Although the series is generally quite campy, It does have its many moments of scary things that will put you off from playing a game or two for some time.
Individual Series
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Tiberium Series
- Tiberium, as summed up by one of the developers:"What happens if you're exposed to Tiberium? Nothing good. If you come into direct contact with Tiberium, the green matter will start to fuse with your skin within about 20 seconds. You'll feel an intense burning sensation, similar to touching a hot pan or spilling acid on your skin. A full blown infection will manifest if you aren't treated immediately. Your flesh will begin to take on a glassy-greenish appearance as it begins to crystallize; eventually your internal organs will shut down as Tiberium extends rigid crystalline runners throughout your body. If you breathe in the crystal, then it will become embedded in your lungs. You'll lose the ability to process oxygen as your lung tissue crystallizes. Eventually you'll start coughing up blood and will hemorrhage to death."—Mike Verdu, "Living with Tiberium".
- The above is the result of coming into contact with Tiberium Wars era Tiberium, due to its self-replicating proton-lattice nature. The effects of Tiberium before that point can be just as terrifying as it's highly mutagenic. Extreme exposure can cause the victim's body to completely breakdown into the aptly-named Visceroid, an amorphous mass of blood, tissue, and muscle. In the original graphics for Tiberian Dawn, there appears to be what look like eyeballs on the unit sprite but Remastered changes them to white pustules, lovely! Even exposure to the point of poisoning is unpleasant as the victim initially develops massive welts on their body which is what happened to Commander Carter before his forces moving down the river were ambushed by the Obelisk of Light, let's hope it gave him a quick and painless death.
- Tiberium is horrifying once you learn of exactly why it has its properties. It's more or less a terraforming agent. However it leeches valuable minerals from the soil into a concentrated amount, growing crystals that can be easily harvested. The gas is toxic to most lifeforms and generally devolves them as well, but is easily contained. This thing is made to capitalize on greed. Every single society will fight tooth and nail for control of this stuff, as there is literally no better way of extracting valuables. They will also purposely cultivate fields of the stuff, because it's far more easier to plop a crystal in the ground than digging through a quarry. But it leeches away nutrients for growing food and degenerates (and poisons) local fauna. This ensures that whatever species left when the Scrin arrives is completely crippled, with but pockets of unmutated stock left and mostly worn out from war and starvation. And Nod keeps wanting to spread this stuff over the planet, and starting in Tiberian Sun they practically have a religion based on it, which Tiberium Wars takes to an extreme with stain-glassed window paintings depicting Tiberium mutations. It's not till Tiberium Twilight where this interest DOESN'T make them come off as insane.
- Tiberian Dawn even goes into some of the early effects of Tiberium. By the end of the game, it's estimated that around 4 million people have died due to Tiberium exposure in the space of three years and millions more have suffered from respiratory, genetic, and reproductive damage, and more again in the livestock population. Nod data suggests that 60% of the planet's population will suffer from Tiberium related illnesses in the near future.
- Speaking of the Scrin, lets look at Cult of Reaper 17. The Cult of Reaper is stated to be set of armies that are supposed to forcibly subdue any planets that offer resistance to the Scrin, and Reaper 17 is described as being bloodthirsty even for the rest of the cult meant to strongarm planets.
- Visceroids in Command & Conquer. They're disgusting enough in the RTS games, but the Renegade FPS gives them a whole new level of scary, seeing as you can see how disgusting they are up close and personal.
- Not enough? Then go for the Nod Mutant army, which is anywhere from dumb Initiates to clever Acolytes to really tough Templars.
- By the Third Tiberium War, Visceroids have been tamed by the Forgotten and used as suicide bombers and, on occasion, as food. Remember what the Visceroid use to be, and remember that the Forgotten are also Tiberium Mutants...
- Buzzers. Swarms of thousands of tiny Scrin bladed organisims whose sole purpose is to flow through the cracks and gaps in your armor and shred you to tiny pieces.
- Sonic Emitters. They work by broadcasting the resonate frequency of your opponent over a large distance. This is meant to deal with Tiberium, but what about when you use them against Nod militants? This means that the Sonic Emitters are literally shattering every bone in the opponent's body.
- Or worse yet, liquefying their insides.
- When Cabal took over the Cyborg Army, he employed Reapers to collect humans for conversion into cyborgs. While the graphical limitations reduce the process to simply emitting a gas and a cyborg popping out from the corpse, you can see that they hold soldiers and civilians alike in pens. And the first step to conversion is to infect the patient with tiberium... Thankfully said mission has you destroying the facility, but not before Cabal obtains a sizable force.
- The brotherhood's cyborg program was started by the Soviet's Super Soldier program, which only had one successful prototype; Volkov and his dog Chitzkoi. When the Allies were victorious, it was stated that both Volkov and his dog were "decomissioned". Not imprisoned, not granted amnesty, not executed, just "decomissioned"...
- Volkov and Chitzkoi's creation is nothing short of horrifying either. Both of them somehow have metal endoskeletons. Not Metal-plated, full on metal skeletons. Volkov also has part of his skeleton modified to have a grenade launcher built into it. And this was done with WW2-era soviet surgical knowledge. No wonder there was only one "successful" prototype.
- The Yellow Zones and Red Zones of Tiberium Wars are horrifying to behold. Yellow zones are an all-to-close reminder of some of the poorer 3rd world countries that exist in our time; decrepit infrastructure housing billions of starving, desperate people while global superpowers war just over their heads, and running water and food is considered a luxury. On top of all that, they have to deal with the very real possibility of Tiberium contamination as they go about their daily struggle for survival. And then there's the Red Zones; an apocalyptic wasteland where the earth itself has been gutted by tiberium. Giant "glaciers" of tiberium run so high and deep that it's impossible to harvest them with conventional means, while any man not thoroughly protected from the air itself will find himself either dying an agonizing death or horrifyingly mutating into a Visceroid. Within minutes. Anything that managed to survive in this environment has been mutated beyond recognition; your soldiers will occasionally remark how it feels like an alien planet and they're right; Tiberium has mutated the place so much that it is an alien world.
- Even if Tiberium is brought under control, Earth will never be the same.
- Coming from the initial concept for Command & Conquer 3, known as Command & Conquer 3: Incursion, are the units used by CABAL. They range
◊ from◊ being◊ severe examples of Body Horror to◊ just◊ straight◊ up◊ actual◊ Mechanical Abominations. - Tiberian Dawn had this gruesome cutscene of a Yelling Interrogator beating up a prisoner and then shooting him in the head. Yeesh!
Red Alert Series
Here.
Generals Series
- Death by Anthrax intoxication, Nuclear radiation, burning alive, etc.
- Along with the aforementioned Anthrax, radiation, and napalm, there is also the fact that the "good guys" have the most horrific weapon in the game: the microwave tank. It will fry any enemy infantry who gets too close to it. If you know how a microwave works, that means that literally every cell in the victim's body bursts.
- Running desperate from the Particle Cannon as it relentlessly pursues whichever poor soul was chosen to die, even worse than the magnetic Satellite because just as you think you got away the damn thing can speed up.
- Everything about the Global Liberation Army just got a lot more unsettling now that an actual real-life counterpart to them has made its impact on the world: the Islamic State of Iraq & Syria.
- Given how at least alleged extremists have hit places as far as Canada and Australia, this is one nightmare that looks like it's coming slowly close and closer to reality.
- China Theme #9 sounds like something straight out of a slasher film or horror game.
- Individual generals are horrible bosses to work/fight for:
- Dr. Thrax is the most obvious, being a Laughing Mad "scientist" with sketchy credentials and a fascination with toxic chemicals and biological agents. He supplies the GLA with 'Anthrax' but keeps his most potent stuff for himself. His base is in a mountain with dilapidated chemical storage bunkers all around, and most likely poisoned soil and water. His base terrorists are given chemical sprayers as weapons, but aren't given any additional protection. His workers are up the creek, so to speak.
Dr. Thrax: "See? you can tell [the toxins] are hmm! Just right, when the flesh falls off the bone!"- Shi Tao makes his base in a dilapidated nuclear testing facility, a place so irradiated patches of visible radiation crop up randomly in the village between his structures and the players starting area. He also loves nukes, and his tanks come equipped with the nuclear power plant upgrade, but have to be further upgraded to not explode violently. Fighting him he'll also take China's focus on We Have Reserves up to eleven by sending unprotected soldiers through this hellscape, often arriving at the player's base with slivers of health left.
- In the PRC campaign mission "Flood of Violence", you head into a village near the Three Gorges Dam and find it abandoned. Abandoned, because the GLA have killed everyone there.
