya as she did the rest of the Spark Hunters, but nope, not this time. Rather, she is visibly and genuinely shocked and confused about this and believes that they have all of them defeated and cannot comprehend that another Spark Hunter would exist without her knowing about it. In fact, none of the other Spark Hunters ever brought her up.
  • Kanya herself is quite frightening; she is seen ballet dancing and skipping around like a little girl at first, but then she smiles and bares her teeth in a similar shape to a Chain Chomp showing how malevolent she actually is. It is later found that Kanya was created after the revelation of Edge's treason against Cursa, to take her place as the Spark Hunter's leader and has free will of her own to be a proper leader. Unlike the first commander, Kanya only left Cursa since she hated being a lackey to her creator and left the Spark Hunters to begin her own plans to destroy Cursa and conquer the universe. She is also a skilled mechanic and specializes in explosives, which she sics the Proto Mecha King Bob-omb on the Heroes to test any flaws the Proto Mecha King Bob-omb has, and it is clear that after it was defeated, she learns about them and applauds them, which is clearly odd given her psychotic and hot-tempered nature.
  • To make it clear just how cruel Kanya is, she states that her plans are not related to Cursa in any way, but she has the plans regarding the Sparks themselves, which already gives red flags since it is already known that the Sparks are targeted by Cursa's minions. One of her Spark victims is Cryodash, who is being used as a power source for her machines in her HQ against its will and seeing that she has other machines and her fighting robots, no one knows how many more of them are subjected to this treatment.
    • Once Allegra mentions her missing friend, who is a Dorrie who can have Melodic Gardens' biophonies play various songs, Kanya derisively tells her that she is too late and she "should have said something earlier", which obviously gets a reaction out of the warden, who goes out to find her friend.
  • It is also shown that Kanya has no respect for the beautiful environment and it shows the way where it was confirmed that she flooded a labyrinth to which it was now called the Flooded Ruins, and to make matters worse, she plans on industrializing the entire planet through using all of its natural resources and when she is "done" with Melodic Gardens, she will be out to get rid of Cursa and the wardens and conquer the galaxy so she can rule with an iron fist. It is that she even upstages Daphne, another one of the more nasty Spark Hunters.
• The music of Melodic Gardens before the final battle with Kanya, especially in the Flooded Ruins is pretty petrifying for those who are proficient listeners of certain parts of the song being played. If you listen very closely to the song, you can periodically hear eerie and desolate whispers that echo all around the area and it really gives off vibes that Melodic Gardens' will soon fade away into nothingness, becoming the silent coda to the galaxy. This is most likely from Allegra as she sounds desperate about the situation, and she knows the planet long enough to know the consequences of perpetual silence.
• Cursa's stronghold is one of the most disturbing cases. Ever since Cursa took control of Rosalina, it also usurped her Comet Observatory which it uses as its base of operations. This is the very place where it was a hub world in Super Mario Galaxy, and it is considered as the symbol of hope in the universe. This is a full projection of Cursa's goal which is to bring complete annihilation of all things that provide people hope, and to replace it with complete despair. Beep-0 and Rabbid Rosalina are understandably horrified by this revelation.
  • Darkmess Bowser just so happens to be a clone of Bowser where we learn that Cursa retains the memories of the Megabug, and due to it having taken control of Bowser, it used that blueprint to take on this likeness. Because of that, it is extremely likely that Cursa is not just out to attack the heroes, it wants revenge for its previous defeat!
  • Darkmess Edge is just as eerie; even though Edge has some unsettling moments here and there, mostly with her mannerisms and general formidability, Darkmess Edge is a whole other story. It also has Edge's typical appearance and habits, such as her laugh and grin, but its voice is FAR MORE DEMONIC than the real one, and it has a bit of Edge's voice as well as the deeper darker tone in it, almost as if an evil powerful demon has slipped inside of and possessed Edge's body, using her as its vessel for its soul, and is speaking through her! One must wonder if this had been the person that Edge used to be, before her reformation.
    • JEANIE could only guess if it was made through the DNA blueprint of the Megabug and adds another possibility that it created it by itself. The battlefield has four visible statues of Midnite, Bedrock, Daphne, and Kanya (the latter which was broken), but Edge does not have a statue of her own, which is most likely due to her leaving the Spark Hunters for good.
• Cursa itself is absolutely terrifying. Its entrance early on in the game is unsettling and Starburst is the one to tell them that it barely managed to escape from it, but since Cursa is seeking to take their energy, it won't stop pursuing them and with the creature being able to use portals that allow for it to travel quickly along with the fact that it has the Spark Hunters and the Mooks including it brainwashing Bowser's minions to increase the chances that one of them will obtain a Spark, there is no safe refuge for the poor Sparks. When the WM ARC arrives to save Mario, Rabbid Peach, Starburst, and Beep-0, Cursa almost gets a hold of them when they escape.
  • Cursa's next scene has it give orders to Spark Hunters, Midnite, Bedrock, and Daphne to bring the creatures (the Sparks) to it since it needs their energy and its red eye glows bright as it tells them their objective. The Spark Hunters are all in silhouettes with bright white eyes before they turn orange before they leave.
    • And if you recall the last part of the scene that took place before it where Beep-0 believes that since they will be protecting the Sparks, then Cursa won't be able to bother them ever again. But with the aforementioned scene, he's DEAD WRONG!
  • Once it is revealed that Rosalina is firmly under Cursa's control, JEANIE reveals that Cursa's true goal is even more horrific, and it was draining the Sparks of their energy in order to crush her will and hope and force her to completely submit to its control.
    • It is especially terrifying to think that Rosalina has been fighting back, but think about it; in one of the scenes where Cursa is extracting the energy from the Sparks that Daphne delivered to it and it was briefly halted when Rosalina took control, but with the energy Cursa extracted, it was clearly getting harder for her to break free and she could not do anything to stop Cursa from retaking control and completely absorb the Sparks. We also see the effects of being drained by Cursa after they are free alongside their adoptive mother and they look like white lifeless husks which has the similarities of SKELETONS!
    • And also in this scene, Midnite and Bedrock both failed to present any Sparks for Cursa, and its response is to crush them with its hands and even though it misses, it goes to show that Cursa never cared for any of its creations, and she even tries to do this to Edge during the final battle. It is no wonder Edge turned against it.
  • Once Rosalina is freed from Cursa, the latter is so consumed with rage and hatred that is exceedingly savage in nature, and during the its defeat cutscene, it charges at the Heroes and its eyes are very narrow at this point to convey how furious it is and it clearly wants them slain in extreme prejudice and it would have succeeded if the drained Sparks did not turn themselves into a laser to damage it enough for the Heroes to finish them off.
• A minor one in the beginning of Rayman in the Phantom Show; Rayman arrived at the Space Opera Network completely alone and most of the corridors are mostly dark and gloomy. Once Rayman defeats the Stooges, he looks at the gold ticket he received and begins to suspect that the Rabbids are somehow behind this and is apprehensive about it. When you think about his bad experiences with them throughout the Rayman Raving Rabbids series, you can tell he is not completely over it and he does not know about how much the Rabbids changed yet.