Trivia / Cry of Fear

• Approval of God: A fair amount of fan-made content was accepted and implemented into the full release as bonus levels and scenarios. ruMpel himself also tends to be very approving of fan projects related to Cry of Fear, with him usually leaving supportive comments on their posts and videos. One creator was even personally invited to collaborate with Team Psykskallar on their Unreal 4 remake of the game after ruMpel was impressed by their work porting the game to that engine and having it be surprisingly more functional and in-depth than the source material itself.
• Colbert Bump: While still a popular mod, it was relatively niche, with around 200 players playing it every day on Steam. Pyrocynical's video on it caused interest to spike up dramatically, with player counts jumping up to over 1,300 players when his video came out.
• Dummied Out:
  • Originally, the Faster was to have a unique kill animation for when one killed Simon. It would have seen her stab him and throw him onto the ground. While it is no longer accessible in-game, it is still viewable in the files.
  • A Smith & Wesson M76 can be found in the game files. There's also an inventory icon for a "Taurus" (unrelated to the usable revolver) that was to be used in place of the Glock, meant to be the Taurus PT92, as well as files referring to an AK-47.
• Dyeing for Your Art: In order to properly deliver Doctor Purnell's gravelly accent, Lasse Holmen had to smoke a considerable amount of cigarettes to make his voice husky enough for the role. He also had to hit himself with a belt to produce Purnell's pained grunts when shot at during his boss fight.
• DVD Commentary: It can be accessed from the options at any time, and it plays it straight with the developers talking about "behind the scenes" stuff with Cry of Fear. However, starting with Chapter 2, some of the audio was edited so it's hard to hear without going into the game's files.
• Official Fan-Submitted Content: The Steam release comes with several community-helmed projects, the most notable probably being the "Memories" campaign since it also includes work and voice acting by ruMpel.
• Throw It In!: Many ideas used for the game came from suggestions from others.
  • The dead cat seen during Chapter 4's vent sequence is the same cat from the intro. The reason it's there is because the mod team hates cats, as stated in the commentary.
  • The train escape sequence came about when the mod's developer told some of his college friends that he was working on a train sequence and wanted some ideas on how to end it. The scene in the final version was what was suggested.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The Developer's Commentary reveals that the camera sequence in the first part of the game is a leftover from the original idea for the mod, where Simon would have killed his mother and, in his psychosis, went around taking photos of her. The idea was eventually scrapped.
  • As mentioned under Dummied Out, several other weapons were planned but ultimately not included. The Taurus PT92 pistol was replaced with the Glock, while the S&W M76 submachine gun and the AK-47 assault rifle were just cut.
  • The developers originally wanted quests, where there would be suicidal people giving objectives to Simon in an effort to prevent them from committing suicide, but this was scrapped very early in development.
  • The dead body in the tub that Simon encounters was originally supposed to be dead from a pill overdose, but blood was added in later to imply a more violent method of suicide, which also explains Simon's rather lackluster reaction to it.
  • Early screenshots of the mod also show that you were apparently able to nail headshots, instantly killing an enemy and removing the head in a spray of blood as well. While a more minor form, as typical for shooters, is still in the game - shots to the head do deal slightly better damage, complete with a version of the Faster in Doctor's Story and co-op that wears a metal cage around its head specifically to nullify headshot damage - this was presumably removed due to not fitting the tone of the game and making combat too easy, with the only enemy whose heads can still be removed by shooting it being the Suiciders (presumably as an unintended side-effect of the programming for them to live up to their name when you get close to them).
  • The Watros only encountered in the co-op campaign were apparently meant to be fought as a boss at some point, as players have found unused animations of the things re-submerging themselves and of a full theme song for them that is never used in-game.
  • A Source engine remake of the game was considered at one point, and an unfinished internal build was made but not released due to its high developmental cost and lack of support from Valve. While a short gameplay demo of it can be watched on Team Psykskallar's YouTube channel, it was put on hold indefinitely, if not cancelled altogether. While it is known that Team Psykskallar is looking into developing yet another remake, this time in Unreal Engine 4, it's unclear if any of the changes of the Source version will be implemented in that build.
• Write What You Know: A lot of the locations and the names of buildings are taken from places the developer team knows, or has traveled in around their stretch of Sweden. Some backgrounds and walking areas are based on photographs taken from long walks at night, something which the player as Simon does frequently throughout the game.

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