Nightmare Fuel / Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty

One man did this. ...Well, "man".

• Open a locker in the the Engine Room in the Tanker Chapter, and the corpse of a Marine falls out with accompanying Scare Chord. There is no explanation for it apart from inducing scare factor.
• In the second swimming section in the Shell 2 Core in the Plant Chapter, Raiden opens a door and the body of Peter Stillman floats out.
• That entire sequence inside Arsenal Gear: The Colonel and Rose are both revealed to be AIs. The AI gets corrupted by a virus, and the Colonel starts spouting nonsense. Some of the codec calls you receive in this section are truly horrifying: You're naked and unarmed, and while there's definitely something wrong with what's going on (besides you being naked, of course), there's nothing certain except that you really should get moving to finding your suit. Then you get a CODEC call from the Colonel. "Raiden. Turn the game console off RIGHT NOW." This line is especially jarring if you have been playing the game for an extended period of time. From this point on, the CODEC calls are filled with terrifying Word-Salad Horror, a lot of which is aimed directly at the player.
  • Adding to that, for some of the calls, the Colonel's portrait is replaced (at random) with an X-ray image of his face. This image◊, which only ever shows up for a split second, with no warning, is truly one of the most horrifying shocks in the entire series, and would make a great page image, were it not such a huge spoiler. It gets even worse - the skull's jaw continues to move when the Colonel's image talks at various points. To match that, occasionally Rose's AI will be pictured with glowing white eyes.
  • The entire sequence is backed by the extremely creepy and ambient "Arsenal's Guts".
  • Due to the randomised factor mentioned above, each time playing through this section will be unique, which only adds to the horror. In the video above, the line "Snake, you're all alone and surrounded by bad guys" is especially creepy.
  • Oh, and what if you're named Jack? The instinctive head-turning might get annoying after a while, but there's more to it than that. Think about when the Colonel AI goes into a monologue about the La-Lu-Li-Le-Lo, how they're trying to control all the world's information...and by extension, the world itself. The insults? The cruelty? The mental whiplash, the doubt, the pain...it's all aimed at you.
  • The line "Kawanishi-Noseguchi, Kinunobebashi, Takiyama, Uguisunomori, Tsuzumigataki, Tada, Hirano, Ichinotorii, Uneno, Yamashita, Sasabe, Kofudai, Tokiwadai, Myokenguchi." The creepy thing about these seemingly random words is that they keep showing up throughout the series. Gray Fox rattles them off in Metal Gear Solid while slaughtering the Genome Soldiers leading up to Hal's lab (although his lines tend to overlap with each other, so making out what he's saying can be somewhat tricky), the Mammal Pod in Peace Walker also spouts them off when its memory boards are removed, and Sunny uses them as lyrics in a tune while making her eggs. A decade later, Raiden asks Bladewolf what it means, and even it has no idea. ^note  In reality, it's a list of stations along the Nose Rail Line in Honshū, Japan. Though what significance it has in-universe, outside of being a fun Easter Egg, is never explained.
  • The entire Mind Screw related to Rose's role in the plot and the reveal that she and the colonel are AI programs has absolutely horrifying implications. Was she really spying on Raiden? Or was that simply something that the Patriots made her say as a hostage? Was she being held hostage, or was she going along with the plot (however begrudgingly)? If she's an AI as well, then at what point did she become so? Was the real Rose ever actually present in this game at all? The ambiguity as to whether anything about her is actually real or not, and the sheer lack of any certainty regarding this, carries the implication that the woman Raiden loves might not actually be there, or might be an entirely different person altogether, is anxiety-inducing to say the least. This is mitigated somewhat by the reveal in later games that they eventually, genuinely reconciled and are finally happy together, but the above questions still go entirely unanswered.
• Call the Colonel enough in the beginning of the Plant Chapter, and he tells you that they removed all of Raiden's blood and replaced it with artificial blood that includes nanomachines.
• The names of the parts of Arsenal Raiden's entering or exiting. (The 'oh WHAT' locations the AI throws at you are a relief, which, yeah.) Jejunum, Ilium, Ascending Colon - it's snicker-inducing at first, but then you stop to consider it, and you realize these are all parts of the human digestive system, so basically Arsenal ate you alive.
  • The... room... where you fight the Metal Gear Rays. (The Rectum). Nothing but an endless expanse of cloudy darkness with a platform in the middle of it. This platform doesn't seem to have any hatch or shaft in it, even though Raiden got there by climbing a ladder. As you fight, an endless wave of Rays slowly walk up to the platform and... wait. Waiting for their turn to fight you. After the battle, Raiden is saved from the remaining Rays by Olga, who drops down from above, even though there's only sky above him and nowhere she could've possibly dropped from. Eventually, he passes out and wakes up on top of Arsenal Gear, with no explanation of what the hell that room was, or how he, Solidus, or Olga got into or out of it. Was it just a holographic simulation created by a horrifically damaged AI? Is poor Raiden just suffering a complete break from reality after everything that's been done to him?
    • According to Kojima's script in The Document of Metal Gear Solid 2, the RAY boss fight room was going to be Arsenal Gear's RAY hangers. An endless series of hangers, with no walls marking the limit of Arsenal itself.
  • Arsenal Gear itself. Imagine a huge black beast loaded with nukes and Rays resting just below the water's surface. Then think of all the people who were utterly crushed when it crashed into NYC.
    • You know what also doesn't help? Arsenal Gear's music. It's more eerie and horrifying when you're NOT being spotted. All it is is just scary voices and ambiance noises, echoing within Arsenal's hangar as if you're being watched...WHICH YOU ARE.
  • Or how it seems like the sheer concentration of information on Arsenal has caused it to hit some kind of critical mass and and begin warping reality. In addition to organ names, sections will randomly be named after real world locations, your minimap will be replaced with stock footage, the game itself begins to glitch out, entire sections (like the Rectum mentioned above) are nothing short of Alien Geometries and the Snake you meet is implied by the script to not even be real but spawned by the expectations of Raiden and the player that Snake would save the day. It all adds up to show that Arsenal is hostile to reality as we know it and that humanity was never, ever supposed to build something like this.
• They were more set pieces, and a puzzle than anything you had to actually, seriously deal with - but all those fucking sea lice in the Big Shell. Emma is appropriately terrified of them.
• How about Vamp's introduction scene of him slaughtering a group of soldiers in Strut B and then sucking one's blood?
  • Up until this point, Raiden is effectively re-treading Snake's steps from the original Metal Gear Solid. Then he enters Strut B and finds the bloody hallway—way sooner than Snake had in Shadow Moses. The only weapon Raiden has now is a silenced pistol. The SEALs in the room just ahead of him are equipped with assault rifles. Then someone starts cutting the soldiers down, one by one, with the last one firing every which way and screaming in terror before the assailant gets behind him and slits his throat. This is about the time Raiden—and the player—realize that he's out of his depth…
  • The part of the game where you have to protect Emma Emmerich from on top of a platform is both hectic and a bit jarring in itself... She's being hounded and hunted relentlessly by Vamp throughout the whole ordeal and fight. There's a bit of parental fears thrown into good measure along with the horrific inevitable out come which falls into the deep lines of some serious tear jerking territory.
• The Reveal that the events of the game have been a setup for an Ancient Conspiracy's plans to control information flow. Consider that Internet censorship and all attempts at it are very real and you can see why this is quite terrifying, even if the concept is somewhat different.
  • What the Patriots have in mind here, and prove they can do, is so much worse. The way they got Ocelot under their employ? leading him to believe the S3 plan was for "Solid Snake Simulation", because that's what the entire Big Shell Incident was. Except it's not. They were able to bait the most dangerous and cunning agent on the planet by provoking his fixation on Big Boss, all the while he had no idea of what it truly was: Selection for Societal Sanity. As the AI imitating Rose states, their aim is not merely so control existing information, but to "create context", and not just putting a face to unknown origins — but literally, as in scripting global events. The reason for the so-called "Solid Snake Simulation"? It was the ultimate test, to prove they could incite a global catastrophe on par with Shadow Moses, manipulate the developments on both sides of the conflict down to influencing subjective decisions made by individual players, and ultimately resolve the situation with, at the least, no net loss. Not only did they pull this off, but even when Solid Snake hijacked the scenario, the worst-case emergency they could have possibly encountered, they kept hold of the reigns and achieved their desired outcome. A situation that could trigger global nuclear catastrophe, the kind of situation that could truly destroy mankind, the kind of incident that would be echoed through history forever as what might have neared the end of the world — they could create and resolve on a whim. It says a lot that Liquid Snake's postmortem spirit is probably the only thing at that point in time which could throw a wrench in the plans of the Patriots.
  • Note that this game came out in 2001. The Paranoia Fuel aspect of this revelation is very eerily prophetic.
  • And for extra measure, not only was the game written in 1998 (right after the previous game's worldwide success), the game's own advertising pre-Substance plays into the plot twists and betrayal of player expectations, as well as the suppression of the truth.
  • What's worse is that the Patriots don't even bother with the pretense towards the end. They know that they have Raiden's number and tell him everything. Raiden cannot defy them even knowing he is nothing more than a puppet in some experiment in thought control, and by extension the player as well. They know that Raiden must win or else Olga's child will die.
• Raiden's backstory is equal parts horrifying and sad. Before the game even began, his parents were murdered by Solidus. Raiden (then named Jack) was drugged and conditioned to be a killing machine before the age of ten. Abused both mentally and emotionally, he tried burying his bloody past once he made it to the States - which made him the perfect pick for the Patriots' evil plan. Even in adulthood, the man continues to be used, abused, and betrayed by damn near everyone around him - even his love interest! It gets worse in later games, where his head and spine sans lower jaw is surgically removed and grafted on a cybernetic body against his will. As of Revengeance, all of Raiden's repressed memories and pent-up negative emotions/battle lust manifest in the form of the ultra-violent, bloodthirsty Jack the Ripper persona.
• Olga's backstory is also horrifying; imagine giving birth alone, with none of your friends and family to help support you, and the second you let yourself feel exhausted from the ordeal, the medical staff take the opportunity to steal your baby. It's the ultimate fear and it makes her actions in this game perfectly understandable.
• Emma's fear of water after nearly drowning at six years old. The line "The water... it-it wants me, it won't let me go..." can hit home for quite a few aqua/hydrophobes.
• Otacon revealing that he was molested by his stepmother, which was what lead to his father drowning himself and traumatizing Emma in the process. It's yet another horrifying revelation to add onto his life, and unlike many of the other tragedies he's experienced, it's an eerily realistic one. The sheer number of people who might relate to this experience makes it even harder to stomach.
• While the "External Gazer" Snake Tale chapter isn't canon, it literally makes the observant mind stop and think, since not only are they taking Snake's actions into account, but your own as well. Solidus hammers this lesson upon you if you decide to kill anyone in Otacon's VR simulations run by the mysterious Koppelthorn Engine. Even if you never kill anyone, if you fail any mission in the Tale and retry from the "Mission Failed" screen, Solidus still calls you out on it with the shocking facts that people you kill in environments created from varying areas of other universes in VR Missions are not only erased from their own universe, but all other universes as well that they also exist in, and every time you select "Continue" after the "Mission Failed" screen appears, an uncountable number of universes are destroyed when you do so, as Solidus pointedly explains to Snake, and yourself, the "External Gazer".
  Solidus: When you go through VR training, your actions within virtual reality are reflected in a set of corresponding universes. … For example, let’s say you just killed an enemy soldier within the VR simulation. That means that the universe containing the killed soldier was observed and made definite. In other words, universes where the soldier has not been killed lose their indefinite potential and are erased from existence. … Do you realize what this means? When your game is over in the VR system and you try again, the potential for existence for that very universe is denied and eliminated as never having existed. That means that every single time you replay the game, an uncounted number of universes are destroyed!

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