History NightmareFuel / MaxPayne

* The whole condition of New York City in the game is pretty nightmarish, going beyond the average WretchedHive or CrapsackWorld. The city is completely infested with sleazy corruption, government conspiracy and violent criminals. There's an almost supernatural snow-storm that is ravaging everything like the end of the world. The Mafia is so brazen that they rob a bank in the early evening and gleefully massacre everyone at a subway maintenance station. And that's not even getting into the mass use of a drug that turns people into murderous and suicidal lunatics.

* Also, the motivations of Nicole Horne, who is pretty much completely soulless and would do absolutely anything for money and power.

* In all but the ending the game [[EarnYourHappyEnding gives you on the hardest difficulty]], [[TearJerker Mona dies]]. Max is on the verge of total mental collapse the whole game, he finds a second true love and then she is once against snatched from him in tragic circumstances. Brutal.

* There are also minor but significant changes to Max's house that are disturbing too. The picture on the wall changes from "HUG ME!" in the real scene to "CUDDLES", "HUGGIES" and other such slightly off phrases, as if Max's PTSD and/or Valkyr use is changing what he remembers. And in one dream the child's letter blocks spell out "D3AD". At one point, if you try to rescue Michelle by cutting through the bedroom en suite bathroom, huge wooden planks nail the door shut...showing Max's guilt that the door was jammed and stopped him from saving her.

** The Twin Peaks parody itself is pretty disturbing. The TV is just sat in the middle of a completely dilapidated flat. The main character recounts a split personality experience in a wavering, shaky voice and more creepily still, the dialogue references Max's own suffering. The TV states that the "flamingo" says: "The flesh of fallen angels." and the protagonist says "I have no idea what that means." Of course, that exact phrase is what the Valkyr junkies said when killing Max's family and he is familiar with it, which makes it all the more surreal. Right after this sentence on the TV we hear a baby screaming and the whole sequence ends with the narrator mentioning that he always wakes up..."strapped to his bed".

** The scream is actually from a parody of ''Series/TwinPeaks'' that is briefly seen in the game, but it's horrifying nonetheless. Also, since we're watching the show from Max's perspective, it may be that he's hearing a normal scream on the TV as the same scream of his dying child...yikes.

** The scream is actually from a parody of ''Series/TwinPeaks'' that is briefly seen in the game, but it's horrifying nonetheless.

* The halllways twist and the walls change. THE WALLS CHANGE! It's... wrong.

* What about Vinnie Gognitti's death scene? Being forced to watch him, in another nightmare, no less, being put through a trivia quiz on his favorite TV series with his life hanging in the balance, by the guy you considered to be your ally through most of the game? And the just stand there helplessly, as he gets his head blown off, while he begs for his life? Classic.

* On top of Ragna Rock and Lupino both being super-creepy, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdIha5Dz07U the boss fight itself]] is [[WakeUpCallBoss a nightmare]]. Unlike the rest of the games bosses, the Finito Brothers, Rico Muerte, the Trio or the Russian gun runner, Lupino doesnt have a realistic level of health. The reason? He's hopped up to his eyeballs with Valyrie, and cant even feel pain anymore. Even after the boss fight, Max empties his gun into Lupinos corpse during the cutscene, just to make sure he wont get back up again. This makes a lot of sense once you find out that Valkyrie is really [[spoiler: a goverment Super Soldier Serum prototype that was never finished]]. The run-of-the-mill addicts you've fought so far in the game just havent had access to enough of the stuff to get the effect Lupino got.

* If you shoot the V junkies their screams will sometimes transition into the sound of a baby crying. The fact that it's the sole bit of MindScrew in a game that's largely straightforward outside of the dream sequences just makes it all the freakier.
* The loading screen for the Prologue of 'A Bit Closer to Heaven'. It sticks around in the quit screen as well.

* The UFE prison Max goes to after turning himself in. It's somewhere you ''absolutely'' don't wanna be in, specially if you're familiar with the brutality of brazilian prisons, where in most cases the police goes as far as ''allowing inmates to kill other inmates'' depending on how bad the crime they've commited was. Knowing Max and the trouble he gave to both the police and the scum of São Paulo, [[NothingIsScarier who knows what he would be put through if he hadn't escaped?]]

--> '''John''': I was trapped in a nightmare. [[JekyllAndHyde My evil double]] had taken my girlfriend. Following him, I had somehow slipped into a twisted alternate reality, Noir York City. My double was [[spoiler: John Mirra]]. He was the devil incarnate, a fallen angel.

** As frightening as that is, it's how Max reacts to the discovery of it that is most telling. This is a man who has seen his wife and his baby girl dead, seen most of his friends die in front of his eyes and came face-to-face with the screwed up truth behind Valkyr, and faced it all with a pained but stoic attitude with his anger mostly bottled up inside. Here, he's so horrified it takes him a while to comprehend just what he is seeing when he stumbles across it; after he's had time to process what he has seen, [[spoiler:he comes quickly to the conclusion of blowing the whole place to hell]], and when he confronts the villain who had been overseeing [[spoiler:the organ harvesting]], rather than going into his trademark TranquilFury mode, he speaks and acts in a palpable state of unbridled hot ''[[UnstoppableRage rage]]'' for perhaps the first time in the series.

** The scream is actually from a parody of ''TwinPeaks'' that is briefly seen in the game, but it's horrifying nonetheless.

''Max Payne 2''
* What about Vinnie Gognitti's death scene? Being forced to watch him, in another nightmare, no less, being put through a trivia quiz on his favorite TV series with his life hanging in the balance, by the guy you considered to be your ally through most of the game? And the just stand there helplessly, as he gets his head blown off, while he begs for his life? Classic.

* The nightmare/hallucination sequences from ''Max Payne'', which include such gems as: the terrified, pleading and weeping voice of Max's late wife Michelle; the baby crying (and ''screaming'' at one point if you fall during the second sequence); creepy music box music; the door from the bathroom being boarded up violently; and lots of creepy imagery, including a cradle on a red floor surrounded by candles like a demonic altar.

* What about Vinnie Gognitti's death scene in the second game? Being forced to watch him, in another nightmare, no less, being put through a trivia quiz on his favorite TV series with his life hanging in the balance, by the guy you considered to be your ally through most of the game? And the just stand there helplessly, as he gets his head blown off, while he begs for his life? Classic.

** As frightening as that is, it's how Max reacts to the discovery of it that is most telling. This is a man who has seen his wife and his baby girl dead, seen most of his friends die in front of his eyes and came face-to-face with the screwed up truth behind Valkyr, and faced it all with a pained but stoic attitude with his anger mostly bottled up inside. Here, he's so horrified it takes him a while to comprehend just what he is seeing when he stumbles across it; after he's had time to process what he has seen, [[spoiler:he comes quickly to the conclusion of blowing the whole place to hell]], and when he confronts the villain who had been overseeing [[spoiler:the organ harvesting]], rather than going into his trademark TranquilFury mode, he speaks and acts in a palpable state of unbridled hot ''[[UnstoppableRage rage]]'' for perhaps the first time in the series.
* In the first game, if you shoot the V junkies their screams will sometimes transition into the sound of a baby crying. The fact that it's the sole bit of MindScrew in a game that's largely straightforward outside of the dream sequences just makes it all the freakier.

** As frightening as that is, it's how Max reacts to the discovery of it that is most telling. This is a man who has seen his wife and his baby girl dead, seen most of his friends die in front of his eyes and came face-to-face with the screwed up truth behind Valkyr, and faced it all with a pained but stoic attitude with his anger mostly bottled up inside. Here, he's so horrified it takes him a while to comprehend just what he is seeing when he stumbles across it; after he's had time to process what he has seen, [[spoiler:he comes quickly to the conclusion of blowing the whole place to hell]], and when he confronts the villain who had been overseeing [[spoiler:the organ harvesting]] he speaks and acts in a palpable state of unbridled hot ''rage'' for perhaps the first time in the series.

* The final reveal of the game, that the events of the story were just a side effect of [[spoiler: the power games of a goverment conspiracy and its various infighting.]] All the horrible things that happened werent even for any real purpose.
* What about Vinnie Gognitti's death scene in the second game? Being forced to watch him, in anoter nightmare, no less, being put through a trivia quiz on his favorite TV series with his life hanging in the balance, by the guy you considered to be your ally through most of the game? And the just stand there helplessly, as he gets his head blown off, while he begs for his life? Classic.

** In that vein, the extremely surreal and abstract sequence of the second nightmare, where you wake up in Punchinellos burning office, and find yourself confronted with a ringing phone and a paper on the desk. When you answer the phone the first time, its simply gibberish on the other end, but the second time, a voice is beggind Max to wake up and remember where he is, while Max still only hears gibberish, as the phone turns into a gun... And the document on the desk respectively tells Max that he's in a video game and a graphic novel. It might seem silly, but in the context, its terrifying. Subconsciously, Max KNOWS he's a simple puppet, and all his suffering is merely to set a backstory for the players.

* On top of Ragna Rock and Lupino both being super-creepy, the boss fight itself is [[WakeUpCallBoss a nightmare]]. For starters, Lupino can absorb a ludicrous amount of lead, and the game does not yet provide you with the heavier hardware. On top of this, mooks spawn during the fight to take you on from all angles. Mix these two together and you get a nightmarish combat sequence ahead of you.

** As frightening as that is, it's how Max reacts to the discovery of it that is most telling. This is a man who has seen his wife and his baby girl dead, seen most of his friends die in front of his eyes and came face-to-face with the screwed up truth behind Valkyr, and faced it all with a pained but stoic attitude with his anger mostly bottled up inside. Here, he's so horrified it takes him a while to comprehend just what he is seeing when he stumbles across it; after he's had time to process what he has seen, [[spoiler:he comes quickly to the conclusion of blowing the whole place to hell]], and when he confronts the villain who had been overseeing [[spoiler:the organ harvesting]] he speaks and acts in a palpable state of unbridled hot ''rage'' for perhaps the first time in the series.

** As frightening as that is, it's how Max reacts to the discovery of it that is most telling. This is a man who has seen his wife and his baby girl dead, seen most of his friends die in front of his eyes and came face-to-face with the screwed up truth behind Valkyr, and faced it all with a pained but stoic attitude. Here, he's so horrified it takes him a while to comprehend just what he is seeing when he stumbles across it; after he's had time to process what he has seen, [[spoiler:he comes quickly to the conclusion of blowing the whole place to hell]], and when he confronts the villain who had been overseeing [[spoiler:the organ harvesting]] he speaks and acts in a palpable state of unbridled hot ''rage'' for perhaps the first time in the series.

** As frightening as that is, it's how Max reacts to the discovery of it that is most telling. This is a man who has seen his wife and his baby girl dead, seen most of his friends die in front of his eyes and came face-to-face with the screwed up truth behind Valkyr. He's so horrified it takes him a while to comprehend just what he is seeing when he stumbles across it.

* The Imperial Palace hotel, all of it.

* At the climax of the Panama mission, Max discovers [[spoiler: the corpses of the ship's passengers heaped on the roof of the museum, surrounded by a massive pool of blood.]] It becomes even worse when you think of [[FridgeHorror what they must have gone through before they died.]] They were most likely marched up to the roof, pleading for their lives before being gunned down by the pirates. It gets worse when you realize that it was all because [[spoiler: Marcello and Passos hid the blood money from Victor's organ harvesting ring within the ship,]] most likely without the boat's owner even knowing about it.

* [[spoiler: Victor Branco's operation involves rounding up the poor and impovershed and ''harvesting their organs'' ]]

* [[spoiler: Marcello]]'s [[ManOnFire death]].

* The first time [[{{Psyonif}} this troper]] ever saw the game, his friend was playing through the hallucination level where Max has to follow the trail of his own child's blood to the room where said baby was brutally murdered. It's fair to say that this dissuaded him buying his own copy of ''Max Payne''.
** What makes the first hallucination sequence even worse for this troper is the fact that they occasionally cut to Max tied to a chair in a Mafia hideout, and allusions to baseball bats are made. A few levels earlier, we were shown the handiwork of a mob executioner who favored baseball bats...
* Also when fighting the mad mafia boss (the name eludes me) when he shrieks (*shrieks*) things like "I have tasted the flesh of FALLEN ANGELS!"
** On top of Ragna Rock and Lupino both being super-creepy, the boss fight itself is a nightmare. For starters, Lupino can absorb a ludicrous amount of lead, and the game does not yet provide you with the heavier hardware. On top of this, mooks spawn during the fight to take you on from all angles. Mix these two together and you get a nightmarish combat sequence ahead of you.