History Main / SinisterSubway

* VideoGame/{{Transarctica}} has the underground tunnels, which can be very useful as shortcuts to distant locations, but their inhabitants, savage tribals called the Mole Men, have the nasty habit to ambush trains passing by. This can result in heavy losses in manpower and resources, but on the other hand it's an opportunity to catch fresh slaves. In the name of humanity's salvation, of course.

* The second part of the fifth mission from ''[[VideoGame/MetalSlug Metal Slug 2/X]]'' takes place in a subway system occupied by the Rebel Army. Here, the player fights both the Rebel soldiers and speeding subway trains that try to crush you. At the very end of the subway, lies the Rebel Army's laboratory, infested with grotesque mutants that swarms all over the players.

* In ''[[ComicBook/SevenSoldiers The Manhattan Guardian]]'' by Creator/GrantMorrison, the New York subway system is home to a bizarre underworld in which bands of subway pirates raid stations to kidnap commuters off the platforms as slaves, and their mad captains race each other in search of a 'god machine' somewhere deep under NYC.

* ''VideoGame/TheNightWayHome'': The first area in the game is a subway station in which [[PlayerCharacter Rina]] meets a girl crying in the washroom. After being touched by her, then regaining consciousness ([[NotMakingThisUpDisclaimer Yes, that's what happens]]), the subway suddenly has a long-legged StringyHairedGhostGirl in it that attacks Rina on sight.
* ''VideoGame/ProjectDownfall'' has the Pink Line. It's a filthy, dingy, ominous subway line that is (unofficially) reserved exclusively for members of organized crime. Normal citizens who try to ride are harassed, attacked, or even killed. Your first act as a vigilante is to try to clear it out.

* ''VideoGame/MaxPayne'': After the depressing opening level, we skip forward a few years, as Max is meeting up with his DEA partner in the Roscoe Street subway station... [[UnexpectedlyAbandoned but the station is deserted]], and the platform exit is locked. Then, if the player is paying attention, they'll notice a spent shotgun shell lying on the platform. From there, it only goes FromBadToWorse.

* The fragmented remains of the Moscow metro system, full of toxic air, radioactive water, monsters of all kinds and some [[LivingMemory other]] [[OurGhostsAreDifferent unpleasant]] [[LivingShadow "inhabitants"]], is the setting of ''VideoGame/{{Metro 2033}}'' and its sequel ''VideoGame/MetroLastLight'', as per [[Literature/{{Metro 2033}} the original novel]].

%%* ''VideoGame/ResidentEvilOutbreak: File No. 2''.

* ''[[VideoGame/FirstEncounterAssaultRecon F.E.A.R. Extraction Point]]'' (the ExpansionPack) had "Descent", its longest chapter, set in a Subway system (along with some storm drains).

* ''Film/DeathLine'''s plot follows two university students who find themselves at the centre of an investigation involving a man who goes missing on UsefulNotes/TheLondonUnderground, and ultimately discover the remnants of a CannibalClan dwelling in set of never completed tunnels.

* ''Film/DeathWish1976'': The subway is one of several locales of seething, bald-faced criminal activity, as Paul Kersey is picked on by muggers twice in this setting.

* One of the stages in ''VideoGame/MortalKombat3'' is an abandoned subway station, whose stage Fatality, appropriately enough, involves uppercutting the opponent to the tracks on the other side and watch as the train ([[GiantSpaceFleaFromNowhere which was never there before]]) tramples them. If you uppercut your opponent during the match, however, they'll go up to the Street stage. The stage was revamped for ''VideoGame/MortalKombatArmageddon'': now the trains pass by periodically, and the opponent can be dropped into the tracks mid-round, while the player is treated to a much more realistic and [[{{Gorn}} graphic]] death cinematic. It comes back in ''VideoGame/MortalKombat9''.

* An early scene of ''Film/JacobsLadder'' has the title character lost in a New York subway station. Though he doesn't encounter anything supernatural, the atmosphere is almost unbearably dark and creepy.

* In ''VisualNovel/GSenjouNoMaou'', one of the endings features this as a "Final Battle" stage.

* The ''VideoGame/SpiderMan game for the [=PS1=] had a level where Spidey had to ride a moving train from one station to the other. He gets attacked by an endless horde of lizard people for some reason.

* [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lower_Bay Lower Bay]] station in Toronto sits empty in its SinisterSubway aura 90% of the time...except when it's being used for filming (it even has its own collection of MTA signs to make the station look like New York), being opened to tourists once a year, or being turned into a GenreSavvy piece of [[http://ghoststation.blogspot.com/ installation art]].

* ''VideoGame/{{Underrail}}'' takes place in the eponymous Underrail, an enormous subterranean complex of caverns, living facilities, laboratories, factories, and tertiary structures. Trains are the most common means of transport between civilized areas. Given that the Underrail is a minimum of two hundred years old, it goes without saying that most of the uninhabited regions, especially the train tunnels, have become [[RodentsOfUnusualSize places you]] [[BanditClan don't want]] [[BigCreepyCrawlies to be]].

%%(ZCE)* ''VideoGame/{{Underrail}}'' in its entirety.

* The Washington DC subways are the location of the first mission in ''VideoGame/SyphonFilter'' [[BookEnds and the last mission]] in ''VideoGame/SyphonFilter3''. The fictional town of Carthage in ''The Omega Strain'' also has a subway.[[http://underground-history.co.uk/aldwych.php The bottom of this page]] includes a description of it.

* The fifth level of ''VideoGame/Ashes2063'', "The Sub-Caverns", takes place in metro tunnels, stations and caves abandoned for decades and is known across the wastes for "crazy ghost stories". The entire location is dark, dreary, difficult to navigate, and sardine-packed with mutants, beasts... and [[OurGhostsAreDifferent Haunts]]. There is an alternate path through that deviates to a less spooky abandoned mall, but years of disuse made the entrance hard to find.

* ''VideoGame/DukeNukem3D'': The "Rabid Transit" level is set in one.

* ''VideoGame/TombRaiderIII'' had a level set in UsefulNotes/TheLondonUnderground's Aldwych subway station.

* ''VideoGame/{{Turok}} 3''.
* ''VideoGame/{{Underrail}}'' in its entirety.
* The fourth level of ''VideGame/TheWorldIsNotEnough'' for the Nintendo 64 (which, in a subversion, has occasional bystanders and operating trains).

[[folder:ComicBooks]]

* ''Film/AnAmericanWerewolfInLondon'': Lucky Briton Gerald Bringsley gets stalked and eaten there by the eponymous werewolf.* ''Film/BladeTrinity'' has a [[strike:toupe]] troupe of newly turned teenage vampires try to turn a local subway station into their own personal buffet. It would have worked if their first victim didn't have silver tipped knives and an energy bow.

* ''Film/DeathLine'''s plot follows two university students who find themselves at the centre of an investigation involving a man who goes missing on UsefulNotes/TheLondonUnderground, and ultimately discover the remnants of a CannibalClan dealing in set of never completed tunnels.

* ''Film/DeathLine'' and ''Film/{{Creep 2004}}'', both horror movies set in UsefulNotes/TheLondonUnderground.

* Harry Harrison's ''Literature/TheLastTrain'' involves a man going down into a station and finding himself apparently back in time - or is he among ghosts? The people there don't belong in the 70's when he enters the station - they appear to be sheltering from bombs during the Blitz.
* ''Literature/TheEighthLamp'' is set during the First World War, in the fictitious Cheyne Road station on the London Underground. As he turns off the lamps on the platform one night he sees a Circle Line train that shouldn't exist. No-one believes him, but the next night he sees the train again and confront the reason it appears.

* The opening titles of the TV movie version of ''The Sunset Limited'' are set over an ominous sequence of shots of a scary and apparently deserted (but real) subway station in Harlem.
* The title sequence of ''Series/TheEqualizer'' also played up the New York subway system for all its crime-ridden menace.
* Starling City in ''Series/{{Arrow}}'' has an abandoned subway system.
* An episode of ''Series/PoliceRescue'' featured a search through various tunnels leading out of the rail tunnels for two kids who tired of a delay and decided to leave the train while it was still underground.

* Music/TheCure 'Subway Song' is about a woman walking through the subway at night with the feeling that she is being followed. The track ends in a haunting scream, implying that she has been attacked.

* Act 3, Scene 1 of ''The Saint of Bleecker Street'' is set in a dim passageway in a subway station.
* Inverted in ''Linie 1'', a German musical from 1989, set in the [[UsefulNotes/BerlinUAndSBahn Berlin subway]].

* ''VideoGame/TheMidnightStation'' has this in spades as the entire game seems to revolve around a creepy abandoned train station platform located in the center of an [[https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EldritchLocation Eldritch Location.]] [[http://studio-anjin.co.uk/the-midnight-station/ The website capitalizes on this in spades.]]

* The Washington DC subways are the location of the first mission in ''VideoGame/SyphonFilter'' [[BookEnds and the last mission]] in ''VideoGame/SyphonFilter3''. The fictional town of Carthage in ''The Omega Strain'' also has a subway.[[http://underground-history.co.uk/aldwych.php The bottom of this page]] includes a description of it.

* The fourth level of ''The World is Not Enough'' for the Nintendo 64 (which, in a subversion, has occasional bystanders and operating trains).
* An extended sequence in ''VideoGame/TheMatrixPathOfNeo'' takes place in a train station similiar to the first movie - except that it's lights are even poorer and rats are seen running about on the floor.
* Inverted in ''VideoGame/HalfLife2 Episode 1''. After a long and harrowing journey through the tunnels and collapsed buildings under City 17, reaching a subway station is the sign that you've reached the surface.

* In ''VideoGame/BeneathASteelSky'', LINC is reachable through an old subway tunnel. There is also a monster lurking about there.
* The third ''VideoGame/{{Exmortis}}'' game has you escaping into one of these to take shelter from a nuke that goes off on the surface. It's plenty creepy - with an EldritchAbomination stalking you and playing with your memories, you have to manually restart a train while avoiding booby traps, and there's a [[ImAHumanitarian cannibal]] living in the tunnels.

* In the ''WesternAnimation/BatmanTheAnimatedSeries'' episode [[Recap/BatmanTheAnimatedSeriesE25TheClockKing "The Clock King"]]: Gotham citizens first laugh at Mayor Hill when the ceremonial first train to Gotham Central Station doesn't arrive when he announces it. Then they hear Fugate's voice asking them to "clear the platform", and the lights of two trains at one appear. Everyone panics.
* In the ''WesternAnimation/AdventureTime'' episode "Mortal Folly", the monstrous Lych's Well Of Power is in a ruined subway station complete with undead skeletal passengers.

* ''Manga/VampirePrincessMiyu'', in one of the first episodes. Even after she finished exorcising the Shinma who'd made his home there, the place remained very, very, VERY creepy. [[spoiler:Especially as she only killed the villain but did nothing to ease the suffering of his [[TakenForGranite victims]].]]
* ''Manga/HayateTheCombatButler'' features one of these. It ended with a barely-fended-off stampede of rats. Considering it was TheOjou's first attempt at taking a subway, not surprisingly she never tried ''that'' again, sticking with nice, safe, normal private jet travel.
* ''Anime/{{Hellsing}}'': Episode 7 of the first anime takes place in UsefulNotes/TheLondonUnderground, battling vampires and a particularly tenacious priest.
* The opening scene of ''Anime/BloodTheLastVampire'' takes place in a subway. Subverted in that [[spoiler:the person Saya was chasing wasn't actually a Chiropteran.]]
* ''Anime/GaReiZero'': Yomi and Kagura are called out to investigate one of these, where Kagura has her first encounter with Category D's. Yomi warns Kagura that the subway is still active, and suggests she not touch the electrical conducting wire unless she wants a "really bad hair day".

* During Creator/GarthEnnis' run on ''ComicBook/ThePunisher'', Frank occasionally had to deal to underground problems, like a gang of criminal midgets (which ended up with Wolverine getting his face and gonnads shot off then literally steamrollered) or a hobo army led by a man who lived in a giant pile of corpses (because it reminded him of the time his morbidly obese mother died on top of him, forcing him to eat his way out).

* ''Film/AnAmericanWerewolfInLondon'': Lucky Briton Gerald Bringsley gets stalked and eaten there by the eponymous werewolf.
* ''Film/{{Moebius}}'' is a Argentinean film that features as protagonist the Buenos Aires subway, the "Subte". An ambitious and peculiar layout that tries to connect all the lines ends in an [[AlienGeometries entangling figure]] akin to a Möbius Strip that ruptures the continuum of timespace, situating the speeding train in a neverending loop out of reach from our dimension... with [[FateWorseThanDeath thirty passengers on board]]. [[CorruptCorporateExecutive Corrupt corporate executives]] and [[ObstructiveBureaucrat neglectful government employees]] are involved in this mess, and hire a [[MadMathematician topologist]] to [[MathematiciansAnswer fix the problem]]. Based on a 1950 SF story, ''A Subway Named Möbius'' by A. J. Deutsch.

* Then there's Hobbs Lane Station in the film version of ''Film/QuatermassAndThePit'' - not exactly abandoned, just closed for renovation, and the focus of unearthly events.

* ''Film/{{Cloverfield}}'' has a very spooky sequence in a subway tunnel, [[spoiler:which climaxes rather frighteningly when the cameraman turns on the nightvision]].
* The climax of ''Film/FantasticBeastsAndWhereToFindThem'' is set in a subway like this in New York. Being set in the 1920s, it feels creepier than a modern subway, too.
* An early scene of ''Film/JacobsLadder'' has the title character lost in a New York subway station. Though he doesn't encounter anything supernatural, the atmosphere is almost unbearably dark and creepy.

* ''Film/GhostbustersII'' has a SinisterSubway sequence with a Ghost Train to boot. And severed heads on pikes.
* ''Film/BladeTrinity'' has a [[strike:toupe]] troupe of newly turned teenage vampires try to turn a local subway station into their own personal buffet. It would have worked if their first victim didn't have silver tipped knives and an energy bow.

* ''Film/TwentyEightWeeksLater'' has the heroes flee into UsefulNotes/TheLondonUnderground to escape an attack helicopter and the rampaging zombie horde. Naturally, it's full of bodies and only one person has night vision (on the scope of her rifle).
* The Hungarian film ''Film/{{Kontroll}}''. Before the film begins, a [[UsefulNotes/BudapestMetro Budapest subway]] official assures the viewers that the subway is, in reality, perfectly safe. This was a condition for granting the filmmakers access to the subway.
* ''Film/ThePhantomOfTheOpera1989'': If we are to believe Creator/RobertEnglund, if there'd been a sequel to his version, most of it would've been in an abandoned subway station.
* Luc Besson's ''Film/{{Subway}}'': Inverted. The subway system is a playing ground for some, and to others it's their home.
* French film ''Buffet Froid'' is about a crime in the [[UsefulNotes/LeMetropolitain La Défense RER]] station in Paris.
* ''Film/TheMidnightMeatTrain'': Leon Kauffman, a photographer, is attempting to find the "real" New York City. He begins to delve into the city's inner "darkness", and while there, discovers a monstrous serial killer roaming the subways.
* The action of ''Film/{{Mimic}}'' takes place mostly in a subway system.
* ''Stag Night'', which is pretty much ''Film/WrongTurn'' [[RecycledInSpace IN A SUBWAY SYSTEM]].

* The subways of ''Film/{{Daybreakers}}'' are infested with mutants.
* The hero of ''Film/{{Pi}}'', in the throes of a horrible migraine, experiences a nightmarish hallucination in the empty New York subway, in which he chases a bleeding man (who may be [[AlternateSelf himself]]) and follows the trail of blood to a [[{{Squick}} bloody brain]] lying at the foot of a staircase, which he probes with a pen, producing audio and visual hallucinations in his own brain.

* ''Film/FrightNight2NewBlood'': One of the vampire attacks takes place in the subway. The main characters have to jump out of the carriage and walk along the tracks to escape.
* In ''Film/ThirteenWomen'', Ursula coerces the swami into throwing himself under a subway train once [[YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness she has no further use for him]].
* The ending of ''Film/FinalDestination3'' shows [[spoiler:a train crash in the subway that kills off the survivors. However, since it is a premonition and the end FadesToBlack, it is ambigious if the crash actually happened though its heavily implied it did]].

* ''Literature/ThePendragonAdventure'' has an abandoned subway station as the location of Second Earth's flume entrance.
%%* Used in one of the ''Literature/YoungWizards'' books. - ZCE
* In ''Literature/{{Sourcery}}'', the genie's fullomyth (a play on the filofax) includes a map of UsefulNotes/TheLondonUnderground with the hidden stations most people don't know about. It's not shown, but presumably they have at least a passing resemblance to the SinisterSubway stations.

* ''Literature/{{Neverwhere}}'s'' London Below, which is essentially where everything that has ever slipped the cracks in the real world goes, has a few scenes with abandoned stations.
* Creator/CliveBarker's short story ''Literature/TheMidnightMeatTrain'', has a subway where you can be murdered to be fed to the Elders of New York.

* Parts of ''Reliquary'' take place in abandoned subway tunnels (and active ones, like when the creatures massacre the occupants of a train)
* In ''Literature/RogueMale'' a fight to the death in a deserted tunnel of the now-disused Aldwych London Underground station ends with the "hideous, because domestic, [[HighVoltageDeath sound of sizzling]]."
* In [[Literature/ModernFaerieTales Valiant]], the protagonist makes her home in an abandoned subway station with some companions. Considering they are variously disturbed children doing Faerie drugs, they are the REASON it's sinister.
* In Stephen King's ''Literature/TheDrawingOfTheThree'' from his ''Franchise/TheDarkTower'' series a major plot theme revolves around Jack Mort, a [[TheSociopath homicidal maniac]] designated "the Pusher," who lurks in subways and pushes people onto the tracks in front of oncoming trains. (Among other vicious crimes.) Odetta Holmes falls victim to him and loses her legs at the knees in backstory, spending the whole series in a wheelchair. Roland [[MeatPuppet takes control of Mort's body]] and [[CoolAndUnusualPunishment throws him]] [[KarmicDeath onto the tracks]], [[HoistByHisOwnPetard under an oncoming train]].
* In {{Literature/Kane}} story "At First Just Ghostly" an abandoned tunnel of London underground is the place where [[AuthorAvatar burnt-out writer Cody Lennox]] meets {{Satan}} himself.

* Sir John Betjeman's ''Literature/SouthKentishTown'' was a short set in a closed London Transport underground station, after a clerk gets off the train when the doors malfunction and open at the disused station. The train leaves before he can wonder where he is, leaving him alone in the dark station, unable to leave as any portals in the station to the outside world have been built over and forgotten.
* John Wyndham's short ''Literature/ConfidenceTrick'' has a man get on an underground train from Bank Station amongst a crowd, but then realises the train has only 3 people on board, and has been rolling for more than an hour at full power without getting anywhere. Pulling the emergency brake does nothing; the train stops at a terminal at midnight where a voice calls "All Change, End of the Line", where they are met and guided on by a demon.
* Conrad Williams' ''Literature/LondonRevenant'' deals with drop-outs who haunt the underground; among them a Pusher similar to the Stephen King example above.
* Tobias Hill's ''Literature/{{Underground}}'' involves a search down disused tunnels, makeshift passages and locked/forgotten stations regarding a series of murders.
* A psychotic film-maker murders passengers and lives in an abandoned station on the Tube in Nicholas Royle's ''Literature/TheDirectorsCut''.

* The climax of Film/FantasticBeastsAndWhereToFindThem is set in a subway like this in New York. Being set in the 1920’s, it feels creepier than a modern subway, too.

* ''Film/AnAmericanWerewolfInLondon'': Lucky Briton Gerald Bringsley gets eaten there by the eponymous werewolf.

* The film "Jacob's Ladder" has a very effective example of this.

-->--Metro announcer, ''Film/FinalDestination3''

[[quoteright:284:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/subwaybubway_9152.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:284:Wazzamatta? Scared?]]

* Somewhat present in ''Film/Ghost1990'' with the "Subway Ghost" (played by Creator/VincentSchiavelli) knocking items around and whatnot as well as his tragic backstory.

* Somewhat present in ''Film/Ghost1990'' with the "Subway Ghost" (played by Creator/VincentSchiavelli) knocking peoples' items around and whatnot as well as his tragic backstory.

* The ending of ''Film/FinalDestination3'' shows [[spoiler:a train crash in the subway that kills off the survivors. However, since it is a premonition and the end FadesToBlack, it is ambigious if the crash actually happen though its heavily implied it did]].