History NightmareFuel / Left4Dead

* You might not ordinarily expect the developer commentary to be that scary, but one of the sequel's nodes is particularly nasty - the art department had a folder full of photos of various real-world skin conditions caused by diseases to use as reference for how to design the Infected mutations. You know, the Infected whose appearances have already spawned several entries on this page. They ended up not using any of the photo material, because it was ''too unpleasant to look at''. Just look at a screenshot ***of one of the Infected and imagine catching a real disease that looks ''worse''.

*** The sounds that it makes in the second game are even more unnerving than in the first.

* Dark Carnival from ''2''. It's not the zombie clowns, it's not the other zombies. It's the [[{{AmusementParkOfDoom}} setting itself.]] A whole amusement park, where thousands of people came to have fun and a good time, most probably there to see a rock concert. This was a place of fun, happiness and such. Now it's silent, foreboding. ''Joy'' is ''dead'' and ''happiness'' is ''gone''... and there's also considering [[AdultFear what happened to the possibly hundreds of children]] [[{{FridgeHorror}} that may have been there at the time]].

* Until around 2004 there were in the entire recorded history of the Rabies virus (which the infection is a strain of)exactly TWO survivors, one of which was a Greek man several thousand years ago. Now thanks to modern medical science (and a quick google search) the number has increased to a whopping SIX with there being no verification for all but one of the latest batch of survivors actually having the virus in the first place.

* For the comic, that yacht FULL of Witches who appeared to be in a sort of Girls Gone Wild deal. Some of them are even ''[[{{FanDisservice}} naked]]''! Others are covered in the [[{{Squick}} blood of the cameraman]], who is currently lying dead with [[{{BodyHorror}} his torso carved open]].

* Also in the sequel, the classic special infected are now even more heavily mutated than before. The worst victim is the [[http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/left4dead/images/e/e3/L4d2_Smoker.png Smoker]], who now has ''six'' tongues, poking out from ''all over his body'' (although he still only uses one).

** That could make the special infected all the more scary. They're capable of high-level thought, but attack you out of their own hatred.

* Rabies can take up to 2 years before it progresses to the first stage despite it normally taking 2~12 weeks? To top all of it off the symptoms listed for rabies include anxiety, insomnia, confusion, agitation, abnormal behavior, paranoia, terror, hallucinations, progressing to delirium, etc so the infected are probably fully aware of what's going on with the virus actively amping up their emotional state to 11 which (judging from the descriptions I've been seeing of the special infected) correlates to the behavior. Witch is Anxiety and possibly terror. Hunter is paranoia so it's trying to get you first possibly because it thinks YOU are the infected one. Tanks are obviously agression. Jockeys are hallucinations and general delirium. So on and so forth with the rest being a mixture.

** Imagine this: You are playing with friends when you hear something. Your friends quite down and you realize it's a Tank. Now you all know what's coming and that's it is unavoidable. The worse part is picking someone to find it and draw it back to the group.

* The Finale is plenty hard enough to worry about. After all, fighting off waves of zombies until rescue arrives could rattle anyone's nerves. But how about when rescue '''does''' arrive? Your indication is a sharp change in music, a warning on the screen that basically says "Rescue has arrived! Run like hell!" (which most, if not all, players do) and a nice, fresh wave of zombies trying to keep you from getting away. In that short time, the AI seems to go all out to prevent you from escaping, sending a crapload of specials after you. The whole thing can make your adrenaline shoot through the roof, make you heave a huge relieved sigh when you make it or give you a nice bitter feeling if you fail to make it.

* The 'Last Man on Earth' mutation is probably the scariest this game gets. The player is absolutely alone and only special infected spawn. This means that there can be long gaps of the player just wandering about completely alone until a special infected feels like showing its ugly face. And even then they like to stay hidden meaning that you'll only have the gurgles and music queuing you into the presence of a special infected. This can actually set up some genuinely startling jump scares and atmospheric tension more in line with classic Resident Evil than Left 4 Dead. Oh, and on top of that the PC will constantly call out in desperate search of non-infected life.

* A scene in The Passing. You run upon a park littered with chairs and nice decorations. Then you see a witch at the very end of the chairs wearing a wedding dress. You can assume that this woman, and possibly every other person nearby at the time, almost instantly became zombified ''during her wedding''.

** It's get worse. If you kill a Spitter,you can clearly see on her hand that she has a ring on her ringfinger. That means she was married. What do you think happend to her husband?

** It's get worse. If you kill a spitter,you can clearly see on her hand that she has a ring on her ringfinger. That means she was married. What do you think happend to her husband?

*** Worse than that: the swamps are deep enough to fully conceal witches. Have fun.

** Hard Rain: This campaign starts off fairly normal, make your way through a town and get some gas, easy right? It is... until you get to the sugar mill that's full of witches. And then it starts raining. On your way BACK THROUGH THE SUGAR MILL you run into just as many witches as before... except it's raining so hard you move twice as slow and can barely see or hear your teammates.

** Also, sometimes when you don't get the music cue, you can still tell if there's one nearby... because you can hear them ''breathing''... Opening a door and finding a tank is there is bad, but standing in front of a closed door and hearing his panting clear as day is so. much. worse.

*** [[FromBadToWorse Even worse]], at one point during the finale, you have to face '''TWO''' tanks at the same time.

** The TAAAAANK mutations were either horrifying or a CMOA depending on your perspective. It's a versus game where all the infected team spawn as tanks. And if they die they respawn as more tanks. For the survivor team it's basically don't stop running for a second or you're going to die incredibly quickly.

* How about turning a corner and finding yourself face-to-face with a ''tank''. No musical cues to speak of, just suddenly finding yourself staring down something that can kill you in three hits on ''easy''.
** Imagine this: You are playing with friends when you hear something. Your friends quite down and you realize it's a tank. Now you all know what's coming and that's it is unavoidable. The worse part is picking someone to find it and draw it back to the group.

*** One particularly unsettling thing with the walking Witches of Left 4 Dead 2 is that noises near them are less likely to startle them but will still ''attract them'', causing a really horrible occasion for me when I was backed into a corner with a running chainsaw, watching the Witch slowly following the noise.

** That is still minor compared to when the malevolent AI decides to throw a wave of several dozen which start sprinting towards your group from all directions, including the one you came from, with you hearing a chorus of distant snarling long before you actually see them.

*** How about the Witch? She sobs like a dejected little girl until you shoot her, has fire in her eye sockets, has spindly claws for hands, goes into UnstoppableRage when you shine your flashlight at her, and her attack is a one-shot. Even on the easiest difficulty, she takes twelve hunting rifle rounds to the NECK before even visibly slowing.

** The basic zombie has two modes: listless, or sprint in your direction snarling, meaning that you often don't see them coming until its too late.

** The Special Infected are the truly scary enemies though, and most are heard long before they are seen. They consist of the Smoker, an enemy that can strangle you with a 50-foot-long tongue, the Boomer, an enemy whose attack obscures your vision with green vomit while triggering a wave of infected that will target you specifically, the Witch, a crying girl with very long claws that can knock you down in one hit and kill you in two more, The Tank, a ginormous monster with equally massive muscles, and the Hunter, who deserves special emphasis.

* Try having a Witch spawn in a place where it's COMPLETELY impossible to avoid her, like the subway car in No Mercy that you have to go through. (They hate light, yet they're always sitting under a bright light...weird...) Looking into the eyes of one of those things when she's looking your way is fear in physical form.

* And if all of this isn't bad enough, you can look at the infected and realize that these are HUMANS. They're not undead, they're humans who got sick, are still humans (albeit animal-like) and you're executing THOUSANDS of them. Not only that, but it makes you wonder whether you'll wind up immune, should this ever occur in reality... Because it's that, an unceremonial corpse on the street, or you got lucky. But you don't have too high a chance of getting lucky, looking at those hordes.

* All throughout the Parish, you find evidence that the military was killing PEOPLE. There's strong evidence that they weren't necessarily infected, too. And there's the quarantine zone in the Graveyard level... Ruined buildings, and some particularly chilling graffiti. "If you can read this, the army left us to DIE." It's possible that the military was in a panicked retreat that left no time to evacuate everyone or distinguish carriers from infected, but it's also possible that there was a unit of [[SociopathicSoldier Sociopathic Soldiers]].
* The horror shifts to a more personal level in Versus, in which you actually play the things which blight your existence in Campaign Mode. Viewed in [[DeliberatelyMonochrome sepia]], you await the Survivors to spring whatever trap you've laid for them. In the meantime you can consider the fact that whoever you were was just slightly less lucky than the people you are now hunting, and listen to the sounds of whatever you have become. And look at your hands. Probably the worst for this is the Jockey, who has completely normal hands...except they shake, endlessly.

** Hard Rain: This campaign starts off fairly normal, make your way through a town and get some gas, easy right? It is...until you get to the sugar mill that's full of witches. And then it starts raining. On your way BACK THROUGH THE SUGAR MILL you run into just as many witches as before...except it's raining so hard you move twice as slow and can barely see or hear your teammates.

* The Spitter...not because of her attacks, or her concept art that made her look pregnant- it's the way she dresses. Look at her. A cute little top and some capri pants, a pink thong...this was a normal girl. This was a teenager, a preppy girl that suffered from bulimia. The infection turned her into...into THAT. That is what the infection could ''do'' to you!

* Dark Carnival from ''2''. It's not the zombie clowns, it's not the other zombies. It's the [[{{AmusementParkOfDoom}} setting itself.]] A whole amusement park, where thousands of people came to have fun and a good time, most probably there to see a rock concert. This was a place of fun, happiness and such. Now it's silent, foreboding. ''Joy'' is ''dead'' and ''happiness'' is ''gone''...and there's also considering [[AdultFear what happened to the possibly hundreds of children]] [[{{FridgeHorror}} that may have been there at the time]].

** The thought of ''any'' of the special infected knowing what they were going through is terrifying. The Boomer finds themselves gaining weight and expanding uncontrollably, the Hunter's fingernails grow into claws and their skin is covered in boils, the Spitter can't stop vomiting as her mouth dissolves, the Smoker starts exhibiting all those growths and breathes out smoke, the Charger's left arm atrophies without reason as their right grows like a cancer, the Tank's muscles expand out of control and they slowly lose their ability to speak, the Witch's hands extend into claws and she loses control over her emotions... those were all regular, everyday people like us, who may well have been aware of their transformations and in terrible pain, and unless there's a cure out there, killing them is all the survivors can do. Death is the only mercy they can get from that...

** There's evidence that the military is crumbling. Sure, some of its members are *ssholes, but the military is in charge of evacuating whoever is left out there.

* The virus in ''Left 4 Dead'' is a mutated strain of Rabies. As in it can effect animals too. We've seen what it can do to humans now think about what the animals will look like. Zoo DLC anyone?

*** [[FridgeHorror Which leads to another distrubing implication:]] what if this entire situation started out as standrand test with a new form of the rabies virus on animals?

[[caption-width-right:320: If this is bad enough for you, just wait till you see it in-game and it's [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cu101dw7uc8 theme]]]]

** The Special Infected are the truly scary enemies though, and most are heard long before they are seen. They consist of the Smoker, an enemy that can strangle you with a 50-foot-long tongue, the Boomer, an enemy whose attack obscures your vision with green vomit while triggering a wave of infected that will target you specifically, the Witch, a crying girl with very long claws that can knock you down in one hit and kill you in two more, The Tank, a ginormous monster with epually massive muscles, and the Hunter, who deserves special emphasis.

* All throughout the Parish, you find evidence that the military was killing PEOPLE. There's strong evidence that they weren't necessarily infected, too. And there's the quarantine zone in the Graveyard level... Ruined buildings, and some particularly chilling graffiti. "If you can read this, the army left us to DIE." It's possible that the military was in a panicked retreat that left no time to evacuate everyone or distinguish carriers from infected, but it's also possible that there was a unit of [[Sociopathic Soldier]]s.

** The latest mutation, Lone Gunman, is even scarier. There are no Special Infected other than Boomers, but the only weapon you have is a Magnum and the Common Infected swipes do 25 damage... it's not really about how you'll get to the safe room, it's about how long you'll survive.

** Not phased? Did we mention that the Witch now wanders around?

** Death Toll: This campaign features the infamous "Church Guy". A survivor who was bitten by an infected and has gone mad. Hearing him repeatedly say [[MadnessMantra "Better safe than sorry"]] like a deranged psycho is horrifying. He even scribbled those words on the wall more than a hundred times.

* Take enough of a beating from the Infected and you are left almost helpless on the ground. Sure, you can still shoot your pistol (very slowly), but your health constantly ticks down as you bleed out. You are completely dependent on your teammates picking you back up, and if they take too long, you will die. Now remember that you're probably still being mobbed by the Infected, who will switch to stomping on your body, killing you even faster. To top it off, [[InterfaceScrew your view constantly lists]] to one side as you begin to have trouble keeping your head up, and, with the last bit of your health bar, your vision will fade to black.

* Take enough of a beating from the Infected and you are left almost helpless on the ground. Sure, you can still shoot your pistol (very slowly), but your health constantly ticks down as you bleed out. You are completely dependent on your teammates picking you back up, and if they take too long, you will die. Now remember that you're probably still being mobbed by the Infected, who will switch to stomping on your body, killing you even faster. To top it off, [InterfaceScrew your view constantly lists] to one side as you begin to have trouble keeping your head up, and, with the last bit of your health bar, your vision will fade to black.