Per wiki policy, Spoilers Off applies here and all spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned.
This is just the first case and there is already a body that was witnessed.
As a game about murder mysteries, Master Detective Archives: Rain Code unsurprisingly has more than a few unsettling moments.- Due to the pact he had made with Shinigami, Yuma is quite unsettling when one stops to think about him. He has the ability to kill the culprit of any Mystery Labyrinth he enters, without leaving any evidence, and there's little the culprit can do to stop him aside from trying to hide the truth. The concept behind Shinigami as a character was "What if Monokuma/Junko were on your side?", and it shows. And since the culprits don't know about the threat he poses to them, he's grade A Paranoia Fuel. It's easy to interpret their last stands against GOD Shinigami as fighting to protect not only their lies, but also their lives.
- Look at most of the quotes from the GOD Shinigami segments. Now remove the context. Suddenly, they look less like someone denying their crimes and more like someone begging for their life from a murderer...which, given the above, is very apropos.
- The very first chapter of the game begins with a doozy. Yuma wakes up in the bathroom, only to smell smoke from the nearby infirmary. Then he sees Zilch inside with a knife stabbed in him, and by the time Yuma breaks open the door with a fire extinguisher, Zilch appears to have been burned to a complete crisp, with all the skin burned off, and only his glasses remaining as his identification. Yuma goes to look for the other Master Detectives, only to discover each and every one of their burned corpses one by one.
- All the Nail Man crime scenes. The victims have nails driven into them, and dolls are nailed down and strewn throughout the rooms, so the crime scenes look quite eerie. And on top of that, all the rooms have the keys to them inside, which makes them locked room mysteries, so one can't help but feel at first that the crimes appear impossible, unless they were done by the Nail Man of urban legend. Even worse is when investigating Victim No.2 at the mansion, one prominent Solution Key involves the doll on the wall with its eyes missing, leaving empty black eyesockets staring right at you.
- Everything about Yomi Hellsmile. Everything. From his murderous intentions to his short temper, it's hard to hold one's fear around him.
- While watching the play at the start of Chapter 2, a scene in which one of the princesses will die via poison turns into a real murder. Yuma and several high schoolers have to witness Karen groaning in pain and then coughing up blood before collapsing. By the time you get to investigate her body, it has already turned gray, her face locked in pure agony. This death was animated, and it is not pleasant to watch.
- At the end of Chapter 2, Yomi decides to punish Martina for not solving Karen's case and for letting the detectives get away. Martina reluctantly accepts it before Yomi reveals that there's a high-performance presser that can compress things into cubes. It doesn't take long before Martina realizes that she'll be turned into a cube. One can only imagine how utterly painful it is to go out that way, and given that Yomi knows how it can even turn humans into cubes, it's clear that he's used it before. And seeing Yomi take delight at punishing his right-hand woman is outright terrifying, especially when his eyes turn black at one point, especially with his chilling final words to Martina.Yomi: "Oh, and Martina? What is love?"
- Yomi's Villainous Breakdown at the end of Chapter 3, absolutely outraged by things in the city not going his way and his way only, enraged about there being "no peace in Kanai Ward." Applied In-Universe too, as the agency (and Kurumi) are understandably terrified by his outburst.
- In Chapter 4, imagine being fatally stabbed by a hitman and having Yomi kick your dying body several times out of spite. This is one of Yomi's most abusive moments ever, and Yuma's screaming and begging sum it up horrifically.
- Examining Dr. Huesca's corpse shows you the knife in his back, but there also appears to be other holes made by the knife, suggesting that the culprit, (that is to say, our friendly Chief Yakou) stabbed him multiple times.
- Vivia during the Mystery Labyrinth, as well as the investigation, in Chapter 4 is downright terrifying, even more than he typically is, and for good reason. He gets up close and personal with Yuma, and even tries to confront him via very direct means on the matter of the culprit. As well as this, he also points out that he's been aware of what Yuma has been doing with the death god who's been haunting him right to his face, that being killing the prior culprits, and even shows contempt and a willingness to murder him, not only to avoid him from knowing that Yakou's the one who killed Dr. Huesca, but also as a means to stop him from causing further destruction with Shinigami's powers. Then he takes sides with Mystery Phantom Yomi and outright tries to stab Yuma to death when attacking him with arguments, which he actually succeeds at if the player fails to counter his attacks.
- After Shinigami respectfully sends Yakou's soul off, the Mystery Labyrinth is still up, meaning that there's more to this mystery than it seems. After going down a secret passageway, the heroes are attacked by a glitchy Mystery Phantom (actually one of Yomi Hellsmile) who sounds outright demonic when telling you to Get Out!
- The ending cutscene of Chapter 4. Aside from the ominous atmosphere, music, and general sense of dread within the detectives in the moment, the situation itself is pretty grim. Their guide, Number One, mysteriously ends up dying in an explosion on the other end of the screen, and they receive a video feed of the WDO, the organization they work for, being caught in a terrorist bombing. Then, gas begins emitting from Yuma's pocket due to a trap from the Big Bad, the gas then completely filling up the room, knocking everyone unconscious and the following events being uncertain. Note that these are the same characters Yuma, and therefore the player, had been working with during each of the four main cases they assist in.
- Adding to this, the fact that it happens right after Yomi is finally defeated and the detectives discuss the unanswered horrors behind Kanai Ward, making the player well-aware that the Big Bad (Makoto Kagutsuchi) is no longer playing games and is actually showing the true extent of his villainy.
- Practically the whole Chapter 5 investigation segment oozes this.
- In the first scene, Yuma and Shinigami wake up and find themselves in a dark room. Then they see a dark silhouette walking outside the window... and then it stares at them with red eyes and looks utterly inhuman. Seeing that while finding themselves in a dark room understandably makes Yuma and Shinigami freak the fuck out and leave the room.
- The next scene reveals why things feel utterly unsettling. Yuma reunites with Kurumi, and they leave the house, only to find themselves in a strange village. Then they see a nearby man facing the wall, and Yuma approaches him... only for the man to scream in Yuma's face and try to bite him. It doesn't take long for Yuma and Kurumi to realize that he's a zombie. They then flee from more zombies and take shelter at a nearby building and discover that they're in the restricted zone. Then three zombies break into the building, and what's worse is that they turn out to be Yoshiko, Waruna, and Kurane, who were the culprits of Chapter 2 and are supposed to be dead, and yet they're very much alive as zombies. It's at that point that you realize that something seriously dark and messed up is going on here.
- After that, Yuma and Kurumi learn from a letter that all the zombies here are homunculi, and malnourished ones seek human flesh. Not long after, they see the Priest from Chapter 1. Yuma approaches him since he appears calmer... only for the Priest to attack him like the others. They flee, but Shachi suddenly appears and turns his head toward them with a monstrous scowl. Then Icardi falls from a nearby pole and gets up without a problem, and the Worshipper appears as well. The fact that many of the deceased characters encountered in the past are now here as zombies and have neither humanity nor their personality traits from when they were alive is both tragic and terrifying.
- It gets even worse. Yuma and Kurumi find themselves in a factory for meat bun production and encounter several groups of hungry zombies. Thankfully, they are easily distracted by the Ama-Pals playing music and distributing meat buns, but it raises the question of why the zombies like meat buns in particular... and then it's revealed at the end of the factory: the buns are made from human corpses, which are stored in a nearby freezer. The fact that Makoto has been feeding the whole population of Kanai Ward for three years with these meat buns must have involved kidnapping thousands of people. Even if all the people were vile criminals who would've been sentenced to death row anyway, the whole operation is just so disgusting and inhuman that no one can blame Yuma for almost throwing up from learning about this.
- The truth behind the Blank Week Mystery is incredibly dark. Every last resident of Kanai Ward was devoured by homunculi, and we've seen how vicious homunculi can be when they're berserk and hungry for human flesh. Essentially, the whole city was attacked by immortal zombies, and no one was spared. It's even darker once you realize that some of the homunculi are children, so not only were the originals devoured, but their homunculi participated in the attacks as well. Imagine what it would be like if you saw a zombie-like creature that looks like a child, and it attacked you mercilessly. If the Deduction Denoument is any indication, some people were killed by the same individual homunculi who would replace them (namely Dr. Huesca being menaced by his homunculus).
- In the final Deduction Denouement, when Yuma and Shinigami discuss how all the Kanai Ward residents were replaced with homunculi, all the Kanai Ward characters that Yuma has encountered beforehand are seen in the background. Fine enough, but then all of them fall down to the ground and sink into pools of red blood. They're immediately replaced by the homunculi, who are shown with black eyes and red pupils. Then they are seen eating meat buns, but they stay as their berserk homunculus selves. It's quite disturbing to say the least. It hits you with the fact that all these characters, good and evil, are homunculi deep down.
- Makoto Kagutsuchi and Yomi Hellsmile are generally terrifying as villains and a duo that are a realistic portrayal of power-mad leading executives who willingly abuse their positions, as the Amaterasu Corporation's two leaders. Obviously Evil designs aside (especially Makoto's ominous masked face), they're both deliberate and calculated schemers who will do anything they can to achieve their goals and don't care about who interferes with said goals (albeit Makoto actually has the ability to empathize unlike Yomi), and pretty much everyone is scared of Yomi as well. As for Makoto, though still an extremist, his willingness to deceive multiple people without them even knowing and without taking any physical fights himself (besides the one with his original counterpart) is almost impossible to even conceive of doing to the ruthless degrees he does it to - but it happens in the real world as well for those who gain control over an entire population of people. Even the arguments they have with one another during Chapter 3 and 4 just emanate of their horrendous disregard for the city's population under their rule and their only concerns being who has more power over it than the other.
- The fact that Makoto Kagutsuchi's motive for everything that he does for the homunculi stems from an existential crisis over being Number One's clone. Being a clone of someone as intelligent as him, he was forced to realize what he actually was, and as a result, he ended up losing any sense of moral restraint and turned to doing villainous things in an instant (starting with his escape from the UG). Then when he ended up at Kanai Ward, his empathy towards the homunculi alongside Yomi Hellsmile's contrasting apathy towards Kanai Ward as a whole drove him to extremism, which in turn led him to doing many terrible things, of which he severely regrets and knows is bad but feels like he's forced to do anyway. This would, of course, involve deceiving the main characters and trying to kill his original self because of his strong sense of justice. Of course, the true nightmarish thing is that Yuma could've also turned out like this if he was pushed into doing the same things, due to being that original self in question, which is something that Makoto represents.
- In a peculiar case, not so much a specific sound or event, but one of the tension tracks in the game's soundtrack, that being "The End of Fun! Fun! Fun?"
, is incredibly haunting and almost demonic, like impending doom in sound form. Though, it fits the Dark Fantasy genre of the game, at the least. A remix of it is even used in the aforementioned Chapter 4 ending, appropriately titled "Explosion of the World Detective Organization", just to emphasize the dread of the situation.
