A "face" that only a mother could love.
Moment Subpages are Spoilers Off. You Have Been Warned.As with other MegaTen titles, Shin Megami Tensei V has plenty of horrific and gruesome stuff waiting for you around the corner...
Canon of Creation (Vanilla Game)
- The protagonist and his schoolmates are stopped from going back to their dorms by police officers and a wide tarp blocking off their way through the station. The purported reason for this? To keep the scene of a grisly murder from being viewed by the public. It's already bad enough that someone died in the middle of everyday life, but later on you realize that this was the work of a demon who attacked the supposedly safe haven of the duplicate Tokyo...
- How the protagonist ends up in Da'at. One moment he's going through a tunnel looking for Yuzuru at Miyazu's behest, and the next, the tunnel's collapsing around him. When he awakens, he's in a desert landscape where his home city should be. The sheer look of disbelief and shock on his face says how he feels about the whole situation, and unfortunately for him, it only gets worse when he runs into a group of Daemons...
- It's a lot worse for Ichiro, who was also dragged into Da'at with the protagonist. Not ten seconds after the protagonist finds him does he see Ichiro being held up by an angel. While the angel is helpful and brings him to Bethel, where he can be protected and sent back to the duplicate Tokyo, imagine how Ichiro himself must feel, being held up in the air by some otherworldly being. It apparently got worse for him when Nuwa and Yakumo raid the Diet Building, where they killed every angel and demon inside.
- Aogami's flashback showing Armageddon, the war that took place 18 years ago. It looks as though the armies of law and chaos are about to engage...until Lucifer suddenly descends from the sky and delivers a Wham Line: "The God you cravenly revere is dead.". Not only has he just announced he killed YHVH or his equivalent in V, but killing God is also the reason why Da'at looks the way it does. Without a Creator, both it and Tokyo are essentially left as they are, with the latter slowly disappearing with God's Shekinah Glory starting to fade while Da'at is left as a rotting, demon-infested wasteland. The worst part about all this is that Lucifer considers all this a means to an end for his grander goal of breaking free from the Mandala System and allowing humanity to become Nahobino.
- When you start a battle against a random encounter, you're immediately greeted with this
. It sounds like an air raid siren from hell. - If you still thought Tokyo was safe from demons at all, think again. Barely a day after the protagonist returns from his trip to Da'at does he discover that demons have started to invade the city. One of the invading demons is that ugly bastard up above, who makes it very clear he's going to find his "soul mate" (read: Sahori) and gorge himself on every other human he can find.
- Continuing with the creepiness that is Lahmu, he books it for Jouin High School. When the Nahobino arrives, he discovers that its been altered significantly, all within a handful of hours since he left for the temple to provide back-up. While you thankfully don't see any students being killed (save for Sahori's bullies), the fact that there are demons running around the entire school and rounding them up to be taken for Da'at is horrifying.
- The angels killed a huge number of captured students ("countless", according to the boy inside a fallen building in the Fairy Village), because they'd rather see those students dead than risk the creation of more Nahobino. The only survivors you find in the Fairy Village were rescued by fairies or Fionn.
- As Yuzuru reaffirms after Arioch is slain, Da'at isn't just some alternate world that went through absolute hell—it's your Tokyo. When the Conception happened, God created the Shekinah Glory, creating a false Tokyo while the real one became part of Da'at and turned into the demonic hellscape you see in the game. That's not the worst part, though: without God around to keep the Shekinah Glory miracle in place, the false Tokyo will gradually disappear. When you see the miracle starting to fade, you see buildings slowly dissipating on the horizon. Which raises the question: If the Shekinah Glory completely fades, what's going to happen to everyone living in the city?
- Abdiel becoming a Fallen Angel is a disgusting Body Horror sequence. First her body darkens as she starts to vomit black ooze, her wings turn black and seemingly fall apart while new bat-like wings sprout from her body. That's the least disturbing bit of her transformation. The real showstopper is when her face suddenly splits and she sprouts a new demonic head befitting her newfound fall from grace. Worse still, the remains of her human-like face are still there, hanging on the sides of her neck like the collar of a shirt.
- The noise made by Ippon-Datara when it spots you. It's a cross-up between a loud, distorted babbling and a Sinister Scraping Sound. In fact, many demons make some rather horrifying noises when they see you... Even if you didn't see them.
- While there are plenty of demons with some horrific, monstrous designs, by far the worst offender is series newcomer Femme Manananggal. To put it simply, she is Fan Disservice incarnate; she's completely nude, but the left half of her body is a decaying mess, her legs are separated from her torso, exposing her spine and some disgusting worm-like bowel. The lore of the Manananggal is not much better as she's a vampire in all but name that Eats Babies, specifically unborn fetuses. Doi himself said he pushed for Manananggal's inclusion in the game to fulfill the role of a "horror character". Don't take our word for it, though. See this Filipino horror for yourself. And just in case you think the real thing is any prettier...
- Some Demons have Uncanny Valley or otherwise nightmarish battle animations. Sraosha's "recovering from damage" animation has it violently jerking its limbs about as if putting its own bones back in order, while Angel's "low health" animation has its neck and limbs bent in unnatural directions and twitching, giving it the feel of an organic robot rather than a living being.
- The Demi-Fiend. Here is a demon so powerful that he destroyed his entire Multiverse, and he has taken an interest in the protagonist, and he has the fiends as his messengers. The nightmare kicks in when you consider how much more powerful he is compared to literally everything else, even Nahobino. If he decided to get involved and go on the offensive, the plot of this game would be a whole hell of a lot shorter.
Canon of Vengeance
- The first trailer of the Updated Re-release starts off in gruesome fashion as it shows the Qadištu attack Tokyo. Several humans are killed and outright turned into magatsuhi, which may or may not be a kinder death than the people who immediately follow who are crushed to death by Glasya-Labolas. Thankfully its a Gory Discretion Shot and there's no blood, but it's still a visceral sight.
- Eisheth Zenumin, despite being somewhat more attractive than Manananggal, is just as terrifying. Your first glimpse of her is in the first PV trailer and in the English Extended trailer where she's feasting on an unfortunate student, complete with a Slasher Smile look on her face. Her next appearance in the second PV is not much better as she's revealed to have a hand for a tongue, which she uses to devour human souls as seen in her unique skill. Worse, she has Miyazu in her clutches, which does not bode well for the girl at all.
- In the Canon of Creation, the Fairy Village was a safe haven for the kidnapped students. This is not the case in Vengeance; as seen in gameplay previews, the party arrives to find several students and demons having turned into statues made of salt. What's worse is that this isn't an isolated case as Koshimizu reveals it's also happening in the human world. Furthermore, it is not the work of the Qadištu, meaning no one knows who's perpetrating these attacks.
