History NightmareFuel / Spore

* Creatures with the Bard Archetype are meant to be fun-loving party-goers. Sounds awesome, right? Then you read the Blocks of Chance, which contain gems like these:
-->"There is no purpose. There is no value. There is no point. Life is ridiculous."
-->"The universe is one big joke, and the joke is on us."
-->"The best we can hope for is entertainment. We'll get along as long as you provide amusement - fighting our wars for us, fixing our worlds, looking for meaning where there is none, and groveling in the dirt to fetch us plants. So keep it up! Just remember that we're laughing all the time."
** Let that sink in. Where the Scrolls of Harmony, the Scrolls of Faith, and the Books of Science contain deep musings on the meaning of life while the Scrolls of Order, the Tablets of Prosperity, the Stones of Force, and the Stones of Life contain societal blueprints, the Blocks of Chance contain despairing nihilism and playground jokes.
** The first and third blocks in the set seem to imply their search for the meaning of life made them GoMadFromTheRevelation. Make of that what you will.
** And then there's their [[CarnivoreConfusion dialogue...]]

* What you can become, late-game, as a militaristic race. Just imagine it from your victim's point of view: your leaders are cowering in their capital, watching as their planets lose contact one by one. They throw every ship and resource they can trying to stop whatever is destroying their worlds- until the last world between them and the empty patch where their empire was disappears. Then, a single ship burns into the atmosphere, flies to the nearest city, and destroys it within seconds. Then, it moves to the next nearest, and does the same. And it just keeps destroying everything while you're pleading with it and trying to negotiate surrender, but it hears your pleas of surrender and laughs in your face. Then, when it hovers over the last city in your entire empire, all you and what's left of your species can do is look up and watch as it drops that final anti-matter bomb. All because you had blue spice on your homeworld.
** And it gets better (worse?), think about how your home planet reacts to everything you do out in the galaxy? They simply let you do whatever you want and do not complain even a little about it. So for those ships running amok in the galaxy destroying everything? They are doing it with the full support (or worse, the complete apathy) of their leaders in whatever government is in place for them.
** De-terraforming a planet doesn't stop at just turning the planet uninhabitable. Depending on whether you're screwing with the planet's temperature or atmosphere (or ''[[NoKillLikeOverkill both]]''), you're either making everyone and everything on the surface choke or burn/freeze to death, completely out of nowhere. It's basically a slightly slower Gravitation Wave that doesn't violate the Galactic Code for Spode knows what reason.
** There's also the Fanatical Frenzy superweapon that converts an entire system "[[MindManipulation peacefully]]" not just into a new part of your empire, but ''[[WasOnceAMan into your species as well]].''
** Similarly, if you are a Scientist race fighting against a Warrior race that demanded one too many tributes. You then proceed to conquer their planets one by one....until you get to their homeworld and rather than conquer it, you decide to wipe their great capital to the ground using the [[WorldWreckingWave Gravitation Wave]]. There's a reason these two Superpowers are against the Galactic Code.
** Even worse when you realize that the enemy you are sending everything at is only a single ship piloted by a captain that was only recently hired...
** And the cherry on top? This nameless avatar of armageddon has ''a Grox ship'' flying alongside him. If there was any hope of talking this maniac down, it just died: anyone able to befriend the Grox is surely just as bad as they are.
** Mishandle a Zealot or Warrior empire and this could be ''your'' empire's fate (minus the Grox).
* Imagine for a second, you are a member of a perfectly peaceful race of herbivores, enjoying your days eating fruit and breeding with lady herbivores. before you have the chance to react a group of carnivores appear out of thin air (sneak skill) and mercilessly slay and devour YOUR ENTIRE SPECIES. Just. Because. They. Could... yeah.
** Then further imagine that the monstrous carnivores were the player character committing genocide because of the dusty old skeleton you found earlier.
* Imagine this: You're a creature that just crawled out of the primordial ooze. All around you are some horrific eldritch abominations. The more scary ones actually being incredibly docile... And then come the 50 foot killer potatoes.

* The Proboscis mouth in cell stage. It literally allows you to suck the insides out of other cells.

* The angry face icon in the Space Stage which indicates that your standing with a rival empire has decreased. While it may be narm to some, it can be a bit startling as it's large, red, and rises up out of the affected area as a sound akin to an inflating balloon plays.
** Sometimes, the game will glitch and give the empire a "You refused us tribute" negative modifier, with the accompanying red face, completely at random. Doubly startling if it's an archetype that doesn't usually demand tribute(like a Diplomat), leaving you wondering what the heck you did to piss them off.
* The Grox. They initially appear kind of adorable, but Spode help you if you make them mad... Which you already do by existing. Their ships are practically indestructible with tons of weapons, they appear in packs of twenty, and there are enough to destroy all of your colonies at once.
** It really needs to be emphasized the Grox are not just hostile - they are [[AbsoluteXenophobe Absolute Xenophobes]] whose entire culture is built on the idea that any other sentient species are irredeemably inferior. They can survive only on T0 planets and are said to be "too toxic for your Cargo Hold" just like how the unnatural representation of pure evil cannot exist among good. [[AlwaysChaoticEvil Every single one of them is an omnicidal sociopath,]] to the point where peace with the other races and equality is foreign and impossible to their mindset. There is a ''reason'' they are considered ultimate evil by the rest of the galaxy.[[note]][[http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/spore/images/6/65/The_Devil%27s_Deed..jpg Now, look at their writings, specifically, at the letters.]] [[OhCrap Resembles anything?]][[/note]]
** The worst part is that any war with the Grox is a ForeverWar unless you eliminate them. Every other empire can be defeated without being destroyed by either giving them a large peace offering or destroying so many colonies that they beg for mercy. Neither option is available for the Grox; once they're angered enough to declare war, they will not rest until every last member of your species is dead. They will never ask for mercy, and you don't even get the option to make a peace offering. And their empire is so massive that even dedicated players can take a ''month'' to destroy them all, all while having to backtrack to colonies closest to the core to defend them, since not even a T3 colony with all turret slots filled and an Uber Turret can stave off a Grox invasion. The kicker is that it's stupidly easy for to provoke them into declaring war--when you first encounter them, they're already at -70 relation bonus(-60 with Gracious Greeter), whereas -71 is what's needed for a race to declare war. If you accidentally destroy one of their ships on the way out because you forgot(or didn't think) to deactivate your Auto Turret, there will be no stopping them from hunting you down.
** When you are allied with the Grox, you can fly right above one of their cities to listen to their anthem... if we can call it that, anyway, as it is comprised of nothing but [[DroneOfDread a strange droning sound]] with static, bizarre guitar riffs and various random sounds before a disturbingly human-sounding off-key baritone singer makes his cue. Have a listen [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRaJUdaaXHs here]].
* If you're a scientist race, and you have enough time and patience, you can REALLY be a MadScientist.
** Step 1: Find an alien planet in creature/tribal stage and monolith them into civilization
** Step 2: Find a planet with the same T-Score and use the Creature tweaker to turn a random creature into a monstrosity covered in weapons and abduct one/as many as possible.
** Step 3: Evolve the civilization to space stage and get thanked by them
** Step 4: put the creature you tweaked down and supersize it
** Step 5: Sit back and watch the results ForScience! If the uplifted race wins wipe them out with your scientist super power, if your epic mutant wins kill it and wipe them out nonetheless.

* "That's My Lunch" appears to be a harmless adventure about a little girl and her [[CuteKitten kittens]], rabbits, chicks and...one-eyed lizard babies. You get an invitation to the girl's birthday party at [[ShmuckBait "Hugs Valley"]]. You have to escort the girl to the party, while secretly [[spoiler: feeding the animals to these two hungry monsters. To do this, you have to distract the girl with things like a butterfly net. Then you have to lure one of the animals into the beast's lair with candy. Eventually, there's none left, and the girl finally reaches the party. She then looks at the player and says that ''[[CreepyChild you've just sold your soul to pay for the gifts]].'']] It isn't at all surprising the guys who made ''WesternAnimation/RobotChicken'' made this.

** Also, while editing a mission, you can play two scores at once. It can get especially creepy if they tend to fit just right in a creepy way. This troper's personal favorite example is taking the California track and splicing it with Alien Abduction. When it fits just right, it feels creepy and upbeat, like the theme of a charismatic serial killer.
*** Another example from the same troper: Taking the Creepy Action 2 theme and speeding it up to a certain point. The result is a quick-paced, spine-tingling theme fit for a chase. Said troper has used this for Epic chases, horror adventures, and so on.
* What you can become, late-game, as a militaristic race. Just imagine it from your victim's point of view: your leaders are cowering in their capital, watching as their planets lose contact one by one. They throw every ship and resource they can trying to stop whatever is destroying their worlds- until the last world between them and the empty patch where their empire was disappears. Then, a single ship burns into the atmosphere, flies to the nearest city, and destroys it within seconds. Then, it moves to the next nearest, and does the same. And it just keeps destroying everything while you're pleading with it and trying to negotiate surrender, while it just ignores you. Then, when it hovers over the last city in your entire empire, all you and what's left of your species can do is look up and watch as it drops that final anti-matter bomb...
** All because you had blue spice on your homeworld.
** While it just ignores you? Oh no, it doesn't ignore you, it hears your pleas of surrender and laughs in your face as it gleefully annihilates every living thing on your planet in whatever way seems amusing to it this moment. Destroy all the cities in an anti matter explosion? ''de''-terraform the planet into a barren rock? Blow the whole place to a flaming magma ball of uninhabitable mess. Kaiju attacks? And the worst part is the planet being attacked doesn't even get the choice. It is all up to the whims of the captain of that despotic space vessel claiming (or destroying) one more world for The Empire!
** And it gets better(worse?), think about how your home planet reacts to everything you do out in the galaxy? They simply let you do whatever you want and do not complain even a little about it. So for those ships running amuck in the galaxy destroying everything? They are doing it with the full support (or worse, the complete apathy) of their leaders in whatever government is in place for them.

** Then further imagine that the monstrous carnivores were the player character [[WhatTheHellPlayer commiting genocide because of the dusty old skeleton you found earlier]].

*** [[FromBadToWorse It gets worse.]] Most likely, the tribe's species will pop back up into the wild due to the game's generation. Which you can then domesticate.

** Many of their missions are like that; go play Shenanigan's Funhouse. MonsterClown, death traps, and [[EverythingIsTryingToKillYou killer woopie cushions]].

* What you can become, late-game, as a militaristic race. Just imagine it from your victim's point of view: your leaders are cowering in their capital, watching as their planets lose contact one by one. They throw every ship and resource they can trying to stop whatever is destroying their worlds- until the last world between them and the empty patch where there empire was disappears. Then, a single ship burns into the atmosphere, flies to the nearest city, and destroys it within seconds. Then, it moves to the next nearest, and does the same. And it just keeps destroying everything while you're pleading with it and trying to negotiate surrender, while it just ignores you. Then, when it hovers over the last city in your entire empire, all you and what's left of your species can do is look up and watch as it drops that final anti-matter bomb...

* "That's My Lunch" appears to be a harmless adventure about a little girl and her [[CuteKitten kittens]], rabbits, chicks and...one-eyed lizard babies. You get an invitation to the girl's birthday party at [[ShmuckBait "Hugs Valley"]]. You have to escort the girl to the party, while secretly [[spoiler: feeding the animals to these two hungry monsters. To do this, you have to distract the girl with things like a butterfly net. Then you have to lure one of the animals into the beast's lair with candy. Eventually, there's none left, and the girl finally reaches the party. She then looks at the player and says that ''[[CreepyChild you've just sold your soul to pay for the gifts]].'']] And the guys who made ''WesternAnimation/RobotChicken'' made this!

* Okay, is nobody going to mention the Grox? They appear kind of adorable, but Spode help you if you make them mad, which you do by existing. Their ships are practically indestructible with tons of weapons, they appear in packs of twenty, and there are enough to destroy all of your colonies at once.
** That's not it. The Grox are not just hostile - they are [[AbsoluteXenophobe Absolute Xenophobes]] whose entire culture is built on the idea that any other sentient species are irredeemably inferior. They can survive only on T0 planets and are said to be "too toxic for your Cargo Hold" just like how the unnatural representation of pure evil cannot exist among good. [[AlwaysChaoticEvil Every single one of them is an omnicidal sociopath,]] to the point where peace with the other races and equality is foreign and impossible to their mindset. There is a ''reason'' they are considered ultimate evil by the rest of the galaxy.[[note]][[http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/spore/images/6/65/The_Devil%27s_Deed..jpg Now, look at their writings, specifically, at the letters.]] [[OhCrap Resembles anything?]][[/note]]

* In Galactic Adventures, if the temperature of the planet is turned up high enough, the oceans will be replaced by molten lava. And, of course, touching the lava in any way can be fatal for the player, or an NPC. A certain death animation for the NPCs (and the player, too, but it is obscured by the "fail" page) may happen where they sink into the molten rock, hideously screaming as they burn. This would be bad enough, but there is a glitch that makes it worse. If there is a surface under the lava, the creature will sink, and [[BodyHorror their legs bend oddly, the kneecaps high in the air, the legs just above the lava, the rest of the body in a morbid position]] that looks as if it's been [[SquashedFlat forcibly crushed]]. The glitch reaches its peak, because after several seconds, the NPC will [[JumpScare without warning reappear]], and the death animation will repeat, making them DIE TWICE.

* In Galactic Adventures, if the temperature of the planet is turned up high enough, the oceans will be replaced by molten lava. And, of course, touching the lava in any way can be fatal for the player, or an NPC. A certain death animation for the NPCs (and the player, too, but it is obscured by the "fail" page) may happen where they sink into the molten rock, hideously screaming as they burn. This would be bad enough, but there is a glitch that makes it worse. If there is a surface under the lava, the creature will sink, and [[BodyHorror their legs bend oddly, the kneecaps high in the air, the legs just above the lava, the rest of the body in a morbid position]] that looks as if it's been [[SquashedFlat forcibly crushed]]. The glitch reaches it peak, because after several seconds, the NPC will [[JumpScare without warning reappear]], and the death animation will repeat, making them DIE TWICE.

** Let that sink in. Where the Scrolls of Harmony, the Scrolls of Faith, and the Books of Science contain deep metaphysical musings while the Scrolls of Order, the Tablets of Prosperity, the Stones of Force, and the Stones of Life contain social blueprints, the Blocks of Chance contain despairing nihilism and playground jokes.

* In Galactic Adventures, if the temperature of the planet is turned up high enough, the oceans will turn to molten lava. And, of course, touching the lava in any way can be fatal for the player, or an NPC. A certain death animation for the NPCs (and the player, too, but it is obscured by the "fail" page) can happen where they sink into the molten rock, hideously screaming as they burn. This would be bad enough, but there is a glitch that makes it worse. If there is a surface under the lava, the creature will sink, and [[BodyHorror their legs bend oddly, the kneecaps high in the air, the legs just above the lava, the rest of the body in a morbid position]] that looks as if it's been [[SquashedFlat forcibly crushed]]. The glitch reaches it peak, because after several seconds, the NPC will [[JumpScare without warning reappear]], and the death animation will repeat, making them DIE TWICE.

* In Galactic Adventures, if the temperature of the planet is turned up high enough, the oceans will turn to molten lava. And, of course, touching the lava in any way can be fatal for the player, or an NPC. A certain death animation for the NPCs (and the player, too, but it is obscured by the "fail" page) can happen where they sink into the molten rock, hideously screaming as they burn. This would be bad enough, but there is a glitch that makes it worse. If there is a surface under the lava, the creature will sink, and [[BodyHorror their legs bend oddly, the kneecaps high in the air, the legs just above the lava, the rest of the body in a morbid position]] that looks as if it's been [[SquashedFlat forcibly crushed]]. The glitch reaches it peak, because after several seconds, the NPC will without warning reappear, and the death animation will repeat, making them DIE TWICE.

* In Galactic Adventures, if the temperature of the planet is turned up high enough, the oceans will turn to molten lava. And, of course, touching the lava in any way can be fatal for the player, or an NPC. A certain death animation for the NPCs (and the player, too, but it is obscured by the "fail" page) can happen where they sink into the molten rock, hideously screaming as they burn. This would be bad enough, but there is a glitch that makes it worse. If there is a surface under the lava, the creature will sink, and [[ BodyHorror their legs bend oddly, the kneecaps high in the air, the legs just above the lava, the rest of the body in a morbid position]] that looks as if it's been [[SquashedFlat forcibly crushed]]. The glitch reaches it peak, because after several seconds, the NPC will without warning reappear, and the death animation will repeat, making them DIE TWICE.

* In Galactic Adventures, if the temperature of the planet is turned up high enough, the oceans will turn to molten lava. And, of course, touching the lava in any way can be fatal for the player, or an NPC. A certain death animation for the NPCs (and the player, too, but it is obscured by the "fail" page) can happen where they sink into the molten rock, hideously screaming as they burn. This would be bad enough, but there is a glitch that makes it worse. If there is a surface under the lava, the creature will sink, and their legs bend oddly, the kneecaps high in the air, the legs just above the lava, the rest of the body in a morbid position that looks as if it's been [[SquashedFlat forcibly crushed]]. The glitch reaches it peak, because after several seconds, the NPC will without warning reappear, and the death animation will repeat, making them DIE TWICE.

* In Galactic Adventures, if the temperature of the planet is turned up high enough, the oceans will turn to molten lava. And, of course, touching the lava in any way can be fatal for the player, or an NPC. A certain death animation for the NPCs (and the player, too, but it is obscured by the "fail" page) can happen where they sink into the molten rock, hideously screaming as they burn. This would be bad enough, but there is a glitch that makes it worse. If there is a surface under the lava, the creature will sink, and their legs bend oddly, the kneecaps high in the air, the legs just above the lava, the rest of the body in a morbid position that looks as if it's been "[[SquashedFlat]]"forcibly crushed. The glitch reaches it peak, because after several seconds, the NPC will without warning reappear, and the death animation will repeat, making them DIE TWICE.

* In Galactic Adventures, if the temperature of the planet is turned up high enough, the oceans will turn to molten lava. And, of course, touching the lava in any way can be fatal for the player, or an NPC. A certain death animation for the NPCs (and the player, too, but it is obscured by the "fail" page) can happen where they sink into the molten rock, hideously screaming as they burn. This would be bad enough, but there is a glitch that makes it worse. If there is a surface under the lava, the creature will sink, and their legs bend oddly, the kneecaps high in the air, the legs just above the lava, the rest of the body in a morbid position that looks as if it's been forcibly crushed. The glitch reaches it peak, because after several seconds, the NPC will without warning reappear, and the death animation will repeat, making them DIE TWICE.

* If your a scientist race, and you have enough time and patience, you can REALLY be a MadScientist.

** Similarly, if you are a Scientist race fighting against a Warrior race that demanded one too many tributes. You then proceed to conquer their planets one by one....until you get to their homeworld and rather than conquer it, you decide to wipe their great capital to the ground using the Gravitation Wave. There's a reason these two Superpowers are against the Galactic Code.

** The first and third blocks seem to imply their search for the meaning of life made them GoMadFromTheRevelation. Make of that what you will.

** And the cherry on top? This nameless avatar of armageddon has ''a Grox ship'' flying alongside him. If there was any hope of talking this maniac down, it just died: anyone able to befriend the Grox is surely just as much of a CompleteMonster as they are.