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Subjective
NightmareFuel: Video Games
I feel g...o...o...d...

READY!
TO DIE
—Eversion

Some computer and video games are supposed to be scary, but that's okay because we as player characters have the power to destroy The Legions Of Hell. These examples, however, leave us wondering what the hell the script writers were thinking.

This can often occur while braving Big Boos Haunt during the Night Of The Living Mooks. Also, while not quite the same thing, many Demonic Spiders can lead to nightmares.
Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Kirby Games 

    Final Fantasy Games 

    Psychonauts 

    Super Mario Games 

    Super Smash Bros 

    Metroid 

    Earthbound (Mother) 

The rest...
  • I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream: Basically the epitome of this trope.
  • This troper just finished Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. And the level where you have to go into the stomach of a Sarlacc to rescue Bail Organa freaked me out. It's not enough to be inside a creature that will painfully digest you over the course of a thousand years, there are areas where it will suck you into a hole and do SOMETHING that makes your player character, a hardened Sith apprentice, scream in pain and terror. *shudder*
    • The downloadable Jedi Temple mission features some truly chilling imagery toward the end. After completing the final Force puzzle, Galen is confronted by a vision of his inner dark side, clad in the Sith armour from the bad ending. The horrible sound of laboured breathing that heralds his arrival is bad enough, but throughout the fight with him, he constantly makes this tortured wailing noise that's all the more terrifying because it's in Galen's own voice. And, to top it all off, after winning the fight, the Apprentice wakes from his hallucination and briefly sees his Sith self's claws projected over his own hand, and a deep, distorted voice says, "You'll never escape me..."
  • Yume Nikki, a creepy little freeware game about a girl who travels through her own dreams
    • For purposes of elaboration, watch this. You can hate me later.
    • Another notable part is when you get to Seccom Masada-Sensei's spaceship. Masada himself is always at his piano if you leave him alone. Now, in this game, when you kill things, they let out a high-pitched scream (Nightmare Fuel in and of itself), no matter what they are. Killing Masada takes this to a whole new level, not only because he has no mouth and STILL SCREAMS, but because after you kill him, his piano is still playing.
      • This troper always thought of Masada as a somewhat sympathetic character, because he's the only one that reacts logically to the knife by trying to run away.
      • Several other characters do actually avoid you when you're holding the knife (At least one of which is in water, and therefore couldn't possibly be stabbed by the player at all), but Masada is the most noticable example, since he otherwise stands still, and the player is more likely to be paying attention to him.
    • This Troper was always scared to death of the toriningen—specifically, the ones with purple eyes that chase you around, can't be shaken off, and if they so much as touch you, they literally send you to Hell. It doesn't help that most of them get this way after you knife them. Needless to say, This Troper will never kill another toriningen.
    • Some events in Yume Nikki shows up fullscreen. Check the links of the infamous Lets Play showcasing.... FACE..... FACE....FACE.....
    • And the Body Horror Monoko...
  • Space Quest 4; Roger Wilco and the Time Rippers. This Troper remembers playing Sierra adventure games with her parental unit. And most of the time we had fun. However one day the parental unit bought SQ 4 (I was 8 at the time). In first screens you're allowed to have control on the character, you could run into a zombie. We smacked right into one and we were treated to a close up of a bald, snarling, humanoid with his eyes forced open like in Clockwork Orange. Then the zombie raised it's hand and screams at you. This troper recalls screaming and tearing from the computer room faster than light speed and refused to play a Space Quest game ever again.
    • This Troper never ran into the zombie way back as a child, fortunately. It was the slime in the sewer that melts the flesh off your bones that got to him.
      • Ding! You have to click on the 'screenshots' link to see it. (Unlike damned Uboa up there.) In the Olden Days, you'd be viewing that fullscreen rather than in a tiny window.
  • The video game Drakken: The Ancient Gates has a quite a few disturbing things in it, this troper finds certain bosses to be the most disturbing- especially the Inquistior who is a grim reaper like entity with supernatural magic powers, there's also a whole dungeon level which features skeletons in it .
    • Let us not forget the boss of that level, who trails you around constantly, a Creepy Critter that has an endless supply of beautiful virgins shipped to him... so that he can skin them and wear their skins as clothing.
  • PC kids' game Nightmare Ned uses Nightmare Fuel as a plot point and is extremely disturbing, another game series for pc Pajama Sam possesses the same amount of disturbing stuff in it. One level in Nightmare Ned has Ned in some sort of hospital about to have his organs taken out by beaver-like monsters.
  • You'd think that a game like Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts would be more than devoid of this stuff. But you'd be wrong. The seemingly innocent Banjoland level takes your childhood memories and stick them through a blender. Clanker the robot shark/whale thing has been torn apart, with his teeth set in the wall, his tail thrown haphazardly out into the floor of the desert area and his head hooked up to the central heating, the snowman from Freezeezy Peak has melted into an unrecognizable blob and the hat converted into a snow machine, the Jolly Rodger from Treasure Trove Cove stripped from it's beached position and deposited casually in a pool, the giant tree from Click Clock Wood dissected and bolted to a wall - the list goes on. And the "employees" don't care, despite being reccuring characters pretending to be museum curators and so on.
    • And then you realize Clanker is by most rights a living thing, and that his eyes are watching you when you get close
  • The first trip to the Quiphloth in Tales Of The Abyss is certainly Nightmare Fuel. Even though it's entirely a good example of Nice Job Breaking It Hero, when the ground gives way under Akzeriuth and the entire place falls into a realm of creepy dark purple and red colors, caused by a poison gas, it can be quite a disturbing thing.
    • Not to mention John, a little child, dying an agonizing death as he was swallowed by poisonous mud from the planet's core shortly after.
    • The explanation behind Guy's gynophobia is literally Nightmare Fuel for him, but also for this troper: When his family was massacred, he was buried under the corpses of his female relatives and servants for several days. DAYS.
    • Another point from the Tales Series that can be quite disturbing, is Soulless Colette from Tales Of Symphonia. Her red eyes were creepy enough, but the fact that she had become a monstrous killing machine adds to the effect.
      • Actually, Tales Of Symphonia is pretty much full of it, but it's all covered up by fun, cute and bright graphics. Examples:
      • The Desians, a Nazi-like enemy organization. Seriously, many of the things that they do are Nightmarish.
      • Exbelua. These horrific monsters were once human. Now think about that.
      • The Desians BREED HUMANS. Imagine being born into a torture of the caliber that the Desians put people through.
      • Or worse, imagine being a little kid trapped in Rodyle's undersea Human Ranch.
      • Of note, the main bad guys, the Cruxis also do this. But their method is a tad less cruel. They arrange marriages to create people with certain qualities. So that the result can be sacrificed to bring the sister of the organization's leader back to life. This is how Colette, the female lead of the game came to be, Zelos, her male counterpart found later in the game is involved in a scandal surrounding this and his mother states that he should never have been born.
      • Anyone absorbed by an Exsphere faces the fate of And I Must Scream. Even happens to Colette. (As it was stated that she knew what was going on when she was "soulless").
      • This troper, while also being slightly disturbed by Soulless Colette's inhuman red eyes, found her normal self's shriek of terror when Yuan attacked her at Palmacosta after going to the inn to be a scary thing. A very scary thing.
      • The first visit to Presea's house. The house looks completely unlived in and Presea, who is obviously brainwashed, is mindlessly wandering around in there and occasionally doting on the sixteen year old corpse of her father that's still lying rotting in the very bed he died in.
      • You probably don't want to read the manga adaptation then. The reader actually gets a full view of Presea's dead father after she regains her soul, and it's none too pleasant.
      • The Devil Noise Glitch creates a horrific sound at the end of a battle that easily can be called Nightmare Fuel, oh, and it can freeze your game. Worse, no one knows exactly what causes it.
      • Speaking of And I Must Scream, when Mithos briefly succeeds in putting Martel's soul into Colette's body, it's made clear that she's been aware this entire time of what Mithos has been doing, watching her younger brother and friends fall gradually into deeper madness and torture the entire world in her name. For FOUR THOUSAND YEARS.
    • The first encounters with the Zerom-soldiers in Tales Of Hearts. Zerom are ugly little bastards that eat Spiria, essentially souls, causing a wasting disease caused Despir Sickness. The villain generates them, captures them, and fuses them to humans. From that moment, the remainder of the stage begins crawling with dark-colored, red-eyed, inhumanly growling armored soldiers. This is the state in which you fight them, all but foaming at the mouth, and they're worthy foes to boot, using soldiers' moves and some new ones as they growl for your blood. Oh, and the first time you see them, the soldiers stagger out from basically magitech coffins. *shiver*
  • This Troper is not afraid of the game Doom except for one monster...The Archvile. When he hears that horrific thing waking up, he freaks out. It doesn't help that the Archvile laughs while he's looking for you, or that he screams "Ohh, why-hy?!..." when he dies. That last part is made all the more disturbing when you find out the Archvile does not understand why you are trying to kill him, because he believes he is simply doing good for his fellow demons.
  • Heart of Darkness features the young male protagonist trapped in a world populated largely by hostile creatures varying from merely disturbing to outright horrifying, that can kill him in a variety of ways that are remarkably grotesque for the game's total lack of genuine gore... in a game rated E. To be fair, this editor suspects the game wasn't actually intended for children, despite its cartoony art style and goofy sense of humor during the lighter moments... but this was apparently lost on the Media Watchdogs.
    • Some of Andy's death animations may actually drain the blood from your face. You get to watch as the young boy's body is stretched, crushed, bent, and broken in disturbingly unnatural-looking ways that it's clear the developers paid a lot of attention to getting just right wrong. Oh God, the rock worms. And as Heart of Darkness is Nintendo Hard, you'll get to see every animation many times. And hey, remember that time that totally exhausted Amigo dropped to the ground, and his shadow ran up his body like an infection, and he was mutilated, mind and body, into one of the shadow bones fliers that you've been blowing apart with your Power of Life for a while now without knowing where they come from? Heh heh heh. Good times. *sobs*
    • Thanks to the magic of the You-Tubes, a categorized montage of them all is just a click away.
  • The Jeljel level in the Puzzle Game Meteos features disturbingly melting-looking pieces, a heat shimmer in the background, and this spine-chilling, music-box-like tune. Clear the level, and a loud church bell rings. Lose... and you hear a volcano erupting as a woman screams in horror... Compared to how light-hearted many of the other worlds are, it's even more of a contrast.
  • For some reason, this editor can't get over the nightmares of any 3D game where progressing to another world meant entering what appeared to be a bottomless pit or tunnel. Then again, considering that, if it doesn't lead anywhere, such holes lead to death, it's understandable.
    • Similarly, this editor is also creeped out over any platformer where you can (and sometimes have to) get eaten by a fish or other aquatic animal. The Big Bass in Super Mario Bros 3 and especially Super Mario 64, which would snatch you right off the surface and swallow you whole in one gulp, is especially disturbing.
      • Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure has a particularly bad version, where the last level of episode 1 (after the Final Boss!) is a big funnel, with a giant mouth at the bottom. All you can do is grab the walls, slowing your descent. You'll still slide down slowly, closer and closer to the waiting jaws (The beginning of the second episode takes place in the stomach of the monster).
      • This troper is very tolerant of Womb Levels, but Clanker from Banjo-Kazooie freaked her the bejeezus out. That "rust" looked waaaaay too much like a mass of bloody scabs and boils. Ew ew ewwww x.o
  • The Zombiebots in Metal Arms: Glitch in the System scared the crap out of this editor: they are extremely fast and powerful, have to be killed twice, and the most effective weapon against them could only be used at close-range. Also, their distorted metallic screams are just awful.
    • This troper was about eleven when he played the game, and cried when Hosed and Screwed, your tutorial buddies, were unceremoniously blown to bits at the start of the second level. Imagine his pants-wetting reaction to the Zombiebots, and his relief at finding you could rescue two of them and have them help you. Plus, he found the nappy-wearing Zombiebot King Nightmare Retardant.
    • The intro to the wastelands. after killing the first enemy batch, you see two grunt corpses, heads and arms ripped off, with a huge bloodstain under them, slowly dripping... and if you shoot them they sway. Then, there is the three-fourths point in the wastelands, when there are two Zombiebots and you're high above them... I grenaded the area, and jumped down. Guess what? FIVE FEET AWAY FROM ME ARE TWO ZOMBIEBOTS.
  • The "Generator Room" level in the first Crash Bandicoot game is particularly Nightmare Fuel-laden. Imagine an enormous, black space with exhaust pipes pumping what appeared to be black gas into the room, metallic platforms hanging over what appeared to be an infinite, dark void, and video screens brandishing a dead-eyed version of Doctor Neo Cortex's face throughout the area.
    • Lots of things in the game are Nightmare Fuel. What freaked me out were the Lab Assistant characters. It's explained in the third game that they're really artificial robots with real flesh - that's Nightmare Fuel itself, but they look human by Crash standards in the first game. Their only means of attack (apart from standing there) in one level is to run at Crash with arms outstretched, occasionally generating electricity between their hands. It doesn't help that they return in the sequel, some assimilated into Borg-like space warriors, and the only way to beat them is to push them into a fire shield - and their standard cry is eerily cut off as they evaporate.
    • The Mount Grimly theme in Crash: Mind over Mutant is extremely dark compared to the rest of the otherwise cheery and upbeat soundtrack.
  • One level in Spyro The Dragon involved enemies that remained tame and mostly harmless in the light, but turned into vicious demonic versions of themselves in the dark. The transformation is just so sudden and ghastly (not to mention makes the enemies much more dangerous), this editor guarantees you'll be freaking out the first few times you play it.
    • "Spyro: Enter The Dragonfly" has a rather spooky glitch in which every goes all Slow motion-like.
      • A lot of the bad guys you face in The Legend of Spyro series are seriously Nightmare Fuel-ish.
    • This level you're thinking of is "Dark Passage".
    • In fact, the whole Dream Weavers' world was creepy - it didn't help that the world's (thankfully optional if you're not going for the 100% completion) boss was a Jack-in-the-box... except he wasn't in a box.... What really creeped me out was Haunted Towers. That gave me nightmares when I was a kid. A large section of the enemy population are animated suits of armour which float and attack by whacking Spyro with their own helmets. Not to mention the level being the site of an infamously difficult puzzle (easy when you know how) to reach the last dragon. Not scary itself, but due to a clipping glitch (or perhaps a subtle clue) it's possible to see part of the trapped dragon... struggling to escape the crystal. Through the ceiling.
  • The music that plays (appropriately) during most of the nightmare levels in Alundra gave this editor nightmares. It's difficult to describe, but it keeps shifting between various themes and instruments, with a heart beat-like bass drum in the background, occasional cuts to music-box style music, and some screams thrown in for good measure. Part of it makes me picture melting angels. Of course, the creepiness was probably intentional here, but not to that extent.
    • For that matter, some of the nightmare levels were damn creepy.
    • This song to be exact.
  • This troper always had a problem with any Womb Level in a video game, or any realistic portrayal of anatomy and being inside someone's body, in any medium. Worst of all was Joe and Mac. Joe and Mac is a cartoony game involving cavemen and dinosaurs, with bright colorful graphics and much silliness, so the last thing this troper expected was a level which takes place inside the body of a T-rex. The level features moving villi, large red blood cells visible in the background, and worst of all, a giant beating heart. A realistic beating heart, not a cartoony one! Which led him to wonder, "What were they thinking?"
    • Another SNES caveman game (gosh, how many did we need?), Congo's Caper, goes on this exact same trope, with the added fun of swimming through the T-Rex's digestive juices. Sickly. Yellow. Digestive juices. Totally submerged in. Joe and Mac was also memorable to this troper for having bosses that actively decayed as you hit them. Some just looked cartoonishly pained, but some were nightmarish. The Mammoth, for instance, lost its tusks, then its ''trunk'', leaving a horrible gaping hole ''while it was still alive and bellowing''.◊ It's really no wonder this troper has a morbid phobia of elephants in her adulthood.
    • Another such level exists in Jet Force Gemini where you travel through a giant alien insect larva... thing... it's sort of sad when someone can feel relieved when coming out of an anus. Unfortunately, immediately after doing so you are assaulted by the level boss, Twin Cyborg Tailed Praying Mantises who, aside from being That One Duel Boss, are accompanied by orange rocky landscape, lava rivers, and an orange sky where the clouds travel by quickly, giving an apocalyptic atmosphere to the already nightmarishly hard fight.
      • Also, one of the spaceship parts is on top of the giant worms brain! How did it get there? Why do you have to walk on its brain to get ti? What the hell where the developers thinking?
    • Also featured in Ocarina of Time, but to a lesser extent. (See Zelda.)
  • In Pikmin 2, one of the treasures is a scary, undead-looking doll's head. To make matters worse, in the Japanese version, it is worth 666 pokos.
    • Don't forget the Waterwraith. In concept it shouldn't be weird or disturbing at all: a giant clear flubber-looking thing on stone steamroller wheels. But mainly it was the fact that it couldn't be killed. Or damaged. At all (at least not until the final level of the cave it's found in.) And if you took too long on a floor, it would suddenly drop in out of nowhere and start chasing after you. The unearthly gargling noises didn't help things, either, nor did the fact that your ship freaks out when it first appears, yelling "RUN! RUN AWAY!"
      • The Waterwraith also has its own, unique dramatic chase-music whenever it appears outside of the boss battle, which adds to the sense of urgency. And it was a real threat, too, easily flattering your eintire Pikmin troup in seconds if you got unlucky.
      • It gives them compliments?
      • Don't forget that it's implied that the damn thing is just a hallucination.
    • On the subject of Pikmin, one day this troper was poking around the Forest Navel, eventually finding a large circular area with nothing in it. This troper was not yet savvy enough with video games to understand the concept of boss arenas, so he dallied right in, his army of 100 Pikmin following behind him. And then the Beady Long Legs - a giant fuzzy ball with four legs that moves like a spider - SLAMS INTO THE ARENA OUT OF NOWHERE, stomping around as heart-pounding music begins to play. To make matters worse for this troper, one of the Beady Long Legs's feet managed to land squarely on a yellow Pikmin carrying a bomb. Just as frightening for him as the giant freakin' spider dropping out of nowhere was, having paused the game in sheer fright, noticing one hundred ghostly Pikmin images drifting upwards and Olimar's health down to near zero. This troper is convinced that this incident is the direct cause of his deathly arachnophobia.
    • Forget all that, the whole idea of slowly killing your enemies by throwing tiny ant-like things onto your foe's body until they die is some pretty bad nightmare fuel for anyone who's afraid of insects. Not to mention that then your corpse will be taken to their hive and used so that they can make more pikmin to kill all your friends. Granted, most of your foes want to kill you, but still... what a horrible way to die.
    • this troper found several things unnerving and creepy about the original pikmin game. Among them are:
      • The unsettling feeling of hopelessness and impending doom (I never found all the parts in time),and the loneliness of the game's atmosphere.
      • The dark, drippy scenery (and creatures) in the Forest Navel level.
      • The Smoky Progg. Oh jeez the smoky progg. A nearly unstoppable DEMON FROG made of smoke (that leaves a trail of the same noxious smoke wherever it goes), who, upon hatching, makes a beeline for your Onions and TEARS YOUR PIKMIN OUT OF THE EARTH to disembowel them. That, and it's implied to be a larvea of the already creepy mamuta which has been mutated (and apparently pissed off) by you disturbing its egg. It's anatomy is perplexing to the point of it resembling a Cosmic Horror, and upon dying, the entire thing MELTS leaving nothing but a small pearl.
    • The second half of Pikmin 2 involves you looking for Louie because you left him behind after leaving the planet when you pay off the company's debt. The Nightmare Fuel happens when you find him. He's at the bottom of the toughest cave in the game, on top of a giant spider monstrosity called the "Titan Dweevil", just sitting there as you slowly proceed in killing it. Then the ship's computer later comments that it looked like Louie was CONTROLLING IT the entire time. *shudder*
  • Quest For Glory IV has literal Nightmare Fuel in the form of a Cask of Amon Tillado, a wine that gives the drinker dark visions of the Evil Overlord rising to destroy the world.
    • Also noteworthy are the nightmares you have when you sleep in Erana's garden or under her staff.
    • Completing the Paladin's quest in "Shadows of Darkness", the one involving the ghost chick in the river, quickly turned into nightmare fuel.... After killing the ghost of her murderer, you must wade into the river and kiss her. Only, by this time, she is no longer an, uh, alluring figure. She is, in fact a rotting corpse. Squick
    • This troper could probably write a whole page full of Quest For Glory examples..., heck, Sierra examples in general! Quest for Glory IV in paticular had alot of creepy things, although the snarky narrator helped lighten the mood a bit.
    • Then there's Tanya, the little vampire girl who lives in Castle Borgov, and has eerily blank, glowing gold eyes and white skin, and just misses her mommy and daddy. God, is she creepy.
      • In the first game, the music in the magic shop. This editor could not stay in that place for very long, even as a Magic User, due to the music. Also, Night Gaunts can be a bit of a surprise the first time you try to sleep in the wilderness at night. The fact that you never see them somehow makes it so much more disturbing.
    • Not just the Quest for Glory series - this editor (who is twenty) had to sleep with a light on for weeks after dying in the unlit room in the Catacombs in King's Quest 6. All you see the whole time are the dots of your character's eyes...and that makes it worse.
      • Legend of Kyrandia has one of these—-this video—-but its not the protagonist's eyes you can see.
      • Catacombs? Heck, how about the Realm of the Dead? Creepy music, check. Nighttime, check. Body Horror, check. A sequence describing how the Lord of the Dead slowly turned from a human being into a death lord numb to all pain and misery for all eternity, check.
    • The point and click Sierra game Torin's Passage has a tragic Anti Villain with an oddly creepy yet touching story.
  • Kingdom Of Loathing has plenty, ironically enough.
    • The Big Creepy Spider, whose description informs you that "he promises not to kill you, but you're not sure you believe him."
    • Spookyraven Manor in its entirety. Especially the part with the animal skeletons.
    • That line about how your familiar "gets creative with the fish scaler" is extremely creepy, even if it's hurting your enemy.
  • The recent Time Crisis 4 features the "Terror Bites", several ultra-sound controlled insects that resemble to cockroaches or wasps. Their attacks consist on rushing towards the player, clinging to the monitor and slowly sucking your life away. While not being strictly Nightmare Fuel, it may still disturb small children and entemophobes.
  • Rayman: Raving Rabbids is creepy enough in concept: Rayman and his friends the Globoxes are kidnapped by deranged, screaming, mutant bunnies (the titular Rabbids), and Rayman must win his freedom by competing in various minigames, most of which involve abusing said Rabbids in various slapstick ways (blowing them up, shooting them with plungers, etc.). "Bunnies are Slow to React" is especially creepy, as it involves playing a marble labyrinth game inside a Rabbid's brain while creepy Muzak plays in the background, including a snippet of Rabbids singing "Ode to Joy".
    • Arguably worse is the mini-game where you have to pull grinning worms out of festering cavities in the Rabbid's teeth to a backdrop of a screeching dentist's drill. Fail to grab them before they go back in, and the tooth will go brown, then explode, leaving wiggling root endings hanging out of the screamsonicing Rabbid's gums. Oh, and since it only ends when you lose, seeing this is inevitable. Even worse is the harder difficulty, in which the Rabbid constantly exhales bad breath at you, making the screen wobble like a 70's sitcom flashback effect. This troper is a natural pro for some reason, so when friends are over for a game, she's always tossed the controller on this level and forced to play through while listening to everyone else squirm and squeam. It was a hell of a way to really appreciate the Wii's graphics update for the first time. In-game footage is not for the weak of stomach.
    • How about the minigame in which you have to force a Rabbid to hit himself with a mace or screaming by touching his brain on particular locations ? Oh, and did I mention said Rabbid had to go through a trepanation for this to occur ?
  • Sonic Riders is a game you'd think has absolutely no potential for nightmare fuel whatsoever... until you race in the Digital Dimension track, the first half of which is a hellish landscape with creepy gargoyle statues and skeleton hands that try to drag you into a pit. The hands can be avoided if you're good with tricks, however. Its potential for inducing nightmares is lampshaded in mission briefings as Storm the Hawk says he's scared of the place.
    • It gets stranger when a quarter of the stage is in a heavenly place after coming out of a door that led to a light.
      • A harp can be heard when you enter that area.
    • In the game, all characters can attack each other. These attacks change as the racers collect rings and Level Up. Sonic's Level 3 attack just so happens to be spinning into another racer and repeatedly and brutally smashing them into the ground as Sonic spins, while the sound of bones cracking is heard. Yes, even with the robots. This really made this troper wonder what the hell SEGA was thinking when they put in the attacks...
      • All this in a G-rated game, no less.
  • Three words: Sonic drowning music.
    • You mean This music? Yes. I'm evil
    • De...de...de...de...de...de...de...de..de..de..de..de..de..de..de..de..de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de- de-de-de-de-de-de-de-DE-DE-DE-DE-DE-DE-DE-DE-DEDEDEDEDEDEDEDEDEDEDEDEDE. BWOP.
      • This troper, playing Labyrinth Zone on Sonic 1 at 6 years old, was frequently reduced to tears by that.
      • Likewise, if only because the whole scene was Nintendo Hard.
      • Guess what? It's even worse in the Sonic Adventure games! Check it.
      • The real nightmare music is in the American soundtrack of Sonic CD - Namely, the boss music and the gameover music. Now, the boss music is creepy just right to make Robotnik sound evil, but the Gameover is UNBEARABLE. Talk about justification to not to screw up while playing!
      • It's not just the music but the short pause between the music stopping and Sonic drowning- ohgodohgodthemusicstoppedcanireachthatbubblehowlongdoihavele—-*drown*
      • This troper attended a game show panel at an anime convention, and one of the backdrops to one of the hard questions was a "Labyrinth Zone Dance Party". Take a wild guess as to what happens if you miss the question.  *
    • I was more freaked out in the Chemical Plant Zone when I drowned in all that purple toxic waste or whatever it was. Also that part in Act Two where you have to go up, I got stuck on that for so long.
    • This troper was too scared to even play Aquatic Ruin Zone, due to the combination of potential drowning and those flying arrows, which, despite being pretty slow and regular, terrified her by their unexpected entrance screen right.
    • What about the teleportation boxes in Sonic 2? Am I the only one freaked out at the music and the whole screen turning white and, well, just see for yourself.
    • Sonic Adventure 2 had some levels where these sinister-looking ghosts with yellow eyes jumped out at you unexpectedly, scaring the shit out of me.
      • This troper took F-ING TWO HOURS to complete Pumpkin Hill because of them. He's traumatized by that stage, just to find out that the following two Knuckles stages had those stupid ghosts in a even worse fashion (since you still could see them in Pumpkin Hill in miniature form before they jump out and scare the crap out of you, but in Aquatic Mine the miniatures are pretty well hidden)
      • Rouge's Egg Chamber level was scary, if only because of the LOUD, FLYING, INVINCIBLE BUG ROBOT THAT FIRED A LASER AT YOU IF IT SAW YOU.
      • Three words. King Boom Boo. This troper was so freaked out the first time she fought him, she turned off the console, and didn't play the Hero story again for half a year.
    • In the same Sonic vein, there is another, seemingly overlooked nightmare. In the Genesis games 2 and 3/Knuckles, there are the few enemies that go kamikaze on you, and explode (the starfish in Metropolis and the shark missiles in Hyrocity). Now....look closely. When/if you hit these enemies normally, a little bird or something pops out and flies away (Free Bird!). If they explode on their own (starfish) or collide with you (shark) the thing just goes in a puff of smoke...WITH NO BIRD OR ANIMAL APPEARING. The implications of this can be very very....unsettling...to observant youngsters (or even older gamers).
    • This picture of Sonic, from Sonic Unleashed: [2]◊
    • After watching this YouTube video, you'll never view Sonic's Schoolhouse the same way again.
    • Sonic & Knuckles, as well as Sonic 3 when it's locked on to said game, has Sandopolis Zone's Act 2, set inside a huge pyramid with a scarier version of Act 1's theme playing in the background. About a quarter of the way through, you'll land on a capsule that dispenses a crowd of ghosts, which start off small and cute but get larger and more demonic-looking as the lights dim. By the time the lights have gone out completely, the ghosts are huge, have big devil horns, and are dive-bombing you.
      • So is this troper the only one that thought they looked like evil bunny rabbits then?
    • Dark Gaia from Sonic Unleashed is scary enough, but when he goes One Winged Angel on you, he transforms in a really disturbing manner, and the final product is somewhere between Starfish Alien and Eldritch Abomination. For his head, think a venus flytrap filled with eyes, the whole thing enclosed in tongues with two huge ones hanging down. Its death is pretty family unfriendly, too.
    • The Tails Doll is this for some, but not for me.
      • You'll come around to me... Oh yes... you'll come around...
  • This editor remembers from this old Daffy Duck game on Game Boy, when this giant bat would come out of nowhere on certain stages and the music would turn really creepy.
  • Non-conventional computer game example: In the "Save the Dinosaurs" game that came with 3D Dinosaur Adventure, if you failed to save all of the dinosaurs in time, the meteorite would hit the Earth, the dinosaurs would cry out in fear and pain, and the guy who gave you the mission would tell you it's all your fault before pulling you back to the present. It was quite creepy.
    • Another scary part of the game was that eventually, you would find your way to the various Mesozoic periods barred by giant arthropods, including mosquitoes, scorpions, fleas, and pill millipedes. If you approached one, an eerie sound that the creepy crawlie's real-world equivalent makes would fill the air. It was rather creepy, considering that most people don't like mosquitoes as it is.
      • And they suck away your time when they do so. But at least you can zap them by clicking on them. Nice "laser gun" noise. BYEEOW! BYEEOW!
    • This troper was more scared of the Dromaeosaurs that he would encounter if he went the wrong way down the time tunnels. At least the giant arthropods can be see before you run into them, and always block the way to the direction you're supposed to go. So they help, if unintentionally.
    • Another creepy part of that game was a section where the player could view videos, with realistic simulations of dinosaurs. One video featured a Deinonychus killing another dinosaur in a bloody fashion. Another featured a Struthiomimus crushing another dinosaur's eggs and eating what was inside.
      • This troper remembers those videos from her childhood dinosaur-obsessed days. The one with the pack of Deinonychus killing the Struthiomimus was indeed rather disturbing. The part that really got to me was the Struthiomimus' BLOODCURDLING SCREAMS. *shudders*
      • You mean this documentary here?
  • Another non-conventional computer game example: When this troper was younger, I played this game who's name escapes me at the moment (it was one of those kids' CD-ROM games that's made up mostly of mini-games and rarely, if ever, has an overall storyline). One of the games consisted of putting together puzzle pieces to reveal a short but funny black-&-white movie. This particular one, however, was anything but. The completed puzzle revealed a picture of a girl holding her pet cat. Pretty normal (even though, if I recall, the girl was wearing shiny black opera gloves that looked suspiciously like they were made from the skin of a crocodile). At one point, some eerie background music played, and the girl gained the eyes, ears, and whiskers of a cat, along with a sinister smile. Naturally, the pet cat freaked out and said "Oooh! Heh heh, nice kitty" and then purred nervously. Not only was this movie scary, this is probably the only unattractive Cat Girl in the Universe.
    • That would be Math Workshop, brought to you by the folks behind Myst and Prince of Persia. No, really.
    • Also the folks behind The Logical Journey of the Zoombinis, if I remember correctly, which, in case you've forgotten, present you with the scenario of tiny refugees escaping a dystopia in an educational kid's game! Now, that premise wasn't so bad in the first place (...though this troper has friends who say it's just him), but then there's... that puzzle. You know. The one with the beehive. The one where you can make no more than three mistakes before a swarm of angry bees starts chasing your Zoombinis off the screen with giant scissors, syringes, and other LARGE POINTY OBJECTS.
  • The children's educational game Sim Ant was creepy enough for featuring colonies of ants. The victory condition was eating the opposing colony's queen. This is further exacerbated by potential deaths such as being squished flat, being eaten by a Giant Spider, or mowed down by a lawnmower (it helps that the first time this one happens, the most that'll be going through your head is "What IS that loud whirring noise?").
    • Think that's scary? Play Sim Copter. It's a good enough game, with great music and fun gamplay, until you see the graphics close up. From people whose poorly rendered faces that wrap all the way around, to animals who are actually skeleton like wireframes that only appear to be normal from a distance, This Troper never went to the ground level if he could avoid it, preferring to do everything from the air.
  • The Play Station game Gex: Enter the Gecko had the titular character exploring levels based on movie genres. The series of levels based on horror movies contained blood-soaked walls and floors, eerie ghosts that could hurt you unless you stood under a dim lantern, and quiet, creepy music. It only got worse as the game progressed. This editor played it when she was younger, and very much preferred the kung-fu movie levels.
    • This troper agrees wholeheartedly, even though he played the N64 version. (In fact, thanks to this, he wants to go boot up his emulator— because he always rented the game). In addition, the level based on Titanic surprisingly managed to avoid causing panic attacks due to his fear of water... but swimming to the very top of the level and having Gex's head above the water, there being only a (if I remember) stark blue abyss, scared the ever-loving shit out of him.
  • Aside from being the king of Family Unfriendly Death, Metal Slug has another nightmarish little element. Normally, you have a gun and grenades. When your character is turned into a zombie, however, that changes to a gun and vomiting blood. In a wide, long stream.
  • Andross in Starfox64. Seriously that... thing. He's a huge face and hands, that has an attack that involves him eating your Arwing. Yes. He eats it.
    • This troper thought it was terrifying when you fight the fake Andross: once you deal enough damage to him, his face just falls off, revealing a freakish mechanical structure that only somewhat resembles Andross. And then it charges straight at the screen, just to freak you out.
      • Do you know what's even more terrifying? Fighting the final form of the real Andross. His face melts away, leaving behind a brain, a pair of eyes, and these... tentacle... things... hanging out from under the brain. He'd actually stalk your Arwing all over the arena, catching you in his tentacles if you get too close. Of course, this troper is Squicked out by the sight of brains, but still... brr...
      • Surprisingly, the beginning was the most horrifying part for this troper. When he got to the end, he saw nothing but a shadowy thing...then out pops this grotesque monstrosity of a disembodied head. He was so thrown off he lost the first round with him.
    • For this troper, it was in Starfox Assault. The team is tracking Pigma around the system and ends up in an abandonned station in an asteroid belt. The boss of the stage? It's Pigma, who got assimilated and mutated by the Aparoid artifact,now fused with a large ship that grows tentacles and his face is the core, always screaming creepy assimilation stuff. This troper stopped playing for a few days before being able to continue the game.
  • Drakengard turns into concentrated Nightmare Fuel in some of its endings. Take, for example, this scene, in which a Prophetic Name finally plays out; the scream always gets me. Then, if that wasn't disturbing enough for you, maybe this will be (I did tell you that [[/Video Game I wasn't making it up]]). Both of these are spoilers, by the way, especially that second one.
  • Drakengard 2 has its fair share what with Caim and Angelus bursting into flame before dissolving into ash with an eerie smile on Caim's face as seen here. Spoilery link there.
  • The Old Sorceress's Mansion in Lost Odyssey was pretty damn creepy, not necessarily even because of the creatures you wind up fighting or the old, run-down look of the place, not even because every door you open lets out a ghoulish face or a dark tendril. No, it's because of the profound solitude of the place when you're not in a fight (a theme heavily emphasized by this game), the ghost of the main character's dead child running around laughing, and the extremely creepy piano music that induces yet more of the feeling of being all alone in the world, that makes the entire experience quite nightmarish. This editor shudders whenever he hears that particular piece of piano music.
  • This troper's best friend has a fear of bananas thanks to the banana bomb weapon from Worms.
  • As if Dungeon Siege II: Broken World wasn't creepy enough already, what with the Bound Creatures and the Familiars, there's one part that definitely qualifies for the "sudden appearances of frightening creatures" criterion of Primal Fear. No matter how many times this troper sees it, it's always shocking when the Dryads' Great Leader turns out to be the Overmage of the Cinbri in disguise
  • Deus Ex. Icarus. This malevolent AI spoke to you out of nowhere, sent threatening messages to the main character email account and cooly informed you that a minor character had been kidnapped and dissected by the Ancient Conspiracy. Creepy doesn't begin to describe it.
    • Then there are the little spider-like robots and genetic monstrosities that tend to stalk dark hallways...
  • This Troper was always freaked out by C&C's Tiberium as a child. In particular, the Visceroids, which are giant amoebas made of mutated human flesh.
  • Oh so much of Eternal Darkness. When your sanity bar is low, the characters mutter to themselves, and screams or sobbing can be heard in the background, while the camera slow tilts to one side... And that's just for starters.
    • This troper used to tell friends playing for the first time that looking at the bathtub showed a hidden cinema scene. It does—but most people are not prepared for it.
      • Still, people deserve to know. Examining the bathtub causes a hallucination of Alex (the main character) lying DEAD in the tub, now full of bloody water, having committed suicide by slitting her wrists.
    • Never healing your sanity is the only way to go in this game. Favourite effects for this troper were the ones that messed with your head out of game, including the controller telling you it had been unplugged, the power pretending to go off, the volume lowering itself, and walking into a room that was full of ammunition at the time you needed it most, only for your head to randomly explode when you'd collected it all. All followed up by a flash of the screen and the player character panting/screaming 'this - can't - be - HAPPENING!". Still, nothing creeped me out as much as the statue in the upstairs hallway of the mansion that would watch you as you walked about, accompanied by bleeding walls. Truly brilliant game.
  • Shin Megami Tensei series has more than a few examples of [3]
    • In Persona 3 The effects of the dark hour are generally creepy what with every human turning into a coffin, the sky turning a sickly green, oh and the streets covered in blood everywhere. Oh and then there are shadows and let's not forget the method in which you summon your Persona.
    • Persona 4 has the Shadow versions of the characters which can easily creep most people out. Shadow Teddy Anyone?
      • Shadow Rise. Not only does it look creepy, it moves around creepy. It actually starts humping the pole at one point.
      • Some shadows actually made this troper laugh. Shadow Rise made him say "OH GOD!" and laughed at its silly voice. Same with Shadow Yukiko who was dressed like a princess and Shadow Kanji just...SHADOW KANJI!
      • Shadow Kanji (and the bathhouse dungeon itself) scares this troper. Kanji with that gay voice? And the loincloth thing with full butt view? Oh god no. Keep with the badass please. And don't even get me started on "Nice Guy", "Tough Guy", and the shadow form of Shadow Kanji. Ugh.
      • Not to mention one of the late game bosses, Kunino-Sagiri. It's "Your very wost nightmares as haunted by Zombie Jesus" look is already bad enough, but the trippy battle music, bizarre animations and the entire conditions surrounding the fight make it one of the most chilling bosses in the entire game.
    • Persona 2 Eternal Punishment is chock-full of nightmare fuel material.
      • Think about it, a word where all rumors will come true, now picture your average high school.
      • Or how about the people Possessed by the Jokers? White featureless faces with only a big red Slasher Smile!
    • Persona 2 Innocent sin featured one nightmareish final boss. Nyarlathotep decides to have his last bit of fun playing as the main characters fathers...which is a tentacle monster formed of all five of the main characters' fathers' bodies in bondage gear. They all cry out their names when they attack.
  • This troper, oddly enough, was frightened while playing what should have been a harmless game of Super Black Bass on SNES. While slowly reeling the line back in, searching for fish, out of nowhere a fish the size of a whale appeared. Coupled with the water surrounding it appearing dirtier than anywhere else...
  • One thing notable about the first Banjo Kazooie game is that it made you feel really, really crummy for losing by actually showing the cutscene of Gruntilda succeeding and Banjo's sister Tooty being turned into a Frankensteins Monster. Worse is her line: "Banjo, your sister wants as word with you......NOW! Even worse? You get this cutscene even if you use the "Save and Quit" feature.
    • Worse than that, is in the Xbox Live Arcade version of the game, where at the very end of the epilogue, after Grunty swears revenge, it inexplicably says GAME OVER instead of the original THE END. Let's hope that's not also the case with Banjo-Tooie... and if that had a game over scene, it'd be even more depressing. Grunty and sisters would fully drain the whole island with Grunty restoring her body, leaving the island with a zombie apocalypse.
    • This troper's younger sister fully blames her paralyzing fear of sharks on Snacker, the almost-invicincble baddie who stalks the waters of Treasure Trove Cove. Even if you smack him senseless with eggs, he's one of the few enemies in the original game that periodically respawns, meaning you always have to watch your back... And keep your ears open for strains of The Jimmy Heart Version of the Jaws theme...
      • Rooreelooo's Lets Play of the game turns it into Nightmare Fuel Squared by playing the aforementioned Sonic drowning music when he shows up.
    • This troper can't be the only one that's scared to death of Rusty Bucket Bay in the first game. The troper being the one up there in the Mario folder who became quite literally traumatized by the eel in Super Mario 64, the level is not a happy place for him (but oddly, Clanker's Cavern does nothin' for him, nor Jolly Roger's Bay in the next game, so... it's odd I guess). Even trying to get into the damn place, what with the tall flooded chamber, is HORROR INCARNATE to him. To say nothing of the water in the actual level, which depletes your air at normal rate even when your head is above the water and doubly fast when it's under... and the return of that fucking shark, even in a small area, DOES NOT HELP.
    • From Banjo-Tooie, the huge dinosaur foot that keeps coming down to stomp you, letting out a huge roar each time.
      • Jolly Roger Lagoon. Anenomes and octopi and fucking EELS! And don't get me started on the living algae and that fragging fish in that one area. Or Lord Foo Wak Wak.
  • Ivor Beggar's transformation into Ivor Bargain in Viva Pinata. He turns his head upside down, using a different mouth and nose that were formerly his hat.
  • Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney has the infamous stare of Damon Gant, which can make many gamers uneasy when they see it. Not to mention that Gant's stare isn't nearly as creepy the first time you see it. The problem is, every time he does it, the stare goes on for even longer, and there's NO MUSIC PLAYING. By the time you sneak into his office and he caatches you, he stares at you for so long in utter silence that it feels like HE'S LOOKING DIRECTLY AT YOU! In Case 5 of Trials and Tribulations, we witness Dahlia getting exorcised out of Maya's body, letting out a scream, and in her final on-screen moments takes the form of a very creepy ghost before turning into a flame and vanishing, while flashbacks to her crimes go off. And then in Apollo Justice, perceiving Kristoph Gavin is scary enough, but when you see his nervous habit—namely, his hand tensing and a combination of his finger bones and the scar on his hand forming a demonic face, you will shit bricks.
    • Two words: Jean Armstrong.
  • pop'n music has the "Chara-Pop" option, which replaces the standard note skin with that of your character. Sometimes the notes will change to something not-nightmarish (i.e. powerup icons for Vic Viper), but sometimes they'll change to things like your character's head. This troper was doing a battle match with a friend, and he could see on his friend's screen a bunch of his character's heads scrolling down, which was part of an attack that he inflicted on his friend's screen. It had a rather creepy effect, and it doesn't help that they explode when you hit them (which you are supposed to do).
  • "Little Big Planet"'s third world (The Wedding) seems rife with Nightmare Fuel...if you aren't just impressed by the exellent Day of the Dead decor. "Your Mileage May Vary". The most nightmarish bit would have to be Skulldozer, where you get chased by an enormous bull skull on bicycle wheels that continuously screams, is surrounded by red fog, and is being piloted by an insane zombie bride who thinks she's been jilted and is running down the entirety of her wedding reception. Trust me, it makes more sense in context.
  • Nothing about Breath Of Fire 2 yet? The English translation is a bit weird, but at times it just adds to the Uncanny Valley horror.
    • The initial scene where young Ryu and Bow follow a spiked tail through a shadowy cave, leading to a monster that may/may not have torn them to pieces.
    • THE GODDAMN FACE HUGGERS IN THE WELL.
    • The monster hunters who casually tell you that if they ever find the beautiful woman in the forest, they'd "sell her, of course."
      • It gets even worse when said beautiful woman actually shows up...and reveals her true colors as That One Boss. Now you know why the house with the monster hunters was suddenly empty. She murdered them in cold blood.
    • The whole surreal sidequest with the cat chefs. If they decide you're weak, they'll slowly cook you alive on a giant grill.
    • Nimufu. Just Nimufu. She collects cute boys and turns them to stone. And then there's her line when she meets the main character and learns he doesn't want to "play" with her: "...then I'll kill you first, then play with you!"
      • That being said, after you defeat her in the boss fight following that line, she becomes The Woobie. Yes, really.
    • Evrai. That is all. It is a city that is believed by the majority of the world to be paradise, but in reality, it is a city that sucks out your soul and feeds it to an evil god. And you can never leave.
      • That place creeped out this troper to no end. One minute everyone is happy and smiling, but once you try to leave, go talk to everyone in town again. Everyone will either laugh evilly or tell you that "it's so cold...". And perhaps worst of all, the standard town music is still playing the entire time, as if absolutely nothing is wrong, which somehow makes things even creepier.
  • On Ilos in Mass Effect, there is an ancient distess signal from a Prothean, and when you finish the dialogue, as you leave you can hear it repeat over and over in a terrified voice "Can not be stopped!". It creeped me out.
  • Eversion, a freeware platformer. Get it here. It starts off bright and cheery, but gets worse REALLY fast. The fact that the opening screen quotes H.P. Lovecraft should give one some hint to this.
    • It gets worse in later levels with giant hands speeding up to kill you, and instead of the basic "READY!" screen, it would occasionally say things like "I SEE YOU", "MOTHER", or just "READY", but right before starting the stage, adding "TO DIE" beneath it.
    • This troper finds X-5's music to be scarier than X-6's or X-7's, mainly due to when you first hear it when you suddenly everse from World 4-1 to 4-5. Soon after, surprise handsecks.
      • This troper, while haven't played the game, finds X-6's music to be the worst of them all. It soon playes screwed-up music. The faces on the blocks, oh god the freaking faces look terrible. It's a nightmare.
    • This troper actually got scared of the dark again after playing Eversion. She seriously was convinced that those demonic hands would come out of the dark walls. Also, the "BEHIND YOU" ready screen terrified her. When they said "NOT INTENDED FOR CHILDREN OR THOSE OF A NERVOUS DISPOSITION", they meaaaant it....
  • The old-school arcade skateboarding game 720 Degrees: When the timer runs out and a booming voice says "SKATE OR DIE!!!", then a swarm of killer bees starts chasing you, gradually becoming faster until they are unavoidable, while also changing their formation to the shape of a hammer, a pair of scissors, a syringe, etc. Fuels nightmares of being chased, you know, where your pursuer keeps getting faster and faster.
  • Anybody who's played the Donkey Kong Country games probably remembers the shockingly depressing Game Over screens. Also from a Donkey Kong game comes Mad Jack from Donkey Kong 64. Imagine, if you will, a giant Jack-in-the-Box. Now picture the Jack in question being a demented cyborgian crocodile with Donald Duck's voice and part of its paint job chipped off, revealing a glowing red eye. If it isn't all that scary, it ought to be.
    • Creepy Castle in Donkey Kong 64 was just disturbing in a handful of ways— the rotting hands you have to use as platforms with Tiny come to mind, but this troper just has to ask: is he the only one that was inexplicably but deeply terrified of the ominous, useless pillar in that level...?
    • Donkey Kong Land III - after beating the game with the normal ending (but not yet getting One Hundred Percent Completion) attempting to enter the Lost World will result in suddenly being hit with the "You Need However Many Coins To Enter" screen, which is... a digitized render of Baron K. Roolenstein against a black background while the super-happy credits music plays. It's absolutely terrifying.
    • DKC1's cave music can go screw itself for making troper want to get cave stages over with ASAP. Specifically, before the music hits the 1:38 mark.
  • Has any other editor in this fallen off of a building in a Mirror's Edge? If just being in first person wasn't enough, there's the snapping sound. Uuuugggh...
  • The old, Lovecraft-inspired graphic adventure game Shadow of the Comet is remarkably creepy, especially if one played it as a 14 year old boy, like this troper did.
  • The Haunted Grounds level in Gauntlet Dark Legacy. The level has an overall ominous atmosphere, combined with eerie music and the random laughter of children, which at one point, for no reason, becomes an unsettling scream. Plus it has statues of the four classic Gauntlet character classes, meeting gruesome fates. The next level, the Haunted House, is probably a bit of a relief, what with its abundance of ghost story cliches.
  • Half Life 2. In Ravenholm, the fast zombies crawling up the pipe nearly made me shit myself. This was especially embarrassing as I was playing it in my break at school. Slightly less scary since I found a mod that turns the headcrabs into Dr Zoidberg
    • Now just imagine how this troper felt playing it in the dark with headphones on. The fast zombies' blood-curdling scream and the fact that a similar sound is present on the background music for the level gives the whole place a most resoundly deserved place on this page.
  • Oregon Trail II produced quite a bit of Nightmare Fuel for this troper back in 3rd grade...the DUN DUN!!!! that played whenever a bad event happened STILL scares the hell out of this troper...so much he refuses to play it with the sound on.
  • The PC game Abuse can be summed up as a platform version of Doom (Abuse was made by ex-id Software members). Dark corners, creepy mutants, though not a lot violence to boot. If the atmosphere doesn't get to you, then the scream of the mutants and seeing a horde of them coming at you will. Fans of Tim And Eric Awesome Show: Great Job can hear this from their Bougar sketch.
  • In Fable II, the Demon Door in Bloodstone transports you to a secluded forest path in the winter. You follow the path, lit by glowing lanterns, haunting Christmas-style music playing in the background, until you get to an idyllic little cottage, all lit-up and warm and inviting. Inside, you can see a perfect little set up; everything is rosy and bright. Why, you might think of moving your family here. No deed on the outside, though, so you step inside to investigate further. A loud noise like a scream. The lights go out. The music stops. And where once was a homely little lodge is a now a burnt out, dilapidated shell of a house. What's more, there are skeletons draped across the remains of furniture. You run upstairs, grab your treasure, and high-tail it back to the door... But not before passing the torture cages where the path lights used to be.
    • This troper saw a graphical glitch while opening the door where his character's hair keeps dissapearing and returning. Also, the next time he went into the Door, he found himself falling into an endless pit that came out of nowhere.
    • About halfway through the Wraithmarsh, you pass through an abandoned cottage. In it are two iron maidens. Next to one, there's a chest with an Eternal Love Ring in it. Next to the other, a chest with a teddy bear. Think about it.
    • This troper found the "Perfect Day" level to be absolutely terrifying. It just seemed too idyllic. When I saw flaming, mangled, mutilated corpses littering the roads under a blood red sky later on... yeah.
  • Star Trek Elite Force goes for some out of left field: aside from the usual danger of seeing a couple of your teammates turned into Borg, the real shocker comes when you first kill an enemy with the alternate fire of your phaser or, worse, the phaser rifle. Said alternate modes are the disintegrate settings, and the result is... unsettling. Especially when you realize it's the two basic Federation guns assigned to everyone on the Hazard Team that do it.
  • The Witch Doctor in the original Adventure Island, aka the NES clone of Wonder Boy. Everytime you defeated him, his head fell off and he would get a new, more grotesque Head Swap, some of these, such as the cyclops form, were downright terrifying, especially when this troper was a kid.
  • Several of the bosses in the Turbografx Shoot Em Up Monster Lair were downright nightmare fuel-errific, for example the skull with a circle of mini-grim reapers, the fish whose skin came off to form smaller fishes, the wasp hive and queen, the baby vampire/frankenstein hybrid, the cactus jack-o-lantern(nasty buzzing noise when it snaked across the screen), and to top it off, the Final Boss's One Winged Angel / Clipped Wing Angel form. The game's Nintendo Hard-ness could be nightmarish too.
  • Guitar Hero: Aerosmith. Yes, fucking GUITAR HERO AEROSMITH. The second level's encore animation features lightning, and several creepy images of stuffed rabbits and such, and then a freaking jack-in-the-box with an outright demonic face pops up. Why they decided this would be a good idea, I'm not sure at all.
    • The Tool stage from World Tour oh god all those eyes
      • That's nothing! You know the poster for the Kentucky level? It's got the single scariest sheep ever! I think Satan should consult his sheperd boy because he lost one of his sheep from Hell!
  • Soul Blade had Siegfried's bad ending. He beats the crap out of Cervantes, gets the male Soul Edge blade, and hoists it into the air victoriously... where it clamps down on to his hand, and as he struggles to free himself, twisted armour starts forming all around him. Siegfried's screaming gave this troper, at ten years old, nightmares for weeks. What makes it worse is that this was the canon ending to the game.
  • Chibi Robo had the Spydorz. Those things are seriously creepy.
  • Super Robot Wars Alpha 3: "End of the Galaxy". Enjoy it—or not—here.
  • Although NIGHTS: Journey of Dreams is a fairly bright, happy, game, there are a couple of bosses who deserve to mentioned here. First up is Donbalon, who's literally a patchwork/clown/balloon-thing, with a freaking creepy smile. Next is Cerberus, who is bad enough on it's own (being a couple of dogs with spiked balls for bodies), but combine it with the creepy cage-dome/desolate background, and the music, then Cerberus becomes a lot worse.
  • Chrono Trigger is pretty notable for doing some horrible things with the SNES sound hardware, such as the infamous Lavos cry, the genuinely startling noise many monsters make when they attack you, and the music in Magus' castle, which has a disturbing laughing/weeping noise playing throughout. To say nothing of some of the game's set pieces, like the cathedral or the People Jars aboard the Black Omen.
    • "But...the future refused to change..." The apocalyptic imagery from the bad ending was enough to give a lot of players the heebie-jeebies.
  • In Nightmare Before Christmas: Oogie's Revenge, one of the first boss battles opens with a cutscene of Jack arriving in a seemingly abandoned building. He sees a dark shadow on the floor, which slowly starts to grow and lift itself off the ground. No big deal, right? Well, a few seconds later it morphs into a pitch-black shadow of Oogie Boogie, with glowing yellow holes for his eyes and mouth. And as if that's not enough... "Jaaaaaack!" This troper just about had a heart attack!
  • The classic Playstation gem known as Medievil and its sequel Medievil 2 are well known for being Nightmare Fuel. It it wasn't the violence, demonic themes and dark setting, then it would be the terrifying awesome music. As a kid, this troper wasn't afraid of anything in the game but that music. That haunting music that perfectly created an atmosphere that made your skin break into goose flesh and your hairs to stand on end, your spine chilled and teeth chatter. Yep, those game had it all (but no Killer Rabbit unfortunately).
  • This troper can't believe that nobody included the NES classic Monster Party on this list in so long. It was released in 1989, back when there were no age ratings for video games back then, and the gory visuals and general weirdness of the monsters was primo Nightmare Fuel for many a kid back in the day, from the sudden change of scenery in level one to the absolutely creepy ending.
  • Marathon: Evil had the Devlins, a spinney, yellow eyed, hard to see menace that liked dark places. Having one jump out at you for the first time is not calming.
  • The sunken ship in Okami: There's ghosts of past bosses, possessed treasure chests, and, in one flooded room, a huge slime-ridden hand that lurks beneath the surface and attempts to grab you as you try to get from one side to the other. The unique art style of the game doesn't help.
    • Not forgetting about the ghosts that fly in your ''face'' screaming, if you get too close. Also, it was only recently that This Troper noticed it, but take a look at thoses un-killable ghost girls, when the water is raised. They just float there, with a disturbing resemblence to corpses. It certainly makes you shudder.
  • That One Boss in Skies of Arcadia— a huge, bloblike creature with a translucent belly— in which you can see human skulls swimming around in green digestive fluid. YUCK. Its entire lair is covered in blood and human skeletons, and one of its most devastating attacks involves the thing THROWING UP ON YOU (and said attack can poison your entire party). It's incredibly difficult to beat, especially on your first run though the game, as it loves to poison you with said throwing-up move. And beating it is no relief; right after you climb the ladder it was guarding, you get to fight another boss battle, followed shortly by a mini boss of sorts...
    • From the same dungon, we have the "Mind Stealers", which appear to be giant beetles that are parasitizing emaciated humans by apparently taking over their nervous system.
    • Hell, the ENTIRITY of the Valuan Catacombs is terrible experience: Let's see, it's a Scrappy Level of the Absurdly Spacious Sewer type, there's Goddamn Bats everywhere, and you have to experience the most disturbing sound effect in the game...
    • On the subject of that sound effect (the sound of Lightning out of battle- it's worse than it "sounds") it's also heard going into the Vortex, which is the SCARIEST dungeon this troper has ever encountered in an RPG.
  • In Tony Hawk's Underground 2, play as The Jester that you unlock in New Orleans. Build up his special and activate "Focus Mode" (press L3). Now jump and do his special manual trick (the one where he juggles with coloured balls). Because in Focus Mode everything slows down and the music is mute, instead of his happy laugh, you get his Evil Laugh. It makes him a Monster Clown! Wise tropers can use this trick to scare young kids out of the room.
  • Digimon World for the Play Station has a creepy boss. Getting your prosperity too high will make you face a overpowered greymon. Note that it stalks you until you kill it and was following you home. It doesn't help that it wants your street sign and makes you train like crazy. Beat him but he can be Paranoia Fuel.
    • Want to know what's behind Monzaemon's zipper. It's disturbing squick that is found out through a cheat. There's a Numemon. Yes I repete a Numemon, the ugly slugish crap eater is inside the happy teddy bear. To get him in the same game, bring a Numemon to the teddy bear costume and it will evolve. Worse part, your character doesn't seem to notice something's not right.
  • I'm surprised no one has mentioned Zork: Nemesis yet. This Troper had played all the previous games in the Zork series, and was expecting a continuation of the familiar jovial tone. Zork: Nemesis is much darker, and while all levels have a somewhat sinister atmosphere, its most nightmare-inducing aspect is a level inside an abandoned asylum set in remote snow-covered mountains. The ambient soundtrack, featuring muffled screaming and clanging metal, is par for the course when there's the Bedlam House trope being played up. But to max out on Nightmare Fuel, there is also a batshit insane electroconvulsive therapy technician and a morgue, where you must find a naked corpse in a metal drawer (which, of course, ups the volume on the Psycho Strings), decapitate it, place the severed head onto a machine to reanimate it and make it say the combination to the lock a safe. So much unnecessary squick. Similarly, you must alsoretrieve an amputated arm and hand mounted in a display case to open an electrified keypad lock without risking yet another Zork-style death. I first played this when I was 16 years old; even now it's kinda nightmare inducing if played at night.
    • Completely agreed. The whole game is nightmare-inducing, and the total emptiness (but with screaming in the background) of almost every area doesn't help. At least the torture chamber is optional, though there's a whole sequence in that same zone where you have to run around with a highly radioactive item, and there's a very short time limit before you die horribly.
  • The Trauma Center series. Forget the various strains of GUILT/Stigma, forget the Squick inherent in half the operations (particularly to more squeamish tropers)— what's more terrifying than anything is the scene in Under the Knife 2 where Adel Tulba goes completely batshit Brainwashed And Ax Crazy right in front of you, before screaming in agony and collapsing.
    Adel: Dr. Stiiiiles... Do you know what else the "Healing" Touch is good for...? It's also good for... KILLING!
    • That reminds me of Summon Night Swordcraft Story's Tear Expy Ureksa which also Brainwashed And Crazy and shows the same look.
    • You can't honestly say that the image of the lifeless palette-swapped blood-splashed body of a particularly endearing Ill Boy wasn't burned into your brain for at least a little while after GUILT Returns. Plus this troper bawled once a little of the shock wore off.
  • Super Puzzle Bobble / Super Bust-A-Move's American boxarts, SBAM1 for the PS2 and SBAM2 for the Sega Saturn replace Bub and other characters with Nightmare Fuel inducing images: a baby wearing sunglasses that show the gameplay screen while having a red bubble on his mouth, and a guy who has shoved matchsticks on his eyes to keep them open. Look if you dare.
  • The bad ending to Bubble Bobble (arcade, NES). Listen to the music here... if you dare...
    • Doesn't help that it's reused in Rainbow Islands!
  • The Tails doll - an unlockable character in Sonic R that apparently scarred a whole mess of young fans. It's a doll made to look like Tails (surprise) with these big, staring eyes. The way it moves suggests that something invisible is carrying it by the head. This character spawned dozens of myths online, in the style of Bloody Mary. To this day, people claim that the game is haunted and that if you do thus-and-so in exactly this or that fashion, the tails doll will appear and kill you three ways before you hit the ground.
    • One of those myths blames the Tails Doll for causing the series to hit the Polygon Ceiling.
  • X-COM has inspired a fair few nightmares in its time. The Chryssalids are known to reach High Octane levels as well as being Demonic Spiders, but this particular troper is more freaked out by the original Sectoids... mainly because they're who you first fight when you're new to the game and dealing with an unforgiving kind of tactical combat, though probably mostly because this troper finds all of The Greys to be Nightmare Fuel. (by contrast, by the time I finally met the Chryssalids, they went down so easy that I wondered what all the fuss was about)
    • When this troper was first playing X-COM I had the radio on in the background. The first time I ran into a Chryssalid was very early on, my first terror mission I had reached in time, and the song playing was the Wall of Voodoo cover of Ring of Fire. An awesome, but at the time scarey combination.
    • It gets even worse in the sequel with Tentaculats. Oh God, the Tentaculats. Think even creepier-looking Chryssalids with three-dimensional movement. Those things made this troper equip every soldier with a grenade / sonic pulsar primed for immediate detonation in hand lest they wander about as zombies.
    • And then there's the Deep Ones. Humans implanted with mind control devices and turned into living incubators for alien fetuses, while fully aware of what is being done to them, yet unable to control their own body. Made even worse by researching the Alien Implanter, whose description explicitly states that the subject remains conscious during surgery.
    • In third game, the chryssalids are now changed to brainsuckers who do exactly what its name says. It sucks the brain out of the agent and replace it with an alien organism. It doesn't spread anymore but some of the aliens have gun shooting brainsucker eggs. Take too long for a mission and you can find a colony of them. The hyperworms are quite disturbing too.
  • Bio-Hazard Battle is made of this trope. Creepiness is guaranteed given that the player ship and all of the enemies are organic, but there is a memorable boss who is a giant maggot poking out the neck of a giant decaying human/insectoid corpse.
    • It gets creepy enough when the first level is a ruined futuristic city overrun with monsters, but the final level starts out as an industrial-scientific area, possibly hinting at the origin of the... things you have to exterminate.
  • If you think Bio-Hazard Battle is creepy, try X-Multiply. It's an arcade game by the developers of R-Type where you control a microscopic fighter injected into a human infected by alien virus. The title screen itself...
  • Although not as bad as the movie, the Coraline game for the Nintendo Wii has its moments. Example? In one mini-game, Coraline must race after Wybie (who is running scared) through a dark forest with only fireflies for light. Afterwards, when she finally catches up wit him, she sees him curled up on the ground, hiding his face. Coraline asks if he's okay, to which Wybie replies with "I-I-I don't...know..." and lifts his face. We then see that he now has button-eyes, and then the Other Mother's arm stretches like rubber out of the well, grabs him, and pulls him, screaming, down the well. Thankfully, it's only a nightmare.
  • The Tetris clone Lockjaw has Rhythm 20G mode, a mode in which pieces drop instantly and lock to the beat of an eerie rendition of Korobeiniki (the Game Boy Tetris A-Type theme). The music gradually increases in tempo, and at about 3 minutes and 14 seconds (if you can survive for that long), the music is suddenly interrupted by a voice saying, "You're better than I am, you don't really need this music anyway," and then the music suddenly turns into a creepier, dying monotone. If you haven't died yet at this point from speeds reminiscent of Tetris TGM2's Death mode, you sure will now.
  • Basically everything involving Dr. Steinman in Bioshock. Especially the scene right before you kill him.
  • Return Fire is supposedly a military-themed vehicular combat game, where the player commandeers helicopter, tank, an APC, or a jeep. But if your vehicle destroyed, you'll be treated of an image of a SKULL. LAUGHING. AT. YOU. FULLSCREEN.
  • Haze has a few genuinely disturbing moments in an otherwise bland first-person shooter. Coming immediately to mind is after destroying the Mantel mind-control device thingy in the Observatory, you come across two Mantel troopers as they are suddenly deprived of the drug that kept them unaware of what exactly has been going on. One starts to go "I did something bad... I did something really bad...", repeating himself several times with greater and greater emotion until he finally pulls a gun and shoots himself in the head. The other then starts crying out his friend's name over the friend's body (and these are the same people who have been psychotically gung-ho and uncaring throughout the game due to the drug) until he takes his friend's gun and commits suicide as well. And all you, the protagonist, can say is "I'm sorry..."
  • BEWARE, I LIVE. I HUNGER. RUN, COWARD!
    • RRRAAAAAAWRR!!!
  • How was Oblivion not mentioned? The central plot of the game is WALKING THROUGH HELL. I'll admit most of the levels weren't that scary, but the hanging corpses and fleshy growths spread out made this troper queasy.
    • The Big Bad, Methrunes Dagon walking out of a portal to hell, into the burning Imperial City was pretty creepy.
    • This troper recalls a plane of Oblivion that is mostly underground. Dark tunnels, pools of lava, burning corpses, and the occasional 10-foot tall alligator monster made me flee the zone in fear.
    • When you walk to close to an Oblivion Gate, the sky turns volcanic, tinting the air red. There's also a creepy soundtrack.
  • Seven Minutes. If the whole "Only seven minutes left to live" thing doesn't freak you out, then the giant three eyed head taunting you (and turning into a skull at points), the seizuretastic lighting, and the layout of the game will.
  • Ecco The Dolphin. The game starts with everything normal and happy and peaceful in your little ocean world, but doing a high jump out of the water triggers a horrific transformation— the screen flashes red and then black, the music is replaced with unearthly alien screeching, and all your dolphin friends and everything else in the ocean except you is sucked up into the sky. This troper had to brace herself for this sequence every time she started a new game— it's worse because sometimes it takes a few jumps to trigger it, so you can never quite predict when it's coming.
    • There's more. The final boss, where you fight that thing responsible for sucking up all the sealife. A twenty-meter-high, disembodied alien head which you are required to gradually mutilate to pieces in order to win.
    • The whole gameplay could be considered Nightmare Fuel, with the tiny, minimalist background music and mile after mile of bleak, cold ocean which poor Ecco is required to quest through. The sense of crushing loneliness that starts to set in after a while is bad enough on its own... but then it gets broken in the worst possible way, by bouts of heart-busting terror as killer sharks or giant ihthyosaurs blitz onto the screen from nowhere and devour you in one bite. *shudder*
  • Some of the item placements in Katamari Damacy are just unsettling. It gets worse with every game. By the fourth game, there are giant whales carrying continents,a giant octopus attacking an oil tanker, and skeleton-men lighting stuff on fire. Yikes.
  • This troper personally finds glitchy games, as the result of the game being dirty, as his own personal Nightmare Fuel. And he does take good care of his carts.
  • In Ragnarok Online, Morroc, one of the major in-game towns, was once a thriving commerce center, only a stone's throw away from Prontera, the main town. Now, Morroc and the surrounding area have been destroyed; the BGM has changed accordingly. Compare: the original Morroc theme to its destroyed counterpart.
    • How about Glastheim and Aldebaran's Clock Tower? The former is practically an abandoned city swarming with monsters ranging from bloodthirsty lice to the most grotesque playing card ever. The architecture of the latter - which has a maze-like interior with cogs, abandoned clocks, steel mesh and endless pits at times - gives this troper the creeps. Doesn't help that the most common enemies are giant cuckoo clocks with muscular arms and scary masks. And the music. Goodness, the music.
  • Pilotwings 64: Normally a cheerful flight simulator with lots of options and bird names for all the pilots. Well, enter two levels in which you face a large creature made of stone, with red eyes, who attacks by hurling boulders. Freaked ThisTroper out every time.
    • That would be Mecha Hawk, and This Troper found his goofy scream when you score a hit on him to be Nightmare Retardent. On the other hand, he always found the music for the rocket belt stages strangely unsettling, as well as the fact that, like Myst, the whole friggin world (especially the Little States Island stage) is completely empty save for the sounds of the hustle and bustle of apaarently invisible city folk and a pair of apparently ghostly airplanes that circle the island.
  • The Flood from Halo. Just, the Flood.
  • Marathon Infinity gets some points for the dream levels. Invisible, nigh unkillable enemies stock you in a bizarre landscape, and the terminals, typically advice from someone at least sort of on your side, instead are insane stories of decapitated corpses and mysterious men in black.
  • Sid Meiers Alpha Centauri has a few. For example, the way that Mindworms use their Psychic Powers to kill your units (they paralyze them with psi-induced fear, then lay eggs in the paralyzed people) and I particularly find fucking terrifying the page quote for Brain In A Jar, for the inclusion of "Subject termination advised"
  • Black & White has a ghostly voice that says "deaaaaath" every time a villager dies. Creepy. But if you register your game with your name, and you happen to have a common name that's programmed into the game, the same creepy voice says your first name in the middle of the night.
    • The voice must have gotten the publisher/developer some complaints, because the first patch has the death voice's removal as a listed feature.
  • Tetris: The Grand Master's backgrounds are mostly biology-themed. Level 0-99 are what appear to be blood cells, which aren't too bad. Level 200-299 are what appear to be blood vessels or tentacles. From level 500 onwards though, the backgrounds start going downhill: 500-599 is a bunch of what appear to be neurons, 600-699 are spiked balls of doom, 800-899 is a brain, and 900-999 is a fetus. Some of these images are a little discomforting.
  • The Reaper in Kid Icarus freaked out this troper. To the uninformed, when Pit gets near the reaper, its eyes suddenly bug out and it starts running back and forth while an extended version of the game over theme plays as smaller reapers descend from the sky.
  • Although they didn't look very scary, the Vorticons from [[Commander Keen]] freaked this troper out years ago. In the original game, not only did they have ninja-like jumping skills (better than Keen's, even), they also took four shots to kill. Screwing up and having to start over was a big possibility when fighting one of these guys.
  • This Troper personnaly thought they were cool but most of his friends thought the Eight Phases of Morganna and the area you fight them in on the first four {{.hack}} games were pretty creepy. Understandable since the first of the eight more or less crucifies you as one of his attacks.
  • Tale of Tales's The Path. It's actually a pretty beautiful-looking game with some creepy imagery (but what do you expect, it's based on the earlier tales of Red Riding Hood), but the endings...dear God, the endings. Once you come across your personal "wolf," you have a little cutscene of the two of you interacting, and then you wake up in the pouring rain in front of Grandma's house. Starting from there, you move in a slow, sluggish way, with your head down, and once you step inside, are forced to go on what can only be described as a roller-coaster in the house. Going through dark room after dark room...seeing various creepy things, like axes and blood smears onteh wall, a moose's head, a dark cellar...and depending on the girl you choose to play, the ending images are all varying levels of scary. Like Robin, the youngest girl, being mauled to death by a wild and vicious werewolf. Or the possible-lesbian Ginger, revealed to have died by barbed wire. One of the images shows her body on the ground, with her head a good distance away from it, conected to her ody by a long, glowing strand of light, while barbed wire sits across from it. There's a reason this troper doesn't want to play before bed.
  • Billy Hatcher And The Giant Egg is rife with this, ladies and gentlemen. You fight an army of crows powered by darkness, and some of the bosses are quite creepy.
  • Command And Conquer Renegade had the Visceroid. Now, anyone who played the RTS version is probably going "How is that scary?" Simple. YOU CAN'T SEE MULTIPLE MOUTHS AND EYES FLOATING IN A MUTANT TIBERIUM BLOB! Of the same type, the Initiate and Acolyte enemies are also quite freaky to look at, when you realize the former lives in constant, never ending pain, the latter has an exposed brain and various bionic augmentations, and all are horribly experimented on.
  • Spore's cell stage is quite creepy once you see the other cells in the background at first. This troper thought that they were Border Patrol and will come up and eat you if you go to far. and if you find a huge cell, than God help you.
    • If you go online, you might found some guys with twisted ideas creates "twisted" creatures... not to mention the Creepy and Cute parts pack...
  • Final Boss of Phantasy Star IV, that is all.
  • Elebits is a funny, cute game from Konami where you have to catch cute miniature critters hidden everywhere in your house or your town. Then you get to the Amusement Park. Oh, nothing scary at all... Except that the park's mascot is none other than Robbie the Rabbit. Considering in what game we already met him, it can be quite... Disturbing to wander around those statues...
  • Max Payne features this with literal nightmares, where Max goes around an increasingly surreal version of his house the night his family was killed. And every time you die (which will probably happen a lot due to a section with a bunch of very unforgiving jumps) this positively ungodly scream echoes around you.
  • EarthwormJim. Almost all enemies. And the hero himself. That creepy snot parachute. And the falling puppies minigame. I can't believe someone could find those horrors funny.
  • Mega Man Star Force: Namely the second game. Towards the end, the bad guys raise Mu into the sky, and EM bodies have been sent out to terrorize everyone. The music that plays on the Overworld is the typical "danger" music played for every other scenario like this. Beat the game, return to Echo Ridge in preparation for the second quest, and... the people are still being terrorized by the EM bodies and Mu still floats ominously overhead, but the music is the cheery Echo Ridge tune now. On an unrelated note, those Grabbity viruses look familiar...
    • Even above that is the Bonus Dungeon. It's a parallel-world version of the various locations in the game, except there are no people. You're seeing what would have happened if the Big Bad succeeded.
  • You wouldn't expect an 8-bit game to have nightmare fuel in it. But This troper got a tad freaked out in Lode Runner. If you fall into one of the holes you make, it eventually fills up and you get BUILT INTO THE WALL!
    • Anyone who doubts the power of 8-bit nightmare fuel obviously never played Shadowgate. This troper was so traumatized by the game's horrifying death descriptions and (in retrospect, wonderfully) creepy music that I went from a pretty fearless kid to being terrified of the dark.
  • Baten Kaitos and its prequel haven't been mentioned yet? Really? Well, I'll take care of it, then. Both games have beautifully rendered elaborate graphics... Which makes certain dungeons (Nekton, Ancient Library, Capella, and Zaurak, to name a few) absolutely terrifying, especially when coupled with their music. The track "Deterioration" gives this Troper the chills every time it pops up in her mp3 player's shuffle list... And then there are some of the monsters and bosses. Some of the monsters have quite creepy designs, but then there's the bosses... Some of which are humans mutated into extremely grotesque and monsterous things.
    • Also, from the original game, the island of Mira in general. And with "Castle in the Sand" as its overworld music... *shudder*
      • Duhr was quite creepy, too.
    • The ghost towns you visit in the "flashbacks" in the prequal were really creepy for This Troper. And then there's Wiseman. Oh sure, he's not scary to look at, but I found his voice, lines, and battle music are all terrifying. Oh, and not to mention he's responsible for said ghost towns, is something of The Heartless , and is one of the root causes for just about EVERYTHING and I do mean EVERYTHING bad that happens in both games. He's evil, and really, REALLY creepy.
  • Vambies, from Legend of Musashi. They are a mix of zombies and vampires, which basically mean they are zombies who can't survive at daylight, but if you ever went into the town while it was vambie infested at night, be prepared. Couple the creepyness with the fact this troper knew little to no english at the time, and as such wasn't even aware they would appear due to not understanding the villagers warnings.
  • The logo of Bone Daddy Entertainment scared this troper to no end as a kid. One game they made (if not the only game), called Rapid Fire, had the logo between the gun holsters, and occasionally it appeared on the screen during attract mode. From what I remember, it was a skull with eyes and a mohawk. Can't find it on Google for the life of me, though.
  • Quake 4 has a lot of this, mostly with the human corpses you find. Especially in the Stroyent Dispersal Facility. And then there's how you kill the Stroyent Processing Creature (who already qualifies): By forcefeeding it Stroyent so that it's stomach bursts open and spills enough acid to burn through three floors.
  • This troper found the torture scene in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater to be nightmare fuel. Though anybody getting beaten up with a bag over their face is freaky it was particularly scary because Snake even peed himself. SNAKE. Manliest man in the world reduced to that. If that isn't scary I don't know what is!
  • Seiken Densetsu 3 - a little-known, but fantastic SNES RPG. The ghost ship sequence. Narm at first, but the sound limitations on the screams make it about a thousand times worse. The "Ghoul" enemies, which you see for the first time here, appear to be attacking you by distending their ribs and scratching you with them. Then there's the "captain's log", which you open only to find "Die Die Die Die Die Die Die Die Die Die Die Die Die..." followed by a shriek. Ick.
  • In the german-made flight sim Dark Star One, every sector of space you fly in is actually very small, and no matter how long you fly towards a distant-looking planetoid, you can never reach it. However, there's one sector of space (where the final battle takes place) in which the far-distant asteriod belt can be flown to, mined, etc. For reasons I simply don't understand, this long-distance, uneventful trip from this asteriod belt to the space's exit point scares the crap out of me, to the point where I refuse to make that trip ever again.
  • In the flight sim Freelancer, the space for each of the system's sectors is portrayed with simple starfields and nebulae. However, one of the hidden / easter egg sectors has a vastly different design: the sector is essentially within a giant cylinder. I've had actual nightmares about this, because it's so different and alien than anything else in the game.
  • A little known educational game called "Jump Start Adventures: 4th grade" put the player on a first-person view of a Stock Halloween island...except two things were guaranteed to scare young players. For one, Repsack would appear out of NOWHERE and then say "Boo", and would give you a riddle that you had to answer or else you would lose health points. The second, Mrs. Grunkle was the witch villain who had turned your classmates into monsters and was deciding to screw with you and have a little fun before you joined them.
    • And if oyu played a game while not on a mission...Madame Pomretta's eyes appeared and said "COME TO POMRETTA'S TO ACCEPT YOUR CHALLENGE!"
  • Scissorman would appear out of nowhere in Clock Tower and scare people. Even when it's a demented circus-reject. T His troper literally jumped up and said "WHOA!" when he appeared out of nowhere one time.
  • I have absolutely no clue why, but Dracula actually scared me in the underrated FMV game Dracula Unleashed. It took a little while before I figured out you were supposed to enter holding the cross and all I could do was watch as Dracula would rip my dude's heart out and then throw it on the floor, taking the Damsel In Distress as his undead bride. Or what about a few of those random deaths? Some involve a wolf running up to the player character as the screen fades black, another is when a man yells "I'm Sane I tell you! SANE! SAAAAAANE!" and then the screen goes black. Or when the maniac strangled Hellsing?
    • If you wait too long to fight Dracula, you can go find your friends murdered.
  • Vampire the Masquerade Redemption, the little-known first game based off Vampire the Masquerade had the Cathedral of Flesh, endless tunnels of a demonic church created out of thousands of flesh-crafted bodies, which were still visibly human.
  • Four words: Lemming. Tomato. Ketchup. Facility. Featuring lemmings being systematically squished into blood. That evidently becomes ketchup. And unless you solve the puzzle you can't stop it. *shudder*
  • In inFAMOUS, you play as Cole McGrath, gifted with electricity-based superpowers. The game has a karma system, so you can choose to be a real hero and save the world. If you do this...it does not all change the fact that Cole's powers win you fights by frying your enemies to death as surely as if they were strapped to an electric chair. And that's when you're not sapping the natural electric charge from their bodies to recharge yourself. There's something altogether unnerving about the whole thing, and given the game's The Dark Knight-inspired grittyness, the developers probably noted the possibility of some players thinking this, and didn't see any need whatsoever to do anything about it.
  • Even worse were the moments when the last boss formed copies of himself, and touching any one of these gave you a full-screen screamer flash up.
  • The SNES game Porky Pig's Haunted Holiday is pretty scary thank to the combination of his graphic and atrocious primitive voice over to his cartonny's horror theme. Like we said in Quebec: we don't want to know it, we want to see it if you want to see it off course, muahaha
    • And while in the subject of looney tunes's game on the super nintendo, Speedy Gonzales Los Gatos Bandidos's game over screen is quite......unforgiving....saying the least.yet again a video worth a thousand word and yet see why i never played this game more than three time shall we **evil grin**.
  • The Snow Bros. 2 character select screen.◊
  • Baroque has load of disturbing element. But Bubugel and Nicl & Nicr (possibly the worst case of Love Hurts) made the rest rather tamed.
  • Descent bosses, their engine hums and ability to teleport.
  • The fifth boss in Rocket Knight Adventures; a Humongous Mecha piloted by the Evil Counterpart... You are on foot. All you can do is run like hell, hearing its footsteps close behind (if you see it after the opening, you're probably already dead) and having its movements shake the whole screen, if it touches you, you die. The first time This troper played this level he was young and it utterly terrified him (even knowing from a walkthrough that you get to turn the tables later), to the point where he simply couldn't play the game anymore after various attempts and sold it off despite it being So Cool Its Awesome. He regretted it and got it back a few years later and got revenge, So Yeah... But even now hearing the mecha close behind as you frantically flee is sort of creepy.
  • This Troper still has a hard time playing Metal Gear Solid 2 because of Raiden...
  • This Troper found the Puppet Master as he appears in Castlevania:Dawn of Sorrow, to be rather disturbing. You attack a giant, deformed, puppet head, with hideous yellow eyes and a twisted mouth full of sharp teeth. It's attack consists of using one of its four spindly arms to move a life sized voodoo doll of the main character and place it into the corresponding bloodstained Iron Maiden, where it switches places with your character, dealing massive damage.
    • The final boss for the game consists of multiple giant demons fused together into a single jumbled whole, in a room made out of countless human bodies. One of its attacks seems to involve spraying poison gas through a hole in its ribcage.
  • How in the world have the turrets in Portal not been mentioned? Little white tripods with a single glowing red eye that speak in tinny, childlike voices. This troper thought they were sort of cute until she dropped one and it screamed. Then it shut down with a quiet "Whyyy?".
  • Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines your a big bad vampire right? your not scared of ghosts right? WRONG! Try clearing the hallowbrook hotel without jumping out of your skin. Bonus points if you do it at night with the lights turned off.
  • In Dance ManiaX 2nd Mix, if your Life Meter runs low, the background will flash a picture of a skeleton reaching his arms at you with the word "DANGER" at the top and bottom of the screen. Talk about incentive to not fail...
  • In the original Spyro the Dragon, Beastmasters and Dream Casters were Nightmare Fuel...no...WORLDS of Nightmare Fuel! The worst offenders are Dark Passage, which gave me Nyctophobia, that one marsh where the little plants EAT YOU, and then there is Jacques, with monsters that all look like things half way between Starfish Alien and Eldritch Abomination. What gets special mention is Metalhead. You are trapped in a room alone with a boss who is absolutely delighted to rip you apart by throwing enemies at you. He puts disregard for allied life at whole new low levels.
  • TMNT: Smash Up already seems to have this even though the game hasn't come out! You do know a Foot Soldier is in the game, right? Can't possibly be scary, right? Wrong. Look here, just look at those inhuman looking eyes, the body looks somewhat strange too, and the head looks creepy because there are usually things that represent it, like a realistic looking chin, but this thing just doesn't have one, it looks more like a Shadow Creature than a Foot Ninja! Strangely though, I found myself making the art my desktop background, I guess the Utrominator is slightly scarier...
    • ...Which I will now elaborate upon. Basically, an Utrom usually wears armor to blend in with Humanity, this is what happens when you let an Utrom suddenly become very trigger happy and badass, the suit looks just plain creepy, but it's mainly just the head, and, in the trailers, the Utrom pops out and screams... And it's an ATTACK! Though he is obviously in control, it makes it seem like the machine is trying to hurt the Utrom and the opponent.
      • Something I just found out, the Utrominator is based on a scrapped design for the 2003 series, right here, what's so scary? I read the page, and it says "an enhaced and enslaved Exo suit with an zombie Oot, a version from an alternate era where the Shredder reigns supreme." That makes it slightly more unsettling, because, even though it's not a zombie you're playing as, it's still very, very creepy, imagine playing as it in this form.
  • One of the kids this troper's sister babysits will probably be traumatized by one of the game overs in Nancy Drew: Secret of Shadow Ranch. Near the end of the game, the player is placed inside a maze and the criminal of the game shows up, and the object is to trap him. Unfortunately she didn't escape from him in time, so he walked up and said "heeeeeeeeeeeeeere's SHORTY!" in a fashion similar to "Heeeeeeeeeeere's JOHNNY!" and then the player got a game over screen.
  • Capcom's Darkstalkers series is a somewhat humorous take on fighting games, though there are some instances that are unsettling and creepy. One particular instance that is burned into this troper's mind is the last stage in Jedah's story, called "Fetus of God," which has the two fighters fighting alongside a giant fetus floating in its background. What's worse is that, when you win, Jedah's ending involves his monologue while showing pictures of the waking fetus. Apparently, it's been vampirized as well, as the fetus opens its glaring red eyes and bares fangs.
  • Groove On Fight's resident Mad Scientist M.A.D. has his own personal stage, a drab laboratory with a giant breathing baby-like head hooked up to wires right in the center. It periodically makes a horrifying face and screams.
  • Believe it or not, Tomb Raider has a few. The Playstation 1 versions were barely graphic when it came to Lara's many deaths and players found joy in finding ways to kill Lara. When it came to Tomb Raider Legend and the remake Anniversary, the death scenes were ramped up if players failed to keep her alive in a Quick Time Event. One gory example is Lara being killed by a T-Rex by being flung into the air and then being eaten alive in one gulp. *shudder*
  • The cutscenes in the CDi Zelda games are horrifying. Everyone is sadistic,and they look disturbed. It's horrifying.
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