Nightmare Fuel / Max Payne

Not included on this page: the ghostly and tormented voices of your dead wife and baby, and a creepy baby music box tune.

• The whole condition of New York City.
  • The city is pretty nightmarish, going beyond the average Wretched Hive or Crapsack World and into the realm of just being some sort of surreal hellscape. Max even comments himself: "I could see how somebody impressionable might get it into their head that we were at the end of time."
  • It is also completely infested with sleazy corruption, government conspiracy and violent criminals.
  • There's an almost supernatural snow-storm that is ravaging everything like some sort of herald of the apocalypse.
  • The Mafia are so brazen and vicious that they gleefully massacre transit officers at a subway maintenance station during the former's ongoing bank robbery, and later kill an entire team of SWAT operatives who were working at a crime scene to retake Lupino's Hotel, casually leaving their vans burning in the middle of the street.
  • And that's not even getting into the mass use of a drug that turns people into murderous and suicidal lunatics.
• The nightmare/hallucination sequences.
  • During his trek inside this surreal scenario, it included such gems as: the terrified, pleading and weeping voice of Max's late wife Michelle; the baby crying (and screaming at one point if you fall during the second sequence); creepy music box music; the door from the bathroom being boarded up violently; and lots of creepy imagery, including a cradle on a red floor surrounded by candles like a demonic altar.
  Max: Somewhere, the baby was crying.
  • The scream is actually from a parody of Twin Peaks, Address Unknown, that is briefly seen in the game, but it's horrifying nonetheless. Also, since we're watching the show from Max's perspective, it may be that hearing a normal scream on the TV triggers him into remembering the same scream of his dying child... yikes.
  • The Twin Peaks parody itself is pretty disturbing, cutting out the kooky and funny bits of that show and keeping the horror elements. The TV is just sat in the middle of a completely dilapidated flat (where two mobsters are watching the show). The main character recounts a split personality experience in a wavering, shaky voice and more creepily still, the dialogue references Max's own suffering. The TV states that the "flamingo" says: "The flesh of fallen angels." and the protagonist says "I have no idea what that means." Of course, that exact phrase is what the Valkyr junkies said when killing Max's family and he is familiar with it, which makes it all the more surreal. Right after this sentence on the TV we hear a baby screaming and the whole sequence ends with the narrator mentioning that he always wakes up... strapped to his bed.
  • In that vein, the extremely surreal and abstract sequence of the second nightmare, where you wake up in Punchinello's burning office, and find yourself confronted with a ringing phone and a paper on the desk. When you answer the phone the first time, its simply gibberish on the other end, but the second time, a voice is begging Max to wake up and remember where he is, while Max still only hears gibberish, as the phone turns into a gun... And the document on the desk respectively tells Max that he's in a video game and a graphic novel. It might seem silly, but in the context, its terrifying. Subconsciously, Max KNOWS he's a simple puppet, and all his suffering is merely to set a backstory for the players.
• The hallways twist and the walls change. THE WALLS CHANGE! It's... wrong.
• The blood trail sequences are "limbo in a video game."
• There are also minor but significant changes to Max's house that are disturbing too. The picture on the wall in the baby's room changes from a teddy bear with "HUG ME!" in the real scene to "CUDDLES", "HUGGIES" and other such slightly "off" phrases, as if Max's PTSD and/or Valkyr intoxication is changing what he remembers. And in one dream the child's letter blocks spell out "DEAD".
• During the first dream sequence, when you reach the corpse of the baby, her arm is still moving.
• On top of Ragna Rock and Lupino both being super-creepy, the boss fight itself is a nightmare.
  • Unlike the rest of the games bosses, the Finito Brothers, Rico Muerte, the Trio or the Russian gun runner, Jack Lupino doesn't have a realistic level of health. The reason? He's hopped up to his eyeballs with Valkyr, and can't even feel pain anymore. Even after the boss fight, Max empties his gun into Lupino's corpse during the cutscene, just to make sure he won't get back up again. This makes a lot of sense once you find out that Valkyr is really a military Super Serum prototype that was never finished. The run-of-the-mill addicts you've fought so far in the game just haven't had access to enough of the stuff to get the effect Lupino got.
    Lupino: Death is coming, and hell follows with her... this is the Twilight Winter! I am ready to be her son! Her time is now and all who stand in her way MUST DIE! AHAHAHAHAHAHA!! DIIIIIEEEEE!!!! AHAHAHAHA!!! YOU'LL DIE! YOU'LL... HAHAHA... DIE! NOW... ALL... DIE! AWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! THE WOLF!!!
  • The build up to the confrontation with Lupino is chilling and implies he's been doing awful things for a long time. We find torn up letters, gory diagrams on the walls, a stone dish filled with blood and his own henchmen bound and slaughtered on a pentagram. Even his own men are terrified of him, stating he's been locked away in his private part of the club for three days and the "screams have stopped".
  • Ragna Rock itself seems to be part of Lupino's twisted operation, as Max says that the events there "[Start] with bondage games and lead to the nasty stuff from there." The band is named "Choosers of the Slain" (which the Valkyr of Norse Mythology were in charge of performing), and seeing that backstage Lupino is actually sacrificing people, the band might literally perform this function...
  • While unused from the game's soundtrack, the eponymous "The Flesh of Fallen Angels" is complete panic fuel, which was supposed to be heard when fighting Jack Lupino and his henchmen while sending you on the edge. The sounds heard throughout the track (which is an audio sample named "Insect Infestation" by Zero-G) are also used in Half-Life 2's citadel_ambient_scream_loop1, which is very disturbing.
• The final reveal of the game, that the events of the story were just a side effect of the power games of a government conspiracy and its various infighting. All the horrible things that happened weren't even for any real purpose.
• If you kill the V junkies their screams will sometimes transition into the sound of a baby crying. The fact that it's the sole bit of obvious Mind Screw in the game outside of the dream sequences just makes it all the freakier.
• The loading screen for the Prologue of A Bit Closer to Heaven features a screaming man with hollow eyes. It sticks around in the quit screen as well, resulting in a Jump Scare for those who didn't expect it (the other two sequels don't have that kind of image if you choose to quit the game).
• The effects and symptoms of Valkyr use and the behaviour of the junkies hopped up on it. It seems to be extremely addictive and habit forming, and doesn't even appear to give a real "high", as people who have taken it simply hold their heads and rock back and forth like madmen. Users mutter gibberish and seem anguished ("I think I died...I think I'm dead! I don't know..." and "I'm gonna hurt you..." being stand outs). It also makes the user do completely insane and violent things, up to and including murdering innocent people and children, and blesses the user with a resistance to pain and increased strength with which to commit these atrocities. It's hard to think of a nastier drug (outside of maybe Poppy's drug from Kingsman: The Golden Circle).
• Also, the personality and motivations of Nicole Horne. She is intelligent, powerful and hard-working. She's also completely soulless and happily does absolutely anything to acquire more money and power, which is all she seems to live for. By the time the plot starts she has already crossed dozens upon dozens of Moral Event Horizons and she continues to do so throughout the game, doing the most heinous things again and again with absolutely no guilt or conscience whatsoever. She would quite literally kill your entire family and not lose a wink of sleep over it - and people like this actually exist!

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