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Nightmare Fuel / The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

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"Do not look away. You witness a king's revival... and the birth of his new world."

Tears of the Kingdom may be Lighter and Softer than the previous installment in some aspects, but don't let that fool you into thinking it lacks some chilling energy of its own, because it features the return of a certain Demon King...

Unmarked spoilers below.

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    Promotional Material 

Announcement Trailer (E3 2019)

  • In the first seconds of the trailer, a heartbeat can be heard in the background. A small case of foreshadowing, considering what Link, Zelda and the viewers find when they reach their destination.
    • The start of the trailer the heartbeat is slow, almost labouring. At the end? Faster, if not the pace of a regular, healthy heartbeat, no longer afflicted by what was holding it back.
  • Throughout most of the trailer, distorted female singing can be heard in the background, with a weird backmasked effect. Some have noted that a portion sounds like the Game Over theme from the original game...
  • As Link and Zelda draw closer to the source of the dark energy, they discover a ghastly sight: the mummified corpse of Ganondorf posed in an eternal scream of pain, held in place by a single glowing hand. The music becomes extremely unnerving, and the trailer briefly shows some other clips, such as a blast of Malice, the glowing hand grabbing Link's hand, and a shadow showing the hand approaching Ganondorf. And finally, Zelda looks on in shock as Ganondorf goes limp, presumably free of the hand's grip. His head then moves 90 degrees to face the camera, all accompanied by the sound of cracking bones, as Cursed Eyes manifest inside the empty sockets.
  • The sudden wide shot of Hyrule Castle and the surrounding area. For a few long seconds… nothing. The faint rumble of the earth moving. Then you see the profile of Hyrule Castle changing—it's going skyward. Just what could possibly have been laying underneath the castle for so long, and how is it pushing Hyrule Castle up from below? Just what have Link and Zelda stumbled upon this time…?

Teaser Trailer (E3 2021)

  • While the general atmosphere of the trailer is much more upbeat, the start is horrifying. Tendrils of Malice slowly creep across the screen, interspersed with flashes of Link's right arm being consumed by the Malice-tendrils, the corpse from the previous trailer standing upright with his arms spread, and Zelda falling down a massive, bottomless-looking chasm.
    • Shots after show that Link's right arm has been completely changed, either replaced or integrated with some kind of technology, with blocky tattoos or scarring covering most of his shoulder and right side of his back. While it does seem to be a useful augmentation considering it seems to function similar to the Sheikah Slate, it still implies that Link had strange tech embedded into his arm, or he had his arm completely amputated and replaced with a prosthetic. Either way, it likely was not a voluntary procedure...
  • That distorted backmasked audio is back, and while it's lighter in tone as well, it remains incredibly foreboding, as if to warn Link of something.
  • The trailer ends with a better look at Hyrule Castle's rise up into the sky. Not only are there several shots of the outer walls and towers crumbling and collapsing as the structure rises up, but as it and the surrounding rock get pulled out of the ground, Malice starts pouring out of the hole where the castle used to be...
  • In the teaser that reveals the delay, THE MASTER SWORD IS BROKEN. It's been eaten away at by Ganon's malice to the point it is less sword and more piece of slag. While the Calamity did damage the Master Sword, it was (eventually) repaired. Even then it was still usable. What happened to put it in this state?!

February 2023 Trailer

  • The trailer opens with a shot of wyvern-like monsters flying through a thunderstorm, a Bokoblin and some Lizalfos mining a Stone Talus in an underground cavern, and a fiery three-headed dragon — a Flame Gleeok — guarding Hyrule Bridge. Then the sinister voice of Ganondorf commands his minions to rise up, lay waste to what's left of Hyrule, and leave no survivors. A Blood Moon shines over the desolate kingdom — turning the sky red — and Malice surges around Hyrule Castle, raining down from the sky and empowering a horde of Bokoblins, Lizalfos, and what appear to be Redeads.
  • Zelda admitting that she doesn't think Link can deal with this threat. In literally every other game, everyone has absolute faith that Link will defeat whatever evil forces plague the land. Here, Zelda, Link's most devoted supporter, admits that Link can't fight him. Just what kind of threat from the Demon King/King of Evil are we fighting here?
  • In the last shots of the February 2023 Direct we get more insight onto why Link’s arm is the way it is...and it's pure Body Horror: his arm got drenched in pure Malice (bear in mind, Malice already hurts a fair bit on light contact despite being barely connected to a sealed Ganon), with his arm (and tunic) being horrifically burnt and broken, and despite the magic brace that's letting him even move what is essentially an arm with 4th-degree burn wounds, it's still noticeably withered and blackened in close up shots of it.
    • For extra reference on how bad this is, the pure Malice destroyed the Master Sword and reduced it to slag. If fully unleashed Malice could do that to the Blade Of Evil's Bane, imagine what would have happened to Link’s arm if he didn't get the brace.

Final Trailer (April 2023)

  • Three words: GANONDORF. IS. BACK. After several years of speculation and theorizing about the corpse, and a whopping 17 YEARS since his last appearance in his Gerudo form, excluding spin-offs and remakes/remasters, the Great King of Evil has returned to wreak havoc upon Hyrule once again!
    • The most terrifying thing is that as Calamity Ganon, he certainly was extremely dangerous and managed to decimate Hyrule, but he was basically a mindless abomination. Now he seems to not only have his full power, but also his mind and as it’s always shown, Ganondorf is much more dangerous when he has his sanity.
  • The trailer also features a gargantuan ice monster emerging from some sort of portal in the midst of a storm, lunging directly at Link, Tulin, and the camera. And unlike the Divine Beasts of the last game, which were terrifyingly large but at least were generally slow and restricted to warding Link off, this monstrosity looks to be terrifyingly fast. Have fun figuring out how to fight that thing!
  • After years and years of never reappearing in a main console title beyond the very first one, Gleeok finally returns, and he looks every bit as terrifying to deal with now as he did way back then.
  • The mysterious figure in this trailer says that Link is the last line of defense. Think about that. What's happening in this game isn’t plan A, or plan B, or even C, but plan Z. Absolutely every other defense against Ganondorf had to have gone wrong.

     Post-Release 
  • The very opening of the game. Link and Zelda are exploring the catacombs under Hyrule Castle and right away the atmosphere is enough to leave you on edge. It’s dark, there’s gloom mist everywhere, and as Link and Zelda go deeper the music gets more ominous. And then they find Ganondorf’s resting place just as he’s ready to wake up.
  • Rito Village is initially disturbing. Between the eerie version of its theme, and the fact that only children are around and working, it seems like a PG version of Children of the Corn. It's an incredible relief to come across Tulin's parents and learn that not all of the adults are gone. Still, the poor kids having to dedicate their time to filling in for their parents, not sure if they'll all come home in one piece...
  • A child whose family owns one of the stables lives in utter terror over a monster who set up camp right by their home. What’s worse, they actually tried to deal with the monster themself, and somehow escaped with their life. The whole thing is a horrifying example of Harmful to Minors, and plays straight how scary living in a world full of monsters would actually be to the layperson.
  • Zelda vanishing into light at the beginning of the game was bad enough, but after Link returns to the surface, he finds that people have actually been seeing Zelda since the start of the Upheaval, and that her behavior has been subtly off; for instance, the normally scholarly princess forbids the study of a specific section of ruins that have fallen in Kakariko Village. During any Blood Moons that occur, she stands calmly and confidently in the field, gazing at the bleeding moon and ominously inviting us to "witness the Blood Moon's rise", even victoriously stating that the world is threatened once again. There's a sense that whatever this entity is, it can't be Zelda. And it isn't: It's a doppelgänger created by Ganondorf.
    • What happens during the Blood Moon event after you defeat Phantom Ganon in Hyrule Castle. Now every time the Blood Moon event happens, the Zelda doppelganger PG was masquerading as is no longer present and isn't announcing the arrival of the Blood Moon, yet the cutscene is continuing like normal as if the doppelganger is still there. Depending on how you look at it, this can either confuse or really unnerve some players.
  • Tears of the Kingdom features what is likely the most terrifying incarnation of Ganondorf to date. Lacking any of his predecessors' noble or tragic traits, this Ganondorf is likely the closest we get to seeing the second coming of Demise, and he may not even be a reincarnation of Demise in this timeline, meaning that his villainous actions are of his own volition, which makes him even more frightening than Demise can ever aspire to be.
    Tulin: Was that the Demon King we were warned about? It all really happened?!
    Sidon: This is dire. The Demon King... the man who nearly destroyed the world. Ganondorf! With his return, everyone's in danger.
    Yunobo: Oh, this isn't good! If that really was him... Oh, we're in real trouble!
    • Ganondorf's initial revival and Establishing Character Moment. When Link and Zelda stumble onto his mummified corpse, the hand holding him suddenly falls off. And that's when all hell breaks loose as Ganondorf comes to life along with a menacing heartbeat, the cracking of ancient bones and his glowing eyes bursting into existence. He instantly unleashes a torrent of Gloom that corrodes the Master Sword and ravages Link's arm, obliterating all but 3 of Link's 30 hearts in about 5 seconds, tops, before a second torrent shatters the sword in half. It's the very first action he performs upon being freed. He then cruelly mocks the duo for thinking that the sword that seals the darkness would have any chance against his own power when it shatters so easily against his might, even speaking their names and driving both of them to stupefied terror before taunting Link (sneering the whole time and proving to be very horrifically expressive even as a mummy) about Rauru having placed his faith in him… and Link having failed in mere seconds. The Master Sword, broken just like that, and Ganondorf is gloating magnificently over the fact that a single tiny cut on his cheek was all he received, which then instantly began healing. He then uses another blast of Gloom to raise Hyrule Castle into the air. And then there's his voice. He speaks in a very guttural voice, which may remind one of the Whispered One/Vecna.
      Ganondorf: Rauru placed his faith in you… and that was all you could do?
    • Ganondorf murdering Queen Sonia to take her Secret Stone for his goal of world domination is easily one of the most chilling moments in the whole game. But the crowning moment is him breaking his stoic leader façade to unleash this◊, a nightmarish, utterly ecstatic and over-the-top smile with dilated eyes that looks either more like Luca Blight's evil grin or a skeleton's jaw bobbing on the bone hinges, all before letting an Evil Laugh. What you see is not just an evil Ganondorf, but a Ganondorf so inhumane, so twisted that he takes pleasure in his cruel acts, ascending beyond a thirst for power and into just plain psychopathic levels as the most hateful iteration in the franchise.
      • To give an idea of the scale of depravity, compared to the other Ganondorf's level of villainy, this one is more akin to Frieza in the sheer magnitude of just how vile he is; from how gleefully he takes pleasure in causing other people's suffering and deaths, to being such a Sore Loser he'd rather go full Omnicidal Maniac when faced with the possibility of actual danger of losing it all to someone he underestimated. No one and nothing else is as utterly monstrous as this sole iteration.
    • Ganondorf using the power of the Secret Stone to become the Demon King. His Demon King form can best be described as a twisted fusion of Ganondorf and Demise. With scaly, pitch-black skin, devilish horns, reptilian eyes, sharp fangs, flowing fiery hair, and organic looking robes that look like they're fused to his skin, this Ganondorf feels less like a Demon of Human Origin and more like a demon masquerading as a human.
    • The sheer power he wields as the Demon King. In the past, Ganondorf had managed to conquer most of Hyrule with his new army. When Rauru and the Sages took the fight to Ganondorf, his power was so great that the sages were unable to defeat him and Rauru had to pull a Heroic Sacrifice just to seal Ganondorf away and give Link a fighting chance to defeat him in the future, but even then, the seal wasn't strong enough as Ganon's evil leaked out in the form of Malice, which later became the Calamity Ganon who ravaged Hyrule. Even when resurrected as a mummified corpse, his power was such that he was able to raise Hyrule Castle into the sky and cause chasms to appear all over Hyrule.
      Ganondorf: Thousands of years will pass in the blink of an eye. You only delay the inevitable.
      • One of the sages reports to Rauru that the last free village in Gerudo Desert had fallen. Yes, this Ganondorf is such a megalomaniacal sociopath that even his own people aren't safe from his warmongering.
      • To put in perspective how powerful this version of Demon King Ganondorf is, during the final phase of his boss fight, he can easily break most of your shields in only 3-4 hits. Even a brand new Hylian Shield won't last much longer than a dozen hits! When you consider all of the other incarnations of the Demon King throughout the series, and none of the others can even scratch it, it's no wonder Rauru had no choice but to try and seal him away.
    • When bested by Link in their final battle, Ganondorf has a cataclysmic Villainous Breakdown and decides to perform the forbidden act of Draconification, swallowing his Secret Stone to become a divine dragon, fully aware that doing so would rob him of his mind. He is so desperate to win that he's willing to become a mindless force of destruction (essentially killing himself) because he simply cannot stand the idea of losing to Link.
      Ganondorf: I will YET rule this land... You will NOT STOP ME!! A mere mortal... will not STAND IN MY WAY! [tears his stolen secret stone from his forehead] My body... my mind... EVERYTHING!! I'll sacrifice it all to destroy you... and cast this WORLD INTO ETERNAL NIGHT!!!
      • His speech to Link before performing Draconification has him say that he will sacrifice his body and mind to destroy Link and cast the world into an eternal night. However, the Italian version kicks it up a notch:
        Ganondorf: Body, soul... I'll sacrifice everything! I'll bring you to hell with me, and I'll shroud the world in eternal darkness!
      • The secret stone appears to almost be an extension of Ganondorf by this point—when he pulls it from his crown, he yells in pain as if he just tore it from his skull, complete with bubbling Black Blood where the wound is.
      • When Ganondorf goes to swallow his secret stone, rather than simply dropping it into his mouth, he seems to cram his whole hand and part of his arm down his throat.
      • Before the Demon Dragon properly coalesces into its final form, he takes on the form of a smoky swarm of Malice with glowing yellow eyes, looking uncannily similar to Calamity Ganon. He even coils about Hyrule Castle just like Calamity Ganon used to.
      • As the Demon Dragon, he attempts to take a chunk out of Zelda as she flies past him with Link, and in the final part of his fight he is trying to swallow Link as the player drops towards his head. The way his eyes bulge makes his expressions very unsettling; he looks truly unhinged as a dragon.
  • We finally learn what it was that Link and Zelda were investigating at the bottom of Hyrule Castle: Gloom, the manifestation of evil that spreads from Ganondorf's mummified corpse. It is horrifying, not just for its effects, but the implications it carries. This is the true unadulterated form of Malice. It was previously presented as a sludgey magenta goop, but is now an airborne pure red Fog of Doom that's spread all over Hyrule. Ganondorf is not shy about using the stuff, and unlike Malice, it has multiple ill effects.
    • Feeling sick? Well, that's because Gloom literally destroys your health by existing near it. Link is the Gloom's first victim, and the feeling of absolute terror that comes when it not only decays the Master Sword to the point where it shatters, but completely overtakes Link's arm. Its damage to Link is represented by having 27 of his 30 Heart Containers all be completely destroyed! All of the effort you put in to find and clear all of the shrines in Breath Of The Wild, to become stronger and more resilient against foes and help rescue Zelda, all of that hard work? Undone in mere seconds.
      • Additionally for Link is the damage to his arm. When he does eventually wake up, he's informed that the Gloom had tainted it so badly that his arm needed to be removed or else it would probably kill him. And even afterwards, Link is implied to be suffering the aftereffects of it as whenever he receives a Heart Container, a Blessing of Light, or a Stamina Vessel, some of the Gloom can be seen being purified from his body. The way the Gloom is built up and has repercussions going through the remainder of the game is simply chilling, and it carries into the final boss, where if Ganondorf successfully hits you as the Demon King, the hearts aren't simply grayed-out like with most Gloom damage—they're outright deleted.
    • Some other characters who also came into contact with it are so ill that they're on the verge of death, and everyone is rushing desperately for rare plants to try and heal the illness. In fact, it's so bad, even the Great Fairies are affected, coughing when you summon them.
    • Gloom is so corruptive it shatters half the blade of the sacred Master Sword, and made every weapon in Hyrule broken and decayed to the point of uselessness without combining objects onto them.
    • And worst of all, the Gloom has apparently summoned brand new monsters that nobody in Hyrule has seen for a while. Counted among them are giant tanky Boss Bokoblins, Like Likes that come in a variety of flavors, a monster called an Evermean that mimics trees and will randomly ambush you in forests, three-headed elemental Gleeok dragons, insectoid zombielike Gibdos, giant underground rock-toads called Frox, and likely many others. The first game only had about eighty monsters, but Tears of the Kingdom pushes that number to over a hundred.
  • The revamped Like Likes are as terrifying as they are disgusting. They look like giant, mutated pitcher plants with sharp teeth, and the way they extend their bodies to chomp at you is downright unnatural. Running into one in a cave is bad enough, but occasionally you’ll find a narrow corridor with a bunch of them hanging around. Get that bow and arrow ready!
  • The Gloom Spawn (colloquially known as Gloom Hands). Picture a combination of Wallmasters, Malice and the Dead Hand that sends you straight to the grave instead of straight to the beginning of the dungeon, and—for an Shout-Out to another game—a pool of tar from which a swarm of hands reaches up to grab you. They're groups of five Gloom arms with eyeballs on their palms that emerge from mobile puddles of Gloom that can sometimes suddenly appear out of nowhere and have no visual tells, not even through the Purah Pad camera. You might hear them shrieking and hunting without seeing them, or land right on top of one of their locations before you see them—and in the early game, when you do see them, it's too late. Once they emerge, the Gloom Spawn tint the lighting Blood Moon red and rapidly ooze toward you while haunting reversed-sounding moaning vocals play. They're virtually impossible to outrun (and Hylia help you if there's nothing high to climb in the immediate area), and their reach means they can grab Link, deal Gloom damage that saps his max health, and easily trap him in a Cycle of Hurting that kills him quickly. For the unprepared and still-weak early player, an encounter with Gloom Spawn is just like a bad dream with an inescapable monster, and every time you see one, you're liable to panic and pull up the Purah Pad to teleport as far away as possible. The map might have seemed more peaceful at the start without the infamous Guardian Stalkers around, but Gloom Spawn will make you wish they had been The Dreaded threat again here, too!
    • In a nasty case of Schmuck Bait, Mylle, an NPC observing Kyononis Shrine just north of Lookout Landing, indirectly remarks on these, showing that other characters are aware of these abominations in some form, thus implying errant travelers who aren't Link are in danger of being manhandled to death. To a new and curious player who goes to investigate the town, this will certainly be a wake-up call to the new nightmare in Hyrule.
      Mylle: "Something's moving around in the castle town... I haven't really looked yet though. Too scary."
    • Think it's bad enough encountering one of these in a random cave or in broad daylight on the Surface? You can find them in the Depths too, and meeting one in a poorly lit area only adds further to the Paranoia Fuel both these things and the underground can raise. Thankfully there's only seven of them across the Depths and pretty far from one-another, but two are waiting for you in Korok Grove.
    • There's also the matter of fighting these things. Trying to kill one hand at a time is a suicide mission, not only because, unlike Malice, shooting the eye of one does practically nothing, but also, the others will squeeze the life out of you before you can do much to any one hand, and hands come back pretty quickly if you're not killing them fast enough. They need to be taken out efficiently in multiples with area-of-effect attacks (Hylia help you if you're out of bomb flowers), but even defeating them is no relief, since most of the time, once they're gone, it just summons Phantom Ganon, a figure of Ganondorf made entirely of Gloom. It's likely early on to beat whatever hearts that weren't already Gloom-broken right out of Link by using its tricky dueling attack pattern and the Gloom always beneath it to make getting close painful. The horrific Gloom Spawn aren't just The Dreaded, they're effectively a Trojan Horse packing an even more dangerous boss.
  • Phantom Ganon itself is a recurring threat in the game which the player will have to face multiple times. An encounter with FIVE Phantom Ganons serves as the proper boss fight for Hyrule Castle, including having a second phase like other major bosses (which means you're basically fighting ten in one sitting), swapping between all of their weapons and even showcasing a new move where one floods the room with Gloom while the others dogpile you. If you haven't been able to handle a solo Phantom Ganon up to this point, you'd be forgiven for screaming. Even one Phantom Ganon can be a nightmare in the early game, though, enough that the developers were actually being gracious by keeping him behind the Gloom Spawn—their horrific, impossible early-game threat is the devs' message to just get away because you're in for way worse if you fight and win.
    • That same Phantom Ganon fight also leads to Ganondorf showing Link and the Sages a memory of his own: One where he, as the Demon King, summons an army of monsters and leading them on the back of a nightmare. The icing on the cake is a familiar line that confirmed his presence in the game.
      Ganondorf: Rise... rise, my servants. Sweep over Hyrule with the power I have granted you. Eliminate this kingdom and her allies. LEAVE NO SURVIVORS!!!!
    • A major update with Phantom Ganon is that he is no longer a Tennis Boss. Instead, he chooses to attack Link with his long sword. What helps make him intimidating is that he slowly approaches Link while a pool of Gloom moves with him, forcing players to think carefully about how to fight him. For anyone who has played a previous game with Phantom Ganon, this new style of fighting him will throw them off and make them cower before this reimagined foe.
  • One of the ways to help with recovering the Master Sword has you making your way to the Korok Forest... but the Lost Woods aren't just confounding Link, they're outright barring access and covered in an uncharacteristic black fog contrasting the normal white. You have to go into the Depths and Ascend to get into the sanctuary... and when you do, you find yourself surrounded by a gloom-infected forest full of Koroks who don't even acknowledge your presence. It's downright eerie, and it gets worse when you drop into a Chasm below the Great Deku Tree itself, and have to defeat a Gloom Spawn and face one of the aforementioned Phantom Ganon fights. It's very possible this will be the first Gloom Spawn a player finds themselves compelled to kill, and Phantom Ganon afterward can come as a very nasty and dangerous surprise thereafter.
  • It's revealed that in order to deliver the Master Sword to Link literally thousands of years in the future, Zelda ate one of the secret stones and became the Light Dragon that flies around Hyrule. However, it's explicitly pointed out by Mineru that swallowing a sacred stone basically causes Death of Personality, meaning that Zelda has been flying around Hyrule for tens, if not hundreds of thousands of years as an Almighty Idiot. She's immortal, but at the cost of everything that made her Zelda...
    • The whole draconification scene is distressing, really. From Zelda trying to keep her composure, telling herself that "you must" (sacrifice yourself), to immediately losing it after she swallows the stone, clinging to the Master Sword, while shaking in fear and pain. And finally she desperately cries out to Link to "protect them all," believing that to be her final words, before her consciousness fades away. In this same instant, her eyes suddenly and jarringly change into the eyes of the Light Dragon.
      • The Dragon Tears questline ends after that scene, leaving the player with the crushing belief that Zelda really is gone forever, that Link can't do anything to save her this time, and that he can only fulfill her final wish by defeating Ganondorf.
  • The Depths. All of it, but the way you enter by jumping into an impossibly deep chasm that slowly gets darker and darker thanks to the surrounding Gloom as you fall is almost designed to ping either a fear of darkness, a fear of heights, or a fear of small spaces. Or all of the above at once. It's a bizarre, otherworldly location filled with strange moss and unnatural trees and it's so impossibly dark that you can't see in front of you.
    • Compared to the Surface and the Sky, which, while kind of empty, are still clearly full of life and relatively peaceful, the Depths use that same emptiness to dread-inducing effect. The darkness all over makes it feel less like you went underground and more like you stepped into a huge, alien void, with only Lightroots, torches, Poes, and other small lights showing up in the dark. Unless you have light-generating items handy, you'll have no way of knowing what may be lurking in the shadow, be it a tiny creature that can be easily disposed of... or a massive boss waiting to crush you.
    • There's also the fact that there's Gloom everywhere, which can sap away Heart Containers the longer you stand in it. Gloom is generously scattered over many places, including pits, walls, and roads, forcing you to find other ways to traverse it to avoid tanking your max health. Not only is its effects scary, the angry red and black in the darkness makes it even worse, as it you may be able to recognize the Gloom there... but not how much is present. Or where it's going. Until things light up, the risk is very high.
    • It won't be immediately apparent at first, due to how the map only shows up once you get a Lightroot or two, but the Depths are in fact the new incarnation of the Dark World. The entire map is a distorted mirror of the surface that inverts the various highs and lows of Hyrule. Mountains become terrifyingly deep pits, while rivers and valleys rise up into impassible cave walls. It creates a bizarre twist on the Hyrule you might be used to.
    • As with the surface, the Depths are populated by various monsters. However, these monsters all have large amounts of Gloom pouring off of them, will pursue you for longer than their surface counterparts, never rest (excluding the default state of the Hinoxes), appear to be quicker in movement, and can inflict damage that will lower your maximum number of hearts. Even more terrifying is the noises they make compared to their surface counterparts, sounding more demonic than monstrous.
    • If you stop by Lookout Landing, you can find a tiny statue with four eyes. Notably, rather than talking to it, the action used is pray. It claims to be a Bargainer, but is actually closer to the closest thing Hyrule has to The Grim Reaper. It also has brothers in the Depths, but these are far bigger. They are gigantic statues that are, more often than not, totally buried in the ground with only their head poking out from the ground. It is entirely possible to walk up a gigantic hill, reach the top, and discover a face staring back at you.
    • Beneath Korok Forest lies the Korok Grove, a creepy woodland with large, disfigured trees, many of which appear to have freaky faces with wide, gaping maws. They are just the Ogre Trees that you've seen seen in the previous game around the Lost Woods, but they feel much more ominous in the Depths due to their paler hue.
    • The path to Ganondorf goes deeper and deeper into the Depths and is full of Gloom enemies, including a Lynel (who, thankfully, is easy to avoid) and one set of Gloom Hands. Other than them, most of the path itself is pretty innocuous and is light enough to not require Brightbloom Seeds, but there is one moment during this journey that is somewhat unsettling: After another deep descent, you stand still as though a cutscene is commencing, and are then informed that the Sages' power cannot reach you. It's unclear if this is because it is too deep in the Depths or because being too close to Ganondorf blocks it, but you are left to take the remainder of the path to Ganondorf without them, including the room with the Gloom Hands.
    • The descent in the room where Ganondorf broke free from his imprisonment almost resembles a descent into hell, with the dim red light below, while an eerie song plays.
  • Remember the ReDeads? While they aren't exactly back, the line between them and Gibdos has blurred once again, with this game's Gibdos managing to keep the fear factor of Zelda's undead quite fresh. They make their first appearance in an abandoned Gerudo Town, and provide an unpleasant answer as to why it's so desolate. These Gibdos are slightly fleshy, but stripped to the bone around the waist, and are uncannily insectoid, with a variant that even flies with moth wings and a huge insectoid queen as their brood mother. The moth motif is unique and really cool, but again, unnerving as hell in equal measure. In an eerie bit of environmental storytelling, Gibdos can be found with weapons and arrows stuck in them from unlucky past opponents (they only become usefully vulnerable when hit by an element, not from physical attacks), and a couple of aspects make them even more apt to give the heebie-jeebies: they spawn by falling limp from trypophobic holes in sandy mushroom hives, and they're normally slow, except for moments like the siege of Gerudo Town and the Lightning Temple boss where they suddenly start scampering on all fours at great speeds. Gibdos and ReDeads have always been scary, but Tears of the Kingdom's are no slouch among them.
    • Further, although the Gibdos in TotK are more inhuman than any of their predecessors, their presence in the Ancient Gerudo Cemetery and Ancient Gerudo Prison implies that these twisted beings truly are still The Undead and were once ordinary living humanoids.
  • Imagine walking around and exploring the overworld until you come across a seemingly innocuous tree carrying apples and other materials. Naturally curious, you walk closer towards the tree... only for it to suddenly spring to life and attack you. Say hello to the Evermean, one of the new enemies of Tears of the Kingdom. While Evermeans themselves aren't that scary and not that difficult to fight (provided you have something to chop them down, like a sword or axe, as spears and clubs won't do anything), the scare factor comes from the sheer Paranoia Fuel they can inflict, particularly on first time players, as they are virtually indistinguishable from regular trees, but can be identified by atypical shimmying that normal trees don't do even in windy conditions, though this won't stop anybody seeing this phenomenon the first time from thinking "did that just move?". By the time you're finished playing, you'll likely be jumping at every tree you see like Hestu when you see him cowering before a few seemingly-normal trees.
    • Worse, they too have a gloom-infected version down in the Depths. If you haven't encountered one of these on the surface yet and don't have a nearby light root activated, it can be extremely unnerving to have some sort of underground thing uproot itself and come after you without a clear weak point.
  • As you explore the Depths, you'll quickly learn to hate Little Froxes as they eat the Brightbloom Seeds you're using to light the way forward, but at least they're easily slain... or at least, the little ones are. The big Frox is a tusked, toad-like cyclopean horror - and when we say big, we mean big, to the point that Link is barely an appetizer to it. Imagine you're innocuously shooting Brightblooms forward only for this giant, shuffling thing to start striding towards it, or worse, you're stumbling around blindly in the darkness and suddenly meet this big blood-red eye before the boss music kicks in. Thankfully, they're easy enough to deal with if you know what you're doing - they're basically big Dodongos, with the associated weakness.
    • Some of the giant Froxes are waiting for you at the bottom of certain chasms. Imagine your first encounter with these things is diving down into a pitch black area with no active lightroots, and suddenly a boss health bar appears and music starts playing! Oh, and chances are it'll immediately open its mouth to try and swallow you whole the moment it sees you - again, an opportunity to shoot a bomb into its mouth, but still quite startling if you aren't expecting it.
    • If by chance you manage to get the high ground against a Frox, it will tilt its head up and open its mouth wide to try and catch you like a grape should you fall, and if you remain up there long enough it will leap high into the air to try and take a bite out of you. Pack lots of bombs, you'll need them.
  • The teasers for the returning Gleeoks didn't do them justice. Not only are they massive, even bigger than the aforementioned Frox, but they're airborne. They seem simple enough at first when they only fire elemental lasers at you, but after you've knocked them down once, they stop playing nice and throw out all kinds of different projectiles matching their element (fire, ice, or thunder). Get their HP low enough and you'll be treated to a Desperation Attack that looks less like a projectile and more like a natural disaster that could wipe an entire village off the map. This is without getting into that there's also a King Gleeok type that has all three elements at its disposal; its desperation attack is a sight to behold and will induce a lot of panic as you try to dodge around a lot of ice, fire and lightning from above as you try to get up to it somehow.
  • The Regional Phenomena quest sends you to the four major cities of Hyrule in an effort to find Zelda. What you find in those areas is a variety of horrors both subtle and alarming. And Zelda is linked to all of them, making your quest to find her grow more and more tense as her influence wreaks havoc across Hyrule.
    • Rito Village is in the middle of a huge unending blizzard, one so massive that it takes the form of a giant spinning cloud that can be seen from basically anywhere in Hyrule. The conditions are so bad that basically any Rito capable of flight is searching for any and all food sources they can find due to the blizzard slowly starving them out. The music that plays in Rito Village during the blizzard does not help either, as upon your first sighting of the frozen village and only the children and Teba and Saki there, the music gives an ominous and outright desolate feeling of a town slowly having its life be choked out of it.
    • Gerudo Town is covered in a gigantic sand shroud that covers the entire Gerudo Desert, fuzzing up your map and making navigation impossible. It gets worse when you actually arrive in Gerudo Town and discover that the place is destroyed and filled with Gibdos, which are insanely tough, outright require elements of some kind to fight, and will just keep attacking in wave after wave until nothing is left. The locals are hiding underground, but they admit that eventually they'll be found through the waterways. Like Rito Village, the music for the town also gives a desolate vibe, but also a completely empty feeling, making it very easy to believe that nothing was left of the Gerudo when the player first arrives.
    • Zora's Domain is polluted so badly it's reflected on the world map by all water sources in that area being puke green. It's due to a brown-yellow sludge raining down from the sky, one that clogs up the gills of any poor Zora who swims in the stuff. It's so bad that Sidon is stuck in place purifying the stuff, because if he leaves, the last traces of uncontaminated water will become tainted and overwhelm the Domain. Even King Dorephan has found himself succumbing to the pollution, as his encounter with the Sludge Like has left him barely able to fight and forced him into hiding. And while the music here isn't nearly as desolate as Rito Village and Gerudo Town, it gives a feeling of sheer desperation as the Zora are struggling and trying to find any way to survive this disaster.
    • Goron City trades a more blatant danger for a much more subtle one, with even the music not seeming too menacing on the surface. Normally the place is full of miners, but now the entire mountain seems barren of life. The few locals you do find have glowing red eyes, and do nothing but mindlessly chew on their rock roasts, growling at you to stay away from their damn food. Two of them even try to mug you for some cash when you first arrive, with one of them even sporting a Slasher Smile as they approach. It says a lot that simply making the Gorons aggressive is just as concerning as the other threats, simply due to how unnatural it feels for them to not be boisterous and jovial.
  • Returning to Lookout Landing after clearing the four Regional Phenomena quests grants you an eerie scene with no music where everyone is looking up at Hyrule Castle, talking about how Zelda was sighted up there. Upon looking through the telescope, you're treated to an incredibly creepy sight of Zelda standing atop the castle with a blank face as the Blood Moon slowly rises. If you hadn't figured out yet that the Zelda you've been seeing is a fake, this will erase any remaining doubt.
    • On top of that is hearing the fake Zelda talking to Link as she lures him to different spots of the castle, where you will be ambushed by hordes of strong enemies, culminating in you returning to the sanctum.
    • And finally, the scene where the fake Zelda shows Link a vision of Hyrule Castle in its prime. The way she teleports around the room leading up to the inevitable fight is downright chilling. And THEN the fake Zelda is transformed into a whole gang of Phantom Ganons.
    • Additionally, once the Phantom Ganon posing as Zelda is defeated, the fake Zelda no longer appears or speaks during the Blood Moon cutscene, so you get to watch Ganondorf's monsters revive in silence.
  • You're able to find and equip the Yiga Clan outfit, and you'll draw terrified reactions from townsfolk if you decide to walk around the villages while wearing it. When in Kakariko Village, you'll draw a disquieting response from Chief Paya.
    Paya: To us Sheikah, that garb is a symbol of something truly loathsome. As chief, I cannot allow myself to be seen speaking to someone dressed like that. To that end, please excuse me, Master Link.
  • If you thought any of the main bosses were scary, wait until you encounter them again in the Depths. Every one of them can be found lurking around in the darkness, waiting for a rematch. Colgera looks especially frightening in the dark, with the way it slowly flies around like a giant, predatory insect.
    • Colgera is especially noteworthy because it has the largest battle arenas in the Depths, which are so huge that they appear as giant craters on the map and their edges can look like steep cliffs. To an unknowing player however, you can accidentally tread near those areas while trying to find the next Lightroot and suddenly hear a haunting cry whose source you can't locate or identify in the dark. While Colgera itself can be easily seen in darkness, there are parts of the map where the player can be easily above the arena's elevation and left wondering what on earth is making that mysterious noise until they look down the cliff.
  • Exploring the Hyrule Castle Chasm for the first time can be a serious wake up call to players, even if they prepared before diving down. While you still possess full vision unlike in the Depths, that doesn't lessen the blows of fear that come from waves upon waves of enemies that await below, ranging from elemental Like Like variants, to Horriblins, to a sudden Lynel fight, all while having to worry about potential Gloom effects draining your maximum heart count. If you took the time to complete the Regional Phenomena missions, you'll likely have at least one sage by your side that can make things a little less strenuous to take care of. That is, of course, until you drop down into a particularly deep section around halfway through, where you're left entirely by yourself, greeted with a rather chilling message:
    The power of a sage cannot reach you.
  • The Yiga Clan are back, and while they aren't nearly as paranoia-inducing as before (having mostly relocated to fairly easy to take down bases in the Depths and generally being treated more as a laughable Goldfish Poop Gang), the few times you see them on the surface will show you that they haven't lost their touch at all. They've become more brazen since the defeat of Calamity Ganon, having taken over several settlements and notable locations like the Akkala Tech Lab, the King's Hut, and even the Shrine of Resurrection (though you thankfully don't have to fight any Yiga in there), and their disguises have seen a notable improvement; the Side Adventure "The Beckoning Woman" has a Yiga disguise themself as a young woman who claims to have found Zelda in an attempt to lure out Link, a plot that could have very well gotten the Adventure's quest giver murdered if he hadn't gotten cold feet and told Penn about the encounter. What makes the situation all the more shocking is that said disguise has an actual name instead of "Traveler" or "Researcher" (something otherwise restricted to the two Footsoldiers disguised as Zelda), leaving even a player who suspects the whole thing is a Yiga set-up second-guessing themselves.

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