History NightmareFuel / TheSecretWorld

--> ''' You are ''all'' made of stars...'''

* Halloween 2015: [[spoiler: [[WhamEpisode A Bee has committed suicide.]] Her bee was [[BodyHorror artificially implanted]] by the [[NotSoDifferent Council of Venice,]] which turned the normally benevolent Buzzing into {{Mind Rape}} for her. And finally, [[PowerAtAPrice Bees pay an unknown, severe cost to Gaia for their powers.]] ]]

* The last Lore entry for the Illuminati, which has... interesting implications about what might happen to them as a result of their [[TheSocialDarwinist Social Darwinist]] power-grabbing.
-->Dear sweetling, did you pay attention to that gruesome puppet show as a child? We hope so. The Illuminati is Mr Punch and hidden in that nonsense play is their plot. They have a big stick and conspire to bludgeon all competing puppets, and then the Devil himself. And if you get in their way...you will be another broken Judy, splayed on the floor.

* The last Lore entry for the Illuminati, which has... interesting implications about what might happen to them when all's said and done.

* The Fear Nothing Foundation's clubhouse was a home away from home for children intelligent enough to find it. During the Tokyo attack, it's sealed off, and food quickly runs out... And then John starts speaking to the inhabitants. One child, desperate to get the sound of him out of their ears, [[EarAche grabs a corkscrew...]]

** The FridgeHorror inherent in a line from the Counsellor's journal: [[spoiler: "I have taken to eating flies. Not many. Just twice a day. During meditation, when we visualize eating the light at the end of the universe, I pretend the fly is a tiny star. And... I feel it. Just a spark, but I can finally feel the light."]] What else in this setting eats stars? [[spoiler: ''The Dreamers.'' The FNF was teaching its staff to impersonate the Dreamers!]]

* Arriving on the streets of Tokyo is nervewracking, especially if you haven't gotten the hang of the AEGIS yet. As bad as the disasters in Maine, Egypt and Transylvania were, they were still comparatively minor, occurring in remote locations that could be easily quarantined by resistance fighters like the Marya. Plus, even in the worst-hit areas of Solomon Island, pure Filth infectees were comparatively rare, being outnumbered by zombies and Draug, and the Filth itself was commonly restricted to really nasty places like the Moon Bog. In Tokyo, the Filth is ''everywhere.'' Filth infectees stalk the streets from one end of Kaidan to the next, the sewers are flooded with writhing tendrils of Filth, creepers and bubbles grow on the side of skyscrapers, and Filth birds dominate the skies over Kaidan. And it's only getting worse...

** Vali Omega. With Vigula Divinia and the Nursery under their belt, it's pretty obvious that Vali is up to something bad, but the omega floor seems custom-made to demonstrate what happens to Bees who aren't lucky enough to be recruited by the Big Three. [[spoiler: Long story short, the Orochi want their drones to have access to Agartha, so they successfully track down a Bee-imbued character and have him continuously vivisected for organs that can be implanted into the robots. Because the organs vanish the moment he expires, he has to be kept alive for as long as possible, even while missing internal organs; and because there are so many failed prototypes, the poor man has to be cut open and gutted near-continuously over a period of several weeks. Plus, anaesthesia doesn't appear to work. Eventually, the management gives up on this idea altogether and starts recruiting the Mitsubachi instead, but by this stage, the unlucky Bee has been reduced to an EmptyShell by the sheer pain of his ordeal.]]

** QBL Alpha is also tame in what happens. Nothing that the Player and Player Character haven't experienced a lot of before. No. The main nightmare fuel is the flashes of video on the projector that has killed everyone and turned them into wrathful ghost. [[spoiler: It's a still from the Curesed Video tape from TheRing. Which means that Orochi not only tracked down the tape but recorded it to their archives.]]

** QBT Media is mostly tame...barring the fact that its greenscreens seem to have become effective obstacles on their own, with a ghostly LaughTrack triggering upon your misfortunes with them...and the AxCrazy game show host who thinks said Laugh Track is dead people, and with a pair of some of the most powerful handguns in the game. He's implied to have ''killed'' everyone else on the floor.

* The Fear Nothing Foundation's clubhouse was a home away from home for children intelligent enough to find it. During the Tokyo attack, it's sealed off, and food quickly runs out... [[ItGetsWorse And then John starts speaking to the inhabitants.]] One child, desperate to get the sound of him out of their ears, [[EarAche grabs a corkscrew...]]

* One of the earlier locations in the game, the Dream Quest Kindergarten, seems innocuous enough, despite its proximity to both the Black House and the Atlantic Island park- the only thing of real note there is a respawn point. But if you stick around for too long, you start hearing distorted voice clips of children- toddlers really- around the area, most of them seeming to center on the building where John Wolf has situated himself. [[NothingIsScarier No explanation is ever given for the sounds.]]

* While a lot of the references to real life strange events can be creepy, finding out more about Morninglight and the Fear Nothing Foundation is worse because both groups are incredibly realistic in how they operate. Right now, real cults are doing almost everything those groups have done (barring the supernatural stuff). And, as long as they aren't [[spoiler: unleashing chemical weapons on Japanese subways (again, Real Life),]] they are often allowed to go about their business. [[spoiler: The Fear Nothing Foundation is in many ways an expy for one real life cult. The hint is in the name of the floor with the mass suicide: Dawn's Gate.]]

* Manticore alpha, another relaxed floor, features a rather unexpected dose of nightmare fuel towards the end of the level - blended neatly with BlackComedy: [[spoiler: one of the researchers tried to create his own SexBot, modifying a standard Orochi combat drone to that end. Unfortunately, he tried to play ProfessorGuineaPig a little too soon, with [[OutWithABang fatal results]]. As funny as this scene is, the detail on the researcher's blood-streaked face is still pretty unnerving, given that it looks like one of his eyes was perforated, which just raises all sorts of horrible questions about the exact cause of death.]]

** And then, in the mission following this, you venture into the Dimirs' basement: [[spoiler: it turns out to be an abandoned Soviet bunker, used to house all the magical creatures that the Dimirs capture before they're finally slaughtered and eaten. Most of them are ghouls, but at least one was an innocent satyr.]] Worse still, in the Dragon ending to this mission, it's implied that [[spoiler: Silviu spent time down here as a child, getting a taste for murder- possibly while imprisoned in the same cells as his ghoul victims.]]

** One of the scarier alpha levels is Plethron alpha: the moment you open the elevator doors, a huge cloud of insects swarms in on you, and doesn't leave you alone for the rest of the level... and then you realize that there's a pile of bloody corpses stacked up right in front of the elevator too - as if they were cut down while trying to escape. [[spoiler: It turns out that the source of the troubles here are none other than the giant locusts you encountered in Egypt; Plethron was trying to make the damn things into ''food'' for developing nations. And instead of trying to breed their own locusts or transport them by conventional means, they instead summoned ''a fly golem'' into the building.]]

* While a lot of the references to real life strange events can be creepy, finding out more about Morninglight and the Fear Nothing Foundation is worse because both groups are incredibly realistic in how they operate. Right now, real cults are doing almost everything those groups have done (barring the supernatural stuff). And, as long as they aren't unleashing chemical weapons on Japanese subways (again, Real Life), they are often allowed to go about their business. [[spoiler: The Fear Nothing Foundation is in many ways an expy for one real life cult. The hint is in the name of the floor with the mass suicide: Dawn's Gate.]]

* The British Museum of the Occult. On the face of things, this place shouldn't be all that frightening, given that it's located on neutral ground in London and serves mainly as a source of new collectibles and achievements. In practice, however, the Museum quickly starts getting unnerving, even before you notice the unnecessarily creepy soundtrack: the building is almost completely deserted apart from the curator and the vendors... but you won't be alone for long, because the curator ''will constantly follow you around the museum,'' either strolling after you on foot, or literally teleporting into the wing you're exploring - leading to an accidental JumpScare if you turn around too quickly. Once you've opened a wing on the museum, he will stand in the corner, and ''stare at you'' while you go about upgrading the place. For good measure, he has only two lines, a curiously distorted mutter of "hullo" and "cheerio," swiftly grounding him right in the middle of the UncannyValley. What's this guy's story? Who or what is he? Why can't he say anything else? ''' ''[[NothingIsScarier It's never explained]].''' ''

** The Anansi Omega floor has a jarring element of FridgeHorror immediately upon stepping off the elevator. [[spoiler: The malfunctioning PA system isn't a PA system. It's an AI that's been speaking live all along, and now it's talking to you.]] The AI here was created by Anansi, and then tricked into a series of games to destroy other AIs. It WentMadFromTheRevelation.

** The Illuminati ending, featuring a brief phone-call from the infamous Talking Heads - [[spoiler: which is bad enough to make Geary suffer a psychic nosebleed.]] Just who are these executives, ''what'' are they, and just what are they likely to do to you or Geary if they lose patience with you?

While it's tempting to just say "the whole game", we at TV Tropes like to think we're a bit more professional than that. That said, since it's sprawling MMO with strong horror themes, here are some of the more notable examples:

* Halloween 2015: [[spoiler: [[WhamEpisode A Bee has committed suicide.]] Her bee was [[BodyHorror artificially implanted]] by the [[NotSoDifferent Council of Venice,]] which turned Buzzing into {{Mind Rape}} for her. And finally, [[PowerAtAPrice Bees pay an unknown, severe cost to Gaia for their powers.]] ]]

*** [[spoiler: The Dreamers manifestation is accompanied by flies, the same way Gaea's come with bees. They're not impersonating Dreamers. They're trying to be the player character's equivalents.]]

** Most of the beta levels are based around stealth or threat evasion, and Sycoil beta is no exception: [[spoiler: the department somehow managed to get hold of a working [[HumongousMecha Custodian]] - only to end up accidentally sending it on a rampage. Seeing the devastation caused by this thing and reading the [[ApocalypticLog final terrified emails of researchers begging for help]] is disturbing enough; having to try and sneak past the Custodian itself is one of the most nerve-wracking experiences in the entire game.]] Plus, there's also been some developments concerning the Mitsubachi on this floor, specifically [[spoiler: in attempts to build portable Anima wells for the Orochi Bees to respawn at. Trouble is, most of the rejected wells have little notes reading "test subject [[BodyHoror revived without epidermis]]" or "all that manifested was subject's skeleton. Where's the rest?"]]
** Zagan's omega floor, and the source of the "mystery meat." [[spoiler: Long story short, a flesh creature has been summoned into existence for the Zagan researchers to use as a marketable source of meat; not only is this creature [[AndIMustScream sentient and in constant pain]], but it's growing substantially with every lump of flesh that's chainsawed off it... and it can still control the parts of its body that have been amputated - which might explain why four test subjects have died after eating one variant. No less disturbing is the fact that the local management have started serving the meat at the cantina, and suggesting summer cookouts with it to celebrate the success of their products. And of course, there's the reactions of the still-living employees: some claim the meat tastes like "burnt hair and cancer"; others claim it tastes like despair... and a rare few seem to enjoy it.]]

* The main storyline of Issue #11 features a few doozies of its own: along with Samuel Chandra's genuinely chilling threats and [[spoiler: Lilith's]] utter lack of remorse for mutilating you, there's also the bone-chilling sight of the Filth pouring out of a phone and pooling on the ground to form Shades, with dozens more crawling up the side of the tower towards you - all while John furiously chants [[AC "Let me in. Let me in. Let me in. LET ME IN."]]

** Perhaps the creepiest of all is Faust Beta. Here, ''none'' of the accountants react to your presence at all: nobody looks up from their work, nobody turns around, nobody gets up from their desk - they just carry on working. They're so intent on working that they don't appear to have noticed that [[spoiler: several of their number are quite obviously ''dead,'' and have been for quite some time - the implication being that they were literally worked to death, if not inadvertently starved.]] Scattered memos indicate that there's been some kind of personality modification at work, and those who recovered from it [[DrivenToSuicide actively attempted to hurl themselves from upper-story windows]]; whatever it is, it's quite severe, for the lore entries indicate that the accountants will keep working until the Heat Death of the Universe.

** Oh, one more thing among this level? In one room, [[spoiler: there's a glowing crate that looks essentially identical to the one aboard the Atenist train in Issue #6 - which in itself was noted to be identical to the device that kicked off the Tokyo disaster. Basically, the Orochi Group had Armageddon sitting under their noses all along, even ''before'' the Morninglight turned on them.]]

** Manticore omega; at first, it seems pretty sedate by Tower standards... then the dead researchers start cropping up, along with trashed facilities, and a few traumatized survivors. It takes the ApocalypticLog to reveal that the Mitsubachi were just the tip of the iceberg: [[spoiler: basically, they managed to clone the Gatekeeper of Agartha from a sample taken from it by one of the Mitsubachi. As if attempting to grow their own version of ThatOneBoss wasn't bad enough, their copy grew up violently insane and uncontrollable, prone to [[HellIsThatNoise otherworldly fits of screaming]], ultimately killing everyone in that end of the department.]] Also, this ends up becoming pretty creepy by implication alone: [[spoiler: with the Mitsubachi able to traverse Agartha, [[ParanoiaFuel you could be sharing the hollow earth with Orochi agents and never even know it]].]]

** Most of the beta levels are based around stealth or threat evasion, and Sycoil beta is no exception: [[spoiler: the department somehow managed to get hold of a working [[HumongousMecha Custodian]] - only to end up accidentally sending it on a rampage. Seeing the devastation caused by this thing and reading the [[ApocalypticLog final terrified emails of researchers begging for help]] is disturbing enough; having to try and sneak past the Custodian itself is one of the most nerve-wracking experiences in the entire game.]] Plus, there's also been some developments concerning the Mitsubachi on this floor, specifically [[spoiler: in attempts to build portable Anima wells for the Orochi Bees to respawn at. Trouble is, most of the rejected wells have little notes reading "test subject [[BodyHoror revived without epidermis]]" or "all that manifested was subject's skeleton. Where's the rest?"]]

** Sycoil alpha: this is already a pretty unnerving location, especially since all the lights are out and [[spoiler: an experiment gone wrong has covered the walls, floor, ceiling and former employees with huge glowing clusters of Fungal Filth.]] But that's not the worst part: the worst part is finding a memo from the management, recommending that researchers assigned to work on the new solar power cell take ten minutes after lunch to relax and meditate by imagining the sun: "[[spoiler: Imagine eating the sunlight. Eating the sun. One bite at a time.]]" FridgeHorror: [[spoiler: just how much of the management has been corrupted by the Dreamers, and how long until they go the same way as the Morninglight?]]