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Video Game / Spooky's Jump Scare Mansion
aka: Spookys House Of Jump Scares

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This was not a romantic idea... The old game logo/thumbnail prior to the C&D by Spooky House Studios 

Hello, I am Spooky! Welcome to my home. Can you, humble player, make it through one thousand rooms? Can you find, what lies at the end? Or is there even an end? Cuz I don't really know. Anyway, just... just go.

The house on the hill has been there as long as anyone can remember, to the point that its origins are lost and forgotten. As an amateur historian, you decide to make the trek up the mountain to learn what you can, only to find yourself challenged by a Cute Ghost Girl, Spooky, to make it through all the rooms and find what lies at the end.

While it initially seems harmless, the game quickly goes from cartoonish, playful, and silly to genuinely frightening with very real dangers for the nameless protagonist in the form of the Specimens, bizarre entities of various kinds captured by the sinister, SCP Foundation-esque GL Labs. With the notes of previous victims scattered throughout the mansion, the journey becomes a genuine nightmare... while still retaining the cartoonish and playful elements throughout to give it a strange flavor all its own as you go deeper into the depths of Spooky's house and discover her true plans.

The full first release was issued on July 21, 2015, and you can find it here on IndieDB or Steam. On December 18th of the same year, the DLC Karamari Hospital debuted, in which the protagonist is tasked by Spooky to explore the titular Abandoned Hospital lying at the bottom of the mansion and discover what happened there. Unlike most sections of the main game, which only is a small collection of rooms, Karamari Hospital ditches the randomly-generated rooms and race to the end in favor of a predefined area to explore, with multiple new Specimens called Monsters and other strange things. You can find the trailer here.

In early 2016, the game's name was changed from Spooky's House of Jump Scares to Spooky's Jump Scare Mansion after German mobile game developer Spooky House Studios put forth a cease and desist because they're attempting to trademark the name "Spooky House". The change is noted in game by the new name simply being written on tape and pasted over the old logo.

In late 2016, the game got an Updated Re-release under the title Spooky's Jump Scare Mansion: HD Renovation. The re-release changed the game over to the Unity engine, improved the graphics, gave the specimens 3D models, the DLC "Karamari Hospital" is pre-included with the game, and VR support the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive. The player can also switch between the 3D models at any time. The re-release is however a commercial game unlike the original version which is freeware, but the original version is available for download. The HD re-release trailer can be found here.

On October 2nd, 2020, a new DLC was released, entitled The Doll House or Spooky's Dollhouse, and serves as a definitive conclusion to the story. Taking place immediately after the end of Karamari Hospital, it has the protagonist find and explore a dollhouse-like floor where GL Labs conducted experiments to bind spirits to dolls. With several new Specimens lurking in the halls, the protagonist must carry around a spiritually-enchanted doll to solve puzzles, get through doors, and discover the truth behind GL Labs, all while Spooky continues to watch them. The pre-release trailer for the DLC can be found here.


All spoilers unmarked below!

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    A-E 

  • Advancing Wall of Doom: Specimen 7, who only appears for a few rooms after Room 410.
    • This Specimen originally trapped you in Room 411 until 2.7.1, when the game was nerfed.
  • Affectionate Parody: Of survival horror games in general, and various tropes in modern horror games in particular.
  • And I Must Scream:
    • The game over screen describes that your soul is wandering endlessly in a maze after you die, presumably trapped in the mansion forever.
    • Specimen 11's entry reveals that it's not a joke. GL Labs declared 11 ineffective specifically because the souls of its victims don't remain in the house. Though considering that 11 is most likely an actual demon, and it takes you to a Pocket Dimension after your death, it doesn't look like you'll fare any better from it.
    • Specimen 2 makes choking noises as if it's trying to let out a pained screech.
    • When Specimen 8 opens its cloak, it reveals screaming, distorted faces along with its rib cage. When you consider that its primary method of execution is "absorption"...
  • Animalistic Abomination: The deer you encounter before Specimen 8, which is also one itself.
  • Apocalyptic Log:
    • You can find several as you progress, with the first being from a previous explorer who died of hunger and thirst in the house. You find a series of letters documenting their journey and eventual demise as they try to stay alive by drinking the ink they brought, and then drinking what they think is metallic tasting wine at first. As of the current version, you do find their bones in an elevator. After that, you'll occasionally find notes pertaining to whatever Specimen happens to be up next in the queue for terrorizing you, apparently written by some of those particular enemies' previous victims. The person who consistently refers to Specimen 3 as Subject 5 in notes as it breaks out and undoubtedly kills them, apparently supervised by "Spook," the girl who expresses concern for someone named Matsuri in Specimen 4's domain, who disappeared after going into school late just like a local urban legend had described, the followers of some strange cult in the first location of Specimen 5, apparently killed after what was implied to be a failed Virgin Sacrifice, and some poor fellow accosted by the killer deer best embody this after the romantic explorer.
    • The March Update added a couple more. Some come from another GL Labs facility which was attacked by Specimen 10, which like Specimen 3, Spooky knew of but did nothing about it. The other is a restaurant that details a man working at a restaurant whose meat causes consumers to be addicted to it. When the worker tries it, he also becomes addicted to the meat, but eventually tries to leave his job after falling asleep while driving, and encountering what would be later known as Specimen 11.
    • The full update adds a few more, one during Specimen 12's area where the victim stuck there is trying to hide from his pursuer while contemplating the true nature of the mansion, the one in Specimen 13's lair details a group of scientists studying the mysterious death of whales when suddenly their lab floods and a mysterious creature starts killing the lab members. There is also a new overarching log of another traveler who thinks he is the main character leaving notes, culminating in the final note being at the last save point.
    • Karamari Hospital has its own apocalyptic log, which seems to describe how an ordinary hospital devolved into chaos and bloodshed due to several of its staff falling victim to Demonic Possession. An unrelated note found in the hospital's basement is strongly implied to be from Spooky's parents, saying goodbye to their dying daughter.
  • Apocalypse How: The bad ending for the Dollhouse DLC. You manage to make the mansion blow up, but, by not closing the Hell Gate, all the horrors of the mansion quickly run rampant and doom the world.
  • Ascended Meme: One of the Endless mode monsters is named "Spooper' and is (originally) a person in a crappy ghost costume.note 
  • The Assimilator: Specimen 8. The real Specimen 10 as well. Also implied with Specimen 9.
  • Bad Boss: As it turns out, Spooky is mentioned as overseeing the experiments that created Specimen 3, laughing when the head scientist expressed concern at what they were creating before leaving them to be killed. A later log about Specimen 10 talks about a similar situation.
  • Bait-and-Switch Boss: Specimen 10, originally just an easy to avoid snake, was updated that now when it spawns the real Specimen 10, a goo covered humanoid-thing, literally pops out of the head of the fake Specimen 10. This is shown in its CAT-DOS entry where after room 500 its entry shows "WRONG SPECIMEN ENTRY".
  • Barbie Doll Anatomy: Specimen 13 appears as a woman wearing a towel around her waist. The HD Renovation version has her fully modeled, but her chest is not heavily detailed.
  • Berserk Button: It's noted on the game's wiki that Spooky resents the fact others think that she is "adorable" or "cute"; she wants to be feared. With this in mind, it's very easy to formulate that Spooky is responsible for gathering the Specimens specifically so she can be feared through her connection to this nightmarish collection of killer monsters. One ending pretty much shows that she has been using the ghosts of those that died in the mansion to create a ghost army to terrorize people and that she can finally be taken seriously.
  • Big Bad: Spooky herself. It is heavily implied that she is responsible for creating and gathering the Specimens that inhabit her house and spreading the rumors that caused the hero to be so curious, to create an army and Take Over the World. She also drops her welcoming act as you continue on in the house, even outright removing your ability to run at room 750.
  • Big Red Devil: Specimen 11.
  • Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Spooky. Despite her congratulations and exhortations to continue onward, she also manages to sound increasingly sarcastic and disappointed at your continued survival as you proceed onward.
    • At room 250 she gives you a gift that's harmless, but clearly trolling you. See Shmuck Bait below for details.
    • At room 500 she even forces you to go back to room 50. Fortunately, it's temporary (see Script Breaking, below), but it's unlikely she intended that.
    • At room 750 she does something, and promises you that your stamina will never run out from here on. Which is true, largely because your character can no longer sprint to use it.
    • In the arcade rooms, both current arcade machines feature Spooky either stabbing people or brutally murdering a Pacman-like character.
    • The December update picture has Spooky smiling over the corpse of Santa Claus, who died to an instance of Specimen 1.
  • Bizarrchitecture: No matter how far you travel, no matter how deep you go, there are always more tunnels leading onward.
    • Sometimes you notice that the layout doesn't make sense. One room is just a circle that leads right behind where you started.
    • Specimen 12 is deliberately designed to be this. It's an anomaly that forms a mansion that always changes to fit the surrounding environment.
    • Some of the scripted areas also fall under this. As they are all likely from some other location. Especially egregious is the domain leading up to Specimen 8 which is a large open forest.
    • One of the randomly generated rooms provides you with a map. Some of the rooms move on their own.
    • Karamari Hospital seems to show this as well. How you get there is by the elevator to rapidly drop, causing the floor number to go wild to the point where it disappears. Even Spooky doesn't know how you got there. And that's not even getting into how the hospital seems to loop in on itself, decaying more with each loop.
  • Black Comedy: The game parodies common horror game tropes. Of course there's plenty of this, especially if it involves Spooky herself.
  • Bland-Name Product: In some of the safe rooms you'll find posters that mention "Home Depo" and "Papa Jon's", accompanied by mangled versions of each other's slogans.
  • Boss Game: The main game and Endless Mode consists of running through halls and rooms to get to the end, and the main challenge comes from the Monster Mash of Specimens which will chase you at randomized points; the only non-boss enemy is the Unusually Violent Deer that only shows up in Specimen 8's rooms. This is averted in the Karamari Hospital and Spooky's Dollhouse modes, which are more traditional puzzle-based explorations of haunted locations with monsters interspersed within.
  • Brain in a Jar: One of the random rooms that can appear when not being chased by a specimen has a brain floating in a large green jar surrounded by strange machinery. It may give you a code number, this number is used for the game cabinet that doesn't seem to function, which then plays a short movie about Spooky's past. The HD version allows you to break the tank, which earns you both an achievement and a game over.
  • But Thou Must!: In the Spooky's Dollhouse DLC, during the nightmare scene with the hobo, pressing "no" on the prompt to plant the gun with him does nothing except produce a clicking noise. The player needs to press "yes" and plant the gun, because that's what Spooky's father did the night he accidentally killed her.
  • Cats Are Mean: Subverted. Cats seem to be a reoccurring theme of safety. The cat you meet before you encounter Specimen 7 is nonthreatening and offers cryptic advice to the player.
  • Cat Scare: The titular "jump scares" take this to meta levels. The first one might startle you. From there, they become a silly running gag in a game that doesn't give you much to do besides advance to the next room and read notes. Then, once the real threats start appearing, they play this trope entirely straight, liable to frighten you despite still being just spring-loaded cutouts of cute skeletons and jack-o-lanterns because you're on edge and preoccupied with avoiding the monsters. Maybe this is how they managed to give those four people fatal heart attacks...
  • Can't Move While Being Watched: The puppeteer (and one other enemy) don't move when visible. Keeping said enemy in view too long causes them to teleport.
  • Checkpoint Starvation: After room 300, you only get a safe room with a save point every 100 floors instead of every 50.
  • The Cameo: White Face from Imscared makes an appearance in the updated version as a specimen.
  • Cerebus Syndrome: The game starts off pleasant and cheerful. Once you reach room 60 however, the game becomes increasingly dark and intense.
  • Controllable Helplessness: Specimen 11's kill screen is unique as it transports you to a Pocket Dimension where you can still move around. Not that it matters though since you can't escape and will eventually be finished off by Specimen 11.
  • Creepy Doll: Many of these appear in The Doll House DLC, with all but one of the new enemies being dolls.
  • Cute Ghost Girl: Spooky herself. But although she's cute as a button, she hates people calling her cute, and wants them to fear her instead.
  • Cute Is Evil: Spooky looks cute, but wants others to be afraid of her, and is basically responsible for the Specimens being able to kill people.
  • Death of a Child: By inputting a number of secret codes, you discover Spooky died as a young child.
  • Defanged Horrors: The game certainly seems to be this... at least for the first 50 rooms. Then the fangs grow back.
  • Disguised Horror Story: At a surface glance the game looks very cute, and for the first 50 rooms it's a silly Affectionate Parody of common horror tropes. However, the game doesn't stay too cute for long.
  • Downer Ending: Neither of the endings are particularly good:
  • Dropped a Bridge on Him: In the "ghost" ending, right after the player defeats Specimen 9, the ceiling collapses and crushes the player. Spooky then tells them that they died in a tragic enough way to become a ghost.
  • Earn Your Happy Ending: Inverted. Completing the game with Specimens turned off results in a half-hearted congratulations from Spooky and the protagonist telling their peers how boring their "adventure" was. Considering the above-mentioned Downer Ending...
  • Easier Than Easy: The remake has an option to disable all Specimens. Scripted rooms can still be encountered, but their respective Specimens will not appear at all and the game skips the final boss fight, going straight to the credits screen. According to Word of God, this feature is intended for people who want to enjoy the game, but are unable to due to finding the Specimens too scary.
  • Eldritch Location: The house, see Bizarrchitecture above. The rooms don't make sense and seem to wind on endlessly, and one area consists of a mansion inside the mansion. A room supposedly containing a map of the house is incredibly unhelpful due to some of the map sections moving on their own
  • Enclosed Space: There's no backtracking or exiting, even when the first thing you encounter is a ghost.
    • Some corridors are just straight halls, but either slightly thinner or only as wide as the doors.
    • The Pocket Dimension that Specimen 11 traps you in is essentially this with no way out except for it killing you.
  • Endless Corridor: It is possible that you may find yourself walking down one of these. It's a trap. Later in the game, a certain randomly-spawning room subverts this, appearing endless and dark but only having one way to go, thus eventually revealing a door.
  • Even Evil Has Standards: In Specimen 9's backstory, Spooky ordered it to be destroyed. When Spooky orders something destroyed, you know it's bad. And considering the Specimen is the Final Boss...
  • Evil Matriarch: Invoked with Specimen 4, who is a ghost who is implied to have become a ghost due to some trauma that cost her an (presumably) unborn. The thing is, she's so desperate to have her baby back that not only does she mistake living people for her children, she swallows them whole in an effort to place them back inside of her, letting her delude herself that she has returned them to her womb, where they "belong".
  • Exact Words: At room 750, Spooky decides to "reward" the player by making it so their stamina can't deplete at all... by preventing you from running to use it up. Though technically, swinging your weapon shows that Spooky really DID give you infinite stamina, she just took away the function that needed it most.
  • Expy: Most of the specimen are homages to various horror tropes and media.
    • Possibly unintentional, but Specimen 8, the Deer God, is reminiscent of a 4chan greentext creepypasta about a soldier and his experiences with a deer/goat-man monster that attacks his squad while training.
    • Specimen 6 is heavily inspired by The Happy Mask Salesman, with some serious Ben Drowned undertones to it.
    • Subverted with White Face, as it actually is the villain from Imscared rather than an Expy.
  • Eye Scream: Dying to the puppeteer around room 310 shows a cutscene of one of your eyes being held open with a knitting needle being lowered into it. It cuts away before anything is shown.

    F-L 
  • Face of an Angel, Mind of a Demon: Spooky. She is a Cute Ghost Girl with a perpetual smile on her face and is prone to some adorable mannerisms. She is also the one responsible for the house in the first place and with the help of GL Labs, is the one who brought all the specimens there. A couple of Apocalyptic Logs tell that she left two different GL Lab facilities to fall to a couple of specimens for her own amusement. The minigames also show that she seems to find the suffering of others amusing as well. The Christmas update picture also helps show her true nature by her having a Psychotic Smirk while looking over the corpse of Santa Claus.
  • Failed Attempt at Scaring: While alive, Spooky repeatedly attempted to scare people, but never succeeded. Her final attempt involved setting off firecrackers to help scare a PTSD victim. Unfortunately, it went too well, with her victim shooting her to death out of surprise.
  • Fan Disservice: Specimen 13, when she isn't chasing you, appears to be an attractive woman wearing only a towel around her waist facing away from you. The start of her death screen also reveals that she has a pretty face, as well. She stops being attractive however, when she gives us a Nightmare Face immediately after.
  • Fantasy Kitchen Sink: Many of the scripted areas and the monsters that accompany them seem to be based around some sort of horror element or genre, with little rhyme or reason. For example, one area is a run-down lab, where you have to escape from an experiment Gone Horribly Right; while the next is a Japanese high school where you have to escape from a ghost girl, who unlike Spooky is not cute and resembles something from a Japanese horror. Justified in-universe as Spooky and GL Labs are searching for and finding these anomalies to make the house more dangerous.
  • Featureless Protagonist: Aside from being an amateur history enthusiast and potentially having had trauma of some sort before the game, there is literally no information presented or existing about your character. Even in Specimen 6's kill screen, most of what little of the protagonist's face is in-frame is in shadow.
  • Final Boss: Surprisingly enough, there is a boss you have to fight at the end of the house. It's Specimen 9 in its true humanoid form, which you have to use your axe to bounce back its fireballs and attack it.
  • Foil: Specimen 8 and Tirsiak (from Endless Mode) seem to be this to each other. Both are horned demonic creatures with a connection to arctic cultures' mythology, and both want your flesh to feed their children, but Specimen 8 (a prey species) wants to absorb you and makes you a part of itself, whereas Tirsiak (a predator) is only interested in hunting you.
  • For Want Of A Nail: The events of Karamari Hospital, and Spooky's Doll House happen simply because the elevator fails at floor 995.
  • Gameplay and Story Segregation: Specimen 8 is suggested to not be malicious, and instead just a Papa Bear to the deer. Despite this, he'll still chase you if you don't attack any of the deer.
  • Go, Ye Heroes, Go and Die: As the game proceeds, Spooky's words begin to sound more like this.
    • In Karamari Hospital her tone is surprisingly more friendly, even if she is still quick to leave you. The DLC is implied to take place after the main game, where you end up serving Spooky, so it makes sense.
  • Guest Fighter: White Face from Imscared is one of the specimen exclusive to Endless Mode.
  • Guide Dang It!: Karamari Hospital is more focused on exploration than the main game, but for the most part it's pretty straightforward - the keys you pick up display what they're for, so you know where you need to go. Except for one: the medallion you get in the Morgue. What the hell are you supposed to do with it? Go into the office that has the award plaque, and place the medallion into that plaque. Compared to the easily understandable keys, this is quite unintuitive.
    • Figuring out that you can use your axe on some Specimen at all (but not others) can be difficult. When you first get the axe, you are able to kill the deer enemies with it and break down some barriers, but if you try to use it on Specimen 8, it does nothing. This can cause some players to immediately dismiss the axe as just a utility tool that is worthless against all Specimen.
  • Haunted House: The whole premise, although aside from (potentially) Spooky herself, the ghosts and other dangers seem to have been brought there from various locations rather than be part of some mystery.
  • Horrifying the Horror: If you decide to do a New Game Plus in Karamari Hospital and kill every single monster, the Demonic Child at the end will be terrified of you and beg for you to not murder it too.
  • Horror Comedy: The game ostensibly begins as an Affectionate Parody of shallow horror video games reliant on cheesy Jump Scares... and then quickly develops with actual scares of its own once it becomes clear that not all the presented threats are harmless. Even past that point, however, there's still a mix of lightheartedness and deliberate absurdity to keep it from becoming a full-blown horror game, largely thanks to Spooky herself being a mix of adorably snarky and genuinely unsettling.
  • Hologram: One of the trailers features Spooky sparking and dissipating, indicating that she might not actually be a ghost girl. It's just a red herring.
  • Infinite Supplies: Spooky is behind the creation of a massive underground base with rooms that can rearrange themselves (and this seems to be technological rather than supernatural), as well as an organization that may rival the SCP Foundation in influence and is capable of capturing and containing Eldritch Abominations. Spooky is also the ghost of a 12 year-old girl, so exactly how she has acquired such reality-warping wealth and resources is completely unknown.
  • Interface Screw: Most of the Specimens mess with your controls or visuals in some way.
    • Specimen 1 causes your character to freeze up for a split second.
    • Specimen 2 creates ink spots which slow you down when you walk over.
    • Specimen 5 causes your vision to become cloudy before turning the textures of the walls, and eventually the doors, into a shifting red and black mess.
    • Specimen 6 attacks you when you are not looking at it or behind you.
    • Specimen 8 causes a film grain effect and flashes disturbing images at you when it attacks.
    • The new Specimen 10 covers the player's vision in goo every time it attacks.
    • Specimen 11 causes the doors to completely disappear visually.
    • The Final Boss uses several, potentially at the same time, to make dodging its attacks more difficult.
    • Spooky herself does this to a couple times. One in room 500 where she sends you to near the beginning of the house temporarily. The second in room 750 where she takes away your ability to run.
    • The Hooked Doll and Woormy Charles cause a static overlay to appear on the screen. In the case of the Hooked Doll, looking at it is what causes the static to appear on the screen.
  • Invincible Boogeymen: All of the hostile specimens are this. They cannot be fought and all you can do is continue running from them from room to room, until you eventually lose them. But if they catch you, they will attack you and eventually kill you.
  • Joke Ending: If monsters are turned off, making it to floor 1000 has Spooky say that you can leave and that she will contact you if anything changes. You tell people about the empty mansion, but nobody believes you.
  • Jump Scare: It's right there in the title, isn't it? The actual Jump Scares, though, are pretty harmless; though the sounds they make become increasingly more disturbing (and the faces on at least some of them cease being cute and become Slasher Smiles) they can't harm you at all. Other things won't jump out at you, but are far more deadly.
    • An update later added an entity named Howard to the game that will Jump Scare the player by chance if they encounter a looping room.
  • Kaizo Trap:
    • One room is a small circle. It is just long enough that you can't get through it before a chasing enemy enters. They can walk through walls, you can't.
    • Enemies can attack during the transitions between rooms. Players who don't know you can open doors while facing away from them may have a harder time getting past Specimen 6.
  • Killer Rabbit: The deer in the forest area show their true colors if you get too close.
  • Knight of Cerebus: Specimen 2, the first enemy to be able to harm the player, marks where the game unquestionably begins to become more straight horror.
  • Leitmotif: Most of the hostile Specimens have some sort of identifying tune when you're in a domain where they can get to you.
  • Ludicrous Gibs: How enemies die in Mall of the Spook.

    M-S 
  • The Many Deaths of You: Each of the Specimens (with a few exceptions) have their own methods of killing you, which are either described in word or visually shown on screen, ranging from being Eaten Alive to Eye Scream. No matter what, your soul will be trapped in the house.
  • The Maze:
    • A randomly-spawning room of the game, which requires trial-and-error and a little memorization to find the right path.
    • Karamari Hospital has one near the end where you have to run from a rather fast monster.
  • Medium Awareness: One set of notes is written by a person aware they're a character in a video game, and desperately hoping they're the protagonist rather than a doomed side character who leaves notes for exposition.
  • Mobile Maze: The house can be rearranged at will. This is shown when you wander into a room with a map of the place, which is completely useless as it keeps rearranging itself. There is also an option to "change house layout" on CAT-DOS, but when you try it, an error message pops up.
  • Monster Clown: You never fight it physically, but one can be found behind bars in The Doll House DLC. Leaving and coming back will show the bars broken, with the clown nowhere to be found. It shows up randomly throughout the dollhouse once it escapes, but will never actually harm you. It just acts REALLY creepy.
  • Mood Whiplash: The game starts out as a completely harmless parody of horror games, with a Cute Ghost Girl and adorable "jump scares" that pop out of the walls. Then you meet Specimen 2. The game then continues to whiplash between lighthearted parody and sheer dread constantly, with Spooky's antics and some of the notes you find falling into the former category, while the Specimens themselves (other than 1) providing the latter. The end of the game provides another fine example: after another humorous encounter with Spooky, you immediately have to fight an absolutely nightmarish Final Boss set to oppressive music. And then you're treated to an ending that can be either Nightmare Fuel or just rather weird.
  • Multiple Endings: The game has several endings depending on the choices the player makes during the game.
    • Base game:
      • Good Ending: Unlocked by defeating the Final Boss while having only used the axe only 20 times at most. After defeating Specimen 9, the roof caves in and kills the Protagonist. They then become the last ghost Spooky needed for her ghost army to be large enough to fight humanity.
      • Bad Ending: Unlocked by defeating the Final Boss while having used the axe more than 20 times. After defeating Specimen 9, the Protagonist keeps swinging at its corpse on their own. Eventually, Spooky arrives and declares that the Protagonist will make a fine specimen. The game then displays an image of a human-like silhouette with red eyes dragging a bloody axe behind them.
      • Joke Ending: Unlocked by reaching the 1000th room while having Specimens disabled in the settings. The Protagonist enters the 1000th room to find a room filled with balloons and a party banner with a staircase in the background. Spooky appears and gives an unconvincing congrats to the Protagonist, before the latter ascends the staircase and leaves the mansion. Text describes the Protagonist telling people of their "adventure", and how the mansion is just large and empty, but nobody believes them.
    • Karamari Hospital:
      • Normal Ending: The Protagonist enters a room where they find a demon-resembling child in the mirror. The child notices that the Protagonist seems different than the "others", claims that she's been there for so long that she's forgotten so much, and states that the place needs to be shut down and encouraging the Protagonist to do so. A few rooms later, the Protagonist encounters Spooky again, where she suggests there are still things hidden down there and encourages the Protagonist to keep exploring. The game ends with the Protagonist entering the hallway behind Spooky.
      • Alternate Ending: To get this ending, the player needs to Get the hidden sword and kill the monsters instead of fleeing from them. The ending plays out almost the exact same, except that instead of conversing with the Protagonist, the demon child will beg for them to not hurt her and to leave her alone.
    • Spooky's Dollhouse:
      • Bad Ending: Proceed through the Dollhouse as normal, and complete the Nightmare and Self-Destruct scenes. The game then cuts to the Protagonist outside, far from the mansion but with it still in their view. The self-destruct sequence completes and the mansion crumbles away as the basement dollhouse explodes. Seconds after, a whole swarm of skull-like ghosts burst out of the mansion into the sky, which turns red. Text appears and explains that with the seal broken, the spirits of the mansion are free, but with the Hellgate having not been closed, they went to the surface, and are now free to wreak havoc throughout the now-doomed world.
      • Good Ending: To unlock this ending, the player needs to return to the root cellar and collect 3 black candles while avoiding the Hooked Doll, then return to the ritual room, use the doll, then use the candles. After this, the player will be prompted to select a Specimen on the computer. Said Specimen will begin to chase them, and the Protagonist must lead them through many rooms to the Hellgate. The Protagonist will be sent back to the ritual room, and then proceeds as normal. However, instead of the mansion breaking and freeing the spirits, they're all released peacefully from the mansion to ascend. Text appears and explains that the seal being broken means that the spirits are free to ascend, while the closed Hellgate means that the monsters and Specimens begin to fade. The text reveals that Spooky also ascended, and has now been reunited with her parents, before it states that the Protagonist brought peace to everything.
  • Musical Spoiler: Specimens other than 1 generally have a music theme. If it stops, the specimen has likewise stopped the chase. An annoying bug can sometimes cause the theme not to play during the chase with some of the Specimen, which makes it harder to determine when you're safe.
  • Ms. Fanservice: Specimen 13 appears as an attractive woman seen from behind, wearing only a towel. Once you see her true face, however...
  • Never Sleep Again: The Apocalyptic Log you find in the restaurant details a worker who witnessed strange occurrences at this job. And after eating the meat there, had dreams of being chased in a Pocket Dimension by a demon. Naturally this demon turns out to be Specimen 11 and the player can experience this when they are killed by it.
  • New Game Plus: Karamari Hospital has a few extras that appear only after completing it once. Notably, you can take a sword in the office where you need to place the emblem.
  • Nightmare Face: Specimens 2, 4, 7, 8, 9, 12, and 13 all have rather disturbing mugs. The deer in Specimen 8's domain also have a frighting face when you approach them. Even later instances of Specimen 1 replace the usual cute face with a more disturbing one.
  • No Fair Cheating: If the game detects that the Endless Mode's save file has been tampered with, it displays this message and deletes the save file in question. Clicking OK closes the game and opens this video.
    • If the game detects that the room number has been changed via external program such as a memory editor, specimen 9 will be sent after you.
    • There is also an ending if the jump scares and Specimens are turned off.
  • Nothing Is Scarier: Most of the rooms are either completely devoid of enemies or only have the completely benign Specimen 1. In fact, in the first 59 rooms of the game, this and a save room are literally all there is to the game aside from the random notes. In the beginning, this works to ease the player into the game and assume it'll be a completely silly/cute horror parody, inverting this trope. After meeting Specimen 2 and confirming that there are totally real threats in this game, the trope is played entirely straight.
    • There are a set of notes that can be found in Endless Mode from a young child who wanders off to the mansion, believing that a party is being held there. The notes end with something coming to presumably kill the child.
      I fell asleep.
      My leg still hurts.
      I see Daddy he came for me..

      It's not Daddy.
  • Offing the Offspring: If the player gets the code for the arcade cabinet, it's revealed that Spooky died from an Accidental Murder on Halloween, when the person she was scaring suffered from PTSD and shot her in self-defense. Even worse? The Doll House DLC states it was her father that shot her, and then he blamed it on someone else.
  • Our Ghosts Are Different: The game gives us two: Spooky, who has more of a cartoony design, and Specimen 4, who is inspired by Japanese horror. According to one of the endings, experiencing a tragic death is a key component in making someone a ghost.
  • Perverse Puppet: The Puppet. As long as he's being watched, he can't move aside from turning his head to look at you, but like the Weeping Angels or SCP-173 he moves very quickly while your back is turned, at which point he kills you with a shiv.
  • Pocket Dimension: Specimen 11, when you are killed by it, transports you to a large meaty hallway with no exits, before appearing and finishing you off.
  • Posthumous Character: Most of the people whose notes you pick up, true to form.
  • Press X to Die: Before the full version of the game, when you reached the final room of the version, the game abruptly stops, with a message that tells you the next few rooms still need to be finished. You're then given a choice: Press Enter to start playing an Endless Game, or press Backspace to die.
  • Psychological Horror: While a couple sections from the main game had this, Karamari Hospital focuses on this instead of jump scares.
  • Puppeteer Parasite: The real Specimen 10 is all but stated to be this, as its main form looks like a person whose been covered legs up in a goo. The Apocalyptic Log of the area also explains that a scientist there had some goo in them that kept growing despite how hard they tried to get it off. Also its death screen highly implies that it takes control of your body and eliminates your consciousness.
  • Running Gag: Specimen 1's various ineffectual jump scares and the previous explorer referring to a desire for things to be "romantic" in his notes count early on, though the latter is found dead after the notes dry up and the jump scares become more scary as time goes on.
  • Scare Chord: Plays every time an instance of Specimen 1 pops up. There's a few different ones from which the game can choose to keep it fresh.
  • Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Averted in Endless Mode by disabling the ability to quit the game during a chase. Furthermore in the HD version, if you try to Rage Quit to the windows screen, your save file will be automatically deleted and is treated as if you died.
  • Script Breaking: In-universe, after room 500. Once you come back to the room where you'd normally encounter Specimen 2, picking up the note that would normally trigger its pursuit causes an error in the house, creating an emergency exit door that puts you back where you should be.
  • Sequel Hook: Karamari Hospital ends with one. After leaving the hospital, Spooky mentions that there is still more to these secret rooms and advises the protagonist to continue exploring.
  • "Shaggy Dog" Story: Whether you make it to the end or die to one of the house's many dangers, your fate is the same in the end: you perish and become part of Spooky's army of the dead (or a Specimen if you're really unlucky). One would at least hope that making it all the way through and dispatching Specimen 9, which GL Labs had failed to take care of, would ensure you a higher rank. However, you can survive if you shut off the Specimens and jump scares in the opinions menu- but then, what's the point in playing the game?
  • School Setting Simulation: Rooms 165-200 take the form of an abandoned Japanese schoolhouse, where the player encounters shadowy figures of children and learns of a malevolent entity that violently murders and devours tardy students. Upon trying to leave, the entity, Specimen 4 a.k.a Ringu, gives chase and tries to eat the player.
  • Shmuck Bait:
    • In room 250, Spooky greets you and rewards you with a present: an empty box that says, "Look Behind You." Doing so causes multiple cardboard surprises to appear. It's harmless, but startling.
    • Specimen 9's domain is an endless dark path of hallway, and if one is foolish enough to go down that path they eventually get stuck and have to wait for it to get them. The door to get out of a room it spawns in is easily accessible.
  • Shout-Out: Pretty much every horror encountered in-game bears resemblances or otherwise pays tribute to other games.
    • One part of the house bears a striking resemblance to the school from the first Silent Hill game and Specimen 5 looks like a creature from the series. There is also a small amount of lore similar to the sacrifices from the first game.
    • The machines in the random arcade room consist of a Pac-Man like game and one titled Mall of the Spook.note 
    • The doors you leave the elevators from resemble the door opening animation from Resident Evil.
    • Specimen 6, known as the Puppet, and his domain resemble features from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Specimen 6 bears more than a passing resemblance to the Happy Mask Salesman, his Leitmotif takes a lot of cues from the N64-era games, and the room he's introduced in bears a heavy resemblance to a dungeon from Ocarina or Majora, right down to literally lifting the torch designs straight from there. Users of this game's wiki have noted that one of his puppets resembles Sugar, in silhouette.
    • The Japanese school level has a drawing of Kyubey from Puella Magi Madoka Magica. The sketches on the wall opposite are also very similar to the drawings in Madoka's notepad.
    • Specimen 8's motif and abilities might have been inspired by Alpaca Evolution's main character.
      • It also bears some resemblance to the Beast.
    • The cat, and the area it inhabits—which has a checkerboard floor dripping with blood, a large grandfather clock, and lots of rooms full of symbolism where the cat spouts Jungian psychology at you—seem to be inspired by the Persona series. The rooms after it take strong cues from the witches' labyrinths in Madoka Magica, which seems to also have been a strong influence on the cat.
    • One randomly generated room features a desk with a fan on it and an answering machine that plays a message from a nervous sounding woman should you choose to listen to it.
    • The real Specimen 10, with its parasitic ability to assimilate lifeforms, its Body Horror effects on its victims, and its possible extraterrestrial origin, has been seen as a reference to The Thing (1982). Later confirmed by Word of God.
    • In Specimen 4's area, you might find a picture on a wall that has several line arts of anime girls, one of which has very long Girlish Pigtails and a leek next to her. It reminds one of a certain music program's most popular character.
    • In one of the notes, the writer mentions not to pick up the notes, since it summons "the tall man."
    • Specimen 9 bears several similarities to Red from NES Godzilla Creepypasta. Even more so with its humanoid form.
    • The beginning of Room 810 is nearly identical to the layout of the mansion from Resident Evil. There's even a note that says, "What a mansion!" in reference to Wesker's line.
    • Specimen 12 hunts you down while dragging around a giant scythe. You have to evade him by hiding inside furniture until he leaves, much like the Scissor Man from Clock Tower. Parallels to Ao Oni are also drawn.
    • The area leading up to Specimen 13 is very reminiscent of Amnesia: The Dark Descent, and Specimen 13 attacks the same way as the water monster from the same game.
    • One of the specimen in Endless Mode is inspired by Lisa, the ghost from the cancelled Silent Hills demo.
    • In Endless Mode, the place can become dark and pixelated, with ambiance from Imscared playing. White Face itself will also pursue the player.
    • Otto the Otter, as he is a Take That! to the fans, is obviously a reference to a certain game with animal-based animatronics. Doubly so is the fact that his Jump Scare is similar to (if nor exactly like) the jump scares of said game.
  • Sinister Deer Skull: Specimen 8, a.k.a. the Deer Lord, is a large creature with a deer skull for a head wrapped in a black robe. Under its robe are human bones and screaming human souls. It will chase and try and murder the player, reciting a cryptic poem should it succeed.
  • Sinister Scythe: Specimen 12's host drags a massive scythe along the ground as he chases you.
  • Small Name, Big Ego: Spooky's arcade games seem to exist solely to glorify her. One is a Foregone Victory, the other replaces your name with hers should you get a high score.
  • Soundtrack Dissonance:
    • The themes for Specimens 4 ,10, and 13 are respectively a cute music box tune, a rather somber piece, and an almost relaxing atmospheric piece. None are the kind of music you would associate with being chased by a monster that's trying to kill you.
    • Occasionally the music for the Spooky Kart minigame is replaced with the theme of one of the specimens.
  • Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl: Specimen 4, which is hinted to be either the ghost of a girl named Matsuri, or a similar entity from an urban legend.
  • Stalked by the Bell: Spend at least 2 minutes in a single room, and Specimen 9 will appear and attempt to attack you for high damage. If you're close enough to an exit, you may be able to avoid him.
  • Swallowed Whole: Your fate if caught by Specimen Four.

    T-Z 
  • Take Over the World: Spooky's plan is to kill enough people in her mansion and force their ghosts to serve in her ghostly army. Than she will use her ghost army and her army of specimens created in her mansion to take over the world.
  • Take That!:
    • Specimen 11's lore seems to be a pretty heavy, horror-themed one at fast food companies.
    • The final credit of Karamari Hospital is "In Memory of Konami".
    • Otto the Otter is a Joke Character clearly aimed at Five Nights at Freddy's. Or rather, all the fans who kept pestering the development team to add an animatronic specimen to the game.
    • The entire game could be seen as one to the many mediocre horror games that overuse loud and obnoxious Jump Scares to create the "horror". The titular "jump scares" are omnipresent, but mostly harmless. The real threats, less frequently encountered, rely primarily on atmosphere, disturbing design and suspense to induce fear in the player.
  • Tennis Boss: The only way to weaken the Final Boss and lower it so that you can strike it with the axe is to axe its fireballs back.
  • Uncanny Valley: Intentionally Invoked. Some of the Specimens aren't... right. Specimen 5 has its stiff, jerky movements, and Specimen 6's grinning stare...
  • Updated Re-release Got one in late December of 2016. It changed the engine over to Unity, the specimens have 3D models instead of just being 2D images, and there are a lot better lighting effects than before.
  • Wake-Up Call Boss:
    • Specimen 1 is a joke, Specimen 2 is actually pretty simple to overcome, and people have made it through Specimen 3's section without even seeing it. Specimen 4, though, is a pain in the ass.
    • Specimen 6 also counts now, though originally being a boss very easy to avoid due to how you can just stare at him and wait for your health to regenerate, he now randomly disappears if you look at him too long and teleports somewhere where you're not looking, which could be right behind you, between the doors.
  • Warm-Up Boss: Specimen 2: the first specimen to actively hunt the player. Who, while slow, creates traps to slow down the player, a tactic that several of the specimens share.
  • Wham Episode: For the first 59 rooms, the game is literally effortless, and the only "jump scares" are the hilariously benign Specimen 1, literal cardboard cutouts. In short, it runs on a cutesy Stylistic Suck, though it is possible to find an Apocalyptic Log or two in the first leg of the game. Then, come room 60, Specimen 2 appears; on top of having a deliberately frightening design, it is also the first thing capable of killing the player character. After getting over the initial shock of the Bait-and-Switch, it's still pretty clearly a slow, weak enemy, but it nevertheless serves as a harbinger of the genuinely creepy game to come.
    • The CAT_DOS computer entries on the Specimens make it all but stated that Spooky and GL Labs, either intentionally or unintentionally, gathered these Specimens to make the house more deadly. These entries also reveal a little more backstory on each of the monsters.
    • The backstory of Spooky and one of the endings detail that this was all an effort to raise a ghost army in order to be taken seriously.
    • The final note in Karamari Hospital which seems to be a note from one of Spooky's parents, mourning her and mentioning that she liked to scare people using costumes and fireworks and her would-be victim that day suffered from PTSD, causing him to shoot her.
  • Wham Line: Spooky delivers one in both endings.
    In the ghost ending: Well, you died... In a pretty tragic way, too. Just tragic enough for you to become a ghost. Good job, by the way, making it this far. So buckle up soldier, because now I think we finally have enough troops to invade.
    In the specimen ending: Congratulations! You did it! It was interesting, watching you swing your axe around like that. I know you'll make a fine specimen.
  • Wham Shot:
    • Putting the correct code into one of the otherwise unused arcade machines will activate a brief secret involving multiple wham shots. Spooky as a normal kid happily holding her dad's hand. An adult in a ghost costume condescendingly patting her head while she sits on a porch in her reaper costume on Halloween, looking frustrated & depressed instead of perpetually happy. The inside of her bag which contains firecrackers & a tube of fake blood instead of candy. A look of horror in a stranger's eye & a spent bullet casing on the ground. All followed by this line in text. "I just wanted to be taken seriously. I just wanted to scare people. But I don't blame them. At least I finally scared someone."
    • The Doll House DLC gives another one: During the sequence where you destroy the nightmare, you turn a corner, and automatically shoot... Spooky.
  • Wendigo: Specimen 8 appears to be modeled after one, having a deer-like head with antlers and being in a prominently wooded area.
  • Workplace Horror: Alluded to during the encounter with Specimen 11, which takes place in a (heavily distorted) burger joint. It was discovered under a large abandoned corporate office once owned by a restaurant franchise, and likely had something to do with the paranormal happenings surrounding its stores — an employee who worked at one noted that customers suddenly became addicted to the beef, the managers became extremely violent towards anyone bringing outside food into the restaurant, and after having one of the burgers themselves, the employee too became addicted and finally quit after becoming plagued with nightmares about being chased by Specimen 11 in the restaurant.
  • Would Hurt a Child:
    • Specimen 4 has a particular fondness for children, it seems; she was originally haunting a school (and devouring children) before she was brought to the mansion.
    • It's also somewhat implied that the main character is young, which can possibly put the other specimen under this scope. Spooky and the cat both refer to the protagonist as being little; and while it can be hard to hear through the static and its chase theme, Specimen 8 outright calls you a child while chasing you (Although considering Specimen 8 is a Deer God, it's possibly within range to call anyone under 60 a child).

 
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Tirsiak

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