Nightmare Fuel / Super Mario 64

KLANG! KLANG! KLANG! KLANG! KLANG! KLANG!

As the first true 3D game in the company's long history, the Nintendo 64 launch title Super Mario 64 was truly unlike anything else at the time the system released, serving as both a taste of what's to come for buyers of the console and the developers' playground for new ways to impress and excite generations young and old, and also scare the living daylights out of them.

If you thought that the regularly-occurring unnerving moments from Mario's previous adventures were as horrifying as the series would get... let us tell you, these were just nothing but appetizers for the main course. Be ready, this is gonna hurt!

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• Incidental or not, the original Super Mario 64 is the best example of a liminal space in video games. As these videos explain very well, the emptiness of a big 3D world lets to the most sensitive players the impression of being in a dreamlike world and leaves a more ambiguous tone to the World of Chaos the Mario universe has always been.
  • This impression in enforced by the haunting skyboxes. Bowser in the Dark World's skybox is some deep Creepy Cave with eerie stalactites, Lethal Lava Land/Bowser in the Fire Sea◊ has a hellish sky with ominous clouds which thanks to pareidolia looks like a evil face, Big Boo Haunt◊'s is a pitch black forest with a full moon and Bowser in the Sky◊ has a sea of clouds which thanks to the unnatural purple and dark colors looks utterly demonic. The skybox that creeps most people out however is Wet-Dry World, due to being an altered photo of a real city (Shibam in Yemen) made to look like it’s eerily abandoned and underwater. The DS remake adds Goomboss Battle, whose skybox is a creepy wood with dead trees and Ominous Fog.
  • Another enforcer is the weird exits of some levels:
    • When you complete the second Koopa's Road, the sub permanently disappears from Dire, Dire Docks. And that Bowser door opens underwater... becoming a big black hole that sucks you in if you get near it. It just dumps you outside Peach's Castle, but it can creep you out in the first run.
    • Similarly, in the Cavern of the Metal Cap (in the deepest area of Hazy Maze Cave), there's an area where if you get swept away by the current, you come out of a dark rectangular hole in the ground in the waterfall to the left of Peach's castle, which is very strange and uncanny. It's creepier if you discover the rectangular hole in the waterfall before the Hazy Maze Cave course: you can swim down into the rectangular black space wondering where the hell it leads to, but you can't actually enter the blackness (even as Metal Mario/Metal Wario) and will likely drown trying.
• Just entering the castle can be scary to younger players, as a hostile message from Bowser "seems to come from everywhere" (as phrased in the instruction booklet), accompanied by a Scare Chord and his distorted Evil Laugh.
• The Mad Piano in Big Boo's Haunt. It's pictured on this page for a reason; much Mario-related trauma has come from that enemy alone.
  • Let's set the context: after having explored lighthearted worlds (even Jolly Roger Bay has comforting music to settle down the loneliness), you discover a Boo in a corridor. It leads you to the backyard where all its friends are waiting for you and when you find it, it holds a kind of birdcage. After managing to defeat it, the cage falls on the ground and sucks Mario in. After the Star Select screen, you are now in Big Boo's Haunt, a dark level with a howling wind, disconcerting music, and big bars around it, giving you the feeling you're stuck in a birdcage. The area's boss kindly invites you to come in.
    Big Boo: Come on in here... heh, heh, heh...
  • You don't have much choice if you want to progress through the game. You enter and — because you don't know where to start in this new area — you go for the left door^note especially after being primed by the castle lobby's layout. The first course is accessed through the leftmost door on the lower floor. You discover an empty room — empty, that is, except for a chair and a piano in 3D, an indication that you can interact with them. You slowly approach the instrument, wondering what you can do with it or if some character will play it for you, and... it reveals teeth, bites you, and chases you around the room!
  • More specifically, when woken up, it reveals its lid banging up and down to reveal razor-sharp teeth while making sounds like someone angrily banging their fists on the piano keys. And to add insult to injury, one of the Red Coins is located behind it, so you'll have to approach it for the 8 Red Coins. And even worse, the piano is completely invincible, so Mario has to either move slowly to avoid waking it up or run away before it bites him if it wakes up: three hits (or two if he doesn't have his hat on) and he'll get mauled to death.
  • While they can't hold a candle to the Mad Piano, the Mr I from the same level are extremely creepy. Being a scary disembodied eyeball they are quite jarring compared to the more cartoony enemies in the game and are quite alarming for first time players.
  • The mansion in Big Boo's Haunt besides the aforementioned piano is just plain creepy, a lot of the textures on the walls, floor and even bookshelves have disturbingly un-cartoony lifeless colors. Even the front entrance when viewed from afar looks like a scowling face◊ with the two red lights by the door resembling eyes. The barbed cage around the area is pretty freaky too.
  • In the eagle-eyed view of the mansion, the house resembles a scary face◊ from above as well.
• Bob-Omb Battlefield's Chain Chomp◊ can be said to be the scariest Chain Chomp: the first time you enter the level and see a giant black ball with creepy staring eyes and a big mouth with sharp teeth in 3D dashing at you while giving an aggressive bark certainly did a big impression on young players. It can give even experienced players a tough time dealing with it compared to its brethren.
  • Another thing about Bob-omb Battlefield: When first entering the level, you can come across a trench with two iron balls rolling left to right. After defeating (and given that he explodes, probably killing) King Bob-omb, the trench now has three balls, implying that the third one is actually the corpse of the level's boss (though, if that is the case, it's a wonder there's anything left considering he exploded).
• Several players dreaded diving into Jolly Roger Bay's depths for one reason alone: Unagi, the first of many giant, carnivorous eels that would come to be known as Maw-Rays.
  • To start, its design, especially in its debut. It's an absolutely ginormous red eel with bioluminescent spots littering its back and a face consisting of two dead-looking, icy blue eyes and a gigantic maw filled with sharp, pointy teeth, making it look an awful lot like a real life deep-sea predator. While it has received a significantly Lighter and Softer redesign as of the DS remake, it still has an intimidating presence and is no less hostile.
  • What's bound to throw off new players is that it doesn't look quite that big at first as its head is poking out of the window of the sunken pirate ship. Then it decides to leave, meaning you get to bear witness to the true size of this monstrosity swimming around whenever you go down there, trying your best to never get close to it (because it deals quite a lot of damage).
  • For the level's second star, you're required to get close to it again, this time in a small opening on the wall. Watch as it opens its massive maw and roars once you get close enough.
  • To be fair, Unagi will never go out of its way to attack Mario. But approach the Brobdingnagian eel and Unagi will attack with one of the most nightmare-inducing bites ever to be programmed into a game.
• Speaking of Jolly Roger Bay, the secret level near its portrait The Secret Aquarium some players find unnerving. Despite the calming music, you are trapped in a windowed room full of water as your oxygen/health depletes forcing you to swim around to find coins to avoid drowning. Also looking out the windows you will see that the Aquarium is floating in the middle of the sky which gives the place Eldritch Location vibes.
• The entry to Lethal Lava Land (that flaming face painting that looks a lot like Giygas) may have been frightening enough to scare you out of the room^note Amusingly enough, developers anticipated this reaction, as this is course 7 while Hazy Maze is course 6. Worse yet, it is similar to the silhouette of Bowser's face that appears whenever you lose a life. One might think the creature would appear in the level, but it doesn't: it's just a face of death for a level fraught with danger.
• The Mysterious Mountainslide of Tall, Tall Mountain. One moment you're looking at all the happy little suns and moons lining the track... and the next they've been replaced by a skull and Mario's dropped to his death in the darkness. Creepy as it is, there's also very little warning for a first-time player the trick turn is coming, making it effectively a Jump Scare.
• Bubba (renamed as Cheep Chomp in DS remake), the giant fish (with Triangle Shades) that eats you out of a life on Tiny-Huge Island. Like Bowser, it's the way its model looks, along with its texture and size (which can take up most of the screen in certain camera angles). Unfortunately it's also not killable, but it can disappear through a glitch.
• You wouldn't think the butterflies in this game (or hell, butterflies in general) would be anything remotely scary, since they are minor aesthetic touches to the grassland levels and can even provide 1-Ups if you figure out how to make them. But the butterflies found in Tall, Tall Mountain and Tiny-Huge Island have something else in mind. Get too close to one (which is really easy to do on the latter course, since butterfly flocks are more plenteous there), and they turn into bombs instead. Once the bombs are formed, they chase after Mario, inflating more and more until they explode, hit their target, or hit something in their way. Many players have admitted to being scared of going to Tiny-Huge Island because of these things...the bombs, that is, not the butterflies, since they're so small that it's hard to tell how the bombs materialized in the first place. It's a Jump Scare at its finest.
• Bowser encounters all have something nightmarish in them, may it be the levels, the battles, or simply the castle rooms where the Koopa King has settled himself:
  • The first stage is in a corridor behind the first Big Star Door: you see Princess Peach's distressed portrait at the end, expecting to enter in as you did before, only for the portrait to suddenly change to Bowser with hellish eyes staring at you and his reptilian mouth roaring, before you get caught in his trap. Not to mention the Dark World itself: it's a platforming road settled in what looks like a Creepy Cave with a pressuring music track.
  • The second one, in the basement's Big Star Door, is in another corridor, but with the strange slimy wall that leads to Dire, Dire Docks and only recoils after you complete the sub mission. The Fire Sea is another Lethal Lava Land and the section before the pipe has a collapsing bridge which can burn you into lava if you're not fast enough. After that, the battle is no slouch compared to the first: Bowser starts by making a skyward jump to tilt the stage to drop you to your doom, charge you like an angry bull, and even teleport across the arena. Except from the first gimmick, his other powers remain during the last battle.
  • The last stage is settled in the creepiest part of the castle: the endless staircase. Settled behind a Big Star Door between two Peach portraits, it's just a dark hallway with ominous red lighting and red stairs lined with the aggressive Bowser portraits on the left and the distressed Peach portraits on the right. As you run up, you hear this tedious looping music that sounds like it's going up forever... just like the stairs themselves, if you don't have enough stars. The chromatic xylophone scale music itself just happens the moment you start running, haunting unprepared players. Even if you reach the minimum star requirement and have access to the final level, the room is still dimly lit with a big Bowser portrait and a hole awaiting for you on the top, making it very unsettling to go through.
    • The final Koopa's Road, is addition of being the hardest, is settled in a purple sky, giving the impression of being in a twisted heaven. This sensation can be amplified by the final section before the pipe, a big platform with pillars of Mario and Bowser fighting◊.
    • Bowser's especially frightening in the final battle, due to his green glow, his three varieties of fire breath attack, his seismic stomps, the fact that one bomb isn't enough to end him this time, the arena collapsing to take the form of a giant star which makes the final throw extremely difficult, and the reprise of his battle theme on a pipe organ.
• Mario's drowning and death by toxic gas animations are disturbingly realistic, especially for kids. When he drowns, he desperately puts his hands on his mouth, clutches at his throat, then his body slowly goes limp, and the toxic gas death is similar except that his body twitches after he dies.
  • Even worse, when Mario drowns in the original game, he gurgles, and if you stay still when he's in toxic gas, he puts a hand on his throat and coughs repeatedly due to the lack of air, like he's sick. When you explore the Toxic Maze in Hazy Maze Cave, you better find a safe spot or collect coins to heal, or Mario will slowly choke to death due to the lack of air.
  • Using the Ground Pound at the right time in a high fall will allow you to land safely. However, if you don't use it in time or use it too soon, Mario will get hurt and lose a lot of health after landing. If the fall drains all his health, he moves around like he's dizzy and then falls to the ground sit, then his body goes limp.
  • If Mario gets stuck under the rolling log or the tilting platforms in Lethal Lava Land, the moving platforms in "Bowser in the Fire Sea", or the ramp to the Ice Bully in Snowman's Land, the sound he makes when his rump is roasted plays in a distorted and rapid manner even during the Bowser laugh fade-out. While it's technically a glitch, it still sounds rather creepy.
  • Mario's normal death animations vary depending on where he's hit. If he gets hit from the front, he falls on his back, and if he gets hit from behind, he falls in a prone position. Regardless, his death animation has him struggling to get up and then he falls back down lifelessly. It doesn't help that when he dies in most ways, he has X-like eyes, though this was toned down in the DS remake where he just closes his eyes, but even then, his mouth is visible and remains agape in an expression of pain on his face as he dies, and when he drowns, his eyes remain open in a way that seems rather empty.
• Amps, touching a wrong treasure chest in Jolly Roger's Bay and the shockwaves that Bowser causes after landing back to the ground following a failed throw will shock Mario. If he loses his last amount of health from the electric shock, Mario's body goes limp and he falls to the ground lifeless.
• Heck, even the Game Over screen of all things can be unsettling, with a worn-out looking Mario head suddenly appearing in front of you and the music being a portion of the Bob-omb Battlefield/Whomp's Fortress/Tall, Tall Mountain/Tiny-Huge Island theme slowing down to a pretty unsettling result, and the screen being red does not help. Sure, the Mario head becomes happy again and the background reverts to blue while the upbeat title screen music winds up, but still.
  • The OST version of the theme takes it up to eleven, as it has some extra chords added in, making it sound demonic.
• A Dummied Out enemy for Super Mario 64 called "Motos" were discovered. They behave rather similarly to Chuckya (they're mini King Bob-Ombs that grab you and throw you in a random direction) and seem to be related to the Bullies (the Bullies have the name "Otos") in the game. They look rather unsettling and have some creepy looking dome. Like Bullies, they would've only appeared in the two lava levels of the game. Just imagine this robot-looking enemy throw you to your death in lava as you keep trying to jump out. At least the worst a Chuckya can do is throw you to a bottomless pit.

DS Remake

• The portraits of Mario, Luigi, and Wario are rather... creepy to see. There's also the locked rooms, where the three plumbers are trapped behind. If you try and go inside them without their keys, it won't work, as you hear Bowser's Evil Laugh. A fourth door is unlocked by collecting the shining bunnies and has a Star, but return after taking it and you'll hear the Boos laughing, then the character will leave in fear. What exactly is behind that door? We'll never know.
• Unagi looks more beastlike in this version, having smaller eyes and sharper and longer teeth.
• The added course Goomboss Battle is rather unsettling. First it’s a case of Mood Whiplash and Surprisingly Creepy Moment, as it’s located in Mario’s portrait within Peach’s calming balcony room accessible through the colourful Rec Room. Once you enter the level, you discover by its unique skybox it takes place in a creepy and dead looking forest covered in fog with toxic gas littering the course. The Goomboss himself while more goofy than scary (partly because of his cross-eyed gaze and the fact that he's, well, a giant Goomba), is still quite unnerving due to the fact he starts to run after you faster after enough damage.
• Super Mario 64 DS manages to make Big Boo's Haunt even scarier for two reasons:
  • In the original, the Mad Piano's chasing animation is just incoherently rumbling around and the chomping/"banging on the keys" sounds aren't even synched up with its movement, making it feel a little more like a mechanical trap that's just trying to hit anything close by. In 64 DS, however, the piano seems to be alive, as not only are the sounds now synchronized with its animation, but the animation itself has a distinct "pouncing animal" quality to it, which makes it much scarier because now there's a very coherent and methodical vibe to its chasing, like it's a conscious, sentient predator preying on our poor heroes. If you need another proof, the texture of its mouth also shows a giant tongue◊.
  • The area where you get the key to unlock Luigi is pretty scary too. You jump in as Mario and arrive at an area that seems like a rather simple The Lost Woods level, where a wrong door will take you to the beginning of the level. Wouldn't be too bad if it wasn't for the absurdly frightening laughter King Boo keeps dishing out as you run through the level...and the fact that it's the only clue to getting out of the maze. The Creepy Circus Music at the start doesn't help either.
    King Boo: Eee hee hee... There are no exits. You may as well wander in here forever... Listen carefully. Can you hear me? If you find me, you're history. Eee hee hee...
    • The added boss fight with King Boo in the DS remake to is pretty damn creepy itself. Taking place in front of a giant mirror, when Mario looks into it, his reflection suddenly turns into Luigi and King Boo appears to taunt you. Furthermore, King Boo can only be seen inside the mirror itself with only his shadow letting you know where he is, which is quite unnerving.
• If you play Luigi in the Mirror Room, you can go through the door on the other side: you'll only find a White Void Room with a single star in it◊. Another thing that will forever be a mystery.

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