Talk about raising the dead. Shouldn't have opened those New Orleans crypts...
Who'd have thought a sub-series of skateboarding games would be such a potent source of Nightmare Fuel?
Tony Hawk's Underground
- The C.H.U.D.-inspired Neversoft opening sequence for the game features Eric Sparrow being pulled into the sewers by a monster (who is unlockable by completing the game on Sick) before it throws his bones out of a manhole and burps out the Neversoft eyeball. Granted, the guy was a douchebag, but such a fate seems overkill regardless.
- Some of the screams of pain the characters make when bailing can be very unsettling to hear. Tony Hawk himself sounds like he's in genuine pain, Eric Koston sounds like he has suffered severe brain trauma and one of Elissa Steamer's cries sounds like a trapped horse.
- The mission where you have to get back at the Elm Street drug dealers has some truly unnerving music
that sounds more at home in Manhunt than anything with the Tony Hawk license stamped on it.- Eric torches the drug dealers' Escalade in retaliation for destroying his skateboard. The next morning, after you meet Stacy Peralta, Eric says, with genuine fear in his voice, that the dealers saw what he did. Right when Eric tells you his plan to bail to New York City and stay with his cousin, the dealers pull up with a loud screech. The use of High on Fire's "Hung, Drawn and Quartered" provides an appropriately tense atmosphere as you and Eric formulate a plan to get the hell out of Jersey before those hustlers can do unspeakable things to the two of you.
- The dealers end up abducting Eric anyway and the final mission in New Jersey requires you to rescue him from their van by ramming it with a Street Warrior's car. As unlikable as Eric Sparrow is, he wouldn't have deserved whatever horrid fate the dealers had planned for him.
- In New Jersey, one of the quarter-pipes is in a burned-out house. The gap you get in this area, "Arson Investigation", suggests that the house's destruction wasn't exactly an accident. Its proximity to the Elm Street dealers' hideout doesn't help.
- In Manhattan, there are several flyers reading "the end is near" posted on the walls.
- In Tampa, one of the hazards is a live alligator just hanging out by a pier, snarling with its mouth wide open. Run into it and you get to hear a loud roar and the snap of its jaws. In Free Skate mode, the alligator is gone for some reason. But the snarling noise still remains.
- Also in Tampa is a tweaker pedestrian having a massive freak-out by himself in front of a public bathroom, where you can hear someone repeatedly throwing their lungs up.
- Speaking of the tweaker ped, he and the Elm Street dealers use the same animation, which raises some unpleasant implications about the gang.
- The McTwist between two hotels in Hawaii over a police helicopter is nothing short of spectacular. Which is sure to distract you from imagining what would have happened if you didn't make it.
- The Evil Tiki tunnel in the Hawaii level, in which you are sent into a strange vortex filled with evil laughter before getting sucked into a tiki idol's mouth and then spat back out in the map.
- The noise that the Slam City Jam's broken speakers produce is more akin to a demonic wail than anything like, well, a broken speaker. Fortunately, a few tricks can fix them without any hassle.
- After Eric gets piss drunk and crashes a Russian tank into a government building in Moscow, he pins the blame on you and is off the hook completely, footing you a three-hundred-thousand dollar bill to pay for damages, kicking you off the team and leaving you trapped in a foreign country (a nation that, for a long time, was an enemy of the US, at that). An international incident if ever there was one. You'd have to be a robot to feel anything but hatred for Mr. Sparrow after what had transpired.
- One of the unlockable tapes is of Geoff Rowley's various stunts... narrated by the hoarse, gravely voice of Death telling Geoff that he's cheated him time and time again. Without any background music. And one of the clips is of Rowley doing an ollie off of two flights of outdoor stairs, slipping off his board as he lands and hitting the back of his head on the concrete. Without a helmet. Exactly how and why this man isn't a vegetable or dead is a mystery for the ages.
- In one part of the Moscow stage, you can hear a speech being made that's just blubbering, baritone gibberish. While it's hilarious, it can be startling for some players that don't expect it.
- The bonus stage, Hotter Than Hell, has a freak show in the corner of the map, with the exhibits being a human head in a jar and a woman sitting on a bed of spikes having cinderblocks broken on her stomach. We wouldn't blame you for getting off your board and just staring at what was happening.
- In the credits sequence where the developers are goofing off skateboarding, one of them points out a tooth that was knocked out on a quarter-pipe. And you get to see the guy spitting out blood into the sink and the fresh gap in his smile.
- Another post-credits sequence has a developer slowly skating down the sidewalk while holding his baby low to the ground. Nothing bad happens and the guy is clearly confident in his ability to skate, but it's not fun to watch if you're a parent.
- And another shows a man skateboarding off his roof and into his pool. This isn't the scary part. What is scary is the cameraman's almost inhuman Evil Laugh.
- While the soundtrack is one of the best in any game of its kind, THUG has a few songs that are very disquieting. Most notably Iron Galaxy by Cannibal Ox (with its misanthropic lyrics and dreary tone), Phantom by Mr. Lif (with its creepy synth tones), Better Tomorrow by Dan the Automator (which has a creepy, mad scientist vibe to it), and "To Ride, Shoot Straight and Speak the Truth" by Entombed (with it's lyrics about a God of Evil and the band's signature "buzzsaw" sound).
Tony Hawk's Underground 2
- The very beginning where your character (and several other skaters) are knocked out and thrown in a van, only to wake up in a grungy warehouse and threatened by a masked man wielding a revving chainsaw. The stranger has the blade inches away from Eric's chest as the poor kid cries in terror... until the man reveals himself to be Bam Margera. Fortunately, it's all a part of their introduction to the World Destruction Tour. Unfortunately, Eric voided his bowels. Though imagine being abducted and thinking you were going to be given the Hostel treatment for who knows how many hours, only to be told it was for a transcontinental skating tournament. You'd be livid!
- A text message from Tony Hawk in Berlin talks about how Eric Sparrow's antics have gotten so bad that he may have outright killed the tuba player in a polka band while trying to skate blindfolded.
- The Berlin level's destruction involves derailing a train. Were it not for the hilarious, lederhosen-wearing drunks in the scene, it would have looked like an actual disaster.
- The ominously-titled "Pro Skater" level is nothing short of creepy, divided into three levels: an alien spacecraft, a pseudo-Aztec temple and finally, Hell. Only the lattermost section has any music from the soundtrack; the rest is creepy, minimalist ambience music. The spacy piano music in the alien spacecraft really makes you feel like you are in a liminal space far from home, let alone anything remotely familiar. It is very creepy.
- Naturally, Hell has some particularly creepy sights - including an inaccessible hall lined with prison cells (and the hands that reach out from them!) and some sort of massive, caged green monster.
- Satan's kitschy, jazzy lounge has a counter that keeps track of the damned souls that enter Hell. It has several digits and it's moving way too fast to read. What is happening on Earth?!
- The Lost Soul pedestrians in the Hell level have a unique tag where they repeatedly write how they'll never kill another man. In blood. Also, parts of their body are completely red - as if they've been scalded.
- The unlockable Triangle level, set on an uncharted island filled with aliens, wrecked ships and crashed aircraft. One bisected plane has a skeleton still buckled up in his seat. Look upwards and you can see planes flying through portals in the sky. That's right - you're in the Bermuda Triangle. And like the Pro Skater level, you can't help but feel like you're all alone.
- Inside the alien base, you can see a laboratory through the window with three tanks used to keep alien clones or experiments. And one of them is broken with a trail of green amniotic slime leading out through the door.
- The thunderstorm in Berlin may unsettle certain people.
- The Barcelona mission "Make Your Own Phoenix", has you set fire to a bird.
- Also in Barcelona, there's a window where you can see a bloody, shaking gurney that's clearly hiding a body underneath. It's absent in the Gamecube version, though. Did we mention there's an evil gingerbread man looking out another window in the same map? For the same inexplicable reasons?
- The Aborigine on the go-kart in Australia has an unnaturally wide grin on his face. It's...unsettling.
- In New Orleans, Mike Vallely is so sick of having to deal with Nigel Beaverhausen that his first idea for getting rid of him is to straight up kill him. Considering that the real Mike Vallely smashed the car window of a Neversoft developer (which can actually be seen in the previous game by collecting all the secret tapes) for getting his stance wrong in Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4 (he was depicted there as Goofy and pushing Mongo* ), it makes you wonder if he was serious or not.
- At the end of the stage, you see Chad Muska making off with a helicopter, only to lose control of it while crying out for his mother. He's alive and fine (albeit in police custody) afterwards, but the way he crashed would have had you thinking otherwise for a moment.
- The New Orleans level gives you the opportunity to summon a zombie apocalypse, complete with damned souls and flaming skulls flying through the air. Hitting them as the Witch Doctor doesn't knock them down like normal pedestrians, but instead smashes them apart. The news report in the end credits claim they were just really drunk people, but you know otherwise.
- Also of note is the tone of the New Orleans destruction. While the other destructions are rather comedic, this one is devoid of any humor and portrayed with some actual gravity.
- If every goal was completed for New Orleans (including raising the dead and reversing it), it will still end with a tiebreaker. What did Team Bam do that a localized zombie apocalypse didn't ensure a victory for Team Hawk?
- You can see this weird, humanoid...thing slide through the swamp in the background. Just what the hell is it?!
- Bigfoot bursting out of the woods and stealing a skateboard in the Skatopia level.
- The grand finale involves Bam destroying Skatopia with enough fireworks to level a city block. And not only do you have to get all the animals away from the place before it blows, you also have to do the mother of all combos while the place is going up in flames!
