Line #31 NightmareFuel/InSpaceWithMarkiplier


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4	Make no mistake, ''WebVideo/InSpaceWithMarkiplier'' is easily the darkest "With Markiplier" to date. While there's plenty of humor to offset the horror, the story does not shy away from depicting the dangers, real or imagined, of space travel.
5
6	'''Warning''': spoilers are unmarked.
7	----
8	[[AC:Part 1]]
9	* Mark's first death, immediately after the wormhole transit. He's violently ejected from his cryo pod and slams against the bridge window, which shatters a few seconds later. Poor Mark barely has a chance to scream before he's [[ThrownOutTheAirlock blown into space]], while the Captain can only make a FutileHandReach. Just like that, the Captain's friend -- and the ship's head engineer -- is gone.
10	* After putting out the fire on the bridge while Mark fixes life support, the Captain -- presumably suffering from [[AlmostOutOfOxygen oxygen deprivation]] -- hallucinates that they're alone in a darkened bridge filled with handwritten notes, and [[HumanoidAbomination something with glowing blue eyes]] is staring at them from inside their cryopod. The [[DroneOfDread music]] and the shaky camera really makes the scene feel like something out of a nightmare.
11	** Similar visuals appear during a sequence in part 2, suggesting that it may not have been a hallucination after all...
12	* Ms. Whitacre's discussion about the repeated dreams she's been having of her own death, in which she quickly makes it ''very'' clear that she ''knows'' they're not dreams.
13	* Most of the endings to Act 1 qualify in some way:
14	** In the "Paranoid" ending, the Captains wakes up from cryo to find the ship... [[HopeSpot completely fine]], with all systems functioning normally and the crew alive and well. The crew leads are all smiles as they report in, eager to reach their destination. The captain runs from room to room, looking for ''something'' amiss, and ends up ''almost'' accepting that it was AllJustADream before the warp core begins to malfunction again, forcing the crew into action. Unfortunately, things don't get better after that -- after reaching the planet safely, the Captain becomes a paranoid wreck obsessed with protecting the colony from any possible harm, and turns the entire planet into a PoliceState that micromanages everyone and everything. This culminates in the Captain ''sealing away the entire population underground'' to protect them from harm.
15	** In the "Dream" ending, the Captain writes off the entire series of events as AllJustADream, even as Mark insists otherwise and tries to demonstrate that they're stuck in a GroundhogDayLoop. Mark then scrambles around the ship, fixing malfunctions and trying to save the crew, while the Captain just stands there and laughs at [[ImplausibleDeniability the weird dream they're having]]. When the ship is later attacked by alien slavers who force the crew and colonists into brutal GladiatorGames, the Captain ''goes along with it without resistance'' because they're still not convinced it's real... right up until an alien warrior decapitates them with an axe, complete with a spray of blood.
16	** In the "Alone" ending, which doubles as a TearJerker, the Captain wakes up from cryo to find the ship completely powered down beyond hope of recovery, and everyone else long-dead and having turned to dust in their pods. According to Mark's narration, the Captain spent the rest of their days -- possibly years -- wandering the dark ship, surviving on rations meant for the colonists, and lamenting the loss of their friends and colleagues. For players who [[AFatherToHisMen take their responsibilities seriously]], this is very much a FateWorseThanDeath. It's also the only act 1 ending that isn't played for laughs in ''any'' way.
17	** The "Send Mark" ending is mostly funny, with the Captain bossing Mark around on the new colony and giving him demerits for the smallest of transgressions. It takes a turn toward horror at the end when Mark, having finally had enough, slowly approaches the Captain with a SlasherSmile before violently [[VorpalPillow smothering them with a pillow]].
18	* Wug's voice-downloading helmet appears to inflict unironic agony on whoever he attaches it to. If you open the door to take the supposed "Dark" path when the door offers it to you, Wug's newest attempt to attach the helmet to Markiplier causes the camera to see gruesome red flashes of body parts like an eyeball and teeth.
19	* The sequence when the Captain and Mark return to the ''Invincible II'' with the Bandit in tow. The ship is at red alert and in bad shape, there's a skeletal corpse draped over the terminal on the bridge, and when Mark tries to contact the computer it responds with a burst of what sounds like electronic BlackSpeech before croaking that the "crew is... [[EverybodysDeadDave offline]]".
20	** Then you hear someone banging on your Cryopod from inside, and when the Captain opens it there's another Mark inside, crouched in a TroubledFetalPosition, who points at the Mark standing behind them and whimpers, "[[ParanoiaFuel That's not me, Captain. That's not me]]." Original Mark stammers, "That's not ''me''!" and when the Captain turns back to the Cryopod, the second Mark is gone.
21	** The situation isn't much better when the Captain checks in with the crew leads:
22	*** Gunther has begun a [[TheMutiny mutiny]], believing that the Captain has abandoned the crew to their FateWorseThanDeath. He accuses them of having destroyed the ship on a whim in another timeline, and believes that the Captain is simply "having fun" with the TimeCrash rather than doing anything to resolve the problem. Which, [[VideoGameCrueltyPotential depending on your choices up to this point]], may not be inaccurate.
23	*** Burt [[BrainUploading merged his mind with the computer]] in search of answers while the Captain was gone, and appears to have GoneMadFromTheRevelation -- far from the socially-awkward recluse he was in the beginning of the story, he's now a MotorMouth OmnicidalManiac who wants to scuttle the ship by imploding the reactor to create a black hole, hoping that it will take the wormhole with it. That this will kill him and all of the 100,000 people aboard the ship is barely an afterthought.
24	---->''"We are cast adrift against the web of the infinite, hopeless souls worn dull against the waves of eternity. All will be consumed by darkness. But in darkness lies salvation. I have modified the reactor to create a singularity that will collapse unto itself and take the wormhole with it. Though our ship will be destroyed, so too will our suffering!"''
25	*** Celci has decided to force the entire crew into Cryo against their will, herself included, because in her mind an eternity in stasis is better than suffering in the TimeLoop indefinitely. The Captain can actually agree with Celci and submit to being frozen, or they can throw themself out an airlock to escape, at the risk of being trapped in the loop forever.
26	* The HandPuppet universe segment in several endings, where the regular crew have all become deranged to a greater or lesser extent.
27
28	[[AC:Part 2]]
29	* Leading up to the release of Part 2, a handful of videos have come out on Mark's channel teasing its premiere, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJfoJbyHAaA from brief screen glitches]] [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWAAeW7QvaU in entirely unrelated videos,]] to ones [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_WrzagTJ3o outright labelled]] [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gELvzeXyJAI with keywords from Part 1.]] And right before the upload of Part 2, currently marked to premiere in May, is a video labelled with a quote. [[ArcWords A very familiar,]] [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_53FY653nHI haunting quote...]]
30	* [[HopeSpot The universe reboots]]... but so does the paradox that destroyed it. The result is a fundamentally ''broken'' reality, with dozens of alternate universes overlapping in chaotic crossovers that only hasten the [[ApocalypseHow/ClassZ final destruction of everything that has ever existed]]. The Captain has to suffer through a retread of the tour from part 1, with various characters dying horribly, manifesting in [[BodyHorror glitched, painful forms]], or simply guilt-tripping the Captain about their failure to save them. Most of Part 2 has the Captain being flung chaotically through the multiverse while trying to stay alive long enough to piece together where it all went wrong.
31	* One timeline you enter features Markiplier crying alone in a bedroom. [[VideoGameCrueltyPotential Choosing to mock him]] has the setting [[VideoGameCrueltyPunishment quickly turn into a horror movie]], complete with visual distortions and black goo dripping from the ceiling, ending with the still crying Markiplier suddenly [[JumpScare rushing the player]] as the scene cuts to black.
32	* [[SmugSnake Mack]]'s FreakOut if you call him out for taking Mark's place as head engineer. At first he's confused, asking you who Mark is and why you'd say his name, then suddenly he begins to [[OminousVisualGlitch glitch out]], flashing around the room while screaming in terror and desperately trying to assert his identity. [[WebVideo/GameTheory MatPat]] acts the hell out of the role, solidly portraying a man being driven mad by ExistentialHorror.
33	-->'''Mack:''' YOU DO NOT GET TO CHOOSE WHETHER OR NOT I EXIST! THIS IS ''MY'' SHIP-- ''(blinks out of existence)''
34	* Crossing over with TearJerker, arriving back at the now long-abandoned space diner for one last chat with Old Mark. The very last of the stars [[TheStarsAreGoingOut flickers out]] as you watch, the dying breath of the universe itself as the wormhole paradox wipes reality out. You have your discussion, then Mark simply vanishes, leaving the Captain entirely alone as the last living being in the universe. Existential dread at its finest.
35	* At the end, we learn that it was Engineer Mark who built the warp core over "too many lives". We can get a more concrete number than that, though. In Part 1, the Lady says that the warp core is "thousands of years beyond anything humans are capable of". Thousands of years in isolation -- no wonder Old Mark was crazy.
36	** To make it even worse, Lady was likely thinking about humanity as a species working on it, not a single individual. Mark had to do this ''completely alone''.
37	* In the GoldenEnding for Part 2, you finally end the Paradox, stopping all the madness. The credits roll. [[TheStinger Cut to]] the discarded warp crystal in a clearing... when an ever so familiar two-toned foot approaches it...

Context NightmareFuel / InSpaceWithMarkiplier