As a Nightmare Fuel page, all spoilers are unmarked as per wiki policy. You Have Been Warned!
No Fridge Horror on this page!
"Hello. Do you want to play with me?"
While Sonic.exe has a polarizing reception (despite its fair share of genuinely good fangames), for all its Nightmare Retardant qualities, there is no denying that there are still some effective horrors throughout the story.
The Creepypasta:
- The nature of the villain, X, is that of a demonic abomination who created his own world while attempting to absorb other worlds into his own. He seduces unhappy souls using his own game and captures them. The bodies of the victims then transform into a horrifying mass of flesh with engraved numbers. He then creates new bodies for the souls based on Sonic characters. Imagine yourself as a victim. Upon awakening in his world, you find yourself in the body of one of your favorite characters. You have acquired a new body, but now you are merely a plaything for an evil god who acts like a child. He will kill you in the most brutal ways and resurrect you as many times as he wants, just to repeat your suffering again. Someday, your suffering may come to an end, but what will happen if it does is equally bad, if not worse. Just like all toys, X will grow tired of playing with you, and for such toys, be prepared for the unenviable fate of being devoured by him. Your body will be destroyed and remain in the black void. Then, you, as a bodyless soul, will disappear as if you had never existed. Truly a fate much worse than death and at the same time a cruel and unusual death.
- And it gets even more terrifying! He is attempting to merge his world with ours to enslave humanity and, consequently, the entire universe, and eventually, other universes as well, so that all living beings become nothing more than disposable toys to be tortured by X. For a creepypasta that has so many nightmare-inducing elements, it could easily compete in terms of darkness and spine-chilling horror with The Russian Sleep Experiment.
The Original Video game:
- The Hill Act 1 track
is legitimately harrowing, whether it's played forwards or backwards and would fit very well in a horror atmosphere.- Similarly, the inclusion of the Giygas theme from Earthbound really works for some reason, thanks to the eerie nature of the track and the desperation of the "YOU CAN'T RUN" phase, which perfectly complements the dark atmosphere.
- The death scream of Knuckles is funny due to the effect of Laryngeal Dissonance. And Tails' death scream? Perhaps not so much...
- All the "I AM GOD" images (such as the cover photo on the page above) depict X with a genuinely terrifying face. This image has changed from version to version and always brings something new to the table.
- Every time a character dies, you can see their demonic form on the selection screen, staring at you with expressions that could be described as anguish.
- If the American version of the Sonic CD Game Over soundtrack already gave you chills, get ready for a year of night terrors when you listen to the Sonic.exe version of it, along with the horribly mutilated victims of X. The old Game Over screen showed the decapitated heads of Tails, Knuckles, and Robotnik on wooden stakes with their eyes gouged out. A special highlight goes to Knuckles' body, hanging from the sky by his entrails, no less. Additionally, Robotnik's head stares directly at you.
- In the 666 version, the Game Over screen was replaced by another terrifying image, with X towering over Tails, wearing a face of pure terror.
- The Sonic level introduced in Version 5, absent from the original creepypasta version, takes place in a static and empty void that transforms into the backdrop of Giygas, inducing seizures, while persistent screams of someone being tortured can be heard. As Sonic approaches the end, the control panel is altered and then disappears completely. After that, X's face appears, which is even more chilling than the "I AM GOD" image. This face makes X look like some kind of wolf/serpent/canine creature with a terrifying smile.
- He returned in Version 7, after being removed in Version 666, now with the faces of the souls that X likely captured flashing at you in conjunction with the mentioned screams.
Sonic 2011:
- Before they could even get into playing the game itself, YouTubers SunFIRE, Luigikid Gaming and M80marc were all tagged in to solve a puzzle with three images, depicted as the three victims we see in-game, before leaving the group chat with co-developer John-Kun without explanation. Solving this puzzle led them to the GameJolt page for the game.
- To make matters worse, the Game Jolt page reveals nothing about the rollercoaster ride that players are about to embark on, simply displaying a few screenshots of Sonic 1 alongside an allegedly blank image.
- The only two community posts there, however, make it worse, as if the user who posted the game wants "him", or "it", off their back. They also refuse to take the blame if anything goes awry as well.
- The new "Hide And Seek" level is nothing short of nerve-wracking. Once Tails starts running properly, you may notice that a timer has been counting down from 10 the entire time, and once that hits, Tails comes to a stop, with the words "TIME OVER" appearing on-screen. But then the music stops... and X shows up!"Ready or not, HERE I COME."
- The Gory Discretion Shot for Tails and Knuckles is even more Played for Horror than the original, with the player only seeing a brief second of X mangling and tearing them apart, with us left to only hear what's going on. And this time, there's absolutely no Larynx Dissonance to lighten the mood at any point. While he "simply" starts Tails' murder by twisting his neck, Knuckles gets it much worse as X downright slams his fists onto his chest, with enough force to likely cave the Echidna's ribs into his lungs. It cuts to black before we can see the rest, but Knuckles is heard choking on his own blood before it gets cut off with a horrific beeping sound. It is not for the faint of heart.
- While we do not hear what X does to Robotnik, we do get to catch a glimpse of X's mouth opening up to unrealistic proportions, as if ready to swallow him whole.
- The picture connected to Paul, the victim in question, shows his face is completely blank, as if he had been erased from existence. The text accenting this further on that same picture reads "ERASED".
- Unlike the original game, the Game Over screen is relatively simplistic: the GAME OVER phrase is written in white letters against the black background... with what appears to be Robotnik's blood covering them. Oh, and unlike last time? It happens right before you get to see Robotnik and the "I AM GOD" screen, though more on that below.
- What's worse is that characters actually display visible emotions of fear, shock, distress, etc., thus taking away a lot of Nightmare Retardant qualities off it.
- Tails outright refuses to approach X upon finding him. You must force the poor fox to walk right into his doom.
- Knuckles looks freaked out through his segment and even his idle animation has the echidna clutch his forehead as if to find an explanation to what the heck is going on around him.
- When idle, Robotnik mostly looks at the player with an expression that changes from simply confused to outright scared as he goes down, right before X gets him.
- The demonic forms the deceased characters take on the selection screen have been significantly improved, all to be even more pants-shittingly terrifying.
- Tails looks like he had been scorched alive or viciously mauled, with blood marks and dark fur everywhere;
- Knuckles got it even worse than last time: one of his eyeballs seems to be missing and another one is bloated in size, sporting a very demented look, complete with a Slasher Smile and what appears to be his broken jaw;
- Robotnik is even more horrifying and sad to look at - not only does he look even more drained of color than before, but his goggles are also absent. Which means you can see his empty eye sockets and a mortified expression on his face.
- Don't want to advance forward and give X the satisfaction he wants? He'll march straight up to your character and force the game to advance and/or take them down anyway."NOW, N....DON'T BE SHY."
- The game's ending is even more creepy than it used to be. After the Game Over screen and one last glimpse of the victims, the game goes full-screen as X appears before us, with an evil glare on his face and a pixelated, yet detailed, face. After a bout of static, that face becomes... well, hyperrealistic. Following on from this, he starts writing his infamous catchphrase "I AM GOD" on the computer monitor, and the player can actually hear his finger pressing and moving across the screen, right before his much louder and clearer laughter is heard. As if things couldn't get any worse, HE LUNGES DIRECTLY AT THE SCREEN WITH AN UNGODLY ROAR, MAKING IT SHATTER! And then there is absolutely NOTHING for almost a whole minute. However, the silence is quickly broken by one of two messages that X speaks out to you. What accents this further is that neither the message nor the screen crack disappear after the game closesnote ."KEEP THIS INTERESTING FOR ME."
"READY FOR ANOTHER ROUND?"
