History NightmareFuel / Arcaea

*** Out of the side characters who chose to be encased, there are people heavily implied to be the likes of Mir or Shirahime. Even if they broke down briefly after experiencing an unpleasant revelation, they still pulled themselves together rather quickly, only to have all of their CharacterDevelopment in their side stories undone because of that one person who just can't. And Kou, Ayu and Vita [[WhatHappenedToTheMouse weren't even mentioned]]. Not even by title. [[NothingIsScarier Just where in the hell are they??]]
*** Lethe, Saya and Lagrange didn't choose to let themselves frozen, but Saya and Lagrange are left wandering for an eternity without any positive outcome or purpose, and Lethe was still tending to memories as always. It's a wonder how did they haven't became insane already...

* The effects of positive Arcaea overdose in Chapter 1-ZR, the bad ending for the Luminous Sky chapter. Hikari goes out of her way trying to collect positive Arcaea ti be happy, and becomes so [[GoneHorriblyRight overloaded with memories of happiness]] that it dulls her mind until she's rendered a [[EmptyShell mindless husk]].

* The effects of positive Arcaea overdose in Chapter 1-ZR, the bad ending for the Luminous Sky chapter. She's so [[GoneHorriblyRight overloaded with memories of happiness]] that it dulls her mind until she's rendered a [[EmptyShell mindless husk]].

* Generally, Arcaea is a ''very'' fucked-up setting that can easily drive someone insane. Imagine ending up in a world where you have no memories about what and who you are, all alone with the chance of finding company next to nil because of how expansive and empty it is. This alone is bad enough and can easily eat away your sanity, but god forbid if you ''really'' got to find out what you actually are. Chances are it's not pleasant and you're here because whatever happened to your previous life is something so awful that you don't want to think about it. And if you dug a little bit further and find out how meaningless and incoherent it is? You're going to ''GoMadFromTheRevelation'', like what Lagrange or Shirahime experienced. The only characters that avoid this fate are the ones like Kou or Ayu who are content in their GlidedCage and didn't bother trying to dig in.

* Generally, Arcaea is a ''very'' fucked-up setting that can easily drive someone insane. Imagine ending up in a world where you have no memories about what and who you are, all alone with the chance of finding company next to nil because of how expansive and empty it is. This alone is bad enough and can easily eat away your sanity, but god forbid if you ''really'' got to find out what you actually are. Chances are it's not pleasant and you're here because whatever happened to your previous life is something so awful that you don't want to think about it. And if you dug a little bit further and find out how meaningless and incoherent it is? You're going to ''GoMadFromTheRevelation'', like what Lagrange or Shirahime experienced. The only characters that avoid this are the content ones like Kou or Ayu who didn't bother trying to dig in.

* Generally, Arcaea is a ''very'' fucked-up setting that can easily drive someone insane. Imagine ending up in a world where you have no memories about what and who you are, all alone with the chance of finding company next to nil because of how expansive and empty it is. This alone is bad enough and can easily eat away your sanity, but god forbid if you ''really'' got to find out what you actually are. Chances are it's not pleasant and you're here because whatever happened to your previous life is something so awful that you don't want to think about it. And if you dug a little bit further and find out how meaningless and incoherent it is? You're going to ''GoMadFromTheRevelation'', like what Lagrange or Shirahime experienced. It's an absolute marvel that some of the characters like Kou or Ayu can pull themselves together and never break down to begin with, despite the obviously hostile conditions.

* All of the Anomaly {{Scripted Event}}s:
** Chapter 1 (Vicious Labyrinth): About partway through "Axium Crisis", [[OminousVisualGlitch the game appears to glitch out, with the background image (of Tairitsu) breaking up, red lines appearing on the screen, and the playfield suddenly changing angles]], before closing the shutters to introduce "Grievous Lady". If this is your first time experiencing this, you might think you've broken your (likely expensive) phone or tablet for a moment.
** Chapter 3 (Luminous Sky): About partway through "Ether Strike", the Recollection gauge turns red to signify that it is now under Hard rules, and starts to decrease every few seconds. This ensures that the player will see the next effect: As the Recollection meter nears zero, the screen starts to slowly FadeToWhite, making the player feel like they're dying. Once the end of the track is reached, or rather ''where the track usually ends'', it keeps going, hitting notes does nothing but add "max Pure" bonus points if they get them, the Recollection gauge rises on its own, and the playfield distortion effect from "Axium Crisis" also occurs before introducing the player to "Fracture Ray". Oh, and if you fail at any point between triggering the Anomaly and accessing "Fracture Ray", [[NonStandardGameOver the screen turns completely white, the track fades out, and you don't get the usual "Track Lost" message as the shutters close]].

** Even the "Terminal Song" ScriptedEvent added with Black Fate is this. Hikari, having endured Tairitsu's onslaught and using the last of her strength, is fracturing the world herself. During the event, the background and even the song chart itself is glitching regularly, and at the very end, [[BreakingTheFourthWall the display cuts out]]. And once you trigger the event, there is no quitting out of it early: the game doesn't even provide you a pause button.

* Insight is a really creepy character that invokes something that is completely unnatural and unknown to Arcaea. Not only she looks way more intimidating than any other character (resembling more like [[Manga/AkameGaKill General Esdeath]] than an actual ''Arcaea'' character), the way she speaks reeks of CondescendingCompassion towards Maya and sounds more like a predator locking in onto their prey.

* Chapter 6 (Final Verdict) is the climax of Hikari and Tairitsu's DuelToTheDeath and is as depressing and nightmarish as it's built up to be.

* Chapter 6 (Final Verdict) continues off from Hikari and Tairitsu's DuelToTheDeath and cements itself as exceptional in a genre that doesn't accustom itself to incredibly dark and depressing stories like this.

* Post-epilogue, if you lock Fatalis Hikari's skill and play "Last" without touching the screen and wait a while, you'll get an "Accept Arcaea" button that appears below the "Refuse Fate" button. If you click it, you'll receive an ''absolutely nasty'' alternate ending that looks like as if Hikari became [[Anime/PuellaMagiMadokaMagica Kriemhild Gretchen]] and took over Arcaea. It's just so irredeemably depressing for RhythmGame standards that it could go on par with the likes of [[VideoGame/{{Chunithm}} Sibyl Seireiki]] [[note]]An infamous scenario from ''CHUNITHM'' that stands out as ''irredeemably depressing and gory'' compared to its usual story scenarios. It's a rather standard fantasy setting with spirit-channeling witches as its protagonists and a world made by a GodOfEvil...but all of the character backstories feature gratuitous displays of BreakTheCutie, gore, torture, excessively pessimistic {{Downer Ending}}s, a climax confrontation between a main character and the GodOfEvil that ends up ''the protagonist's breakdown and defeat'' and said GodOfEvil being a rejected Demiurge with a traumatic FreudianExcuse, and her attempt to recreate the world [[InTheirOwnImage In Her Own Image]] resulted in her being overwhelmed by despair and killing herself[[/note]].
** TheReveal that Arcaea is actually a place created by the real Hikari for her to refuge into and a [[SpiritWorld place for solace for the dead]] -- every other character in this world is DeadAllAlong. [[NothingIsScarier And save for Tairitsu, Alice and Vita, we don't even know how the rest died...]]

* Vita's world brings upon imagery of the ''TabletopGame/Warhammer40000'' universe complete with an oppressive galactic government that's ''literally'' called the Imperium. It's obviously not as gorish as ''40k'', but there are multiple planetary forces fighting, Vita and some other children take control of a planet-destroying KillSat used for "peacekeeping" and said Imperium can easily annihilate anyone who knew too much so long as they know about you, an all-too-familiar haunting sight for anyone who knows anything about that tabletop game.

* Vita's world brings upon imagery of the ''TabletopGame/Warhammer40000'' universe complete with an oppressive galactic government that's ''literally'' called the Imperium. It's obviously not as gorish as ''40k'', but there are multiple planetary forces fighting, Vita and some other children take control of a planet-destroying KillSat and said Imperium can easily annihilate anyone who knew too much so long as they know about you, an all-too-familiar haunting sight for anyone who knows anything about that tabletop game.