History NightmareFuel / Uncharted

* Pick any {{MacGuffin}} from any of the main games and prepare to be horrified at the results. El Dorado? [[spoiler: [[ZombieApocalypse Zombifying anthrax.]]]] The Cintamani Stone? [[spoiler: A tree full of PsychoSerum.]] The "djinn" at the heart of Iram of the Pillars? [[spoiler: Concentrated MindRape.]] The legendary golden city? [[spoiler: Radiated and deadly]]. Captain Avery's lost treasure and utopia of Libertalia? [[spoiler: Nothing wrong with the treasure, but its sheer size and scope caused everyone who knew about it to slaughter each other out of greed and paranoia.]] Is it any wonder why all of them were sealed away?

[[quoteright:250:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/main_menu_image.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:250:Ready for some ''adventure''?.[[note]]And yes, this is just the ''start screen'' of the fourth game[[/note]]]]


!! ''The Series'':
* Pick any {{MacGuffin}} from any of the main games and prepare to be horrified at the results. El Dorado? [[spoiler: [[ZombieApocalypse Zombifying anthrax.]]]] The Cintamani Stone? [[spoiler: A tree full of PsychoSerum.]] The "djinn" at the heart of Iram of the Pillars? [[spoiler: Concentrated MindRape.]] The legendary golden city? [[spoiler: Radiated and deadly]]. Captain Avery's lost treasure and utopia of Libertalia? [[spoiler: Nothing wrong with the treasure, but its sheer size and scope caused everyone who knew about it to slaughter each other out of greed and paranoia.]] Is it any wonder why all of them were sealed away?

!! ''Drake's Fortune'':
* You know how the description describes ''Uncharted'' as ''Franchise/TombRaider'' meets ''VideoGame/GearsOfWar''? Well, near the end of the game you can throw ''[[spoiler:Franchise/ResidentEvil]]'' (or, better yet, ''[[spoiler:VideoGame/NaziZombies]]'') into the mix, as you need to contend with [[spoiler:fast, deadly zombies in a long-abandoned Nazi base.]]
* The way the dead man in the submarine is framed in the background, and the way the light hitting his eyes almost makes him look like a zombie himself is downright disturbing.
* For much of the game, water is harmless. [[spoiler: But near the very end, if you fall in water, you see a brief cutscene of Nate treading water before a Descendant swims up from out of the depths, grabs him, and pulls him under]].

!! ''Among Thieves'':
* At least you could kill [[spoiler:the zombies. Guardians]] in ''Among Thieves'' are [[spoiler: fricking ImmuneToBullets when you first meet them, and ONE almost kills both you and Tenzin]]. Then later, after you think you're safe, BAM! [[spoiler:They start slaughtering soldiers in the monastery.]] And once you get used to ''that'', they whip out one of the most powerful and accurate weapons in the game. Much pain and fleeing to heal ensues.
* The game's BigBad, Zoran Lazarević, is pretty frightening on so many levels. He's a power-hungry, ruthless, [[SociopathicSoldier sociopathic Serbian war criminal]] who was responsible for killing and torture on a mass scale.
** His EstablishingCharacterMoment ''alone'' should tell you something about him: when he finds out that one of his own men was caught stealing a trinket from his camp, Lazarević's response is to knife the poor guy and toss his body off into the swamp, whilst angrily [[EvilIsHammy hamming it up]] about how he's "surrounded by traitors and fools". The fact that [[BadBoss he willfully puts his soldiers in danger and doesn't have a care in the world about their well-being]] is shows just how heartlessly evil and ungodly scary he is.
** When he begins ranting about how historical tyrants like UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler and UsefulNotes/JosefStalin were "great men", you know that Drake is in for some serious trouble. Case in point: at the end of the game, [[spoiler: Lazarević finds the Cintamani Stone -- actually resin in a gigantic tree -- and drinks it, [[ImplacableMan making him virtually invincible against gunshots]] during his FinalBoss fight between him and Drake.]] Considering the amount of violence that this man is said to have caused in the past, along with his aforementioned comments about Hilter and Stalin, [[spoiler: it's strongly implied that Lazarević was essentially going to use his newfound abilities ''[[TakeOverTheWorld to achieve world domination]]'', making him probably the greatest threat that Drake has faced in the series]].

!! ''Drake's Deception'':
* Talbot. The fact that he's [[VillainousFriendship extremely loyal to Marlowe]] and yet so disturbingly cold and merciless in relation to his enemies is one thing. It doesn't help matters that he's also largely shrouded in mystery, [[MindScrew seemingly able appear or disappear at the most inopportune of moments for Drake without logical explanation]]. It's no wonder that [[spoiler: [[TarotMotifs his tarot symbol is the Magician.]]]]
* Players are treated to [[spoiler: spiders. And not just a handful of spiders but entire swarms of thousands upon thousands of potentionally man-eating spiders similar to the creepy crawlies in the first two Mummy films.]]
** They make the bad guys next action[[spoiler: to burn down the entire building]], quite reasonable.
* The [[spoiler: hallucinogenic water. When you're hit with this, your entire world becomes blurred, and you live out your worse fears. Not to mention the bad guys can manipulate you into turning against your friends through it.]]
* The sequence where [[spoiler: Drake is lost in the Rub' al Khali. Imagine finding oneself stranded in one of the most inhospitable deserts in the world, with no supplies, and no idea where you are going, as you slowly start to weaken from lack of water and the conditions. Drake was lucky he found that village and Salim's tribe when he did.]]
** Not to mention that throughout the level, [[spoiler: Marlowe's voice can be heard reciting lines from the poem "Literature/TheWasteLand" by Creator/TSEliot]]. This made especially creepy in that [[spoiler: the poem itself is essentially about ''how the world is hopelessly lost and that life is unable to be regenerating.'']]
--->[[spoiler: '''Marlowe:''']] [[spoiler: "What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow out of this stony rubbish? Son of man, you cannot say, or guess, for you know only a heap of broken images, were the sun beats, and the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief, and the dry stone no sound of water. Only there is shadow under this red rock, come in under the shadow of this red rock, and I will show you something different, from either your shadow at morning striding behind you, or your shadow at evening rising to meet you; I will show you fear in a handful of dust."]]

!! ''Golden Abyss'':
* General Guerro, the BigBad. His EstablishingCharacterMoment is ''throwing one of his own men over a railing for failing him''.

!! ''A Thief's End'':
* The other Uncharted games' start screens had "Nate's Theme" playing against beautiful scenery from one of the game's levels. ''A Thief's End'' has...a pirate skeleton inside of a gibbet in the middle of the jungle accompanied by ''dead silence''. Um...adventure...?
* Rafe's obsession with Libertalia and proving himself make him dangerous to anyone associated with him. [[spoiler: He murders the prison warden in cold blood the second their deal starts going south. He also takes great pleasure in [[CurbStompBattle completely dominating]] Nate in their climatic sword fight, and was only done in when he decided to gloat a little too long. Out of the main villains, he's come the closest to killing Nate. He even gets unique kill animations should the player lose their duel or when Nate gets his HeroicSecondWind: [[GoryDiscretionShot the camera is practically at Nate's eye level]] and we see Rafe not only slash Nate but [[NoKillLikeOverkill stab him]] ''[[NoKillLikeOverkill while Nate is pinned to the ground]]''!]]
* Captain Henry Avery is gradually revealed to be this throughout ''A Thief's End''. Whatever intentions he had when he established Libertalia, by the time he died [[spoiler: he'd become a cunning, ruthless overlord driven mad by paranoia and his pursuit of keeping the treasure for himself amidst a pirate rebellion. The island is filled with old gibbets containing the remains of slaves and/or rebel pirates. You can find almost all the bodies of the Libertalia founders seated at a huge banquet table, all of whom were poisoned and left to rot. Some of the late-game areas include a cavern with rooms individually decorated with the ''skeletal arms, jaws, or rib cages'' of Avery's enemies. Not whole bodies, ''just parts''. He also mummified dozens of his victims, loaded them with gunpowder, and left them as booby traps.]] Even Lazarevic never went that far.
** [[spoiler:The way in which things are shown to have fallen apart is equally unsettling -- in every other outing in the series, the lost civilizations Nate finds were destroyed because they went insane from a quasi-supernatural PsychoSerum (zombie plagues, Cintamani sap, hallucinogenic aquifers). Here, Avery and the Founders did what they did only out of simple human greed and cruelty.]]
* In the last chapters, as you're exploring [[spoiler: New Devon with Elena, you can find a note on a table in a gazebo outside one of the flooded mansions that says something along the lines of, "What you take from me, I will also take from you." Floating gently above the gazebo, without being highlighted in any way, is the skeleton of a woman in a tattered blue dress, hung by the neck. It's easy to mistake her for a flag or something, until you happen to look up...]]

** When he begins ranting about how historical tyrants like UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler and UsefulNotes/JosefStalin were "great men", you know that Drake is in for some serious trouble. Case in point: at the end of the game, [[spoiler: Lazarević finds the Cintamani Stone -- actually resin in a gigantic tree -- and drinks it, [[ImplacableMan making him virtually invisible against gunshots]] during his FinalBoss fight between him and Drake.]] Considering the amount of violence that this man is said to have caused in the past, along with his aforementioned comments about Hilter and Stalin, [[spoiler: it's strongly implied that Lazarević was essentially going to use his newfound abilities ''[[TakeOverTheWorld to achieve world domination]]'', making him probably the greatest threat that Drake has faced in the series]].