History NightmareFuel / Fallout4

** Perhaps the most terrifying thing about it isn't the disturbing events you go through, but this thought: the Children of Atom, those dogmatic and absurd madmen that you've been conditioned by both [[VideoGame/Fallout3 the previous game]] and the main game to believe are TooDumbToLive morons and/or [[KickTheSonOfABitch an utter menace you can shoot without a hint of guilt on account of their borderline suicidal stupidity and tendency to attack others on sight]]... [[TheCloudCuckooLanderWasRight are they right after all?]]

* South of Oberland Station is a small unmarked wooden tower next to a railway. There's a trap door leading to the inside labelled "Waystation". Seems harmless. [[TortureCellar The inside]] is lit by a single lamp, it's quiet. There's a dead body of a settler surrounded by [[ColdBloodedTorture improvised torture tools]] like a [[DropTheHammer sledgehammer]], a machete and a [[ElectricTorture makeshift battery]]. A small plastic crate contains bloody skull fragments. [[NothingIsScarier There's no explanation for anything]]. It's just a grisly torture scene.

** A random encounter exists in the game, whereupon you come across a brood of named Feral Ghouls. Specifically, the names of your neighbors who didn't make it to the safety of the Vault.

* Ever played VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas on Hardcore Mode at the highest difficulty (including DLC)? How the game increases the realism factor with aspects such as the addition of a food/water/sleep meter, permanent companions' death, and ammo having weight? We ask this because Fallout 4's Survival Mode makes playing the former look like child's play and arguably better simulates what it would realistically be like surviving the Wasteland and how bleak and terrifying it can be traversing a world where one wrong move can either quickly or gradually kill you if you don't prepare yourself accordingly. Even with some usual armor, there will be points where even a low-level Raider can kill you quickly with just a few bullets if your guard is down. Think you can conserve ammo by meleeing a group of [[TheGoomba Radroachs and Mole Rats?]] Maybe if you like the risk of getting sick from diseases that can drastically hurt your stats or even kill you if you don't treat it soon. You're in a situation where you're very hungry or thirsty can the only food you have is uncooked meat or dirty water? And you're miles away from a cooking station? There's no fast traveling in Survival Mode, so you have to gauge the risk of eating and drinking your unprepared supplies or risk getting closer to starvation, dehydration, or getting killed by a random enemy on your way to a cooking station. Oh, and forget about SaveScumming, in Survival Mode you only save by going to bed, so death can set you back greatly if you're too reckless and aren't constantly keeping an eye out for beds you can use. Survival Mode, all in all, is the epitome of EarlyGameHell.

* The Grandchester Mystery Mansion, a house where a young girl allegedly murdered her parents. It's filled to the brim with traps and killer robots... because there's a gunner hiding out in there, preying on travelers. But occasionally, you'll see a young girl run by laughing, easily opening the locked doors. In the attic, you see her run behind a wall, open a door and go through it. Opening the door she went through leads to a brick wall...
** For added effect, the second you open that last door, a [[ScareChord Scare Chord]] plays.

* In the cell wing for the test subjects, you can find not just skeletons, but dead feral ghouls still in their cells. This means radiation leaked into the facility and transformed them, keeping a few of the inmates alive, trapped in these tiny cells while the others starved or died of radiation poisoning. Worse, if you pick the locks to some of the cells, you'll find a few of the feral ghouls are actually ''still alive.'' [[AndIMustScream One can only hope they went feral centuries ago...]]

* In just another horrible example of how the Great War screwed up the earth's ecosystem, you can find the bodies of mutated sea creatures on the shoreline. [[UncannyValley They look a bit...]] [[http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Sea_creature?file=FO4-dolphin-whale-render.png off.]] The coasts of New England are home to a surprising number of great whites, so these could be mutant sharks, but there's no gills and the tail fins are horizontal rather than vertical. But if that's supposed to be a dolphin, it looks like a throwback to their ancestors like Basilosaurus or Dorudontinae: creatures with oversized, conical teeth for ripping apart flesh. And then you have to wonder what tore up the corpses like that? Mirelurks, or land-based scavengers? ''[[ParanoiaFuel What else is swimming around down there?]]

* The way synths are constructed can be a little unsettling. As Glory describes, they are "built", bone by bone, muscle by muscle. There is a giant machine that constructs the synth's skeleton like a puzzle before sheathing it in muscle, then jabs the body with electrical prods to stimulate its nervous system before dipping the body in a vat of red liquid. What emerges appears to be a human being, who is then ushered to "Synth Processing". The UncannyValley hits hard here.

** Speaking of [=DiMA=], many Acadia-related quest icons feature a '''very''' UncannyValley-driven ''Vault Boy rendition'' of him, with his appearance in [[http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/File:Fo4FH_The_Way_Life_Should_Be.png the icon for "The Way Life Should Be"]] being especially horrifying.

* ''Revolted'' starts as an innocuous, hilarious, SoBadItsGood GameWithinAGame genre throwback to the likes of Duke Nukem, replete with very hilarious text to speech based SoBadItsGood dialogue. [[spoiler: And then you confront "the Professor" and [[OneWingedAngel he turns into Glitch]] and JumpScare you. Fortunately it's easy to dispatch. As the game ends in a Blue Screen of Death, you decided to get out and you found out that the Glitch made its way to the real world! Thankfully just like before, it's easy to dispatch, you got all your guns back, and it drops items based on the Revolted game.]]
** From the same developer comes ''Vault Buddy'', which is just another companion mod. [[spoiler: Except the place it inhabits gives massive jumpscare, and the doll is basically Fallout version of [[Franchise/ChildsPlay Chucky]] meets [[Franchise/TheSlenderManMythos Slenderman]]]].
* ''Concussion'' starts off as a rather basic, simple bounty-based quest mod. [[spoiler: Then it became PsychologicalHorror meets SurrealHorror]].

* ''Children of Ug-Qualtoth'' starts out similar to the Dunwich Borers location in the main game, but quickly evolves into a full on horror game, complete with an EldritchAbomination [[spoiler: (though it's an asset flip of the Mirelurk Queen in the main game)]] and a scary ass EldritchLocation.

** Hell, any companion is similar to Dogmeat in this regard: All of your allies are a result of the post-apocalyptic wasteland, and to survive in a world where raiders, super mutants, deathclaws, and worse are common, all of them have to be ready and willing to kill anyone who might be a threat at a moment's notice. It can be jarring to be in a friendly conversation with Preston or Piper, and then a second later, they're ruthlessly gunning down your enemies without hesitation. Even Curie, Hancock, Deacon, and especially [[LawfulGood Nick]]. BewareTheNiceOnes, indeed.

* Just north of Sanctuary Hills, on the bank of the river there is a mannquin lying on the ground with a stimpak stabbed into its chest. Who put it there and why is a mystery, but it's a chilling image nonetheless.

--> '''Vertibird PA:''' "Residents of Sanctuary Hills. If you are registered, evacuate to Vault 111 immediately."

** Another incredibly chilling one is from a train car south of Oberland Station. You hear this pre-recorded message from a panicking mother and her son Thomas who took shelter in an overturned train car after being chased by ''[[NothingIsScarier something]]''. The mother pleads for help for her son because he's injured, and then the creature manages to [[OhCrap open the door]] and she shrieks in pure terror for her boy to make a run for it. When you open up the train carriage you see a skeleton and a train car full of blood, and [[UncertainDoom no sign of Thomas]]. The voice actress really nailed the terror of a [[AdultFear parent whose child is in danger]]. Just listen to it [[https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Distress_signal_(Relay_tower_1DL-109) here]].

* Nuka-World is also full of AdultFear moments. Galactic Zone has Assaultrons and Sentry Bots, Dry Rock Gulch encourages kids to have a shootout with one of the Protectrons... with a ''real gun''. And then there's the fact that it's possible for your children to be traumatized for life (if not worse) by being bit by a poisonous reptile in the Safari Zone (and according to one terminal, treatment involves being sent to Nuka-Town USA to file out paperwork before they'll administer any sort of treatment... after you show them your park passes... and that even if you last long enough to jump through those hoops and get treated? The cost of your treatment gets billed ''directly to you''. And if you're too paralyzed to walk to Nuka-Town USA yourself, you need to pay for a stretcher, a sum of four hundred dollars (in FO!2077 money, which would likely come out to about 50 bucks in RW!2016 money). And if you can't prove you paid to get into the park? Employees are simply instructed to call security, without treating the injured party.

* The quest Mystery Meat. Remember that random encounter where you meet that guy who warns you to stand back, because he ate some bad meat and he felt like he was gonna explode? Well, you can track the meat to its source, where you'll meet the guy who manufactures it. At first, it seems innocent enough, claiming that it's Mole Rat meat, and nobody should be getting sick from eating it. Then, against his warnings, you take an elevator into the basement... at which point, the proprietor shuts the elevator down, and you're trapped in the basement with the source of his meat: [[WasOnceAMan Feral ghouls.]] Lots and lots of feral ghouls. [[IAteWhat Hope you didn't eat any of that stuff]].

* The Creation Club Anti-Material Rifle comes with its own quest, ''The Paper Mirror'', and it's easily as spooky as anything in the proper game. You find a scrap of a book predicting your own future in the Witchcraft Museum (already a spooky place thanks to the deathclaw playing haunted house there) and eventually, you'll check out the bounty mentioned in it. The bounty leads you on a path of murder, hunting down everyone else who also had a part of this future-predicting diary. One guy kills himself just to deny you the satisfaction. You do have the option of sparing one woman begging for you to go, but if you do, the diary somehow anticipated that too and punished you with three bounty hunters after you with the same instructions you got for the gang. In the end, you never know what the deal is with that Paper Mirror...but at least you get a nice .50 cal Anti-Material rifle out of it.

* The story of Kim Wu, whose terminals you find in the Pearwood Residences and Natick Banks, is this mixed with {{Tearjerker}}. When China invaded Alaska, Xenophobia swept through America like wildfire. Kim, a very young Chinese-American boy, wrote about many of his experiences during that time, [[ChildrenAreInnocent but clearly didn't understand what was really going on, bless his heart]]. When he and his mother were out shopping for Halloween costumes, an angry mob destroyed the Paifang that marked the entrance to their neighborhood. Later on, the police began searching for Chinese-American residents, rounding them up and loading them onto a bus. Kim and his mother managed to hide from them, but his aunt Song was later taken. When asked where she went, his father explained that Song was taken to a camp, but not a fun one for kids. [[DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything Yeah.]] And while Kim and his family successfully avoided being taken to such a camp, they were stranded in Natick Banks when the Great War commenced.