Nightmare Fuel / Metro 2033

"Quiet in the library," says the Librarian.

This is your source for all the horrific moments to be found in Metro 2033, as well as the page for all the nightmarish moments in its sequel Metro: Last Light. Now purchased from THQ by Deep Silver, this fledgling franchise based on the Russian novel runs on horror, what with all the dark atmosphere, human potential for cruelty, the threat of human extinction, Mind Rape, horrible mutants, and perhaps things still worse...

---

The book

• The book is full of them too. Glukhovsky has a good way of setting the mood and making use of Nothing Is Scarier.
  • Case in point, Artyom's encounter with the Watchmen on the surface. At first, he isn't even aware of what they are until he realizes that with every street he passes, there's one standing there, and he realizes they're tracking him. And then, with growing dread, he comes to the realization that they're not just following him, they're corralling him, while gradually drawing ever closer. It is only by the convenient arrival of a Demon that he is able to escape their trap, and even then they continue to prey upon him for a while longer until he finally manages to escape.
• Melnik and crew eventually capture the leader of the Savage Cannibals of the Great Worm Cult and under interrogation he admits he made up the Great Worm completely and then he croaks. So far nothing particularly unsettling. A few pages later, Artyom opens a service door in a tunnel and is greeted by a pitch-black side tunnel where something big moves right in front of his face, so loud it makes his ears pop. It's never made clear if it's an automated D6 train that's still running or if the Great Worm was Real After All.
• Artyom's "encounter" with the Stars on top of the Kremlin. Before heading to the surface, he is repeatedly warned not to look at them, despite rumors that they supposedly glowed due to spirits or demons (mythical ones, not the mutants) trapped inside of them. Of course, Artyom tries to get away with a mere glimpse of them...and he only has enough time to process that they do apparently glow before he blacks out, waking up a moment later. According to the rest of his team, he just started sprinting towards the Kremlin and they were just barely able to stop him. Considering that the Kremlin's effect is caused by the mutant blob monster in the basement that hypnotizes people into jumping into it to be consumed, it's apparent that Artyom was dangerously close to kicking it right there.
• The phenomenon that Artyom encounters right near the beginning, just after leaving VDNKh. He hears a strange noise coming from a crack in a pipe, then his companions all start breaking down. One starts inconsolably crying, another tries to wander off... He encounters it a second time with Bourbon, who starts speaking (apparent) nonsense before keeling over dead for no reason. Khan suspects that what's happened is the dead, with no heaven or hell to go to, have wound up residing in the pipes and drag people who pass by into their old lives.

The Video Game

• The whole premise of a nuclear apocalypse driving people underground only to be hunted down like prey by the grotesque creatures that lurk in the tunnel.
  • And there is implications that they are all that is left of humanity. Tens of thousands of human beings, population dropping one a day to ravenous mutants.
    • The Expanded Universe says no. Starting from a short novel by Glukhovsky himself, set in the rural Russian Far East, to several authorized novels by different authors that are much Lighter and Softer.
• The simple fact that paranormal elements exist in a world that was metaphysically exactly like ours until the bombs fell. The nukes hit so hard they fundamentally changed reality. Even if the bickering Metro inhabitants were to retake the surface, even if the nuclear summer eventually brings clean air and water, things will never be the same again. Humanity can never again claim to understand the world through science or claim they aren't scared of the dark, not while ghosts and anomalies and outright Eldritch Abomination entities like the Great Door exist.
  • It's implied in the sequel that God/the Afterlife will come back and things may stabilize if humanity atones spiritually, with the help of the Dark Ones.
• The brilliant use of Nothing Is Scarier - for instance, when you are sent into D6 or the Lenin Library, both of which are scary enough on their own. One especially terrifying scene is when Artyom is recovering the documents from the military archives to get the location of D6. You sit there, helpless, watching Arty rattle through noisy filing cabinets, fearing that a hungry Librarian will be drawn to the racket, obviously almost as hurried and panicked as you are. You can practically hear your Silent Protagonist mumbling something along the lines of, "Oh shit, where is it? Shit! Where is it? Oh shit, where the FUCK is it? Oh shit, Oh shit, OH SHITSHITSHITSHITSHIT..." You're waiting for something to happen, and, even though nothing does, it is one of the scariest moments in a scary game.
  • There are several places where you can find a pile of spent brass casings on the floor, usually behind some kind of makeshift barricade. A smear of fresh blood can be found on the floor nearby, which can be followed around the corner to the partially-devoured remains of the poor bastard who had more mutants than ammo handy. Had you arrived an hour or two sooner, he might have made it.
• Say what you will about a game not set in the United States, there is no denying Soviet and Russian architecture is scary and foreboding. The metro tunnels falling apart, the husks of destroyed buildings on the surface, all give off this sinister, ominous vibe. The remains of subway cars teetering perilously off crumbling underground bridges, rusted doors that groan open, water dripping from the ceiling and pooling in radioactive puddles, all combine and make the Metro a terrifying place to be.
• D6, just D6. It's a legendary military bunker, supposedly filled with weapons, food and ammo. The whole thing is shrouded in an aura of myth, almost like the American Area 51. When Artyom and company arrive there (on an automated train that somehow is summoned to their location), the whole place is eerily abandoned, the automatic air recirculation system not working. In the Redux version of 2033, the entrance level of the complex is shrouded in noxious gas, making it near impossible to see clearly. Its incredibly unsettling exploring the facility, moving through the pristine tram cars sitting on their tracks, gas making it impossible to see more than a few feet in front of you. Even worse, there's evidence that something happened here. There are no bodies, just bloodstains and bullet casings strewn everywhere. The whole place just gives out a creepy vibe, Nothing Is Scarier at its finest.
• During the Library level (specifically the level Alley in front of the library itself), the Kremlin and its iconic steeple mounted stars can be seen. In-universe, the rumor among survivors is that something unimaginably evil lives in the basement of the Kremlin, a remnant of a supposed biological attack on the Russian leadership. It is said that looking at the Kremlin's stars hypnotizes all who gaze upon it, and are compelled to travel to the Kremlin, where they are killed. Though no such effect occurs in the game, there is no doubt something is off about the Kremlin; what can be seen suggests it is fairly pristine compared to the rest of the city, and like D6 it gives off an unsettling vibe.
• Perhaps even more terrifying is the fact that the people within Moscow's metro still engage in warfare and all of the behavior that drove them there in the first place. Makes you wonder if mankind will ever learn from its mistakes...
• Nosalises are generally not very frightening in most encounters, as they attack in large, unstealthy, groups and are so noisy that they can be heard coming. However, some variants are pretty nasty - the plated variants found in D6, which just. Won't. Fucking. DIE! Fortunately, they're absent in Redux...and replaced by spiderbugs.
• Don't forget the visions Artyom faces! Sure, the Dark Ones want peace, but what they do to the player is Mind Rape in the most disturbing way possible.
• The Librarian mutants, no thanks to their horrifying appearance◊ and them having the strength to kill you in a few blows. Those monstrosities give Mr. Face a run for his money, which is really saying something.
  • Add in that it is implied in game that they are mutated humans much like the dark ones. That is just two examples, imagine how many are all over the world given the 6 billion population.
  • Their breathing. Those low, horrible, rattling breaths, in rooms full of holes that they can leap through, as they hunt you.
  • Also note their morphology. Most of the mutants are easily recognizable derivatives - Lurkers and Watchmen are rodents or possibly canines, Nosalises are allegedly moles or possibly pigs, and Word of God says that Demons are the ultimate fate of the tigers in the Moscow Zoo^note Probably because their roar is actually a tiger's roar. What do the Librarians look like? Humans, or gorillas – an equally likely prospect, since they could also have been zoo animals. Not that a gorilla origin helps, really...gorillas are still intelligent and strong beasts that no one would want to tangle with in a dark, confined library, and the radiation and crazy biowarfare agents have only given them more of both characteristics.
  • There's also the fact that they herd you in the Library. As you're picking your way through the first section where you're alone, one of them will come up behind you and move a piece of debris across a doorway, keeping you from backtracking.
  • In Metro 2033 Redux, a diary entry by Artyom has him wondering if they were indeed humans, and the reason they back down when you hold eye contact ("Never show the beast your back!") isn't a dominance thing, but because seeing humanity in your eyes, they remember what they once had.
• The Lurker mutants◊ are no slouches in this department either. If you fall down into their burrows, the last thing you'll hear is the sound of those little pink mutant bastards eating you alive. And don't get us started on what you see on the game over screen. Sweet dreams!
• And if those two monstrosities weren't enough, we got the Watchers/Watchmen, thought by some to be the adult variant of the Lurker, that appear on the surface. Fighting them isn't that bad, but their howls in the middle of the radiated wasteland...
• There's a reason why the locals from the Riga station don't visit Nikki to fulfill their desires. She's sexy, yes, but if you pay her, a large man will pop out of nowhere and give you a sucker punch. Next thing you know, all your money is gone.
• In the Lost Catacombs level, Artyom and Bourbon run into a large room while escaping some mutants. You should have known something was wrong when the nosalises refused to enter the room. Or when you noticed the room was littered with dead bodies who have not been looted. Then you start having hallucinations of a bleak, stone corridor swept by wind, with an ominous gate at the end that glows red, and every time it opens, the wind pushes you towards it. Bourbon starts raving about how the "Great Door" sings and how beautiful it is. When you and him finally snap out of it, he shudders at what just happened and says he wouldn't wish it on his worst enemy. You don't hear what he heard, but it's probably for the best.
  • What makes it even scarier is that there is no clue on what the hell that thing was. No other ghost, anomaly or dark one related phenomena bears resemblance to what was in that room. Like the River of Fate in Last Light, it appears to be a spot where reality simply ceased to function as we know.
    • To hammer home just how dangerous this phenomenon is, you are saved from it by a Dark One. The main antagonists of the game, depending on your point of view, went out of their way to rescue you from this evil door that pretty much tried to eat your soul.
• Voices in the pipes. Don't listen for too long. Gets far worse in 2033 Redux, where listening too long results in a multitude of shadowy hands reaching out of the pipes and trying to drag you down with them.
• On the way to D6, the Ranger team finds a two-headed skeleton. A fresh one. There's no indication of any recent human presence in the place that would move an additional skull and carefully lay it down next to the other either. And there are no headless skeletons in the vicinity.
• The Biomass.
  • In the book: intelligent Biomass.
  • ...and then you think about it some more, and come to realize that the Biomass in-game is also rather intelligent as well. After all, it is smart enough to attack the reactor control room in order to stop the control rods from being raised (and therefore depriving it of power). Going even further with that Fridge Horror: D6 was a military installation before the war, host to perhaps hundreds of workers. It's so isolated, even decades after the fact, that there are no lifeforms within its main area except for the biomass and the giant amoebas it sends after you. There aren't even rats and hardly any skeletons. That means that the only thing that it could possibly have originated from was human beings. Artyom's journal points out in 2033 Redux that there are shell casings all over the floor, suggesting that a battle took place at some point— this raises the terrifying yet all-too-plausible possibility that the former residents of D6 were devoured by the biomass.
• Human opponents have long and disturbing death cries. A sound of people coughing up their organs after a home-made black powder pipe-bomb goes off inside the bonfire they were sitting around and fills them up with shrapnel is unsettling.
• From the soundtrack we have A Dog In The Boiler, an eerie as hell song with a disturbing title that wouldn't be out of place in a Silent Hill game.
• The Silhouettes, ghosts that inhabit some of the tunnels in the Metro. Spectral shadows of those who died that relive their deaths over and over, and if they touch you, you die. It doesn't stop there, either...
  • If you're paying attention during Chase, you'll see ghosts off to the side. Including the ghost of a Dark One. Think about this. Why would a Dark One have died in the tunnels near Exhibition? The only explanation is that that's where Hunter died.
  • Furthermore, seeing the ghosts reliving their final moments as you walk through the tunnel with Khan becomes even more terrifying when you realize the ghosts move into the position where their former bodies still lie. A woman attacked by a mutant, and man swarmed by bats...their bodies are still there. Then you get to the subway car and see the ghost of a child attacked by the ghost of a nosalis. If you follow the ghost's position, all you'll see left of both of them is a human skull. The ghostly scream that accompanies this just makes it worse.
  • You'll come across a train car full to brim with webs. First time players may choose to use their lighters to burn it and move quicker instead of simply walking through it. If you do, the ghost of a nosalis pounces you and kills you.
• Metro 2033 Redux adds several new scary moments.
  • Dead City has a hidden apartment complex where you encounter the ghostly shadow of a hanged man, as well as a broken-down TV that glows Poltergeist-style.
  • The area under the bridge in Frontline has dead Reich troops lying about in full combat armour, who look like they're alive until you push them over, revealing them to be nothing but bare bones. Three of them are found sitting around a campfire that's somehow still burning, reached after walking through an area where an anomaly deactivates your flashlight.
    • And still more troubling, the area where you find them is full of poisonous gas. The skeletons have no gas masks on, but they are all calmly seated, and behind them is a box full of fresh, unused masks.
• The corpses littered throughout the game are different kinds of unsettling. Some have parts of their face and head chewed away, exposing the skull underneath, others have limbs torn off. It's obvious that the mutants love chewing on human corpses and leaving them strewn about.
• The final level, set in the Ostankino tower (or what's left of it), is terrifying if you have Acrophobia (fear of heights). Hell, it's terrifying even if you don't. The ruins of the tower look like they're holding by miracles alone and ladders and platforms just collapse under Artyom's weight multiple times. The camera gives you a deliberate view of the broken pieces of the structure dropping down hundreds of meters below while Artyom hangs for dear life, and the plummeting death that awaits you if you're not careful.

---