Nightmare Fuel / Revita

Per wiki policy, Spoilers Off applies here and all spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned.

"It's okay, you can say it... That Withering Culteye is some high-octane nightmare fuel."

— Caretaker, after dying to a Withering Culteye

This is the Withering Culteye.

Revita. A game about grief, and is haunting at some moments. And then... There are some... things you see in this game that are haunting in other ways.

General

• There's something uncanny about Revita Kid being the only non-enemy character whose face is not (always) a mask.
  • The Fool arguably looks the worst out of them all, almost looking soulless.
  • Oh, by the way, Word of God had stated that their masks are their faces.
• The way Revita Kid's body glitches out when you take a curse wouldn't be as bad if Revita Kid wasn't visibly distressed by it.
  • Also, that laugh sounds like Enigma.
• Revita Kid's death animation can be this (pictured): Since their eyes go white, it can be seen as their eyes rolling to the back of their head before they fall and pass out on the floor.
• One of the run icons you can get on the main menu showing what area you were on before you left can have Revita Kid, without their eyes, and the body glitching out.
• The achievement you get for blowing yourself up is pretty unsettling, even if it's a jab at the player.

Enemies, Bosses, and Areas

• Bargaining has a very hollow smile. They're a bunch of souls trapped in ice crystals that are willing to do anything to escape.
• In Fumigated Funnels, you can actually hear what sounds like squishing if you turn the music off but have sound effects on.
• There's one enemy that appears in Somber Sepulcher: A cult eye that has blue growths all over its body and vomits up projectiles. It's foreshadowing.
• There are a lot of gravestones in the 4th area... for no particular reason.
• You can find bones and skulls in the forgotten station. What are they doing there? We don't know.

Acceptance/Enigma

Good lord. Since the game doesn't have much dialogue, it leaves a lot up to player interaction, and once you realize some of the implications... It's a lot.

• Your first intro to Enigma is right at the beginning of the game. They rant about how each time Revita Kid steps onto the metro, they lose themselves more and more. That's a terrifying idea in general, but to make things worse, it's a Hopeless Boss Tight, as Enigma uses an attack that freezes you, and reduces your heath to the lowest it can be. And then, a very minor, but disturbing detail... Enigma could have killed you with that move right away. But instead? They make you watch yourself get hit.
  • To some degree, this could also be seen as also forcing the player to watch as well.
• So, you manage to climb all the way up there for the first time. And Enigma talks to you. There's no music, only the tick of the clockwork in the area and Enigma's deep and almost contorted voice mixed with their angry slams on their throne as they rant about the pain and torture the tower made them go through, yet despite all that, they climbed the tower over and over again to no avail. You can hear the fury in the voice. Then they start trying to discourage Revita Kid from doing this, insulting them… then stating directly they are the same person, which changes the whole context of the thing; Revita Kid actually struggles to keep going on… which could lead them down a very deadly path based on the notes.
  • Enigma is also disturbingly correct in saying they are the same person in a physical sense; Enigma is your past run's Revita kid, whose body had been distorted due to the influence of the tower and Acceptance possessing you.^Note But what about Mother runs? Word of God stated that the story ends after Revita Kid falls off the tower — anything else past that is not part of the lore.
    • This is made worse by the fact that if you look at the design closely, you can tell what came from where: The blue hood likely came from Revita Kid's hair, the metal shoulder pieces the scarf, and worst of all, you know that heart Revita Kid shows up whenever they focus? Yeah, it's on Enigma's chest, upside down and black, as if to imply that they're missing their heart.
    • Also, look at Enigma's mask compared to the other bosses… it's very blank and bland. There are not even two eyes on that thing.
• So then you defeat Enigma, but it's not over. Now comes a black blob that forms into Revita Kid's shape, screeches with glitchy noise in its voice, breaking the clock, then teleporting, driving straight at Revita Kid, grappling them by the neck, then putting their hand into Revita Kid's chest, were they go limp and their eyes dull, powerless to do anything, then pull out their heart, jumping to the other side, showing it, and then crushing it with an echo, all right in front of the kid. And Acceptance is an Enemy Without.
• Many of Acceptance's frames look like they're staring at the player. Even the basic idle could be seen as Acceptance trying to keep an eye on Revita Kid and YOU.
  • It gets worse. If you have the option to pause the game when not active and having the cutscene for Acceptance and ripping Revita Kid's heart out play out completely, due to the way cutscenes and that option work, you can get a pause screen where Acceptance is staring at you, while the game is PAUSED.
  • The achievement icon for no-hitting all of Ticking Tower Top breaks the common pattern of being just the boss spite, and instead, is a unique icon. And Acceptance is — yet again — seeming to stare at the player.
• Okay, now you've defeated Acceptance. What does Revita Kid do? Without the old photo, Revita Kid shoots Acceptance. Their head jerks as if it's coming off, then they fall down, and jerk again before they fade into nothing. No music plays, Revita Kid doesn't do any idles or turn around to look where they're firing, the gears in the room being the only noise that echoes, and your only choice is the throne, saying "Accept your fate?"
• Accept your fate? Acceptance successfully performs a Split-Personality Takeover, and you get to watch that happen, as Revita Kid gets on the throne and becomes increasingly still, until their eyes flick up, with Acceptance's blue color, and then Enigma's mask. Acceptance is still looking at you when you get your results screen, which says "obliterated." whereas it usually says "Lost once more" when you die. The same thing bosses say when you kill them. In a sense? You just watched Revita Kid's personality die, as it was overtaken by their inner darkness. And according to the tower, that counts as death. And you have to do this at least 4 times before you can get the old photo. (But that doesn't mean you will.) You can't win.

Last Refuge

• The very appearance of this place is disturbing. There are overgrown flowers everywhere, and they're not the pretty kind. Blue gloop is dripping from the ceiling. There are tentacles and broken test tubes and containers.
  • The test tubes are a horror in their own right, because of what some of them contain. That's right, Revita Kid(s). And yet again, we have no idea where they came from.
• Every enemy but two in this area count under this:
  • Sprouting Vessel: First of all, you may have noticed that the bottom is Revita Kid’s legs, which is terrifying and brings up so many questions, and the top is a tentacle with blue flowers covering up, having replaced Revita Kid’s head.
    • Image this from their perspective: having to fight what is likely your reanimated corpse.
    • It's also referred to as a Vessel: A Vessel for what?!
  • Blossoming Culteye has had its eye become a flower, and it's got flowers growing on its back and a tentacle on its top. It's implied that this is its first stage of infection.
  • Withered Culteye (pictured) gives us the wonderful quote at the top of this page, and for good reason. Its the above Blossoming Culteye, but now, its gained large two large legs and hands that look like something out of Lovecraft
  • The Flourishing Culteye has had its eye replaced, changing it in a giant, doodling mouth, with small tentacles coming out of it.
  • Burst Flower and Floret are two blue, floating flowers with the bud replaced with an eye.
  • You know those souls you collect? Yeah, The Abandoned is a mismatched pile of those, and you can see their faces. And because of that, it implies that the Drisp is made of the same thing.
  • Gestalt Slimeye is in the name: It's a smile with a bunch of eyes in it. When you kill it, it splits into smaller slimes.
  • Eyesore is a flying mass of eyes that floats around the room and fires a laser. It's in the name as well.
• The build-up to Mother. You walk into a door that's white instead of blue or purple, and it plays its own track. Then you walk into this room with a huge machine, and a capsule that almost looks like a coffin with flowers around it. Interacting with it tells you that there’s a person inside. Is it really surprising that when Retromation first found this, he compared it to Porky?