Katsuhiro Otomo's Akira (1988), Kim Tae-yong and Min Kyu-dong's Memento Mori (1999), Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Kairo (2001), and Koji Suzuki's 1991 novel Ringu (on which Nakata's film was based). Hubbard has said that his goal with F.E.A.R.s horror elements was to achieve "a subtle and cerebral type of dread, emphasising suspense and the shadows." Believing that scares "always works best when you're not expecting it", Monolith attempted to keep the "psychology of the encounter" in the player's mind at all times, in order to "get under [the player's] skin". Thus, they shunned the "in your face 'monsters jumping out of closets' approach". Lead level designer John Mulkey states that "creating expectation and then messing with that expectation is extremely important". Similarly, Hubbard explains that "horror is extremely fragile [...] you can kill it by spelling things out too clearly and you can undermine it with too much ambiguity". With this in mind, he attempted to strike a balance with the narrative elements of F.E.A.R., giving players "enough clues so that [they] can form [their] own theories about what's going on, but ideally [they will] be left with some uncertainty". Speaking to Rock Paper Shotgun in 2013, he reiterated this point; "you want to see something just enough that you can evoke it in your mind and kind of picture it a little bit, but not enough that you can really understand it." The main source of the game's horror is Alma Wade. In terms of influences, she is often assumed to have been inspired by Samara from The Ring (the American remake of Ringu). Hubbard, however, explains that Alma "was born out of a tradition of eerie, faceless female ghosts" and not "as an answer to any specific movie character". Although he does acknowledge that Alma "bears some visual resemblance to the ghosts in Dark Water or Séance", he points out that "creepy little girls have been freaking [him] out since The Shining". Alma was named after Alma Mobley from Peter Straub's novel Ghost Story (1979). In relation to the game's villain, Paxton Fettel, producer Craig Hewitt has explained that initially there were two villains, but they were ultimately merged. Originally, Fettel was a supporting villain, with the game's main antagonist (aside from Alma) being Conrad Krige. Krige's name was a tribute to actress Alice Krige, who had portrayed Alma Mobley in John Irvin's 1981 adaptation of Straub's novel. Initially, Fettel,