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We don't know which is more frightening: the stage or the character of which it belongs to...
Darkstalkers, being a series that has monsters and supernatural entities as fighters, should serve as no surprise that there's some legitimately terrifying stuff in this series.
General
- The moral ambiguity of the series in general. These games feature monsters varying from utter evil to hedonistic and self-centred to broken and nihilistic, battling it out against each other. There is no clear hero and the consequences for the human world should some of these characters win, would be dire. The closest the series ever had to a morally upright hero is Donovan, who is constantly battling against his own dark side. He loses horribly.
- Getting hit by a cutting attack (caused by Lilith, Donovan, and especially Bishamon) or Jedah's San=Passare move generally tends to bisect the character mid-match in the appropriate spot, only for the halves to rejoin themselves in a comical manner right away, such as the character's upper torso doing a swift backflip and landing to its original spot without any consequences. Vampire Savior introduces vertical bisecting with Talbain's Moment Slice and the ES version of Bishamon's Kien Zan which shows the insides of the character once they hit the ground and slides both halves back together to continue the fight. However, continuing a tradition in Capcom games such as Strider, Captain Commando, The Punisher, and Red Earth, if the character is defeated by any of these attacks, the effect sticks until the next round. That is, if there even is one.
Darkstalkers (Vampire) / Night Warriors (Vampire Hunter)
- Several of the character select portraits in the first game look genuinely creepy and chilling as a result of how detailed they look, more than likely to emphasize how monstrous these creatures are. Even Morrigan looks uncanny, what with her gaunt face and bulbous, almost Tim Burton-esque eyes.
- The Kiss of Death Morrigan gives Pyron in her ending, which reduces him to nothing but a decayed skeleton. Thank the heavens that she isn't fond of feasting on humans...
- Lord Raptor's ending after he takes down Pyron. As his reward for defeating the Evil Overlord, Raptor is given ultimate power, enough to Take Over the World. We then see an unholy formation of Raptor being fused with what appears to be Pyron's corpse, in order to become a stronger demon. It ends with Raptor promising to take down his "ruling" master once he's done killing the humans.
- Pyron's Nightmare Face after defeating his opponents in a match. It's the only one that appears in all of the games he appears in.
- Pyron's victory theme.
It gives a mysterious, eerily calming vibe along with a sense of dread - as if something very, very terrible is about to happen. And technically, you'd be right... - Pyron's ending, which involves enlarging himself to become the size of the solar system and bringing the Earth into his reach, which causes gravitational stress to increase and the planet's temperature to skyrocket. In short, he's pretty much bringing Hell to Earth and causing the death of all humanity by burning up the planet.
Vampire Savior
- The art direction for Vampire Savior, in a general sense, is much darker and gothic than the previous two games. Not only are the new characters a whole new order of creepy (except maybe for Lilith), some of the new stages are also pretty frightening, such as Forever Torment (which is essentially a torture room with neat implements such as a guillotine for three and a meat-grinding wheel), Abaraya (a dark and run-down Japanese shack, complete with a lantern yokai hanging from the ceiling), War Agony (a bombed-out ghost town) and the infamous Fetus of God. And yes, they mostly have nice names like these.
- A Scare Chord has now been added anytime someone is KO'ed. Along with that is the updated KO screams of several of the returning characters (Demitri, Talbain, Victor, Raptor, Rikuo, and Hsien-Ko) sounding much more anguishing than their voice clips in the previous games (Sasquatch's scream is made to sound goofier).
- Several things about Jedah are very disturbing, even for this series.
- After winning a match, Jedah will occasionally use his wings to split his opponent in half to absorb their soul. It happens at random and affects any character, including Donovan (who can't be bisected but still has his soul ripped out) and Pyron (whose normal animation while knocked out comes to a complete halt after being split this way), pretty much guaranteeing their death.
- His most common win pose has him laughing manically and rapidly shaking with what looks like blood pouring from his eyes.
- Jedah's Sangue = Passare, yet another bisecting example, has him grab his opponent and pump blood into their headwear or appendages with his arm, quickly enlargening them in the process. The most gruesome of these are possibly Demitri (pumped through his hands, which looks unsettling given how realistic and stoic he is compared to most of the other characters) B.B. Hood (pumped into her cheeks) and Victor (pumped into his cranium, which looks destroyed and distored).
- Most of Jedah's moves involve extremely bloody self-mutilation, and one of his counters even involves decapitating himself and growing his head right back after spraying his blood all over the opponent. And he's almost always cackling like mad while he's doing these moves, too.
- Then, there's his ending. The villain successfully massacres all life throughout Makai, preparing to target the human world next, and his specially designed god awakens. We then hear a baby's cry as the fetal god looks straight at the screen.
- The aforementioned "Fetus of God" stage. Spoiler for the faint of heart: it's a rather realistic Womb Level, with a giant, horned, skinless fetus floating in the background. You can even see some of its internal organs through its skin. And when the match ends...it wakes up, staring right at you and thrashing about.
- Demitri's Midnight Bliss move can change guys to hot girls, and hot girls to hotter girls in most cases. But it's particularly disturbing to see that right afterwards, Demitri picks them up and literally sucks the life and blood out of them, leaving the girls a shriveled, skeletal corpse. The fact they explode and return to their normal forms even after being defeated can offset this, but the brief images are still a little disturbing, to say the least.
- In addition, after transforming the unfortunate victim, Demitri takes on his true form as he drains them. Said form is that of a horrific humanoid gargoyle/bat hybrid.
- B.B. Hood herself is ultimately one of the scariest characters in the series. While she may appear to be a innocent little girl, she is anything but. The development team themselves have stated that she herself is supposed to show how humanity can be much darker and frightening than any monster in fiction and it shows. She herself is an S-Rank Darkhunter whose heart and soul are so twisted and filled to the brim with malice and hatred that she was genuinely mistaken by Jedah Dohma to be a Darkstalker. In fact, her reasons for hunting the darkstalkers isn't out of atonement like Donovan or to make the world a better place like Hsien-Ko and Mei-Ling. She is, in fact, a Sadist who is driven only by Greed and the sheer hatred she has for Darkstalkers. Not to mention, because of her heart being so dark in the first place, a simple gaze from her is enough to put fear into lesser Darkstalkers.
- Then there's B.B Hood's ending. The ending abandons the game's normal art style in favor of a Tim Burton-influenced aesthetic. We see that a family of wolves are watching the news about a psychotic murderer on a violent rampage. While the child and mother are rightfully scared, the father dismisses it as nothing. Then, we cut to outside their home, where BB Hood is standing, presumably prepping her gun or brandishing her knife, while preparing to march to the house.
- Her introduction trailer for Darkstalkers Resurrection is terrifying too. All of the introductions are fairly ominous, with the castle and cemetery landscape, the arm of an undead rising from the grave, the wind effects and soundtrack, and the narrator's dark and ominous voice. All this is scary enough on its own. Hood's trailer? In addition to the above, the narrator is ceaselessly throwing warning upon warning, as if he's genuinely terrified of this new character more than of any other. The viewer (if unspoiled) is expecting the series' single most terrifying Killer Rabbit ever when traditional shadow is revealed... and a human shows up.
- Mixed with Squick, one of Q-Bee's moves has her grabbing her opponent and using her stinger, which squishes and deflates in a realistic manner, pushing a larva from her abdomen-like tail and injecting it into her opponent. The opponent turns into a giant cocoon or egg with their face sticking out while Q-Bee loses strength and dies off. What comes out of the egg? Another Q-Bee that takes over the fight, completely replacing the original and deceased Q-Bee.
- Q-Bee's ending involves her taking over Makai with a growing army of soul bees, with them rapidly multiplying to the point where they will eventually doom themselves due to overpopulation.
Multimedia
- Demitri's Nightmare Face in the first episode of the Night Warriors OVA. It is full of more sharp, long, ROTTEN teeth than a vampire should have. On top of that, we even have a few scenes where the aforementioned true form is shown, while literally taking a huge bite out of Morrigan and later attempting to stab Pyron with his sharp-nailed hand. The English dub even follows it up with a soft yet creepy cackle.
- Lord Raptor uses his Death Voltage attack to suck out the souls of several monks, which makes their skin turn pale and more than likely kills them. The attack then wraps up with him briefly turning into a giant realistic skull.
- Donovan is introduced into the OVA by examining a dilapidated ghost town. Within it, he comes across the skeletal remains of several men who successfully killed a winged, two-headed darkstalker who supposedly managed to kill them all before dying itself. The sharp-fanged darkstalker is still rotting away with several spears pierced through its heads and necks, along with a sword planted in its stomach.
- The second episode is where things get rather graphic, as Bishamon effortlessly slashes two men to death seeking to take Hannya for themselves. The merchant who made the deal with Donovan to eliminate Bishamon in the first place finally claims the armor, but an explosion caused by Hannya rejecting him melts him alive, leaving only a cracking headless skull.
- The OVA reinforces how much of an absolute powerhouse and a living nightmare Pyron is.
- The aforementioned Nightmare Face he makes during his winpose returns, now covering an entire planet.
- In the opening of the final episode, he effortlessly defeats and presumably kills Anakaris (who's bandages are mostly burned off, revealing the body, thin skeletal rib cage and exposed rotting feet and legs of his original self) Rikuo (his defeat is considered to be the most graphic, as his body appears to have completely disintegrated by an explosion that is immediately shown to destroy of a huge chunk of the Amazon Rainforest), Sasquatch (in his only appearance in the anime, aside from the end credits), and Victor, who are all considered to be among the most powerful darkstalkers of the human world.
- He then proceeds to knock Demitri out cold, pushing him into his castle which collapses into the town it resides in. Demitri manages to survive the attack, but it's likely that there were other casualties as a result of the castle collapsing.
- He absolutely masscres Donovan and leaves him in a complete bloodbath. If we never got to see into his thoughts, you'd never guess that he was still alive.
- He also discovers that his influence on the Earth and its inhabitants was responsible for the darkstalkers evolving into what they are now, believing one will eventually come out on top as the highest order of the planet.
- Morrigan in the UDON comics is considerably more frightening due to her Adaptational Villainy. The comics portray her as a more traditional succubus, being genuinely malevolent and having no qualms about murdering humans for fun or draining their souls. She's also capable of shapeshifting, being able to appear as any woman that anyone might pass by, making her attacks much more surprising. Special mention goes to the aftermath of her attacks, as while Morrigan states that the souls she drains are allegedly in eternal bliss, the bodies left behind are much more terrifying due to appearing as nearly-skeletal husks that leave horrified expressions.
