Nightmare Fuel / Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order

"You Have Failed Me, Inquisitor..." ^note This is before he cuts her down.

• At the beginning of the game, Cal and his co-workers work to dismantle a Republic flagship that crashed above a giant pit. Not just any pit, but the mouth of a Sarlacc-like creature known as an Ibdis Maw. If you fall, you won't die from the fall, but getting eaten by a giant creature, which is almost what happens to Cal's co-worker on site, Prauf, when an accident causes the working platform to tip over.
  • It’s stated that the Maw is actually one super-organism stretching over the entire planet, with the pit in game simply being one of its many mouths.
  • The breaker yard of Bracca is nightmarish enough even without the Maw. The Empire's tendency towards No OSHA Compliance is in full effect here, with workers clambering across the wreckage of Clone Wars-era ships with little if any safety gear whatsoever.
  • Apparently, the poor safety conditions are something deliberately enforced by the Empire as punishment for the planet's support of the Separatists during the Clone Wars.
• After saving Prauf with the Force, the two discuss Cal's next move on the tram ride back. After a little chat, Cal shuts his eyes and dozes off. When he wakes up, he sees Prauf moving on ahead through the crowd, and tries to catch up with him. However, his grizzled older friend is one step ahead of them, disappearing through door after door to the tram cars ahead, seemingly unable to hear Cal calling out to him. But the creepy part comes in when Cal's fellow passengers start fading away, the lights start going out...and then, reaching one door, Cal can't get it open. So he turns around...and suddenly, he's not on the tram anymore. Now the cold, sterile walls of a Republic cruiser surround Cal, and as he tries to proceed down the hall, it extends in an unnatural way. Alarms begin blaring all around him, a door slides shut in front of him...and then it suddenly swings open, revealing his dead Jedi master, who imparts him with a chilling message before he wakes up:
  Jaro Tapal: Trust only in the Force.
• Trilla Suduri, aka the Second Sister, a mysterious high-ranking Inquisitor. At first, she wears a mask and doesn't even say anything, in contrast to how her fellow Inquisitors tend to give out pleasantries and chat it up with their victims. It makes her seem like an almost machine-like Super-Persistent Predator intently focused on hunting its prey.
  • It isn't much better when the mask comes off - that just means you can see her sadistic smile as she closes in, clearly relishing the idea of slaughtering you and crushing the hope for future Jedi.
• When Cal seemingly makes a getaway on the Mantis, it doesn't stop the Second Sister from jumping onto the ship and dropping down to the windshield in a Jump Scare. While Greez tries to shake her off, she puts her hand on the glass and applies the Force, yanking the controls out of his hands and sending the ship into a tailspin. If they hadn't managed to shake her off in time...
• The Purge Troopers. Since you can One-Hit Kill Stormtroopers, the Empire compensates that weakness for these guys. They wear bulky armor, wield electro-weapons that let them keep up with Jedi, and some of them actually enjoy it when their targets fight back.
  • According to the lore, the Purge Troopers are the last batch of the Jango Fett-template clone troopers that are exclusively used by the Inquisition as largely disposable cannon fodder, bred for discipline and unquestioning, unthinking loyalty to the Empire. The fact that the Inquisition uses the same type of clone trooper that originally carried out Order 66 to now exclusively hunt down Jedi is nightmarish all on its own, even without their elite status and fanaticism towards the Empire.
• If all the Imperials trying to kill you on Kashyyyk weren't enough, there's also the giant enemy spiders known as Wyyyschoks lurking out there in the wilderness. Their fangs are bigger than your hands, and they like to pounce on their prey. You'll come across stormtroopers being massacred by them, or bodies webbed up in spider gunk.
  • The appropriately named Shadowlands are even worse: nearly everything down there is hostile, from the aforementioned Wyyyschoks, acid-spewing, ram-slug crossbreeds known as Slyyygs, giant carnivorous plants, and snake-like parasitic flowers. The fact that the place is incredibly dark most certainly doesn't help.
• Some areas requires Cal to squeeze through some narrow gaps. Not fun if you're claustrophobic.
• Dathomir is back, and it's every bit as nightmarish as it was in Clone Wars. Among the beasts roaming the planet are dog-sized Bane Back Spiders, ferocious Nydaks, and massive bats named Chirodactyls. The few sentients around are either hostile Nightbrothers or Taron Malicos, a Dark Jedi who went mad due to his prolonged stay on the planet, since Dathomir is shrouded in the Dark Side. Even the weeds used for climbing look like they're made of blood or living organs.
  • The tomb you visit on Dathomir is easily one of the creepiest locations in the game, with ominous red lighting and the petrified corpses of ancient Zeffo fused to the walls. The lore behind the place is no better, with the implication that the previously benevolent Zeffo gradually fell into darkness and depravity, resulting in mass sacrifices of their own kind in a bid to obtain more power.
• When Order 66 is executed, Cal is just a kid that beforehand, had an almost brotherly relationship with the clones under Jaro's command, and in a blink of an eye, he and Jaro are betrayed by these troopers. On top of that, he ends up watching Jaro die trying to protect him, leaving him with Survivor's Guilt for at least five years. Poor kid needs therapy.
  • The game brings the confusion, terror, and despair of Order 66 to life by placing you in Cal's position: the clones, your allies that you pal around with, make jokes with, and train with all turn on you and try to kill you within seconds of receiving the order. Their attitude takes a complete 180 as they go from playful banter to murderous determination. The fact that the clones are voiced by Dee Bradley Baker himself drives the knife even deeper.
  • Not helping is the fact that, with just familiarity with the movies themselves, let alone any other element of the Expanded Universe (either continuity), it's VERY easy for the player to guess going in that this is the cusp of Order 66, be it context clues or just the basic tone of the game to that point. So every second you're walking Cal through what he clearly sees as just another day, the player recognizes that this is GOING to be the worst day of young Cal's life, and is just waiting for the moment it all turns to hell.
• When Cal finally unlocks the Temple, he's suddenly treated to a vision of what could, and likely would, happen if he went through with the plan. It starts out well enough, with a group of younglings around him, eager to learn, but it becomes pure horror from then on out. They're found by the Empire, and we see younglings crawling through trenches trying to hide, a young Padawan ambushing stormtroopers and purge troopers, before finally being cut down without mercy. The rest are left trapped in the Inquisitors' prison, terrified and begging for Cal to help. One is strapped to the torture chair, doubtless about to be brainwashed. It culminates in a vision of Cal himself in Inquisitor armor, red lightsaber in hand.
• We're treated to a first-person perspective of what Trilla went through at the Fortess Inquisitorius. She's helplessly strapped to a gurney, and all she can do is whimper as electric panels as big as her body are activated. Her anguished screams and sobs as the torturers get to work are nothing short of chilling.
  • The moment that segues into this flashback is a frightening presentation of Gameplay and Story Integration as well: Cal manages to take Trilla's lightsaber from her, but touching it inadvertantly triggers his psychometric abilities, which brings upon an unwanted Force echo and allows Trilla to escape with the holocron. Cal is forced to experience Trilla's torture firsthand, which is bad enough, but the scene also brings about the uncomfortable awareness that Cal's power isn't always helpful or benign, and can in fact be dangerous for him, especially considering it seems to have activated unconsciously when he grabbed the weapon.
    Trilla: Careful with that. It's been through hell!
• The final boss battle (if it can even be called that) against Darth Vader himself. After cutting down the Second Sister for her failure and casually tossing Cere aside, Cal finds himself completely outmatched against the Sith Lord, struggling just to stay alive as Vader overpowers him with both his lightsaber and the Force. Just as Vader is about to kill Cal, Cere returns and attacks. When Vader effortlessly bats her aside, Cere unleashes the dark side against him...and Vader is impressed by the depths of her fury and hate. While Cal is able to talk her down, there's a brief look of utter horror on Cere's face as she comes back to herself and realizes what she was doing.
  Darth Vader: Such hatred...You would have made an excellent Inquisitor. [...] Yes. Strong with the Dark Side. I can feel it inside of her.
  • His appearance in-game is full of this trope: Cere has seemingly gotten through to her fallen Padawan, Trilla, who seems on the verge of letting go of her hatred for her former Master...and then Trilla's face contorts into an expression of utter terror as that all too familiar rasping breathing comes from behind her...
  • Reinforcing Gameplay and Story Integration to a terrifying degree, the Sith Lord is completely unstoppable. Cal is so out of his depth that Vader doesn't even have a health bar. He swats away Cal's Force attacks with a casual wave of his hand. It takes everything Cal has to tear a generator out of the base and it's barely even a distraction to the Dark Lord. Vader, meanwhile, tears the base to shreds with a mere thought and creates a Flechette Storm out of panels, and if you try to continue actually fighting him he will kill you, instantly. It goes to show why Vader was the Empire's primary enforcer. All Cal can do is what Cere told him to do: RUN.
  • The very tactical guide log for Vader is nightmare fuel.
    Few survive an encounter with the most powerful Sith in the Galaxy.
    Escape is the only chance of survival.
  • Even worse is Vader literally ripping the base to shreds with the Force as Cal flees, regardless of any Imperial forces in the way. Every Hope Spot Cal gets to escape is brutally torn away. The door closing? He crushes it like a tin can. Cal is making a run to the elevator? The Sith Lord breaks the floor before he even gets close. Cal makes it to the elevator? Not only is Vader already across the gap himself, he's been there long enough to stop and stare at Cal. Cal gets all the way down the elevator after seemingly avoiding Vader trying to get in before it started going, and is in the home stretch to escape the base? Vader's already down there waiting for him and practically mid-swing with his lightsaber as you open a door. There's nothing Cal can do to even slow him down, much less stop him. Vader is in complete control the entire time and appears to be intentionally toying with Cal just to terrorize the Jedi Knight.
  • Made even worse by the score for the scene. It's not the Imperial March as one might expect for an appearance by Vader. Nope, it's Anakin's Dark Deeds from Revenge of the Sith. The Ominous Latin Chanting cutting in the moment that Vader kills Trilla drives home how absolutely screwed you are. While the Imperial March would have given the sense that Cal was fighting a man, instead, you feel like he's fighting a nightmare.
    Darth Vader: You would be wise to surrender.
    Cal: Yeah. Probably.
    • The look of utter terror on Cal's face says it all.
  • Vader's opening move is to grab Cal with the Force, drag him close and then start using his Signature Move of throttling Cal with the Force. And this is shown from Cal's point of view, which gives the player the wonderfully terrifying view of Vader standing over them and saying one of several lines, with the most chilling being simply:
    Submit.
    • Equally terrifying is Vader's remark of "feeble", showing just how outmatched Cal is against the Dark Lord.
  • The Imperial March does kick in for one brief, booming moment: Vader's Jump Scare, as detailed below.
  • When Cal manages to lose Vader, he makes it back to the Imperial fortress's exit, activates the doors... and barely manages to get his lightsaber drawn in time as Vader emerges, swinging for Cal's head. Vader sends both Cal and BD-1 flying, stops Cal from recovering his lightsaber with the Force and, when Cal refuses to hand over the Holocron, reactivates the blade and slowly drives it towards Cal's chest with the Force. The only reason Cal survives is because Cere reappears, forcing Vader to divide his attention.
  • The way Cal and Cere beats him? The only way they could really think to keep him busy long enough to escape? Spring a hole in the aquatic base they're in and force him to focus on that instead. It takes the crushing depths of an entire ocean being dropped on him to give him any pause, and even then Vader emerges completely fine.
  • As if all this wasn't enough, a player with a keen eye might have begun to suspect Vader was coming due to an Interface Spoiler: in the enemy data bank, there is one last slot that is ranked even higher than Trilla. The player is left to wonder just what is still unaccounted for while they play through the game, and if they put two and two together, they're left to realize just who is coming.
  • It's Vader. Many players don't even bother trying to fight him. All that almost anyone can do against a Sith Lord is run, even a Jedi Knight, and Vader is at his Person of Mass Destruction best here.
• Foreshadowing-wise, the presence of Ilum, looking all too similar to Starkiller Base. Something about the faint outline of the trench running down the middle, coupled with the knowledge of what it will become, is spine chilling. The Rise of Skywalker Visual Dictionary confirms that this isn't a coincidence, either; Ilum is Starkiller Base.
• The way Merrin dispatches Malicos is terrifying, particularly for the claustrophobes in the audience.

  Merrin: It is as you said, Malicos. Dathomir will be your grave.