While Pokémon Clover's quite a shocking game, most of the time its antics are Played for Laughs, be it through Black Comedy or crossing the line twice...
...which just makes the intentionally unnerving bits all the more startling.
BEWARE OF ALL UNMARKED SPOILERS BELOW!
- The Unjoy line, a homage to the Pokémon Creepypastas of the late 2000s that manages to invoke the same kind of terror. Both Hanginy and Chancer are undead versions of Happiny and Chansey respectively, and seeing the otherwise-cutesy Pokémon in a rotting state can be quite jarring. Unjoy, a dismembered Nurse Joy head, is by far the worst of the line, thanks to its bleeding eyes, Ghostly Gape, and horrifying back sprite.
- While most of Parax Town (the game's substitute for Lavender Town) is quite tame, it does have one genuine scare. In the bottom-right corner of the town, there's a house that is nothing but a straight line towards a woman facing away from you. If you approach, she vanishes, and you are launched out of the house... except now the house is completely gone. What the house or woman was is never explained.
- Admin Woods- or, more specifically, Sesquatch. You can hear its cry as you explore the forest, and eventually you can see it stalking you as you go deeper (at one point in the darker section of the woods, it runs right in front of you). Once you reach the deepest part of the woods, you can find a sign; interacting with it causes Sesquatch to jump out from Right Behind You. It's quite a challenging fight, too,(especially if you try to catch it), as it has a Totem Aura and powerful moves.
- Not helping matters is that its most recent sprite (as of the 1.3 patch) looks super freaky, with its weirdly-realistic hands, More Teeth than the Osmond Family, and always looking at the player (even in its back sprite).
- Zanyis Town Ruins. Where to begin...
- First off, the Background Music. It's quite possibly the creepiest Lonely Piano Piece ever created, and just exudes a feeling of wrongness compared to the rest of the game's soundtrack.
- The town itself is no slouch, either. It's been withered to the point where the only thing making it recognizable as a former town are the destroyed remains of several houses. It's also pocketed with craters, suggesting that whatever destroyed the town was powerful and not exactly subtle.
- Inside one of the aforementioned craters is an entrance to the main attraction: the Rotting Pit. While the first room isn't so bad (it's a dark room with a rather difficult Pressure Plate puzzle), when you unlock the door and step into the next room, the music changes from the aforementioned Lonely Piano Piece to perhaps the most pants-shittingly terrifying ambient track in the entire game. Oh, and the room where this plays is a pitch-black (as in, Flash doesn't work here) maze made of bones. Did we mention that many of these bones look human, meaning that it's all but stated that whatever destroyed the town killed everyone living there?
- Finally, at the end of the Rotting Pit you find just what destroyed Zanyis Town in the first place: Endranther, a Walking Wasteland Olympus Mon that (unlike most of the game's Pokémon) looks genuinely unnerving. Its battle theme helps add to the creep factor, as it sounds like an unholy antichrist love child of Giratina's battle theme and Ghetsis's battle theme. The whole experience feels like you're fighting Satan itself.
- After speaking to a scientist and going back to the Blacksmith Mansion, you will notice that in the room where you met Polk for the first time, there's a hole in the wall, that leads to a secret lab. And the reason it was sealed was for good reason: after receiving a message from Ebin regarding Narwhalz, some scientists decided to create Niterpent, a Pokémon designed for war, to counter it. However, when Niterpent refused to consume Blobbos or toxic waste as fuel, and revealed to take the life force of other Pokémon for a massive combat potential, the scientists thought it was a good idea to force breaking its empathy away. The result? Niterpent torches the laboratory (and presumably killing some scientists in the process), forcing the people to seal it. The person that wrote the memos even stated that the researchers were concerned, and that even the upper lab personnel were suspicious, and in the last memo, it's revealed that he took a cyanide pill as a refusal to be buried alive (even wondering why Niterpent managed to have more heart than an human being, despite being built for war).
- When the player keeps going down, the secret laboratory starts to degrade, the lower floors being rusted to beyond recognition, and with toxic waste as well. The music of the secret laboratory doesn't help either.
- In the Catalina Range on Gets Island, you can find an abandoned house by going through a hidden tunnel. The first thing of note is the Background Music for the house, which is eerily similar to the Background Music for the Old Chateau. It's completely empty at first, but after exploring the second floor, the previously non-functioning radio in the kitchen starts playing music. If you go back upstairs afterwards, you find a strange, shadowy figure in the bedroom, who completely vanishes upon entering the room. Walking into the bed at this point causes the radio music to cut out, leaving you in complete silence until you attempt to exit the house, at which point the spirit possessing the house finally shows itself and attacks. Of course, the scare factor dies down a bit when you realize that it's the ghost of Elvis Presley (or to be specific, Pretzely), and that there's numerous foreshadowing to its true nature up to that point, but still.
- While mostly Played for Laughs, Kymmi's fate prior to her defeat on the Ruse Cruise is quite disturbing. She's being used as a Decoy Leader for Team Karma against her will, with Vyglass controlling her through the Odd Dildo implanted in her. While it's never made clear whether the dildo hijacks complete control of her body or simply influences her actions, the point still stands that the Big Bad is raping his subordinate into doing what he wants. Jesus Christ.
- Speaking of Vyglass, the guy deserves a special mention for how terrifyingly effective he is as an antagonist.
- Even before you meet him, he shows himself to be ruthlessly competent with The Reveal that regular Team Karma's antics were simply a diversion to keep the protagonist (who he reasoned would be most likely to disrupt his plans) away from his true goal of catching Clovenix. By the time the heroes (and the audience) realize what (Neo) Team Karma's actual goals are, he's almost succeeded.
- When you confront him atop Mt. Clover, he reveals why he wants to capture Clovenix- to completely unmake and remake the region to his liking. He then fights you- not in a Pokémon battle, but with a literal mechsuit that you have to fight with your Pokémon. The music that plays during the battle doesn't help either, especially the intro - a crescendo that builds up to a horrible static screech that is equivalent to the mechsuit itself powering up to kill you. It almost sounds like the Game Boy Advance's sound chip is dying in its attempt to comprehend the notes and instrumentation that should be played.
- Even after you defeat the mech, he reveals that it can complete the task he needs it for with auxiliary power, uses it to forcibly uproot and awaken Clovenix... and uses a Master Ball on it. That's right- rather than try to control Clovenix through complex technology like Cyrus, he does what any competent player would do and captures it with the one Pokéball that never fails.
- After catching Clovenix, he retreats to a void outside the world, forcing the player to follow him to stop him... only for him to reveal that in the void, standard story dynamics do not apply. Namely, even though you're the Protagonist, you can lose and die in the void. Oh, and he capitalizes on this should you lose the battle against him: once he's left you defenseless, he has Clovenix obliterate you, prompting a reset to your last save.
- The Dead Regitrio; already unnerving on their own due to their decayed appearances, Fridge Horror makes it all the more terrifying. Canonically, this should be impossible. The Regis are designed to never rust, melt, erode, or decay in any way, shape, or form. So that leaves the question; what did this to them, and is it still out there??
- "Decaying" isn't the whole story either. By their idle animations, the Regis are actively struggling to stay alive for just a second longer. They even seem to keep outright dying only to reboot themselves back to "life" again, like revenants stuck in bodies that just cannot hold any longer. It's surprisingly eerie for such short loops of animation.
- What happens if you cheat. Before you can register your Pokémon in the Hall of Fame, police approach, arrest you for your crimes and throw you in a cell where you're effectively softlocked and unable to leave. There's one thing in the cell, though: a rope labeled the easy way out. If you decide to use it, the game fades to black and then you're taken back to the title screen, where you'll find out your save file has been deleted. Take into account that the playable character is ten years old.
