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Event Horizon / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked. You have been warned.
Aside from the Eye Scream and Squick elements that keep cropping up over and over, there's the part where we finally see the deciphered message, and it's just blurry enough to make you wonder if you really saw the unspeakably horrible things you thought you saw, or if it was just your imagination.... and the only way to find out is to watch that sequence again. It's not often one is willing to put the remote down and walk away rather than go back and confirm an image, but Event Horizon pulled it off.
This is considered one of the most horrifying scenes, if not THE most horrifying scene in the entire movie, known as the "Blood Orgy". Here, the crew of the Lewis and Clark uncover and watch a video log of what happened to the Event Horizon's crew, revealing, much to their horror, that they had gone completely insane after engaging the gravity drive for the first time and proceeded to tear each other apart. In the video, the crew can be seen murdering, raping, mutilating and cannibalizing each other while screaming and howling in utter madness. Some particularly disturbing moments include a man shoving his hand inside his throat, then ripping out his own intestines from his mouth and a woman gruesomely sodomizing a man with a steel pipe.
What makes the log even more disturbing is how it was produced. As listed on The Other Wiki, real life amputees were used for special effects scenes where Event Horizon crew members had their body parts damaged in many ways, and porn actors were hired to make the sex and rape scenes more realistic and graphic. It's no wonder Paramount had good reason to have that particular part of the movie cut down.
The way it comes up is scary as well. The activation of the ship's log is fairly casual...until it actually turns on, and you just hear screaming. Then you actually see what's on the log.
The whole idea of the Bloody Orgy and how the Event Horizon does it is terrifying alone: here you have a crew of perfectly normal astronauts and men of science, some of Earth's most brilliant minds, getting butchered not by some alien monster or spooky ghost stalking them, but through their own means because whatever possesses the ship just ignites a raw, utterly uncontrollable sexual rage in them, any trace of humanity or civilization is wiped out of their skulls as they regress and try everything to please these inhuman needs to the point they pretty much fuck each other to death, not stopping when it hurts, but going in harder until they just start ripping each other apart.
Wanna know something worse? A significant amount of footage was deleted from those unspeakably horrible sequences in the final cut of the film. The original version was more explicit; according to somearticles, Effects supervisor Dave Bonneywell described some of the deleted shots, including a female crew member having her breasts torn off, a male having his legs smashed apart by steel bars as he crawls away leaving parts of them behind, another whose arm is broken with a pipe as his hand still wriggled and a woman being held down with her mouth held open by clamps as a man drilled screws into her teeth.
Among other parts (besides the extensions of the Apocalyptic Log and Hell scenes) were additional scenes regarding and further explaining the Gateway, a more elaborate development of Justin being drawn into said Gateway, Miller finding a ripped out tooth floating around during the initial search, further hallucinations for Weir and the addition of maggots seeping around Peters' son's scarred legs. And those are just the ones that Andersen revealed so far.
The only thing matching the ship's log would be the visions of Hell that Weir projects into Captain Miller's head, where we see the crew members' bodies wrapped in barbed wire, disemboweled, or impaled on spikes with their bodies crawling with maggots. Since each scene lasts only a fraction of a second, it leaves the viewer thinking "what the hell did I just SEE!!??"
Weir: "Hell" is only a word. The reality is so much worse!
A comparatively little one: when they're first exploring the bridge, lightning from the storm below their orbit briefly lights up the walls near the windows...which are splattered with blood, tendons, and what look like they might be bones. It looks as though someone was smashed against the wall at such incredible speed that the body liquified. It's only for a split moment, but it makes you stop and have to wonder what the hell happened?! Given what we later see of the crew's log...ick is a bit of an understatement.
The set itself was nightmare fuel. The ship was designed with a kind of "techno-medieval" kind of feel, looking something like a cross between a futuristic spaceship and a Gothic cathedral. When the lights are out and things are going wrong, the place looks distinctly like some kind of dungeon or torture chamber. Many of the cast members refused to stay on set longer than absolutely necessary. What can be best described as alcoves around several of the windows look like blood encrusted teeth.
Weir's Stasis nightmare, while everyone was still in Stasis. Weir suddenly wakes up, he exits his pod, is the only one awake and suspects someone onboard. He walks up to go see who it is: his deceased wife, Claire. He turns her over, she wakes up revealing her empty eye sockets, Weir screams and wakes up while still in Stasis and would have drowned if not for the rest of the crew.
Weir's disturbing appearances just prior to and especially after his full submission to the Event Horizon: First, we see his eyes have been gouged out with bloody scratch marks where they used to be, almost looking as if his eyelids have been (poorly) sewn shut. Later, when the ship revives him, he got his eyes back, but he's fully nude and shaven with bloody gashes over every inch of his body like rolled himself up in barbed wire.
DJ's death. He's ambushed by Weir and knocked out cold, and then placed on the operating table, where upon Weir proceeds to vivisect him alive. When he's found, Weir had already evacuated his entire torso of organs, splaying them on the table, and used hooks and wire to hang the body up like a twisted art piece. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/EventHorizon |
Everything is Fine / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
"Winston... Come here, lazy boy..."I know why you're here. Lots of things are scary about this webcomic. Everything is
*NOT* fine.
## Unmarked spoilers ahead!
- The cat-helmets are cute at first, but the more you have to look at them, the more unsettling they become. It doesn't help that they constantly obscure the characters' facial expressions, so you never know what they're really feeling. There are several moments in the comic that just has everyone stare in silence, underlined by the unblinking unchanging helmets.
- The very heavy implication that it's simply not allowed for the residents to be anything but happy. Sam chastises Maggie for trying to talk about a serious, maybe even sad topic and they flat-out
*ignore* that their dog Winston is dead and that his corpse is slowly rotting away in his basket.
- The whole situation with Winston. Sam and Maggie's stubborn insistence that he's still alive, even as his corpse is rotting and attracting flies is incredibly creepy. Then it only gets worse when Sam decides to give his body to a homeless man outside their house, still acting like Winston is alive and he's just taking him for a walk. We're then treated to a nice scenes of the homeless guy happily munching away at Winston while Sam and Maggie sit at the dinner table with no visible reaction. Doubles as a Tear Jerker, as Maggie is implied to be heartbroken over having lost Winston completely now and still feebly calls out to him in the next episode.
- The red lights that occasionally flare up in the characters' masks' eyes. There is no explanation what they're for or what they are, but since they always appear when a conversation starts to turn sour, it's heavily implied they act as some sort of behavior control.
- A prevailing theory is that they get shown live footage of their children, who are being held hostage.
- Stepping out of line even once will get a resident's status set to "red". This means their neighbors, friends and even families have to actively shun them and act like they never existed at all. They're also thrown out of their house and left to fend for themselves on the streets. What this eventually leads to is the red resident starving to death, due to no one being allowed to give them food or even help them get some.
- It gets even worse:
*No Going Back* implies that if parents mess up and get the red-status, their children are *Forced into committing suicide*. And the mask the parents wear make them watch live video-footage of it happening with no way to stop it or to even call out for their doomed children.
- Maggie's Sanity Slippage after Charlie is set to red. She starts seeing Charlie and hearing his desperate pleas in reflective surfaces, along with flashes of a happier past and even though she tries to just forget about all of it, it only worsens her mental state. It gets so bad, Maggie actually tries to commit suicide and is only stopped by a Happy Flashback to a conversation with her child. This concludes in a ghostly vision of Charlie without his face encouraging her to go to his basement, but warning her that once she does, there's no going back.
- Maggie killing Officer Tom with a hammer. When she first hits him his mask is dented inward and you see a sickly green substance along with blood ooze out of it. After Tom makes a rather pathetic attempt at pleading for his life, Maggie just keeps hammering away at him until his head is nothing but a bloody mess of green goo, blood and brains.
- The 1984-esque paranoia of the setting really sinks in after
*Friends for Dinner*, when Bob and Linda offer Sam, Maggie, and Charlie an alliance to essentially sell out their neighbors and defend each other from accusations of non-conformity from the same neighbors. Neighbors watching each other, security cameras everywhere in public, and police going out of their way to harass you if they think you're even considering stepping out of line invokes all the worst parts of the Red Scare and Orwellian literature, with the added surreal framing of the comic's cutesy art.
-
*Omae wa Mou Shinderu* and *No Going Back* reveal exactly why the setting is a Childless Dystopia: everyones children are basically being held hostage by the government to keep civilians in line, and if a civilian happens to do something wrong (which is rather easy to do if they arent willing to manipulate, gaslight and sell out those outside of their residence)? Their kids are forced to commit suicide while they themselves are Forced to Watch the whole ordeal, including having to listen to their kids final words. The whole experience is so traumatizing to Bob and Linda that theyre quickly reduced into Empty Shells.
- Their eyes were red during this scene, inferring that every time someone's eye went red, that was the government showing them something - their children in a prison cell, maybe - to remind them of the consequences for falling out of line.
- Why are the kids so calm and happy-sounding when they jump to their deaths, not even needing to be pushed?... How much
*worse* is whatever will happen to them if they don't?
- Another disturbing detail is the simple fact that despite Bob having conclusive evidence to prove that Sam and Maggie killed Officer Tom, its completely disregarded solely because his body was found in their basement and that Bob even dared to report that a murder had occurred in the first place. It doesnt help that Sam and Maggie seal their fates by effectively turning their tactics on themselves, relentlessly gaslighting and questioning their every word until Linda snaps and tries to stab Maggie. Words mean everything in this society - and it absolutely shows. And
*Omae wa Mou Shinderu* ends with an absolutely chilling Wham Line:
- All of the above doesn't hold a candle to what happens in Chapter 27:
*The entire city is being systemically purged*. All of the obedient sheep who followed the rules to the letter to keep their children safe? Killed for the crime of living on the next block to be scheduled for incineration. And of course, it's implied that their children are no longer of any use to the government.
- It's also very chilling to consider that Sam and Maggie's blocks were next on the schedule and just how close they were to being flamed. If Bob and Linda hadn't forced their hand, enabling them to unknowingly nab their spot to Lakeview in the process of framing them, they'd have been cooked alive.
-
*All Good Things* has a wide scenery shot as Sam and Maggie are driven to Lakeview. At the end of the shot we see a squirrel that seems to carry a chopped off body-part.
- Once Sam and Maggie arrive in Lakeview, the first thing they're told by the police officer who brought them is that people in Lakeview "don't really do cars". In other words: There is no way to escape from Lakeview via car.
- The teaser for season 2. It begins with what looks like the first meeting between Sam and Maggie since school on New Years Eve. At first, it seems like a sweet moment of them sharing a kiss but then it becomes literal nightmare fuel when their daughter appears, wearing the mask and burning alive. Sam drops the title while appearing as a burning skeleton under his mask! | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/EverythingIsFine |
Everybody Edits / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
## Campaigns:
- "MIHBs Dream" gradually goes from an ordinary grassy level to Mind Screw as it reveals itself as a Disguised Horror Story. Endless Corridors appear, the same collectables keep reappearing, the sky turns red, and a large inexplicable silhouette of a smiley with red eyes emerges. Things get weirder as the player character is abruptly teleported around, the text "ALWAYS MORE COINS" keeps covering the level, the level destroys itself with a spreading emptiness that appears to break the boundaries of the level into the void. The tone overall goes back and forth between cheerful and disturbing, before abruptly turning back to normal at the end. The use of invisible portals was uncommon at the time, only being available through a glitch, adding to the overall uneasiness.
- "A Dreary Day" starts off innocent, but the weather of the level gets more and more ominous, before thunder abruptly hits the player character with a loud sound and a quick flash. The player then rises Back from the Dead in a lonely Creepy Cemetery. Any future Hope Spots from that point onward disappear, and turn out to be a continuation of the dull, eerie purple area the level takes place in.
## Other levels:
- The world "Cry kid Cry" shows a crying kid seeing a large, green monster with exposed flesh and empty eyes plus other monsters crawling through portals. What makes this even more unsettling is that there appears to be a monster inside the house, meaning the kid has nowhere to go. No explanation is given for any of this.
- "Children of the Pie" has children lining up for trick-or-treating in a house...only that it's a trap where children are killed and implied to be baked into pies. This is rather graphically shown, with a smiling Pumpkin Person in the house's dark basement stabbing a child's chest with a knife, Blood from the Mouth and a traumatized face visible. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/EverybodyEditsFlash |
Evil Dead / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
"We'll swallow your soul!"The Evil Dead movies are horror films first and foremost, so it's natural for them to have scary scenes. Here are some specific examples.Works in this franchise with their own pages: The Evil Dead (1981) Evil Dead 2 Army of Darkness Evil Dead (2013) Ash vs. Evil Dead Evil Dead Rise | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/EvilDead |
Everhood / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
Spoiler Warnings ahead.
...
Like its spiritual counterpart,
*Everhood* has a generally light-hearted front it puts up. For a bit anyway. After the first chapter is when that veneer is *TORN AWAY* and a much more grim and surreal story begins...
...
HERE THERE BE SPOILERS, both major and minor, as a major draw to this game is a story where the twist happens fairly early on in its run time. It really is important to play it first, if you mind it.
You have been warned...
- The ATM is rather disconcerting. Being a boss-shoutout to Flowey, of all things, asking for your soul in exchange for currency and flashing a ghoulish face as it attacks you while spastically twitching. It's also fully 3D in a mostly 2D game and we never get to know where it came from, with the only clue being that it claims to be "Evil Property". ||It's also revealed to be one of the 30 souls you're looking for if you're trying to kill everyone||, raising further questions as to what the hell it even is.
- The tone of the game is immediately very abstract and uneasy. Unlike its contemporaries, it has a very dark color scheme, with a black backdrop to highlight the colors of the environment and characters. It gives most of the game the feeling that it is set in darkness, or that it is Always Night.
- The end of the first act, where you confront Gold Pig and are suddenly dropped into an incinerator. While it is possible to survive it, it is such an Unexpected Gameplay Change of avoiding musical hazards in the top-down "exploring" perspective.
- Should you (most likely) die to Gold Pig's Incinerator, you're treated to a
*very surreal* sequence of two parts, the first being called Post Mortem and the second simply called Gnomes, where a lot of bizarre technicolor imagery assaults you as you dodge beats made by many... hard to describe things such as:
- Gnomes playing tennis with their own heads, and one ATTACKING YOU with some!
- The Avatars of the two game developers. Probably the least scary of the bunch.
- A boxy, skull-headed... thing with a hand puppet that falls apart on its own after a bit.
- A giant dark head with bright eyes and teeth, who speaks in pixel gibberish.
- The Maze Monster. It appears to be a spider-like abomination with more eyes than a spider should and a gaping maw, and it randomly travels around the maze at a speed faster than you can ever run at, striking out of nowhere. When you eventually bump into it, its music (while pretty awesome) makes it sound as if the creature is alternating between aggressively stomping towards you and skittering around, and to escape this horror you need to step on a spring rather than wait it out like most other opponents in the first half of the game. Then theres noise it makes. Hell Is That Noise does not even begin to describe this thing. When ||you finally do get to kill it, it lets out a loud and sudden shriek||.
- You find your arm amongst Gold Pig's hoard, surrounded by many bricks, before you actually pick it up the screen flashes with lightning, highlighting tons of blood-red messages hidden by the brick patterns. The game double checks if you want to pick up your own arm at that point. ||Judging from the fact that it can kill the immortal beings, that warning's necessary.||
- The events leading up to and including the Incinerator II special encounter. After defeating the Cat God and playing Super Racket 2 with Sam, they get curious about the locked cabin on the right, which they unlock and examine, before deciding quickly they don't want anything to do with that and rushing out of the treehouse. After this, the game refuses to let you leave the treehouse, meaning, to progress, you have no choice but to enter the cabin on the right. Once Red enters it, the door suddenly shuts and bars fall down to further block the door before the word
**INCINERATOR** appear above it. Then everything fades to black barring the door and the text, as you here the incinerator warm-up and the words *In progress* appear between the door and the word. You are then thrust into the encounter where your health bar is flashing as if you're at 1HP, although the first pattern which is tossed at you as the music kicks in is relatively easy to dodge. But then the music speeds up, as does the pattern, as one of the Higher Beings appears, although their neon colours are shades of red. And then, it suddenly shifts to a much bigger area as the second pattern kicks in, as walls of flames approach from both sides with no gap for Red to dodge them, eventually finishing off Red and triggering either the "Yellow Doll" or "Alone" endings.
- The Cat God's appearances in the game are few and far between, but it can give players a start in every one. It even appears as soon as the game as booted up, showing itself on the title screen, lurking behind the game's name and staring at you.
- In a playthrough proper, the Cat God's first appearance is ||during the normal ending, after everyone in Everhood finally passes on. Regardless of whether the player chooses to hear the final Absolute Truth, the Cat God will tell the player to come visit again, appear on screen without its eyes, and gradually get closer; it even starts to warp the screen after a certain point. Then before the game cuts to black, it says,
*"It never ends in Everhood."*||
- The Cat God in its own battle will also appear without its eyes on two occasions. In both occasions however, it will also have its mouth wide open, baring its fangs while flashing red, green, and blue, all while the background turns to static. The second occasion is especially noteworthy because it isn't just the background that turns to static then—the music does, too. And if the player manages to deplete the Cat God's HP, it will begin to flash red with its eyes glowing brightly and maw agape, proceed to get closer to the screen ||just as it does in the normal ending||, and throw the player into yet another battle||--or so it would seem. After the screen turns dark and remains that way for a few seconds, it goes white, then the game asks if the player got scared for a second and laughs about it before offering to tell them a secret absolute truth||.
- If one tries to start a file on which they've already achieved the normal ending, they will be greeted with a rapidly scrolling screen of random text set to static noise, and get kicked back to the file select menu.
- If you go into the Club after you killed everyone inside and out, the music slows down to a crawl the next time you come in, showing this is the End of an Era.
- Near the end of the game, you learn a lot of things about the characters that not even they knew. For example, for Noseferatchu: ||he didn't even realize he was immortal and living the same boring and pointless life for all eternity.|| Plus, it seems like his been sick the entire time too which must have been unpleasant. ||Even in the afterlife, he's still sick. When you find his bedroom, he notes that he probably should get more furniture. So not only has this guy possibly been sick for a literal eternity, he's lonely beyond belief, stuck with videogames that look like they come from the 1990s, and doesn't know he's been doing this for millions of years, he also has literally nothing to show for it.||
- When you travel through the desert, you see what looks like the remains of a medieval style city. ||It becomes clear later on that this must be where the majority of the multi-million large society lived in the distant past. So much time has passed, that the place is so thoroughly buried and destroyed, that it looks like a long lost city of antiquity. All that is left is some ruins and a hard packed dirt road.|| | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Everhood |
Evil Dead 2 / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
Just because it's Denser and Wackier than it's predecessor doesn't mean it's any less scary of a movie.
**As this is a Moments Subpage, all spoilers are unmarked.**
- The scene where a decapitated deadite gets up and performs its grotesquely erotic dance.
- It may seem silly, but the dance can be pretty unnerving when you recall it's the same dance Linda was doing at the start of the movie while Ash played the piano. As a result, it seems like it was meant to further torment Ash.
- She disappears into the woods, only to appear right in front of the window and attack Ash. He starts screaming—only to find himself sitting in the rocking chair. At the exact moment he calms down, the deadite's severed head lands on his lap.
- The famous scene where all of the various items in the room start laughing uproariously at Ash, who starts madly laughing along with them (laugh along here). It seems less like demonic possession and more like a delusional breakdown after everything that happened at that point. Plus, the face Ash makes as he laughs maniacally is downright unnerving. Ash may have been on a downward spiral since the Necronomicon was translated, but this is where Ashy has hit the Point of No Return for his sanity.
- The scene where Ash's reflection reaches through the mirror, grabs the real Ash by the throat, and points out that he/they just chopped up their girlfriend, in response to Ash's attempts to calm down by assuring himself he's okay. Then the camera angle changes to show Ash's own hands around his neck, which freaks him out even more.
- Henrietta, especially when her neck stretches and turns into a snake skull demon.
- On that note, it's alarming how quickly Annie and Bobby Joe went from baying for Ash's blood to
*begging* Jake to let him out of the cellar when they hear how terrified he is:
"LEMME OUT! LET ME OUT!!
*THERE'S SOMETHING DOWN HERE!!*"
- "Even now, we have your darling Linda's soul! She suffers in torment!" That's the severed head of Linda talking. She later starts crying. On another note, we never learn whether or not "Linda" was lying.
**Linda:** *[normal voice, crying]* Please, Ash, please don't hurt me! You swore— you swore we'd always be together! **Ash:** *[also crying]* ...NO! **Linda:** *[demonic]* *YES!* Your lover's mine, and now she *burns in Hell!!*
- The "thing in the woods" crashing through the wall at the climax.
- Or crashing through the car window and into the cabin, in previous pursuit of an Ash who
*knew* it would possess him again if it caught him.
- Bobby Joe's death. After running out into the woods in a panic, she encounters demonically possessed trees as she's attacked by branches and vines wrap themselves around her, dragging her off at high speeds deeper into the woods as she screams in terror before slamming her into a large tree. We never see the moment of impact, but it's clear it wasn't pretty.
- In the original script, the result is shown from a distance. It's...bloody.
- As Bobby Joe is being dragged, you can see the branches are stabbing into her skin.
- Deadite Ash! Yes, The Hero gets possessed (he gets better, but the first time it's nightmarish).
- Even better, it happens
*twice*, once early on and again in the climax.
- "JOIN US!"
- We don't see what the Henrietta Deadite does to Jake, but based on the sheer volume of blood that douses Annie, it's definitely not a pleasant death.
- The thing that makes the reveal of the Kandarian demon in the flesh so frightening is not so much the demon itself, but rather the extremely jarring and off-putting camera angle used in the scene. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/EvilDead2 |
Evil Dead Rise / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
**As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.**
- The cold open isn't necessarily tied to the plot of the film, but it sets the tone for a gory, terrifying story.
- Deadite-Jessica scalping Teresa by ripping off her ponytail.
- The deadite luring Caleb into the water before pulling him below the surface and then throwing his decapitated head back to shore.
- To cap it off, Deadite-Jessica rising slowly, out of the water, into the air, as the title drops in the horizon behind her. Even though she's only one Deadite, it effectively sells the blood-curdling terror of encountering something in the shape of a human, but beyond your comprehension.
- While the design of the book is less conspicuously flesh-like than in previous movies, it does come with a new chilling detail: it has teeth. A row of quill-like fangs that clamp it shut. When Danny accidentally cuts himself on trying to pry it open, it accepts this as a blood-offering and opens itself right in front of Danny and Bridget.
- Ellie's possession is just
*gruesome*. First, the disembodied spirit traps her in the elevator, taunting her with loud noises to put her on edge. It tries to hang her with one of the wires, and when she tries finding leverage, it grabs the rest of her limbs and contorts them till a *snap* goes off. By the time the possessed Ellie makes it back to the apartment, she looks like she'd been beaten to death. Considering what's happening to her, that would have been a mercy.
- Ellie comes home looking like hell, staring off into space while setting the stove and haphazardly tossing eggs—which have blood in them for some reason—into a pan, shell and all. She's trying to speak and mumbles, like her lips are stuck together, and stumbles over the word 'melodies' several times while telling a story, only for her voice to clear as she finishes said story by talking about how she wanted to
**cut her family's bodies open and climb inside them**. Then all of a sudden she drops the pan, staggers forward, and almost seems like she's having seizures, or else that *something* is dragging her body across the floor towards her family. Then, she says *"It's in me"*, vomits up a gush of white liquid, begs her sister not to let "it" take her kids, and dies right then and there.
- The way the scene is filmed, with Ellie crawling after her family after having trouble speaking while doing mockeries of ordinary housewife things, makes it seem like the demon finally just killed her to take over because she was Fighting from the Inside.
- Beth hearing Ellie's voice on her phone. Initially, it seems to just be a voicemail, but then it begins to change and Ellie begins to tell Beth that she needs her help and that she's "burning alive". This is truly disturbing as it would imply the real Ellie, her soul, is damned. However, it's unknown if this was actually Ellie pleading for help from hell or just the demon using an illusion to terrify Beth. For Ellie's sake, let's hope it's the latter.
- Ellie is "back to life" just long enough for her family to notice she's got an insanely high temperature, but when they try and drag her to a tub full of water, her eyes roll back in her head, she starts thrashing around, and then flies upward, clinging to the ceiling. The demon is officially in control as her eyes have changed, and the first thing she does is let out a blood-curdling scream that shatters the bathroom mirror and causes the cold water in the tub to violently boil.
- The Deadites are probably the most dangerous they've ever been in this one. In the previous films, dismemberment was a reliable impediment to either slow them down or (in the 2013 film's case) as a ritualistic way of exorcising the demon. Here? They can just reconstitute, Necromorph-style, and keep coming.
- Most of the movie features just one Deadite, with the characters all trapped in a single apartment, basically making this film a more supernatural, grittier version of
*Alien*. Imagine being trapped in your house with a Xenomorph that can think and reason like a human being. And that *looks like your mother*.
- The most terrifying part of the film is probably just all the distorted and horrific ways Alyssa Sutherland can contort her face.
- We're introduced to Deadite Bridget eating a wine glass. We even get a close-up shot of glass-shards almost poking through her throat as she swallows a mouth-full.
- Deadite Bridget mutilating Beth's leg with a cheese grater. We
*see* strands of skin slip through the holes of the grater!
- Everything about the Marauder form at the climax of the film: Deadite Bridget and Danny dig into the sides of their possessed mother and fuse the three of them together into a multi-limbed abomination that moves far too quickly and uncannily for its bulk and horrific conglomeration of bodies. Its kept mostly hidden except in glimpses at first, the hand it runs across a car window eerily recognizable as once belonging to one of the teens, but is seen in full during the final fight with the wood chipper. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/EvilDeadRise |
Empowered / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
Okay, thanks. We get the picture.
Y'know, for a book that began as a spoof on BDSM manga,
*Empowered* has gotten pretty goddamned grim.
Spoilers below.
- Knight of Cerebus Willy Pete wants revenge on Thug Boy for ripping him off. How? Well, the rest of the
*Witless Minions* were used to satisfy the physical lusts of a man who is walking flame. And because the normal orifices don't last long enough to finish the job because they burn too quickly... he has a thing for eyes. There's a reason Willy Pete has pride of place in Thug Boy's nightmares. He's since added eating bits of more durable living people to his repertoire, and frequently alternates between eating and sodomizing his victims in order to prolong their suffering for as long as possible.
- Basically, Willy Pete is a fire elemental. His entire body (yes, ENTIRE body...) burns incredibly hot. Flesh melts. Bone lasts longer. The skull is mostly bone, and eyes melt pretty fast...
- Speaking of the Witless Minions, one of the villains they rip off has his cooling vents shot out by Thugboy, leaving him to cook and suffocate inside his overheating armor.
- Mindf██k's backstory has a fair bit of this. It seems her rather psychotic brother had similar mental powers and used them to take over her motor functions in order to induce the whole Disability Superpower thing by forcing her to carve out her own eyes and tongue with a rusty pair of kitchen shears. Please note that Mindfuck was both conscious the whole time and well aware her brother thought he was doing her a favor.
- And if that wasn't enough, ||Volume 8 shows that, courtesy of Mindf██k's additional Power Incontinence while asleep, Spooky (and by extension, the reader)
**saw** this very moment, as Mindf██k has a nightmare over it.)||
- It gets better. See, ||Mindf██k's brother manifested his powers pretty early, so much so that the constant assault from the people around him traumatized him. He got over it when he discovered that he could edit
*himself*, meaning his personality, thought patterns, etc. But, he kept on editing and tweaking himself until he was a teenage boy with no fear, no doubt and thus, as Mindf██k puts it, "no consideration as to what he may be doing is wrong." That's nightmarish in and of itself. Now consider that he believed that making Mindf██k cut out her eyes and tongue were the *absolutely right things to do*, because it would make her a better telepath, and doesn't help that his pre-editing self perceived her sister to be a monster. It doesn't stop there, either: Mindf██k, partly in retaliation, edited herself after the event to be who she was when we saw her - she outright says that she doesn't know if the end result is her at all, and spent her life wondering if she was a monster like her brother thought before she edited herself.||
- As an aside concerning her fate. There is something fundamentally, viscerally horrifying about someone's limbs being hijacked and made to walk into a hole in the floor while they are fully aware and able to vocally protest. The fact that said pit was a single-use portal which was the only escape from a crippled space station (which was
*why* the Emp was screaming and begging, she thought she had a chance of surviving reentry and knew Mindf██k had none)? Does. Not. Help.
- And then, there's what Ninjette's ex-clan had planned for her (multiple amputations and a lifetime of rape) - and what happens to the assassins they send to collect her.
- The fate of Ninjette's first boyfriend. There's not enough Brain Bleach to fully describe her father's method of torture and murder.
- ||Ninjette's story of how she lost her virginity ends with her drunk father covered in blood standing over her carrying her lover's head stuffed with the kid's own genitals. Her father mentions he slaughtered the boy's clan members to get to him and that they're currently at war against their closest allies. A war which Ninjette won't be participating due to not being able to walk, eat solid food or piss without blood after he's done with her. To make matters even worse he tells her to take a good look at her first kill, stating it's her fault he had to kill the kid.||
- Ninjette's father is also the primary reason for the rift between F██king Oyuki-chan and Ninjette. ||He was raping Oyuki on a nightly basis, as the Kaburagi clan primarily uses women as broodmares. Ninjette decided to "help" Oyuki by using a jutsu to render her permanently infertile, so she'd only be valued as a warrior from then on. Oyuki agreed to this at the time, but is implied to have regretted this decision later.||
- Speaking of ninja... The Ayakami Clan. They could be anything or anyone (in fact one of them was seen disguised as a
*dog*), if paid enough they will cut you in literally a hundred pieces, and they have a technique that makes them immune to pain, meaning that no matter if you put a blade through their balls, pierce their eye and carve open their belly, they will come at you until they bleed out. And if you kill one of them in self-defence, the entire clan will come after you.
- The Ayakami's ultimate fate: ||Ninjette killed every single one of them. It started with a bomb, it continued with much bladework aimed mainly at vital point, and when the last three, an engaged couple and their best friend, had managed to capture her with a chain, she revealed that the girl was cheating on her boyfriend and provided convincing evidence, then, while they were distracted trying to convince the boyfriend it was only lies, she
*made the girl explode in flame*, and then brutally dispatched the other two while they were looking in horror at the burning corpse||.
- The Super Dead (don't-call-them-zombies), which are kept secret from the world at large, and from most of the superheroes as well. For people who have been reading superhero comics for a long time, a recurring theme tends to be the hero getting his powers from someone else, such as a wizard, God, an alien police corps or a reality warper. Well, Empowered has a twist on that—the varied superpower-bestowing entities are all the
*same person*, most likely the same kind of demon who gave Sistah Spooky her powers, and have been tricking hundreds of superheroes into bargaining themselves for powers, to the point where around half of all existing metahumans got their powers that way. However, what they don't know is, the bargain they make means that while THEY are still mortal, their POWERS aren't, and keeps them alive and sentient even after death, to the point where they're forced to live through their own decomposition as long as they have any brain matter left.
- As if that's not bad enough, once they fall into the clutches of DeathMonger ||who installs his necro-puppet-ware in them||, they're fully conscious with their bodies rotting in front of them
*and* ||forced to do his bidding like living... erm, un-living puppets||. So much to look forward to.
- And if Spooky's infernal service provider happens to be telling her the truth about what happened to Mindf██k... poor, poor Mindf██k. Adam Warren likes his woobies extra-broken, but it's depressing how many horrible things have happened to (arguably) the sweetest girl in the series.
- Mayfly. Spooky spells out that hundreds of people have died horrible deaths as a result of the mutagenic substance, and it's likely we're talking people's entire body exploding with cancer.
- Chapter 9 showed us a Mayfly victim. It's not pretty. ||Especially after Fleshmaster got his hands on it||.
- One of Emp's first times out as a cape and being buried alive and almost drowning in her own snot.
- Even worse, there is some implication that ||she DID die and is an unknowing Superdead.||
- Happily, in-universe evidence, specifically her relationship with Thugboy, point away from the above being correct.
- A single frame in Volume 11 ||confirms she didn't die. The suit's "Angel Mode" took over and fried the thugs||.
- Book 8 has, among other things, ||Spooky being embraced and dragged down by dozens of burning Mindf██ks, and the terrifying flashback of Mindf██k's mutilations.|| It's NOPE on an entirely new level.
- Also from Book 8, the end of the fight at San Antonio: ||after the initial attack from Thugboy and his friends, dozens of Capes and Villains had started an all-out fight when the leaders of the heroes decided to use an alien superweapon codenamed 'Vorpal Sword' (an aircraft-sized sword-looking submunition drone with enormous penetration abilities they had used for about ten years for shock and awe), and lost control of it||. The end result was a supervolcano, and the barely-avoided destruction of the whole American
*continent*.
- The special "Internal Medicine" is mostly a really weird humorous story set in the temporally asynchronous (that is, having more floor than it appears on the outside due most of them being shunted in another time and space) suprahuman treatment wing of the hospital drawn by a guest artist, but the two sequences at the start and the end drawn by Warren... The one at the start is the wounded and smouldering Emp of a possible future wandering through one of the hospital floors in shell shock while the hospital personnel deals with a mass casualty event, and that at the end is the elevator containing present day!Emp and Ninjette opening and meeting Future!Emp, who is shocked by the presence of Ninjette (who she calls Kozue in public) before realizing it's the one of her past and start crying, while we hear the shouts of the hospital's personnel describing the injuries they're trying to deal with and wondering if the guy with a powerful regenerating factor can regenerate from a pelvis and a pair of legs.
- Speaking of Ninjette, we know her as the hard-drinking party ninja, it's easy to forget she's just that: a ninja who's no stranger to dismembering people. We see it in full effect in Volume 7, where she unleash an unholy wrath against a group of bounty ninjas, at some points getting a scary look in her eyes. Then you have her Imagine Spot where she casually murders Sistah Spooky in the most brutal way for disrespecting Emp. Jette is scary when she's angry.
- Comparatively small considering everything else on the page, and made mostly through applying Fridge Horror but just the scope of Spooky's ||perma-bondage magnet curse on Emp||. She has, through the spell, more or less passively mind-controlled every villain who sees ||Emp||. That is simply scary. The part that bumps it up to terrifying is the sheer spite that went into the spell's impetus. This spell did NOT need to exist and was created to serve one (admittedly remorseful) woman's vanity.
- Emp's meta-awareness - which she employs during chapter introductions - means she is also aware that her comic's artist-writer has a history of Darker and Edgier plot twists where he wipes out entire rosters of heroes on a regular basis. Emp is pretty much aware that
*she and her friends can die gruesomely as a plot point at any given moment*.
- Volume 9 sees Emp have a rematch with ||Fleshmaster||, and not only is the torturous Body Horror he has inflicted on ||Manny|| horrifying and tragic, but when he restrains her it's
*very* clear she's not facing the humiliation she normally does... she's facing death, torture, mutilation, possibly rape (given the interest he showed in her during their first battle and his current behaviour). For all that he remains a pathetic figure, him saying "I've had weeks to plan each and every grotesque f**king atrocity I'm gonna inflict on you" is deadly serious.
- Volume 10 ends on the horrible cliffhanger of ||Thugboy suddenly, with no warning, being possessed by Mindf██k's psi-psychopath brother and viciously beating her with a club with a creepy blank stare on his face, quickly followed by Emp having a vision of Mindf██k telling her that her brother will torture and destroy her if she doesn't do exactly as Mindf██k says.||
- The discovery that Willy Pete ||was created by Mindf**k's brother
*on the order of the supers,* only to go out of control. Between that and the Vorpal Sword, it's looking more and more like people feared the Capes taking over *with good reason*.||
- Emp being put through Fight Your Friend for most of Volume 11, courtesy of Neurospear. It's bad enough for Emp to be put through an endless Zerg Rush of jerks-technically-on-the-side-of-good, but having to beat the crap out of the people she's spent the past ten volumes bonding with and finding acceptance with is beyond awful. The fighting is intercut with flashbacks to said Friendship Moments, just to rub it in further. And of course it all culminates in Neurospear sending Ninjette and Thugboy at Emp, letting us see the looks of frozen horror on their faces as they are compelled to fight her best friend and the love of his life, respectively.
*Everyone* is going to be needing a lot of therapy after this.
- The hypermembrane's "Angel Mode". Not only does it take over when it's at its limits to save Emp's life, it erases Emp's memories of those times, and apparently the near-death experience that comes before it (based on the fact that Emp's "buried alive" flashback in Deathmonger's lair seems to have come as a surprise to her). It also has no reservations about killing those who threaten to kill Emp (and probably the hypermembrane by extension), even when Emp would rather die. ||This resulted in the Angel Mode getting ready to kill the neuro-puppeted Thugboy and Ninjette, ignoring the wishes of Emp, when (ex-)Sista Spooky had her Big Damn Heroes moment.|| | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Empowered |
Evil Food Eater Conchita / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
- Banica's early childhood in the first chapter is very unnerving: The desperation of her household to keep themselves alive by eating anything they could get their hands on and becoming morbidly obese as a result, Meguru bullying her daughter and forcing food down her throat just because Banica isn't sick, and the entire household becoming a Dwindling Party as one by one the staff succumb to the disease. The worst part is the final scene, where ||a rabid Meguru decides to eat the corpse of one of their servants and Muzuri is driven to murder her in front of their young daughter.||
- This part of the novel also showcased the nightmare fuel that is the Gula disease: It gives its victims cravings for inedible and even dangerous things things like candle flames or broken mirrors. During the early stage of the curse, one of the Conchita estate's staff died after
*vomiting sewing scissors*.
- The lead up the infection of the household through Gula can be a bit unnerving itself, considering all of the bad signs Muzuri ignores—chief among them being the completely intact wineglass they find in the Baemu's stomach. No one can explain how it got there. and even the staff are creeped out.
- Most of the things that Banica eats are just nauseating, not necessarily scary. Although her first meal after making her contract, which featured
*live bugs*, comes pretty far up there.
- Conchita herself, especially late in the novel. Her grotesque tastes, her powers as Necromancer, which she uses to decimate an army, the fact that she punishes undead soldiers by ||eating parts of them while they are conscious|| and that she simply
*refuses* to die thanks to a Healing Factor granted through her Deal with the Devil. In the novel, her cannibalism of Carlos, Arte and Pollo is nothing but Nightmare Fuel. Conchita is more of a monster than a human by the end of her arc.
- There's a scene where she raises the undead soldiers to fight off the Beelzenian Army. It's all being witnessed by a horrified Carlos, who even recognizes some of the undead in the crowd as they
*literally tear the soldiers apart*. All this while Banica is on the ground dancing and laughing about how she's going to literally eat the whole world.
- Arte and Pollo are even worse than they were as Hansel and Gretel. Despite their ludicrously childish behavior they ||kill Ron Grapple, one of the sole survivors of the Gula disease in the Conchita household, solely because he tried to get rid of the wineglass||. From the way they act and talk about it, it seems almost like ||they were deliberately setting Conchita up to get possessed, from stealing the wineglass back from ABC-IR, laughing at Conchita's breakdown in the engagement dinner, and getting rid of anyone who tried to interfere with her contract||.
- Also worth noting is that before ||they kill him||, Ron realizes that ||he has
*no memory of hiring the twins at all*.|| It's a small detail, but it really shows just how *eerie* these two are.
- Not to mention when Platonic first breaks into the mansion, it's implied that the two of them recently
*crucified* Banica's latest cook.
- The demon of Gluttony—Conchita is never really able to perceive it as it speaks to her (offering her pig's blood to seal the contract), until the very end of the novel when she realizes it's a red, fat, pig monster. The fact that it spends their final encounter ||yelling at her to eat her own baby|| doesn't make it any cuddlier. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/EvilFoodEaterConchita |
Evillious Chronicles / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
"Where are you going with that glass, Mr. Grapple?"
From cannibalism to rape to just plain old demonic possession, there's a wealth of creepiness to be had in this series...
Novel-specific entries go on their respective trope pages.
**Beware of unmarked spoilers!**
## The Chronicles
- Conchita eating herself. Her grotesque tastes outside of cannibalism are also completely revolting.
- Many find the original EFEC song, with its disturbing lyrics and Banica's Descent into Cannibalism, to be nightmare fuel enough for this arc, let alone the content of the novel.
- The entirety of "The Lunacy of Duke Venomania" is pretty disturbing as well, with the title character making a Deal with the Devil in order to lure women into his harem and keep them as sex slaves. Oh and if you pay close attention to the PV, one of the members of his harem has her age listed
*as a single digit*.
- Allen's fate in the
*Story of Evil*.
- And what Riliane did to Elphegort.
- Riliane's tyrannical reign in general, where she executes innocent people for the flimsiest reasons, including Allen's crush. Seeing her in the manga declare she was dead serious about executing Allen—for not
*letting her win at tag*—was chilling.
-
*Wiegenlied* isn't safe either. Clarith's reaction when she hears about Michaela's death? She tries to *bite her own tongue out!* Even the soldiers holding her hostage were freaked out!
- Ney Phutapie is a fountain of Nightmare Fuel, from her maniacal murder of Michaela in
*Wiegenlied of Green* to raising the dead while laughing in *Praeludium of Red*.
- Then theres her at the ending of the manga "Retrouver of Silver", in which she stabs Mariam in the back while grinning maniacally.
- Somehow made even creepier in the non-canon stage musical—instead of stabbing her in the back, Ney sneaks up behind Mariam and
*slashes her throat*. And as poor Mariam stumbles offstage to no doubt suffer a *very* slow and painful death, Ney looks at the audience and smiles serenely.
- While also heartbreaking, Ney's Villainous Breakdown in
*Praefacio* was this. After having just gleefully stabbed Prim, she turns around and convinces herself Kyle did it, ranting about how she'll kill him for it. And then she gets completely possessed by Banica.
- "The Tailor of Enbizaka." The song itself is about the titular tailor being sad as she sees her lover with various girls, mentioning crimes happening around the neighborhood. Finally, when a man is killed, she notes that the four people killed were a family. Her "lover" had no idea who she even was.
- Margarita systematically poisoning
*everyone in her entire town* in "Gift from the Princess who Brought Sleep," and then she felt incredibly happy for it and poisoned herself too.
- After working on illustrations for the novel, Ichika has even said she finds Margarita the most terrifying of all the sinners.
*This* in comparison to Banica Conchita.
- "Red Shoe Parade." As cheerful as it sounds, once you realize exactly what's going on, it ends up making "Conchita" sound like a Sesame Street song.
- In "Capriccio Farce," we have Conchita's servants.
*Especially* the male one.
- Gallerian's slasher smiles. Especially THIS ONE.
- "Flower of the Plateau," in which Mikulia ||
*kills* two people, her old employer and *her own son* because they're the only ones who know that she used to be a prostitute||. The imagery doesn't help. The reveal that ||Mikulia succumbed to Death by Childbirth and that it was actually Eve|| *really* doesn't help.
- In "The Escape of Salmhofer, the Witch," we see Seth Twiright (played by Hiyama Kiyoteru) smiling creepily as he offers to let Meta become his lab rat.
- In "Project 'MA'", it is revealed that Eve's supposedly loving relationship with Adam ||started when he gave her a brainwashing drug called Venom, so she'd be easier to manipulate as Ma.||
- Just when you thought Hansel and Gretel couldn't get any creepier, they pull faces like THIS◊ in the "Waltz of Evil" guidebook. It just looks so...
*wrong*.
- "Blood-Stained Switch." Where to begin? The protagonist has a psychological disorder that causes a murderous alternate personality to take control of her body at random intervals, and even though the protagonist tries to fight against her, she can't keep her in check. Said alternate personality proceeds to brutally murder her father, leaving his corpse so badly mangled that it's not even recognizable as a human body anymore and instead looks like "a pulpy lump of blood and flesh". The protagonist then receives medication that is supposed to subdue her alternate self, but even this doesn't work.
- Oh and it gets better: One of her journal entries implies that her father raped her sometime before this. This makes his death seem considerably more justified...
- The ambiguity of Ma, the Sorceress of Time, as to who and what she is. Her creepy expressions whenever she appears don't help matters.
- Kayo Sudou deserves special mention for having some decidedly creepy scenes in the yonkoma. Though they're Played for Laughs, it descends into Fridge Horror when you realize that one of them has her following her 'lover' all around town, even when he's taking a bath, and he doesn't seem to notice. Just how long has she been stalking him for?
- "The Muzzle of Nemesis" features a younger Nemesis smiling sweetly after she kills her own half-sister with a giant, magical octopus.
- Going into this a little further, the whole sequence that focuses on Gallerian and his already creepy "doll obsession" has Nemesis' voice becoming warped from the rest of the song, and features a shot of the
*real* Michelle screaming in terror as shes about to drown.
- "And Then the Girl Went Mad -End of a Moonlit Night-" showcases Ma's horrible parenting skills; namely, she completely abandons Nemesis in their house in the woods, alone, until she slowly starts to go insane and forgets how to feel any emotion except...
*wrath*. Even worse is the fact that Nemesis starts hallucinating that Hansel and Gretel are taunting her and mocking her for being abandoned.
- The Muzzle of Nemesis album booklet reveals that Nemesis eventually became the Evillious equivalent of
*Adolf Hitler* (complete with being referred to as a "Fuhrer"). She also ends up creating a superweapon known as "Punishment" that could potentially cause the destruction of Evillious itself; during the test run, it burned *an entire forest* to the ground.
- And according to
*Seven Crimes and Punishments*? She succeeded.
- The instrumental "Welcome to the Forest" that opens the "Evils Forest" album. It starts out like a cute, happy romp you would hear in an adventure story. Then it begins to dissipate into something that sounds like it would be right at home in a horror movie. Fittingly enough, it leads into "Master of the Graveyard".
- The premise behind "Survival 'MA' -Who Will Survive?-". Four women are competing for the right to give birth to the Twin Gods, and all of them are stated as becoming downright demonic in their drive. Even more horrifying, Irina kills
*all of the contestants,* orchestrating Ly Li's death by falling off a cliff, Milky's apparent death by hanging, and literally stabbing Elluka (her own sister-in-law) in the back, shown to do it with a huge Slasher Smile in the PV.
- Full-Moon Laboratory is pretty creepy, especially since it's out of context of the rest of the series. The Rin-character up trying to revive something (or someone) in a lab? Staining her robes with blood doing so?
- "La la la la la la la lu lu lu..."
- One of the lyrics in the first verse is "I will destroy one thing and create something else". Later, she says "I will destroy one thing and keep on destroying". A small aspect of the song, but ominous nonetheless.
- Kayo's ultimate fate as revealed in "The Weathered Head at Onigashima". She was caught for her crimes, beheaded and her head was
*hung up in a gibbet and left to rot*.
- While there are high-tension points at several places in the story, it's especially creepy to see the Irregular that was born from the Clockworker's Doll in the "Seven Crimes and Punishments" story's final Wrath chapter. There's just something awfully
*uncanny* about him and how he chases Hansel and Allen brokenly calling for his mother, *the doll*.
- Levia and Behemo's backstory in "Barisol's Child is an Only Child". In particular, the fact that Levia was mentioned to have been turning into a HER and the implication that Behemo murdered his own girlfriend for not letting him wear her clothes.
- Ma's eventual fate at the end of the world in Master of the Heavenly Yard. Having been made up of three different souls, her consciousness would disappear upon death, as despite having a separate mind, she had no soul. In a world where your consciousness lives on as a soul after you die, the prospect of just ceasing to exist is terrifying.
- Or
*is* it? "grEAT Journey" reveals that Ma isn't truly dead—apparently, her desire to exist was so strong that she lingered on as a ghost, and now she's pursuing Banica Conchita and her companions for unknown reasons.
- The Court Ending. While Banica and her servants get to ||traverse other worlds in search of the ultimate evil food||, and everyone else gets to be reborn in Allen and Riliane's new world, Adam, Eve, Irina, and Gammon end up stuck in a "Groundhog Day" Loop, returning to a slightly different version of the Original Sin Story with no memory of the events of the series. A bit less terrible than it could be since it's only stated that history will repeat
*many* times, but still - all those tragedies that happened, all those lives that were lost, and every above entry on this page will happen again, and if they don't, god only knows what events might take their place. *The karma of "evil" is not over* indeed.
- Banica's Graveyard ending, meanwhile, gives her and her servants the power to travel to other worlds, sampling their residents as more "evil foods". The first world we see her in is a warring nation filled with abnormally large humans. She orders her servants to attack and kill these people and bring her back an enormous steak. Essentially, Banica and her servants never received any justice for their crimes and Banica, when you get right down to it, never changed.
- Lich Arklow and Eater Sabella. While Eater is really a dandere in a big body, that still doesn't explain just how
*big* he is. Heck, he's able to carry a LOT of people. And Lich's smile is just... *creepy.* It doesn't help that, although it's revealed that Lich is Michaela's older brother, it was also confirmed in a livestream that he's the Black Rollam Bird that attacked Michaela in Wiegenlied. Cain and Abel, much?
- In the PV for master of the heavenly yard there is a segment of total darkness with only the "Sleep Princess" alone in it. As she begins singing the opening of "Project 'Ma'" her voice slows down more and more as she repeats "My name is" before the screen glitches out as she closes in on the screen until it cuts out completely. A bit of a cheap shot jump scare, but the build up is perfect.
-
*The Karma of Evil will Not End*, the song describing the aforementioned Court Ending. The singer describes the "Groundhog Day" Loop that Adam, Eve, Irina, and Gammon are trapped in in a creepy near-monotone, and the usage of backmasked leitmotifs note : *Project 'Ma*' and *Prophet Merry-Go-Round* respectively, Sdrawkcab Speech, and general audio distortion gives it the musical equivalent of Uncanny Valley. The entire song feels *wrong*.
-
*Banica Concerto* has a very intense moment wherein the Neo Black Box starts to break down and nearly crash, which consists of Arte, Pollo, Lich and Eater all panicking as the ship's alarm goes off, the controls shut down, the power goes out, all escape methods are cut off, the emergency repairs fail and the fuel catches fire, all while Banica simply demands that fly toward her target at full speed. Fortunately, it's revealed at the end that they somehow managed to get the ship on track again.
- "Moonlit Bear", which starts off with Eve finding these magical fruits in a forest, taking them with the goal of making her husband happy and encountering an evil bear who wants the fruit back. Sounds like a nice adventure story, right? Then at the end it's revealed that the fruit are really babies and the bear is the distraught mother. Made even worse when it's revealed that she
*murdered the mother to steal the children*.
- While not as scary as some others, "Blood-Stained Switch" is still pretty creepy. A girl talks about how her father was slaughtered by the machinery in the factory he works in, and later reveals that she had an alter ego that killed him out of revenge for being abused by him. The song ends with the girl exclaiming that she's not evil, and begging not to be given an injection. It's even worse if you can read Japanese, where the girl's diary entries flash on the screen and tell about how her "kind father" was really abusive, implied to be sexually abusive.
- The fate of Eve's father in the
*Original Sin Story: Crime* novel.
## Fan content
- Just when you though Conchita couldn't get any creepier, we have this (gorgeous) cosplay version of the PV. Due to supplementary materials being lacking at the time of its creation, it takes a lot of artistic liberties, but those liberties manage to make the whole thing all the more unsettling; the video depicts the masterminds behind Banica's descent into madness as being none other than ||Arte and Pollo, who soon take delight in the revelation that Banica has gotten so gluttonous that she craves human flesh. They proceed to
*slaughter all the other servants in the manor*, in a montage interspersed with them serving Banica their remains, and it culminates in the two of them turning on each other||.
- Utaite Sekihan's cover of "Tailor Shop on Enbizaka" actually manages to be scarier than the original—during each verse, you can hear women Kayo is killing
*screaming*. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/EvilliousChronicles |
EVTV Weather / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
- There are a few creepy and distorted faces throughout the series, usually belonging to villains.
- The beginning of the Thanksgiving Special is a parody of this trope.
- The second Christmas special. "Who touched the body?"
- The opening of the Halloween special 'You und Ghosts' is much more frightening than the rest of the faux-documentary.
- The Super-Weather formed by the Oldest Star & Cloud. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/EVTVWeather |
Exalted / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
**As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.**
- The villainous factions (the Yozis and Infernals, the Neverborn and Abyssals, and the Fair Folk) are positively
*dripping* with this. It's a natural consequence of having such massively epic heroes; anything that can make *them* nervous is going to be terrifying beyond all reason by our standards.
- Bostvade, one of Szoreny's souls, is a living river of mercury who causes outbreaks of mercury poisoning and cajoles demons to swim through his essence.
- Kimbery sometimes floods parts of Malfeas, dissolving anything and anyone unlucky enough to be in her path. As if the horrors of Malfeas weren't terrifying enough, demons have to flee from
*acid tsunamis*.
- The Organ of Agonies, from
*The Compass of Celestial Directions: Malfeas*, deserves special mention. What is it, you ask? It's a musical instrument that you strap innocent victims into before playing... which it will then *torture to death, making paradoxically beautiful music out of their agonized screams.*
- The Phylactery-Womb, the storage entity for the Infernal Exaltations. Everything about...
*it*... will torment your mind on the threshold of your sanity. For just a few of the horrifying facts: She was a little girl named Lillun, who was raped, physically and spiritually, by the Ebon Dragon. This process warped her body into a malformed monstrosity that is mostly a semi-transparent flesh bubble with her child-like head, arms and legs dangling futilely outward. And though she is mostly mindless, alternating between staying silent or raving in mad tongues, sometimes, *sometimes,* she has enough sanity to try and call out to her mother and father for help. Oh yes, and there are *pictures.*
- In
*Return of the Scarlet Empress*, readers learned that the Ebon Dragon had her assist with the consummation of his marriage to the Scarlet Empress. Readers are not told the details, but the ordeal was so horrific that Lillin couldn't sleep for five days. It probably has to do with the fact the Empress is her own mother, who also sold her out to the Yozis in the first place.
- An Infernal that learns the "Swallowing the Scorpion" charm will be this for both Lilun and the Yozis, because when they do, their Exaltation will be completely freed from their control, even after death. Having a literal proto-Primordial on the side of Creation is one of the Yozis' worst nightmares. And Lilun? She will scream in agony as the liberated Infernal's Exaltation punches its way out of her body.
- The fate of the author of the
*Broken Winged Crane*, as detailed in *Return of the Scarlet Empress*. The Empress herself penned the original, which was actually a portal straight to the Ebon Dragon's prison. The book describes him skinning her in slow motion as a hello. It only gets worse from there.
- In
*Return of the Scarlet Empress*, the fate of the world if the Ebon Dragon succeeds in his plan is horrific. The world becomes a place of murder, depravity, and endless suffering, and while there is a slim chance that new Exalts can mount a rebellion, they will face daunting challenges.
- The fact that 150 of the Solar Exaltations were corrupted by the Neverborn and the Yozis is bad enough, but the fact that the rest could be corrupted takes things to a whole other level. The Deathlords have a Void Circle Spell that turns a willing Solar into an Abyssal, and if there is a way to capture Solar Exaltations, the Ebon Dragon will find it.
-
*Black Mirror Shintai* allows an Infernal Exalted to practically transform into another being, allowing the Infernal to not just impersonate their target, but use the powers they use. While there are so many ways this could count as nightmare fuel, the fact that demons and gods can be copied, as well as being able to use their panoply's, raises some insane scenarios. Such as an Infernal impersonating Lytek, giving the possibility for the Yozi's to gain not just 150 more Infernals, but infernal versions of Lunar and Sidereal Exalted.
- You do
*not* want The Timeless Order angry with you.
- Even if we forget about all the Cthulhu-esque horrors from beyond reality, we have such interesting cases as Tomb Beasts, lizards who have the curious and specific habit of eating their prey only while it still lives and never, ever eating any dead flesh. As such, they will carefully vivisect slices of flesh one at a time, so that their prey does not die until as much as possible is consumed.
- On the bright side, there are hundreds of people with powers far beyond any mortal. Except they're all going slowly insane, and half of the most powerful ones are seeking to destroy/conquer Creation for their dead/imprisoned (respectively) masters.
- And several of the ones without said masters are still potentially looking to do so. And in the case of conquest, they have a divine right to do so.
- A special note for the Abyssal Exalts: they've been created with the explicit purpose of destroying all of existence, and their powers have been specifically tailored to maximize their destructive potential. And if they choose
*not* to carry out their ordained purpose, they have a high chance of accidentally killing their loved ones.
- The Infernal book has to lead the charge, though, with poor Lillun. Squick, certainly, but reading her story will give you the need to put the book down and go watch some cartoons for a while. With the lights on.
- The Infernals cover◊. That thing in the bottom right is one guy's right arm. You can go curl up in a corner now.
- The Ebon Dragon, pictured above along with his sub-soul Erembour, is a walking, talking purveyor of this trope. Remember why that Stephen King short story "The Jaunt" is so horrible? The Ebon Dragon can do that to anyone he kills. Have fun spending eternity in a black oubliette where you will only experience the passage of time, from which you can't be released. No more fun for you, ever.
-
*The Compass of Celestial Directions: Malfeas*. The whole book, but especially the descriptions of specific locations in Malfeas, such as the Screaming Cathedral.
- Voidtech: Basically, imagine System Shock where SHODAN and the Many are one and the same, and you've gotten its physical effects. Mentally, it's a whole 'nother story.
- The Vodak is an Eldritch Abomination that hates all life, can replicate any entity it has eaten, and has Complete Immortality to boot. The only reason it hasn't done more damage than it has is because it burns up in sunlight, and so can't go outside of its caverns beneath Gethsemane. However, it's still the reason the people of Gethsemane refuse to go into the lower city.
- The sesseljae, a race of demons, serve up a nice big batch of Body Horror, thanks to their ability to crawl through a human body like a worm burrows through dirt, and their appetite for diseased flesh. However, they're actually relatively harmless, and even quite helpful for curing people of dangerous illnesses or ridding their bodies of deadly toxins.
- Their nickname, the stomach bottle bugs, comes from the tendency of some demonologists to store sesseljae inside their own stomachs, as a preventative measure against poison and disease. While practical, this understandably creeps out many people.
- Any description as to how the Exalted transformed Theion into Malfeas is terrifying on a cosmic level. According to the books, they castrated him, ritualistically killed his fetich soul, and then
*turned him inside out* to make him into what he is. Thus, it's understandable why he's essentially the embodiment of every anger trope in existence.
- The mere idea of the Unconquered Sun pulling a FaceHeel Turn. There is one timeline where he remained loyal to the Primordials, Gunstar Autochthonia, and he's the biggest danger Autochthon and the exiled Exalted face.
- Lunars. They kill people to steal their appearances, and they can disguise themselves as anyone or anything. If a Lunar wants you dead, you're basically trying to fight The Thing, except it also knows kung-fu.
- Hearteaters. They are eternally driven to make those with Intimacies towards them into pawns, and if they're killed within range of a suitable pawn the Exaltation simply jumps to said pawn. Even worse, they were once the genuinely heroic Auroral Exalted before their Incarna's murder twisted them into what they are now.
- Arcane Fate is rather nightmarish for the uninformed newly Exalted Sidereal, who are forgotten by everyone they know and love, with even most other Exalts and gods being resistant at best. Hell, in 3e the Sidereals got off the hook for usurping the Solars by the Unconquered Son in part because Sol could tell just how much their new curse sucked. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Exalted |
Ex Machina / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
- Nathan's facility experiences frequent power outages. Whenever it happens, everything becomes saturated with a bright red light and all the doors automatically lock. Sweet dreams.
- Caleb discovering the full extent of Nathan's AI experiments.
- Nathan's murder at the hands of his creations, Ava and Kyoko. The look on his face says it all.
- Caleb's fate at the end of the movie: trapped inside Nathan's room at the bottom of his facility and left to die by Ava. He tries to access the computer only to immediately trigger a power outage. Cue the red light, except this time it's not going out. The last we see of Caleb, he's behind the door, screaming frantically and trying futilely to break the glass, not producing a single sound on the other side.
*Kyoko's* fate at the end of the movie. Nathan punched Caleb hard enough to render him unconscious for a few minutes. Afterwards, he punches Kyoko in the same manner, taking her jaw out and making her "drop dead" for good, but is this the case? Perhaps the punch was hard enough to shatter her "brain" (thus "killing" or "deactivating" her), or... perhaps it simply severed its connection to the rest of Kyoko's body, putting her in a And I Must Scream position for the foreseeable future).
- The implications of the ending. Ava, an incredibly lifelike AI with a talent for manipulation and full access to the In-Universe version of Google, escaping into the human world. Whether or not she has any morals whatsoever is left entirely unclear, but she has at least shown a willingness to kill humans in order to preserve her own life. She can also tell how people are feeling based on their facial expressions. And now she's practically indistinguishable from an actual human being.
- There are many onscreen gore shots in this series, one that stands out in particular is on a homeless man being eaten alive by rats.
- A woman's mind getting tainted by a broken shard of an artifact who cuts off her own arm, and murders her own husband, son and pet dog, leaving their bodies in the sewers.
- The series of graffiti images on the subways that create a moving picture when seen from inside the subways. One passenger stabs her eyes out when seeing them.
- The Makers, technological demonic monstrosities that gave Mitchell and others superpowers, so that they could help them take over the world. They've traveled across many dimensions, conquering many earths.
- A woman sets herself on fire to protest the jailing of her son over a minor drug charge. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/ExMachina |
Eyes Without a Face / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
The film:WARNING: Spoilers Off applies to Nightmare Fuel pages. The opening credits music composed by Maurice Jarre, an eerie, fairground-like waltz that's truly hair-raising. The surgery scenes. You'll never see accommodating middle-aged women (or Alida Valli, for that matter) the same way ever again... Christiane's mask, while extremely well-made and pretty, is quite creepy. And most definitely Christiane's horribly scarred face which frightens herself more than anything. The ending, where Louise gets stabbed in the neck with a scalpel, Dr. Génessier has his face ripped off by his own maddened dogs, and Christiane wanders off into the night, free but likely quite mad. The music only enhances the mood of the scene — beautiful yet immensely unsettling. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/EyesWithoutAFace |
Expedition / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
These aren't aliens. They're Earth cows...or
*used* to be.
Quite a lot. The surreal and bizarre anatomy of the creatures can be quite disturbing to some.
- Earth's environment may qualify as this. Toxic air, polluted oceans, swarms of giant mutated insects, the few remaining animals in zoos, such as cows, with horrible deformities that leave them
*essentially faceless...*
- Skewers, flying, stealth-bomber-like creatures that impale their prey on long, sharp proboscises and drain the fluids of the unfortunate, still-living victim. The worst part? They hunt practically anything and everything that moves. Nothing on Darwin IV is safe from them. Not even the T.rex sized Arrowtongue, the apex land predator, or
*even the mighty Emperor Sea Strider itself.*
- Forest Gulpers are basically a big, slimy stomach with tiny atrophied wings. Unable to move around to hunt, they lure small creatures called Spadenoses into their cavernous mouths using scent and sonar pings, and then slowly digest the unwary victim alive...
- The Eosapiens may qualify as well. They are known to hunt top predators, such as Arrowtongues and Skewers, seemingly for sport, and to top it off, they also appear to be intelligent, crafting their own weapons and tools. Fortunately, they seemed to be non-hostile to the human explorers.
- ...though the two probes in the documentary adaptation were not so lucky. With the Eosapiens mistaking their disc launch for an aggressive attack, they violently
*tear the probes apart*, with the final transmission of the disk camera, before going offline for good, being the Eosapiens carrying Ike and Leo's battered remains off to who knows where...
- Beach Quills. These needle-like organisms live in colonies up to a million strong. When another animal passes by, they launch themselves at it with a powerful muscular foot, piercing their hide and injecting them with a lethal neurotoxin. They're able to bring down creatures as large as the Groveback, which inevitably die a slow and painful death due to their size. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Expedition |
Everything's Eventual / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
In one short story *The Man in The Black Suit*, a boy goes fishing and ends up meeting the Devil, described as having burning eyes, shark-like teeth, clawed fingers and the odor of burnt match heads. The Devil tells the boy terrible things, such as his mother dying while he was away and his plans to devour him alive. Through quick thinking, the boy distracts him by offering the fish he's caught, and runs exactly like hell is right behind him. What's even worse is that the monster pursues him until he reaches the outskirts of the forest. Go forward many years later and the boy is now an old man terrified by the prospect of death, fearing that the Devil will return to take him away and he will be too old to escape from him a second time.
*Well, look at that. A little fisher boy...* | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/EverythingsEventual |
Extreme Ghostbusters / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
Thanks to catering to a 90's audience and having a harsher style and color scheme, The Nightmare Fuel present in this particular series is even higher than in either the live action films or *The Real Ghostbusters* — there's a reason it's called *"Extreme"*. One can only wonder what another outing for the Boogieman would have been like.
- Many of the show's villains clearly fall into Eldritch Abomination territory. A hell of a lot more than in any other entry of the franchise.
- The show's sheer amount of Body Horror and And I Must Scream. People get turned into Cenobite-esque zombies, monster clowns or mummies, or get their eyes, bones or brain sucked out of their body...
- "The Crawler" has Cohila, an ancient insect god, kidnap Janine to turn her into his new insect queen. Janine's transformation is especially scary because of the weird, womb-like mutation egg she's trapped in before breaking free from it, gasping for air, then screaming in terror because the front of her torso from (apparently) neck to groin has turned into chitin. Also, she begins to look like a praying mantis at one point, which she's coping with, but she apparently still has eyelids.
- "Killjoys," the episode where Eduardo gets turned into a grinning vampire clown, pushes the concept of Monster Clown up to eleven by presenting demons that take on the appearance of clowns and feed on laughter before sucking the victim's entire body into their mouths, leaving only their clothes behind. Think of Pennywise, but with laughter instead of fear... To make matters worse, these demons are drawn to laughter (even the slightest laugh can attract them), they can turn other people into clown demons like in the case of Eduardo, and they will try to force people to laugh if they aren't doing so already.
- The fact that the faces of their victims appear on the palms of their hands, constantly laughing.
- The Pied Piper who leads the ghosts out of the city. It turns out that he is also a Humanoid Abomination ghost that projects the ghost from a mouth in its chest and when he doesn't get his payment he attempts to lead the children out of the city as well, and into the sea. The musical riff that the piper plays is scary too.
- What makes it worse is that, unlike the original story, the Piper got what he originally requested as a reward...so he starts demanding a ridiculously extravagant increase like a statue in his honor and an office. It was never about the money; it was about getting the children all along.
- There exists a version of the outro sequence without the theme song, and only has some ambience while the viewer is presented with several disturbingly-detailed sketches of the series' supernatural beasties while some legitimately creepy "ghost sounds" are played back. Without the amazing theme song to groove to, the "ghost sounds" make the presentation of the ghost artwork extra spooky. Several viewers, including some commenters on YouTube, have admitted to being spooked by this "no-BGM" outro for
*years*. Listen to Track 29 here, it's fittingly titled "The Creeps."
- Or you can watch the actual outro sequence here.
- "Grundelesque," which showcases the return of the Grundel. What can be worse than a monster that embodies parental fear: A child abductor? Perhaps most terrifying is its mantra when trying to get Kylie to come out. By all accounts, the Grundel did this to her for
**DAYS**, giving her no peace. And then he stole away her only friend, Jack, while she fearfully begs him not to listen. Worse off, the Grundel has a special obsession and hatred for Kylie due to resisting his temptations in the past and devotes himself to killing her once he manages to get free. Imagine if the nightmare from your past remembered you and came back to finish you off.
- "Deadliners." It's an episode about a Stephen King lookalike who writes about beings obviously based off the Cenobites that were using him to publish books about them that made them real so they can go out and hunt people to use as their flesh sculpture. As expected from such a potentially terrifying premise, the episode had some of
*the* worst Body Horror you'd ever find in a cartoon aimed at kids. Not only that, the monsters are invincible unless their script is destroyed which they try to prevent by forcing the writer to write down whatever horrible fate they have in store for their victims.
- In "Slimer's Sacrifice," Slimer is brainwashed into damaging Eduardo's life support system, to the latter's clear confusion and horror, while grinning widely and then is released to find his friend choking to death before being told he did it all. And the rest of the team has either been brainwashed into the villain of the episode's loyal minions or fighting for their own lives so there was no one coming to help.
- "In Your Dreams" originally was supposed to be worse for Garrett. His mother was supposed to randomly show up in his dream and
*torture him with a cattle prod!* And what made it into the episode (him being knocked out of his wheelchair and being abused in the middle of a ball game in full view of a referee and an audience (all the other players were in wheelchairs now too), with no signs of any of it stopping and with little to no chance of fighting back) is still pretty terrifying, especially when he starts to sound like he's breaking down right before he wakes up. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/ExtremeGhostbusters |
Evil Con Carne / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
General Skarr's meat is visible.
- Hector's ways to Take Over the World can either be funny or give a good scare.
- Boskov and Cod Commando getting The Ludovico Technique from A Clockwork Orange. In Boskov's case, it makes him more feral.
- Hector getting squished by his army in "Tiptoe Through The Tulips".
- Hector getting eaten by the Crack Commandos of S.P.O.R.K. in the pilot.
- Skarr getting his face ripped off to the point of his flesh being revealed (As seen on the image above.) in "The Right To Bear Arms".
- Hector being reduced to a brain and stomach after the explosion in his origin episode. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/EvilConCarne |
Everything Into Darkness / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
To think a Crossover story could have so much terror ...
- The whole concept of the story is inherently frightening; ||Ikutsuki|| was an ineffectual Smug Snake, but at least in canon, he was patient enough to wait for ||all twelve Shadows to be destroyed
||
- It Gets Worse; the dragons find themselves in a city where there
**aren't** men and women specifically trained to kill them, and the buildings are made out of metal instead of stone. It might not have been as good to work with, but at least brick was relatively fireproof! Chapter one in particular notes that the dragons flying by cause enough air pressure to shatter the windows in the building, and the one that ends up chasing down Shinjiro and Ken managed to knock over a building when it landed.
- Even more horrific; it's
*still the *. In other words? Everyone is asleep in coffins, completely defenseless from the dragons, who seem completely capable of breaking them open to get at the humans inside. **Dark Hour**
- The dragon who tried to chase down Shinjiro, Koromaru and Ken after eating Takaya. It tried roasting them while they ran away from it, knocked over a fire escape to separate Ken and Koro from Shinjiro after Ken had twisted his ankle, nearly succeeded in eating Ken before getting the fire escape blasted into its face just long enough for Shinjiro now carrying Ken and Koromaru to make a mad dash to the shrine. Once Ken and Koro were inside the shrine, Shinjiro decides to fight it off, knowing very well it will more than likely end up eating him. If ||Theodore|| hadn't arrived,
**it would have.**
- There's implications that Ken while he couldn't see the whole fight could hear it going on. As a later chapter reveals, ||he and Shinjiro are half brothers.
**Ken nearly heard his older brother get eaten in an attempt to **|| *save his life.*
- Ken seems to get put in a LOT of peril the first few chapters; upon his arrival in Elibe, he winds up on the Dread Isle. In an area crawling with Morphs. That nearly find him. Heaven help the world if they had; who knows what sort of damage Nergal could do with the quintessence of a Persona-user
- ||Ikutsuki's|| death in chapter five isn't exactly pleasant either. While it isn't shown in explicit detail, he was thrown to a
*pair* of dragons. Who decided to share him. For as much shit as he caused, that was **still** one hell of a bad way to go.
- A different type of Nightmare Fuel; Yukari has no clue if her friends are alive or dead. All she knows is that ||one dragon nearly ate one of the senpai,|| and that the rest of S.E.E.S was "disposed of". Coupled with her armed with a staff against things with armor that's more than likely tough enough to survive being shot with her arrows, it's no wonder the girl is ready to give up at first.
- Hell, her scene
*starts* with her hiding from the dragons while trying to figure out how to get to safety without being spotted and eaten. She's unarmed, wearing nothing more than pajamas, and there's dragons *everywhere*. For her, it might as well be a case of The End of the World as We Know It. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/EverythingIntoDarkness |
Evil (2019) / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
**WARNING:** Spoilers are unmarked.
- George the demon approaching Kristen in pilot is both creepy and predatory.
- If that weren't enough, George attempts these same tactics on one of Kristen's daughters.
- Eric nearly succeeding in his attempt to drown his baby sister.
- Some seriously disturbing images are seen by the girls while playing the Augmented Reality game.
- Townsend corrupting a Hollywood Homely teen who had bad luck with the ladies into a full-blown terrorist incel. Subverted all the way to a Funny Moment when the kid stocks up on all his guns, but accidentally blows his
*own* brain out before he manages to blow out anyone else's. Then again, there's enough foreshadowing beforehand that it probably *wasn't* accidental.
- Girls at a Catholic school becoming infected with an Ear Worm, a song that they can't stop singing or get out of their heads to the point where two of them jam sharp objects in their ears to get the sound to stop.
- Leon's wife giving birth to an honest-to-God
in a cornfield. **ghoul**
- A woman pregnant with fraternal twins, with her son devouring her daughter while both are in-utero.
- The team put some spyware on Leland's laptop, but Ben discovers while observing him that Leland can seemingly see
*him* while on the laptop, and his evil laugh and distorted smile into the camera is downright terrifying.
- Ben accidentally discovers that playing the Elevator Game in a particularly apartment building brings the player to a forgotten sub-basement, and traps them there. Forever. Ben finds the bodies of a previous couple who died there because they both independently played and
*won*. The experience traumatizes him so much that he starts seeing his rapist, the succubus Abbey, during the day, when she had previously existed only as a nightmare.
- Kristen's run in with a ghost haunting the same apartment complex. The ghost is only the upper portion of the dead woman, having been supposedly cut in half by the elevator, and she drags herself along by her hands, making the most god-awful noises with her fingers. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Evil2019 |
Fablehaven / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
## Fablehaven
## Rise of the Evening Star
- The Revenant. Holy crap the Revenant.
- Everything about it, from the slow, deliberate way it moves, to the creepy, serene smile on its face, to the nail sticking from its neck.
- Even worse, we never learn what it does to its victims making it an example of Nothing Is Scarier.
## Grip of the Shadow Plague
## Secrets of the Dragon Sanctuary
- Warren getting trapped in the knapsack. We never get to see the world from Warren's POV, but imagine waking up to find that you're suddenly trapped in a one-room Pocket Dimension with no contact to the outside world. His allies also have no way of retrieving him. ||He gets rescued in the next book,
*three months later*||.
## Keys to the Demon Prison | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Fablehaven |
Evil Dead (2013) / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
*"We're gonna get you. Not another peep. Time to go to SLEEP!"*
- The Deadites, unlike their main series cousins, are played as completely straight, gone is the Narmy taunts and attitude, and Black Comedy slapstick, and replaced with pure evil, cruel, creepy, and sadistic, serious monsters.
- The opening scene, in which a teenage girl is captured by a clan of frightening, disfigured backwoods people, then horrifically and graphically burned alive by her father in order to drive out the Deadite possessing her. What makes it bad is that before she is burned, the girl is pleading for her life,
*begging* her daddy to hold her again. Then suddenly, the Deadite kicks in and screams, *"I'LL RIP YOUR SOUL OUT, YOU PATHETIC FUCK!"* When the flames ignite, she screams, *"YOU MOTHERFUCKER! I WILL KILL YOU! LIKE I KILLED YOUR * Dear God. **WHORE!"**
- Her father can't bear to listen to her screams as she burns, and shoots her in the head — and, in doing so, unknowingly causes the ritual to fail, damning his daughter's soul (and adding to the body count that will eventually help unleash the Abomination).
- The possession sequence is a drawn-out nightmare. Eric, being Too Dumb to Live, is reciting words he's found in the book, and with each one, we get a P.O.V. Cam of
*something* flying through the woods towards the cabin at high speed. Then Mia, tweaking out hard from withdrawal, steals the car and runs away from the group, only to end up alone in the woods with the demon—see directly below for details on that.
- The tree rape is
*much* worse than the scene in the original. The trees wrap around Mia's arms and legs, hoist her up in the air, and pull her legs apart, with what seems to be a slimy bushel of thorns crawling up Mia's thigh and heading into her genital region (and likely into her vagina) and getting her possessed that way as they apparently come to reside within her. And yes, you get to view the *whole awful thing*.
- Even worse, the thorny branch is vomited up by the Abomination itself — while it takes the form of (what appears to be) Mia's possessed, future self.
- Once she's brought back to the cabin near-catatonic, Mia begs David to listen and says there's something in the woods that followed them back to the cabin. He assures her everything is alright, then leaves, and Mia stares into the corner, where her Deadite self is posed in a painting before turning to the camera and shrieking.
- David finds the dog, Grandpa,
*bloody and bashed to death*, with sharp scene cuts indicating Mia attacked the poor animal with a *hammer*. When he tries to confront her about this, she's in the shower, and with hollow, dead eyes, she's turned the heater on so high that the water gives her horrific burns, her skin boiling and blistering!
- David tries to drive her to help...only to find that the road has been completely flooded off seemingly out of nowhere. When he gets out of the car to see it up close and turns around, Mia, previously unconscious, is staring right at him. She's taken back to the cabin...
- And escapes the room she's kept in with a
**shotgun** in hand. David tries to remove it from her and gets shot in the shoulder, and all of a sudden *lightning strikes the house*, a *howling demonic voice* tells all of them they're all going to be taken one by one, and then Mia, fully possessed, drops her head and stares directly forward before saying this line: **You are all going to die tonight.**
- Olivia is exposed to infected blood (vomited on her by Mia), and is almost immediately possessed, taken by the entity as soon as she makes it to the bathroom in pursuit of sedatives and to wash up. The cabinet mirror she opens to find the sedatives slowly closes, showing her a vision of her own possessed face, with Deadite eyes and all the flesh sheared off of her jaw.
- The bathroom sequence. We are first treated to a terrifying scene of Olivia getting possessed, in which she suddenly
*freezes* out of nowhere as the demon takes over her body, and we see her *piss her pants*. It cuts away to Eric, who checks on her after a bit, to find the bathroom pitch dark and the light flickering like a strobe. We hear a sound of slicing; Eric finds Olivia hunched over in the shower, and she turns to reveal that *she has cut off her entire cheek from lip to ear with a piece of glass*. What follows is a *gruesome* 2-minute brawl that involves said piece of glass, a syringe, and a broken piece of toilet that Eric uses to finally bash Olivia's brains in. Olivia's body then twitches violently on the ground as she dies, after which the camera pans to a view of her crotch, with her panties stained wet with the urine her body excreted as she died. And this is a *mild* version of what comes later.
- The whole scene where Natalie gets infected by Deadite Mia. First Mia
*slices her own tongue in half with a knife* and kisses Natalie, pouring infected blood through her mouth, and also biting her hand. After a while, Natalie notices her hand is starting to mutate from the bite, so she resorts to *cutting it off with an electric carving knife*.
- The Deadites in this one are hideously calculating. Natalie, undergoing the beginnings of possession, is trapped when all the doors start to close, cutting her off from help. She looks at the living room, where Deadite Mia is poking her head up through the basement trapdoor (which, by the way, was
*nailed shut*). Deadite Mia taunts her, and seems to freak out, warning her not to cut off her arm, and Natalie does it anyway. Of course, by the time it's severed, the Deadite has receded into the basement and is laughing hysterically, because even though she did remove her arm, the infection was still going to happen because of the infected kiss, and the following is even more gruesome.
- The nature of Natalie's arm 'mutating' deserves mention here. First of all, her bite wound is mangled and raw, appearing necrotic. Then, Natalie begins to squeeze her wound, and
*black masses which look like tiny leeches* fall out of her flesh. Finally, her skin rapidly begins to turn black and rotting, until her whole arm is a bloody lump of bloody, tumorous scar tissue.
- To wit, the Deadite possessing Mia stays in the basement when all indications are that it could escape any time. It even stays down there when the door is open and David is vulnerable. It's
*thrilled* to infect the cabinmates one by one and watch their possessed selves inflict further chaos, almost seeming to control them like a proxy in certain scenes.
- Deadite Natalie. Mia and Olivia behaved like bona fide insane people, but Natalie looks, sounds, and behaves like a
*monster*. She moves slowly, possessed of a haunting Kubrick Stare, making the sickening clicking noises previously heard during possessions. She starts shooting her face with the nailgun and then goes to shoot nails into Eric's arm and beat him up with a crowbar. David has no other choice than *shooting her with the shotgun to remove her other arm*. To put the sprinkles on the sundae, this successfully purges the demon and Natalie regains control for a while, not knowing why she is mutilated and dying in agony from her wounds in David's arms.
- Deadite Natalie doesn't just beat them up with the crowbar—her first swipe on Eric
*destroys* his hand when he tries to shield himself with it. His fingers are bent and splayed, his palm is widened and cracked down the middle, and the finger that got the direct hit is *broken off backwards*.
- David burying Mia alive to try to kill her long enough to release the entity from her body. It tries to dissuade him by pretending to be Mia, screaming, crying, and begging; when
*that* doesn't work, it hits him where it hurts the most (in a Voice of the Legion, no less): **Demon!Mia**: Why do you hate me, David? *[David stops digging.]* **Demon!Mia**: I know you do. You left home. You left me all alone with our *sick mother*, when I was just a kid. *[David stares down at her in horror.]* **Demon!Mia**: You made me lie. Every time she screamed your name, I told her you were coming to see her. Like you promised. But you never did. **David**: Please stop it. I'm begging you... **Demon!Mia**
: I know mother hates you now. And she waits for you in Hell.
*[Chuckles]* **David**: Shut up... SHUT UP.
- Just when it looks like Mia's been successfully cleansed and brought back to life,
**Deadite Eric** shows up, in the most awful way—with a surprise stab to David's throat. From there, Eric barely moves, simply keeping its awful blank eyes on David as he shambles away, trying to stop the bleeding. The cabin is completely dark, so when it finally does start to walk after David almost casually, it's but a shadow against the light of the window. Once David shoves Mia out, it slowly advances on him with a pair of pliers in hand, and no one wants to know what it might've been planning on doing with them before it got blown up. It gets two whispered words out before David sets the cabin on fire: **Deadite Eric**: *It's coming...*
- The abomination being released.
- The whole battle with the Abomination is the stuff nightmares are made of. It does. Not. Stop. Attacking. The creature starts by dragging itself out of the mud like a zombie; when Mia tries to escape in the jeep, it smashes through the window and drags her out. She tries to hide in the tool shed, only for the Abomination to start stabbing through the walls of the shed; it misses Mia's body, but knicks the top of her leg — which is
*slowly* sliced open as the blade is drawn back. The next stab goes *directly* into her leg. Mia flees the shed, chainsaw in hand, only for the Abomination to stagger out of the shed behind her, wielding a machete. She tries to hide under the jeep, but the Abomination flips it over, pinning Mia's arm While the Abomination threatens her, she manages to get free by *tearing her arm off*. Only then does she turn the chainsaw on her double, slicing it in half *head first*.
- On a more subtle note, the "updated" version of the Necronomicon. In the original trilogy, it was kind of creepy yet still rather obviously a B-movie prop, not much unlike something you'd find in a Halloween store. This one however looks FAR more disturbingly authentic and unholy than ever before. The patchwork binding made from necrotic human skin alone is just plain discomforting, to say nothing of the contents of the pages within.
- The music in the movie is spine-chilling. Special mention goes to the absolutely psychotic music that plays when the Deadites attack, with "Psycho" Strings galore. An extra special mention for the Silent Hill siren that rings out whenever a Deadite is revealed—Roque Baños knew what he was doing with that soundbyte.
- While nowhere near as bad as the other examples, Ash looking at the camera in The Stinger with a Scare Chord of some sort will still probably catch people off-guard. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/EvilDead2013 |
Ephemeral Prince / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
- Zuan. He has a nasty habit of freezing people's legs in place so they can't run away when he wants to talk to them (rumor has it he used to be an executioner and he would do this to condemned prisoners before killing them), he seems to be a bit too gleeful about things like setting scarecrows on fire, and he would willingly ||send people to war who have no business going to war.||
- In Snowe's nightmare, Astra makes an appearance. She looks away for a moment, and then looks back, and her face has disappeared.
- ||Hiante||. It's terrifying when ||one of your former friends|| is trying to hunt you down because ||a demon forced you to kill people dear to both him and you.||
- The mere fact that
*Fleeting* takes place after the bad ending, meaning that ||despite all the effort and sacrifices the party had made, Xiri *won* before this story even began||.
- The scar across Snowe's eye. When he's being healed up after being found on the ship, it's commented judging by that scar, someone really had it in for him. ||That was Erio who did that. Apparently he was just as serious as Hiante when he said he'd kill Snowe if anything happened to Astra. And Erio's older sister thinks he didn't cut deep enough. Ouch.||
- The revelation that ||Snowe turns out to have
*not* survived the Hopeless Boss Fight against Lorel. He's been Dead All Along, kept animated by Xiri's magic this entire time||.
- The whole notion that ||in order for Beliaz to be able to turn back time, Snowe will have to devour Xiri. And in Chapter 19, he
*does*.|| | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/EphemeralPrince |
Exit/Corners / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
**As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.**
- The first chapter begins with the dawning realization of the Contestants that they need to escape from the hotel that they are trapped in, or else face being killed if they do not complete all of the puzzles in time. The chapter then ends with Ink suddenly coughing up blood, complete with a shot of his hand being covered in red, and an expression of Ink's shocked face.
- The time-limit is not the only danger the Contestants have to worry about, they are also faced with several traps placed all around the hotel. One could face being trapped in a small elevator slowly filling with water, or be trapped inside a boiler room where the room temperature is getting higher and higher by the second. The traps placed in each Contestant's 'Corners' are no less terrifying, and are also appears to be designed to cause the most physical and mental trauma to their respective Contestants, to the point where they contemplate suicide to escape the pain.
- Ink's episode where a room appears to have be torn into two, slowly filling the screen with a faint radio static and loud distorted noises. While the 'tear' in the walls grows bigger and bigger, Ink suffers a panic attack and begs his Contact Sean to help him all the while.
- The second 'Corner' poses a bigger threat than the first. While the first one involved pushing Beth to remain inside her 'Corner' and be suffocated with laughing-gas, she was still able to escape of her own volition. Rae in his own 'Corner' has no such luck. His arm ends up trapped inside a device during a puzzle made for him, where the device then sets off a trap to deliver excruciating pain to Rae every twelve minutes, until he cannot take anymore and considers swallowing pills of potassium cyanide to end his suffering.
- Liza's predicament, if one closely examines her actions in the game. Having lost the ability to see at four years-old after a bad accident, Liza grew up blind. Suddenly at the age of eighteen she is kidnapped and wakes up in a run-down hotel, having suddenly gained the ability to see. Before she can even marvel in joy, she is threatened into silence by the same person who kidnapped her, threatening that she will be blind again if speaks of it to the other Contestants, who she will soon meet once Exit/Corners begins. Her kidnapper also mentions off-handedly that someone among the Contestants should not be trusted and may wish to do her harm, and the only person she can trust is her own father via her Gemini device, who struggles to find and rescue his daughter from a death-trap that threatens to kill everyone inside if they do not escape in time.
- Chapter 24: The Death Trap in Liza's Corner. Everyone (sans Rae) is trapped inside the room behind the Black Door that is slowly being filled with poison gas, and the only way out is to have one person stay behind and keep their hand on a scanner that will open the exit if it detects a pulse. Unless someone can find a loophole, at least one Contestant has to stay behind to keep everyone else alive.
- And then come Chapter 25, and after a long and agonizing search for an escape from this predicament, Sean ultimately decides to stay behind. Ink is forced to leave with everyone and abandon his only friend to die a slow death.
- The implied intent for the mirror in Liza's Corner. Had Liza stayed behind as she had volunteered in Chapter 25, her last memory before she perished would have be looking at the mirror and seeing her face being disfigured by the poison gas. Considering how much Liza had wanted to see what she looked like after having lost her sight at a young age, and then inexplicably regaining her sight again upon her inclusion in the hotel, Sent had wanted to destroy Liza's last memory of what her face looked like by scarring her face instead before she perished. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/ExitCorners |
Extra Credits / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
"Horror is about human psychology. It's about understanding those primal fears
that have tormented mankind since its early history. Horror is about the irrational, and the breakdown of our modern faith in logic and the fundamental order of the world. Horror is about all those things which drive us toward our darker impulses, and justify our most bestial actions. Horror is about hopelessness and facing things so unimaginably greater than ourselves, that for all of our self-importance, and assurance of our place in the universe,
*we're nothing before them*
." | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/ExtraCredits |
Evil Genius 2 / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
Evil Genius 2 is a game about being, well... an evil genius. Just because this game is basically a walking talking Bond movie simulator, doesnt mean it doesnt have its moments of horror.
- In the first game, getting rid of the Super Agents was mostly rather farcical and non-lethal. Not so much here, where it's explicitly shown that you're killing them just for attempting to do the right thing. It also doesn't help that most Face Death with Despair:
- The endings. In every single ending (Except Maximillian's), you get disposed of. And the ways you get killed are not entirely pleasant.
- Red Ivan uses his rocket fist to blast your head into chunks.
- Zalkia lets out an Evil Chuckle now that everyone is enslaved to her, before noticing you and sending one of her minions onto you.
- Emma (which serves as the page image) calls upon a legion of her Toxic gas spewing robotic spiders, and commands one of them to LEAP ONTO YOUR FACE face hugger style, before taking you down and gassing you, as if the V.E.N.O.M it injects into you isnt enough.
- Even Maximilian's ending isn't exactly free of Nightmare Fuel, even if it's the only one to avert You Have Outlived Your Usefulness. It shows him giving a speech to an entire room full of people that Max has transmuted into gold statues only for a lone P.A.T.R.I.O.T Investigator to start sneaking around the room before Max spots him and transforms him into a gold statue as well. The statue of the Investigator then falls over, causing the rest of the gold statues in the room to topple over like dominos as well, with the final one landing right in front of the camera. Furthermore, the way the light reflects off of the area around the eyes of the last statue makes it look shockingly like blood. Brrrrrrr...
- Polar's ending mentions that only her and her henchmen will survive the coming ice age to restore the earth. She steps down from her lair into the new icy planet, with ice statues around her. She accidentally breaks one and then a couple minions come in holding a person by the arms. Polar walks up to them and freezes the poor sucker solid, with the last thing they see is ice covering their face. Which the player gets to see from their point of view.
- In short: pretty much
*everything* about Emma.
- For starters, she always sits in a chair on four huge spider legs, making her somehow feel even less human than the other Geniuses. And definitely not a Genius to be played by arachnophobes.
- Her motivations. Polar not included, Emma is the only Genius who, rather than seeking to rule the world, wants to
*end* it. How? By making all of humanity succumb to a toxic Hate Plague.
- Her voice. Sounds sweet and almost grandmotherly, doesn't it? Not very fitting of a callous Misanthrope Supreme who'll coldly take delight in imagining the ways a nation could destroy itself. Made extra ironic by the voice belonging to one of Moneypenny's actresses.
- Even her Doomsday Device looks more unsettling than the others when fully upgraded to level 3. A massive floating globe surrounded by eight huge syringes that rotate all around it when preparing to fire. And when it actually fires, the globe spins violently before the syringes stab straight into it. It's almost like you're watching the world itself be violently mutilated.
- And in her ending? Just before her moment of The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You, you can see her sitting before an audience of skeletons, and obviously taking pleasure in it. Really makes you wonder what could've happened to get those poor saps that way... | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/EvilGenius2 |
Expeditionary Force / Nightmarefuel - TV Tropes
- The Elders themselves. When the Merry Band of Pirates encounter the body of a member of the species, Joe describes them as what the Kristang would look like if they evolve further, and the Kristang are already pretty nightmarish being brutal looking reptilian aliens. Skippy reveals that the Elders had the ability to modify their bodies to suit their needs.
- It's revealed in Book 9: Valkyrie that the Elders did not ascend because they found all the answers in the physical realm and sought to learn about the metaphysical, they were running
*away* from something that originated outside the Milky Way Galaxy. In order to ensure their security, they created a shield that covered the entirety of the Milky Way plus the Sculptur Dwarf Galaxy, and left behind the wormhole network and several other constructs like those in the Roach Motel to help power the shield, and Guardians and Sentinels to protect them. The fact that the all-powerful Elders were scared enough to run away from *anything* is nightmarish.
- The fact that if things go wrong, the human race has an absolutely zero percent chance of winning in a stand-up fight against even the lowest-tier species in the galaxy. If events had gone differently, and Skippy hadn't been found/listened to/etc., it's entirely possible humanity would be extinct (or on it's way to being so). In fact, it's become the working assumption amongst the MBoP that humanity's extinction is inevitable, and that they're just buying as much time as possible before that happens.
- Sentinels. Ancient devices of unimaginable destructive power are just sitting around the galaxy waiting for a reason to wake up and smash everything within range back to the stone age. Joe and even Skippy feel very uneasy just being near one even though it is powered down. ||In book 13 they do wake up and the two that the Merry Band of Pirates attack seem to screw with local space time simply by existing||.
- The situation that humanity finds itself in at the midpoint of the first book. They've been attacked by an alien race, then were saved by a second, only to find out that the first only attacked to reduce our usefulness to the second race, and the second, which we allied with and seemed like saviors, are actually little better than insanely misogynistic Nazis. How horrible to not only find out you're on the wrong side, but the "good" side, while avoiding deliberately targeting people when possible, is -
*has to be* - more concerned with the war they're in than humanity.
- ||In book 15 the Elders return and capture both Joe and Skippy, They decide to punish Joe by forcing him to watch the death of every living being in the Galaxy and they will then abandon him alone on his homeworld. They demonstrate this by killing the crews of Valkyrie and the Flying Dutchman and somehow making Joe watch every single death at once.|| | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/ExpeditionaryForce |
Fabula Nova Crystallis: Final Fantasy / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
Just because Fabula Nova Crystallis: Final Fantasy is full of fun games that doesn't mean there aren't scary or creepy moments. Here are the list: | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/FabulaNovaCrystallisFinalFantasy |
Excalibur / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
Some sequences can be quite creepy, and Merlin has his moments (look at his eyes), ||he eventually literally becomes a nightmare||.
- Morgana insists for Merlin to show her the full power of the Dragon, at which point his staff shoots out fire and his eyes become blazing white, intoning as she screams:
**Merlin**: Look into the eyes of the Dragon and despair! I destroy you! I consign you to oblivion! | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Excalibur |
Fable / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
Meet the Balverine.
**WARNING:** Spoilers are unmarked.
- Balverines. They're quick, they're aggressive, and they often appear in large packs.
- Hobbes are sometimes Played for Laughs, but their lairs in
*Fable* and *II* aren't. They're also much creepier with The Reveal that they're children turned into monsters by nymphs/dark whispers.
- The general state of Albion in the first two games. It's gorgeous and idyllic, but there doesn't seem to be any government. There are few authority figures, and in both games, the leadership of Bowerstone is held by Lady Grey and Lord Lucien, both of whom are corrupt and evil figures. The areas outside the cities are overrun by bandits and nightmarish creatures, and the guards aren't enough to keep the roads safe. Smaller settlements like Oakvale or Oakfield are completely at the mercy of well-organized bandit or cultist raids. Albion appears to be a failed state like Somalia, and that's before you start counting the doomsday threats looming in every game.
- The third game is a mixed bag. There's some government going on now, with an army! Oh, but at the same time, there's heavy industrialization, massive wealth inequality, pollution...
- Darkwood is dark and creepy at
*any* time of day, and often infested with balverines, hobbes, bandits, nymphs, and trolls.
- Early in the Trader Escort quest, you and the two titular characters run into another trader who says he was bitten by something. You're then given the option to a) allow the trader to accompany your party or b) turn him away. If you choose the first option, near the end of the quest, the trader turns into a balverine and you have to kill him.
- Though if you're quick, you can reach Barrow Fields before he turns and he's apparently just fine once he's out of Darkwood.
- During the same quest, any bandits in the regions you traverse go straight for the traders. Be sure you have obtained the Heal Life spell by this point.
- The Chapel of Skorm, where you can sacrifice innocent people to rack up some evil points. Or you can kill the two cultists. One problem, though: If you kill the cultists and return to the Chapel later on, the cultists will have re-spawned.
- Undead aren't particularly scary or anything, but when you kill them, they explode in a shower of dust and bones,
*and release a screaming ghost*.
- Beyond the Demon Door outside Rose Cottage (the one you have to give a romantic token to) is a cave furnished with a four-poster bed draped in ribbons and such...and a rack, cage, head vice, and chains attached to a wall. Even worse, this is outside the house of the woman whose grandson you save from the Hobbe Cave, whom the kid implies abuses him.
- The Hobbe Cave. It starts with a pile of bones outside a cave entrance and a sign saying "Abandon All Hope." It features a Cannibal Larder filled with bones and crude bags full of dismembered human limbs. The bandit prisoner you can find in the "Hobbe Cave" quest mentions seeing his buddies get dragged off one by one and he heard their blood-chilling dying screams.
- Grey House is spooky enough the first time you visit (basically, think Mordor, except on a much smaller scale), but after you go into the house itself and rouse the Undead inside, it's
*worse*.
- When/If you return to Grey House, there are Undead everywhere. Congratulations; you've brought on a localized Zombie Apocalypse.
- Worse, Grey House, like Windmill Hill, is located very close to the otherwise-peaceful settlement of Barrow Fields.
- Lady Grey's origins: In order to come to power as Bowerstone's Mayor, she trapped her sister Amanda in the cellar of their childhood home and left her to die.
- And her old diary (found inside Grey House's cellar) implies that Jack of Blades convinced her to do so.
- Windmill Hill, an abandoned locale which is crawling with Undead. Worse, it's in fairly-close proximity to Bowerstone.
- Lychfield Graveyard is described in-game as "the haunted resting place of generations" and it's not at all hard to see why. As you and the groundskeeper make your way across the graveyard to find Nostro's tomb and to collect Nostro's armor and sword, Undead continuously rise up out of the ground to attack you and even manage to kill the groundskeeper while they're at it.
- The treatment of the Hero of Oakvale's family, namely Theresa having her eyes cut out by Jack of Blades and left in the woods to die, while Scarlet Robe is captured and likely tortured by Jack.
- Not to mention the torture the Hero himself goes through when he is imprisoned in Bargate Prison. His bloodcurdling scream after the scene cuts away from him in the cutscene drives everything home.
- Bargate Prison, in general.
- To elaborate, it's a bleak prison set in the desolate northern regions of Albion. People sent there are never seen again. The guards there have gone completely rogue and become cruel, and the Warden fully encourages this. Prisoners spend all their time in their cells, never seeing the sun except once a year where the guards force them to race around the prison. The losers are sent to the Torture Chamber. Oh, and the Warden will make you listen to his poetry.
- After you beat the Rescue Scarlet Robe quest, you can return to Bargate Prison...only this time, it's completely abandoned. Somehow, that makes the place even scarier.
- The Kraken.
- If you check your mini-map in the menu while passing through the Underground Chamber, you can see a red dot (red dots indicate enemies) in the middle of the pool, or if you aim your bow/crossbow at the pool, the crosshairs will turn red. Either way, the implication is clear: The Kraken's down there
*the entire time* as you make your way into Bargate Prison. Cue Paranoia Fuel vibes.
- In the past, Thunder and Whisper, on their journey to Albion aboard a ship, came upon a
**nest** of those monstrosities.
- Another scary location is the Necropolis where you have to find the Glyphs of Inquiry. It's the frozen ruins of an ancient city where the ghosts of the people who died in a long-ago cataclysm wander about along with the occasional Undead and balverine.
- During the Necropolis quest, if you unearth a wrong tablet, you get attacked by Minions and Summoners.
- In
*The Lost Chapters* portion of the game, Jack of Blades' disembodied voice periodically taunts the Hero after the completion of the Necropolis quest, especially when he tries to sway the Hero to perform all the 'evil' options (kill Thunder, Briar Rose, and the Guildmaster).
For a relatively silly game,
*Fable II*
sure doesn't skimp on the Nightmare Fuel
.
- The first appearance of the new, improved Balverines is quite unnerving.
- Hollow Men are particularly bad as
*you can hear the wisps entering the ground, but you can't see where they are*.
- Especially when you wander near a Gargoyle. You know they can't hurt you, but
*sweet mother of God*, they don't help.
- Finding out what Hobbes really are: Transformed children.
- Lady Grey's tomb, with the beetles under the sand.
- And then there's the Banshees, who attack by sending shadowy creepy children after you, taunting you in their spooky voices all the while. The Banshees themselves also whisper to you about things your character has done in the past.
- The Flavor Text says they "demoralize their victims by telling them everything they don't want to hear," which means it may or may not be true. However, chances are once they start telling you a story, like how Rose didn't die straight away from Lucien's shot, but heard Sparrow get blown out the window and even had time to
**cry** before Lucien finished her off, or how Hammer secretly blames the Hero of Bowerstone for the death of the Abbot and has vowed revenge, most players will be horrifically compelled to listen, as a Banshee is invulnerable as long as her creepy shadow children are alive and attacking you.
- During the third chapter "The Hero of Skill," there's a sub-quest that involves buying Brightwood Tower and spending a night there. You enter a Dream Land where you're turned back into a child and its ruled by a living treasure chest called "Chesty" who puts his 'Super Best Friend' through a gauntlet of "little children" (Hobbes), his other Super Best Friends (Hollow Men), and doggies (Balverines) before finally sending you home with the horribly depressing message "We'll be so lonely without you. And die." Not scary enough yet? OK, how about the fact that it's a Psychopathic Manchild chest?! Every time it shows up, it tells a delightful story about games it likes to play...like shooting the legs off an adventurer and letting him crawl to what he thinks is safety but is actually a swamp infested with flesh-eating insects? Quote: "That's one of my favorites. Maybe we can play it sometime!"
- You can even do it twice.
- Wraithmarsh, in general.
- The fact that the region's theme is essentially a Nightmare Fuel version of the original Oakvale theme doesn't help...especially as you look out at/pass through the ruins of the village itself and realize that one of the best towns in the first game is now nothing but a haunted ruin.
- At one point, you wander into an abandoned building, you turn and OH CRAP, THERE'S A BUNCH OF HOLLOW MEN SWARMING RIGHT AT YOU!
- The ground will shake occasionally, and no reason is ever given for it, though the theory is that that's the Hollow Men making the ground shake as they pop up. Regardless, it isn't explicitly explained, and it
*is* creepy as hell.
- The story of how Oakvale became Wraithmarsh is as chilling as it is saddening, especially when Theresa relates the tale to the Hero via Guild Seal. Apparently, one villager (the future Reaver) made a Deal with the Devil for immortality. And because of one man's selfishness and fear of death, a bright and beautiful hamlet is reduced to a cursed, monster-infested wasteland. It also drives home the series's Central Theme of how a simple choice, be it good or evil, can have far-reaching consequences.
- A street sign reads "Whatever was written here has been erased by time." Creepy and sad all at once.
- Also, it's all but outright stated that Wraithmarsh is also Darkwood from the first game. Except now that everyone in Oakvale died thanks to Reaver, Darkwood is
*spreading*. Wraithmarsh is even worse than Darkwood. At least Darkwood was regularly traveled by merchants, it had human enemies in the form of bandits, there was a merchant camp and a bordello you could visit, you know, *human presence*. Wraithmarsh has none of that, and once again, it's *spreading*.
- "The Perfect World."
- For regular Nightmare Fuel, try Homestead/Serenity Farm. It's all nice and cozy until you look up at the sky... (also the rather creepy glitch that occurs if you look up and to the left of the windmill).
- Try lingering in Terry Cotter's Army. It's bad enough on its own, but after reading his final journal...
- It might even be a example of Nothing Is Scarier or Paranoia Fuel: "Any minute now, these statues will come alive and kill us." Even better, your dog will growl when you walk in the cave full of inanimate suits of armor. The dog normally only growls when there are enemies nearby, but the cave simply doesn't have any enemies...
- And it gets worse in the "See the Future" DLC. You stumble across a cave filled with the suits of armor, including a skeleton with a journal surrounded by them, all apparently looking at the body. The journal's creepy enough...but a few of the suits
*explode* and are revealed to house the blue shadow creatures.
- The Terry Cotter's Demon Door is part Paranoia Fuel as well. After you walk in, you're treated to a nice house. And then you find Terry's bedroom...and then you have to go to the cave at the back to find the treasure.
- Terry's bedroom! It's dark, except for a weird unexplained ball of electricity floating on the ceiling. His skeleton is on the bed,
*surrounded by inanimate suits of armor*.
- Most of the "See the Future" DLC has some manner of Nightmare Fuel in it, especially the Cursed Snowglobe. When you start off, it's just sorta-weird naked guys who look like they're painted certain colors (red, blue, or yellow) and drain the color from everyone and everything. No one seems to be dead, or even in danger; just annoyed. But later, you find a schoolhouse, and you can read the teacher's book...that says she found one of her students in such horrible condition that she only describes the amount of blood splattered everywhere, while her classmates stood grinning around her.
*Then she decided it must have been an accident.*
- In the same section of the DLC, one of the lengthy key puzzles leads you to find an invitation from Chesty. You find the house with the 'by invite only' sign, and go inside. Immediately, there's a long table with long-dead skeletons sitting in the seats, and coat racks with similar skeletons. There's a note from Chesty saying how happy he was to spend time with his super best friends, and something about a mirror...enter the floating mirror upstairs, and you find a fog enshrouded area with a bottle of red dye...
*underneath a suspended skeleton, contorted by almost *Hellraiser *-like chains that extend into the fog*.
- The first Hobbe cave. You help a man there terrified of going in to rescue his son, who has been kidnapped by Hobbes. He mentions then that he had always heard stories that Hobbes were all once small children who were captured by Hobbes and turned into them. This is the start of a variation of Apocalyptic Log that is heard from afar as the player runs around another path to get to the man's son. The sounds and the fate of both the boy and his father are enough to make anyone feel like they want to throw up... Not to mention there is no way to stop it from happening, even if you kill his son, he will just... fall over dead.
- There is a Demon Door, Memory Lane, with a chest at the end of a small, grassy road...lined with tombs, gnarled trees, and other junk. Off to the side is a wooden cabin you can't go into. If you look in the window, you see that the cabin is stuffed with white statue-like versions of characters from the game staring out at you. It doesn't help that the area is totally silent.
- A lot of the Demon Doors, actually. Winter Lodge is a good example. When you walk in, it's a prettily-lit, idyllic winter path, with a warm, inviting house at the end. Walk through the door and, in a flash, it turns to a ruin, with skeletons and torture devices strewn about the area, which is now lit in dull, stark colors. And there's a screeching metal sound when the flip happens, that isn't found anywhere else in the game.
- A minor one, but when you first pass through the Bandit Coast with Hammer on the main quest to the Crucible, a distraught Lilith stops you and asks for your help. She explains that her son has been taken by Balverines into the nearby Howling Halls. Once you enter, it is revealed that Lilith is actually a Balverine who has lured others into her den to feed her Balverine children. There are several hints leading up to the discovery such as the Balverines refusing to attack Hammer and Sparrow when they're with Lilith and said woman's name, which is that of a female demon from Jewish mythology.
- The Shadow Court quest. Once you gain enough renown for Reaver to give you the time of day, he tasks you with taking his Shadow Seal to the Shadow Court in Wraithmarsh, BUT what he, Jerkass that he is, neglects to tell you is that you have to make a Sadistic Choice: Keep the seal and allow the Shadow Judges to take your youth (the "good" option), or give the seal to a scared, crying girl and allow the Judges to take her youth instead (the "evil" option). If you keep the seal and get your youth drained, you gain glowing red eyes.
- The Shadow Judges themselves provide a massive heap of Nightmare Fuel. They're shadowy, Grim Reaper-esque beings with red eyes and scary, deep voices. Oh, and there's something absolutely chilling about them telling the Hero that, when the sacrifices stop,
*they will come for Reaver*.
- The worst part about the Shadow Judges is that, apart from Reaver's backstory with them, you know absolutely NOTHING about them. At no point in the series is there any reference to what they are or what they want beyond the sacrifices.
- The Reliquary where you have to find your Hero parent's treasure for Sabine is a dimly-lit and quiet (except when you're battling Hollow Men) environment. The eerie, ethereal music does not help ease the apprehension the whole place generates one bit.
- Even better, if you peruse the bookshelves you find in the entry hall after you first enter, you find two copies of a tome titled
*Darkness Descends on Albion*, foreshadowing what's to come much later in the game.
- And to top that off, the Reliquary, an area where Hollow Men come up from the ground to attack you, is located right underneath Brightwall Village (accessible through Brightwall Academy), making it much worse than Bowerstone in the very first
*Fable* game (which was located fairly close to Windmill Hill, an area crawling with Undead).
- Mourningwood isn't a particularly nice place, filled with the the souls and bodies of apparently hundreds of soldiers, and Logan sends anyone he doesn't like there because he doesn't expect them to survive.
- Silverpines is also pretty bad, dark, forbidding, suspicious, and filled with Balverines.
- The place is absolute Paranoia Fuel. If you're walking
*anywhere* but in the town itself, it's perfectly reasonable to be walking slowly at all times, constantly turning the camera to view your surroundings with your rifle already in hand, ready to blow Balverines away at a distance the instant you spot them. And then they run at you.
- The Sunset House quest has you finding a ruined mansion in a remote location in the middle of Mourningwood. At night, though, the beautiful ghost of the mansion reappears, and you might manage to return it to the real world. Bad idea. The house is home to a creature of terrible evil that drove the old owner to suicide by burning down the house in an effort to stop it. His skeleton is dangling from the ceiling as you enter. The bedroom is worse. Whatever happens, don't go to sleep, or you'll meet the creature that haunts this place... and it turns out to be your old Super Best Friend, Chesty. He wants to play chess on a giant chessboard with living statues, but decides to just kill you instead when he gets bored of that. Then he gives you the house. Except Chesty's probably still there, lurking in the unseen corners.
- The game refuses to allow you to move your family into that house, and if you sell it, it will just sit empty as no one will ever actually move in. There's probably a very good reason for that.
- The first encounter with the Crawler and its spawn is quite well done for a non-horror game. It starts with a fight with the glowy-eyed shadow creatures, then every moment you look around, you feel it's onto you. Except it isn't. It is only when it has lulled you into a false sense of security that it attacks again, harder this time.
- The golden gates. Look at them closely for long enough and you will notice something...uncanny.
- In the late game—Treasury Value: 0/6,500,000. Projected Civilian Casualties: 6,500,000.
- It gets worse when you go into
*minus* figures while trying to be a good guy.
- You think that's bad? Try going into the final battle when you're in minus figures and walk the streets of the towns afterward. No shops are open, there's nobody walking the streets...why? Because you tried to be a good person and almost everyone died for it.
- Demon Doors in general tend to be this. Not so much the doors themselves, but what lies beyond them. All it takes is for one of the interiors to freak you out for you to start getting on edge whenever you enter one. It doesn't help that sometimes the most innocuous Door request can yield the scariest results.
- As a case in point, Millfields has a Door asking you to challenge the perception of societal aesthetics (i.e. get fat and wear something ridiculous). You complete the request and it opens to Twitcher's Curtains, a spacious cavern covered in
*giant* cobwebs that span the entire cave wall (keep in mind that the webs encountered everywhere else in the game are as big as, or slightly larger than, your character). As you approach the treasure, you can see even bigger webs in the background and you get the feeling that something might be back there... Nothing else really happens except for *something* screaming/roaring at you as you try to leave. Keep in mind that most Demon Doors don't have any music in their interiors, which makes the roar from nowhere even worse. It doesn't help that trying to look back into the cave results in nothing. Everything looks the same.
- The Veiled Path. Walking through the sand and up flights of stairs down a long, winding path that is lined with rows and
*rows* of Sentinels. They're just statues, though...which just makes it worse. You're horribly tense, waiting for them to come alive, and their eyes are *glowing*. But they don't move. They just...don't move. It's almost a relief when a live one comes stomping down at you at the end of the path, though the statues themselves never do attack you.
- The Hero's appearance when you become a tyrant in trying to save Albion from the Crawler. Your skin turns pale and your eyes turn solid black. It's
*absolutely bone-chilling* to see. And the worst part about it? You end up looking like that because you made compromises in trying to save your kingdom.
- In the final part of
*Traitor's Keep*, as Commander Milton extracts the Hero's essence, the Hero lets out a bloodcurdling scream of pain that lasts for at least a minute.
- One of the more darkly humored loading screen posters advertises a trepanning procedure.◊ | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Fable |
Eye Candy / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
Season 1
- The ongoing story arc - getting stalked. Not just by any stalker (which is scary enough in itself), but one who can follow almost every move you make in public by hacking into traffic and security cameras.
- The very concept behind Lindy's website, never4gottengroup. Full of people who, just like Lindy, have had people they love disappear without warning, never to be heard from again... and the police aren't finding them.
Season 1 Episode 1 - "K3U"
- The before-credits scene of Sara's kidnapping - I challenge any loving sibling
*or* parent to watch it without getting chills at least once.
Season 1 Episode 4 - "YOLO"
- Having your child go missing while out partying, especially for something like high school graduation.
- Seeing an urban legend actually come to life might sound cool. But when you're in the middle of it?
Season 1 Episode 5 - "ICU"
- The brain surgery operation gone horribly wrong with all the doctors and nurses fainting around the terrified teenager.
- The needle for the lumbar cerebrospinal fluid extraction.
Season 1 Episode 7 - "SOS"
- The fact that people can pay to voyeuristically watch unsuspecting people get drugged and "played with".
- Lindy is Bound and Gagged by someone who's been wreaking havoc on the Virtual Slumber apartments. The poor girl then starts crying and screaming as her captor is about to brand her.
Season 1 Episode 8 - "AMA"
Season 1 Episode 10 - "A4U"
- The cell phone ||buried in Tessa's head.||
- After finding out that ||Jake is the Flirtual Killer and has left a tablet containing vital information regarding Lindy's sister, Lindy tries to fight off Jake, but is put to sleep for her troubles.||
- Lindy awakens to find herself in an abandoned mental facility, all the while old music is playing through the halls.
- The flashback that reveals that ||Jake drugged up his mother and killed her when he was still a child and soon after, his father killed himself out of grief.||
- ||Jake Bolin|| is this throughout the whole episode as he is shown to be an absolute psycho who does many horrible things ||out of "love" for Lindy||.
- After Lindy finds out that Sophie has been captured and close to death, she takes off to rescue her friend. As she is trying to rescue Sophie, she has flashbacks to when Sara was captured all those years ago, and what doesn't help is that the obstacles in the way eerily recreate the night Sara was kidnapped. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/EyeCandy |
Fable / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
Meet the Balverine.
**WARNING:** Spoilers are unmarked.
- Balverines. They're quick, they're aggressive, and they often appear in large packs.
- Hobbes are sometimes Played for Laughs, but their lairs in
*Fable* and *II* aren't. They're also much creepier with The Reveal that they're children turned into monsters by nymphs/dark whispers.
- The general state of Albion in the first two games. It's gorgeous and idyllic, but there doesn't seem to be any government. There are few authority figures, and in both games, the leadership of Bowerstone is held by Lady Grey and Lord Lucien, both of whom are corrupt and evil figures. The areas outside the cities are overrun by bandits and nightmarish creatures, and the guards aren't enough to keep the roads safe. Smaller settlements like Oakvale or Oakfield are completely at the mercy of well-organized bandit or cultist raids. Albion appears to be a failed state like Somalia, and that's before you start counting the doomsday threats looming in every game.
- The third game is a mixed bag. There's some government going on now, with an army! Oh, but at the same time, there's heavy industrialization, massive wealth inequality, pollution...
- Darkwood is dark and creepy at
*any* time of day, and often infested with balverines, hobbes, bandits, nymphs, and trolls.
- Early in the Trader Escort quest, you and the two titular characters run into another trader who says he was bitten by something. You're then given the option to a) allow the trader to accompany your party or b) turn him away. If you choose the first option, near the end of the quest, the trader turns into a balverine and you have to kill him.
- Though if you're quick, you can reach Barrow Fields before he turns and he's apparently just fine once he's out of Darkwood.
- During the same quest, any bandits in the regions you traverse go straight for the traders. Be sure you have obtained the Heal Life spell by this point.
- The Chapel of Skorm, where you can sacrifice innocent people to rack up some evil points. Or you can kill the two cultists. One problem, though: If you kill the cultists and return to the Chapel later on, the cultists will have re-spawned.
- Undead aren't particularly scary or anything, but when you kill them, they explode in a shower of dust and bones,
*and release a screaming ghost*.
- Beyond the Demon Door outside Rose Cottage (the one you have to give a romantic token to) is a cave furnished with a four-poster bed draped in ribbons and such...and a rack, cage, head vice, and chains attached to a wall. Even worse, this is outside the house of the woman whose grandson you save from the Hobbe Cave, whom the kid implies abuses him.
- The Hobbe Cave. It starts with a pile of bones outside a cave entrance and a sign saying "Abandon All Hope." It features a Cannibal Larder filled with bones and crude bags full of dismembered human limbs. The bandit prisoner you can find in the "Hobbe Cave" quest mentions seeing his buddies get dragged off one by one and he heard their blood-chilling dying screams.
- Grey House is spooky enough the first time you visit (basically, think Mordor, except on a much smaller scale), but after you go into the house itself and rouse the Undead inside, it's
*worse*.
- When/If you return to Grey House, there are Undead everywhere. Congratulations; you've brought on a localized Zombie Apocalypse.
- Worse, Grey House, like Windmill Hill, is located very close to the otherwise-peaceful settlement of Barrow Fields.
- Lady Grey's origins: In order to come to power as Bowerstone's Mayor, she trapped her sister Amanda in the cellar of their childhood home and left her to die.
- And her old diary (found inside Grey House's cellar) implies that Jack of Blades convinced her to do so.
- Windmill Hill, an abandoned locale which is crawling with Undead. Worse, it's in fairly-close proximity to Bowerstone.
- Lychfield Graveyard is described in-game as "the haunted resting place of generations" and it's not at all hard to see why. As you and the groundskeeper make your way across the graveyard to find Nostro's tomb and to collect Nostro's armor and sword, Undead continuously rise up out of the ground to attack you and even manage to kill the groundskeeper while they're at it.
- The treatment of the Hero of Oakvale's family, namely Theresa having her eyes cut out by Jack of Blades and left in the woods to die, while Scarlet Robe is captured and likely tortured by Jack.
- Not to mention the torture the Hero himself goes through when he is imprisoned in Bargate Prison. His bloodcurdling scream after the scene cuts away from him in the cutscene drives everything home.
- Bargate Prison, in general.
- To elaborate, it's a bleak prison set in the desolate northern regions of Albion. People sent there are never seen again. The guards there have gone completely rogue and become cruel, and the Warden fully encourages this. Prisoners spend all their time in their cells, never seeing the sun except once a year where the guards force them to race around the prison. The losers are sent to the Torture Chamber. Oh, and the Warden will make you listen to his poetry.
- After you beat the Rescue Scarlet Robe quest, you can return to Bargate Prison...only this time, it's completely abandoned. Somehow, that makes the place even scarier.
- The Kraken.
- If you check your mini-map in the menu while passing through the Underground Chamber, you can see a red dot (red dots indicate enemies) in the middle of the pool, or if you aim your bow/crossbow at the pool, the crosshairs will turn red. Either way, the implication is clear: The Kraken's down there
*the entire time* as you make your way into Bargate Prison. Cue Paranoia Fuel vibes.
- In the past, Thunder and Whisper, on their journey to Albion aboard a ship, came upon a
**nest** of those monstrosities.
- Another scary location is the Necropolis where you have to find the Glyphs of Inquiry. It's the frozen ruins of an ancient city where the ghosts of the people who died in a long-ago cataclysm wander about along with the occasional Undead and balverine.
- During the Necropolis quest, if you unearth a wrong tablet, you get attacked by Minions and Summoners.
- In
*The Lost Chapters* portion of the game, Jack of Blades' disembodied voice periodically taunts the Hero after the completion of the Necropolis quest, especially when he tries to sway the Hero to perform all the 'evil' options (kill Thunder, Briar Rose, and the Guildmaster).
For a relatively silly game,
*Fable II*
sure doesn't skimp on the Nightmare Fuel
.
- The first appearance of the new, improved Balverines is quite unnerving.
- Hollow Men are particularly bad as
*you can hear the wisps entering the ground, but you can't see where they are*.
- Especially when you wander near a Gargoyle. You know they can't hurt you, but
*sweet mother of God*, they don't help.
- Finding out what Hobbes really are: Transformed children.
- Lady Grey's tomb, with the beetles under the sand.
- And then there's the Banshees, who attack by sending shadowy creepy children after you, taunting you in their spooky voices all the while. The Banshees themselves also whisper to you about things your character has done in the past.
- The Flavor Text says they "demoralize their victims by telling them everything they don't want to hear," which means it may or may not be true. However, chances are once they start telling you a story, like how Rose didn't die straight away from Lucien's shot, but heard Sparrow get blown out the window and even had time to
**cry** before Lucien finished her off, or how Hammer secretly blames the Hero of Bowerstone for the death of the Abbot and has vowed revenge, most players will be horrifically compelled to listen, as a Banshee is invulnerable as long as her creepy shadow children are alive and attacking you.
- During the third chapter "The Hero of Skill," there's a sub-quest that involves buying Brightwood Tower and spending a night there. You enter a Dream Land where you're turned back into a child and its ruled by a living treasure chest called "Chesty" who puts his 'Super Best Friend' through a gauntlet of "little children" (Hobbes), his other Super Best Friends (Hollow Men), and doggies (Balverines) before finally sending you home with the horribly depressing message "We'll be so lonely without you. And die." Not scary enough yet? OK, how about the fact that it's a Psychopathic Manchild chest?! Every time it shows up, it tells a delightful story about games it likes to play...like shooting the legs off an adventurer and letting him crawl to what he thinks is safety but is actually a swamp infested with flesh-eating insects? Quote: "That's one of my favorites. Maybe we can play it sometime!"
- You can even do it twice.
- Wraithmarsh, in general.
- The fact that the region's theme is essentially a Nightmare Fuel version of the original Oakvale theme doesn't help...especially as you look out at/pass through the ruins of the village itself and realize that one of the best towns in the first game is now nothing but a haunted ruin.
- At one point, you wander into an abandoned building, you turn and OH CRAP, THERE'S A BUNCH OF HOLLOW MEN SWARMING RIGHT AT YOU!
- The ground will shake occasionally, and no reason is ever given for it, though the theory is that that's the Hollow Men making the ground shake as they pop up. Regardless, it isn't explicitly explained, and it
*is* creepy as hell.
- The story of how Oakvale became Wraithmarsh is as chilling as it is saddening, especially when Theresa relates the tale to the Hero via Guild Seal. Apparently, one villager (the future Reaver) made a Deal with the Devil for immortality. And because of one man's selfishness and fear of death, a bright and beautiful hamlet is reduced to a cursed, monster-infested wasteland. It also drives home the series's Central Theme of how a simple choice, be it good or evil, can have far-reaching consequences.
- A street sign reads "Whatever was written here has been erased by time." Creepy and sad all at once.
- Also, it's all but outright stated that Wraithmarsh is also Darkwood from the first game. Except now that everyone in Oakvale died thanks to Reaver, Darkwood is
*spreading*. Wraithmarsh is even worse than Darkwood. At least Darkwood was regularly traveled by merchants, it had human enemies in the form of bandits, there was a merchant camp and a bordello you could visit, you know, *human presence*. Wraithmarsh has none of that, and once again, it's *spreading*.
- "The Perfect World."
- For regular Nightmare Fuel, try Homestead/Serenity Farm. It's all nice and cozy until you look up at the sky... (also the rather creepy glitch that occurs if you look up and to the left of the windmill).
- Try lingering in Terry Cotter's Army. It's bad enough on its own, but after reading his final journal...
- It might even be a example of Nothing Is Scarier or Paranoia Fuel: "Any minute now, these statues will come alive and kill us." Even better, your dog will growl when you walk in the cave full of inanimate suits of armor. The dog normally only growls when there are enemies nearby, but the cave simply doesn't have any enemies...
- And it gets worse in the "See the Future" DLC. You stumble across a cave filled with the suits of armor, including a skeleton with a journal surrounded by them, all apparently looking at the body. The journal's creepy enough...but a few of the suits
*explode* and are revealed to house the blue shadow creatures.
- The Terry Cotter's Demon Door is part Paranoia Fuel as well. After you walk in, you're treated to a nice house. And then you find Terry's bedroom...and then you have to go to the cave at the back to find the treasure.
- Terry's bedroom! It's dark, except for a weird unexplained ball of electricity floating on the ceiling. His skeleton is on the bed,
*surrounded by inanimate suits of armor*.
- Most of the "See the Future" DLC has some manner of Nightmare Fuel in it, especially the Cursed Snowglobe. When you start off, it's just sorta-weird naked guys who look like they're painted certain colors (red, blue, or yellow) and drain the color from everyone and everything. No one seems to be dead, or even in danger; just annoyed. But later, you find a schoolhouse, and you can read the teacher's book...that says she found one of her students in such horrible condition that she only describes the amount of blood splattered everywhere, while her classmates stood grinning around her.
*Then she decided it must have been an accident.*
- In the same section of the DLC, one of the lengthy key puzzles leads you to find an invitation from Chesty. You find the house with the 'by invite only' sign, and go inside. Immediately, there's a long table with long-dead skeletons sitting in the seats, and coat racks with similar skeletons. There's a note from Chesty saying how happy he was to spend time with his super best friends, and something about a mirror...enter the floating mirror upstairs, and you find a fog enshrouded area with a bottle of red dye...
*underneath a suspended skeleton, contorted by almost *Hellraiser *-like chains that extend into the fog*.
- The first Hobbe cave. You help a man there terrified of going in to rescue his son, who has been kidnapped by Hobbes. He mentions then that he had always heard stories that Hobbes were all once small children who were captured by Hobbes and turned into them. This is the start of a variation of Apocalyptic Log that is heard from afar as the player runs around another path to get to the man's son. The sounds and the fate of both the boy and his father are enough to make anyone feel like they want to throw up... Not to mention there is no way to stop it from happening, even if you kill his son, he will just... fall over dead.
- There is a Demon Door, Memory Lane, with a chest at the end of a small, grassy road...lined with tombs, gnarled trees, and other junk. Off to the side is a wooden cabin you can't go into. If you look in the window, you see that the cabin is stuffed with white statue-like versions of characters from the game staring out at you. It doesn't help that the area is totally silent.
- A lot of the Demon Doors, actually. Winter Lodge is a good example. When you walk in, it's a prettily-lit, idyllic winter path, with a warm, inviting house at the end. Walk through the door and, in a flash, it turns to a ruin, with skeletons and torture devices strewn about the area, which is now lit in dull, stark colors. And there's a screeching metal sound when the flip happens, that isn't found anywhere else in the game.
- A minor one, but when you first pass through the Bandit Coast with Hammer on the main quest to the Crucible, a distraught Lilith stops you and asks for your help. She explains that her son has been taken by Balverines into the nearby Howling Halls. Once you enter, it is revealed that Lilith is actually a Balverine who has lured others into her den to feed her Balverine children. There are several hints leading up to the discovery such as the Balverines refusing to attack Hammer and Sparrow when they're with Lilith and said woman's name, which is that of a female demon from Jewish mythology.
- The Shadow Court quest. Once you gain enough renown for Reaver to give you the time of day, he tasks you with taking his Shadow Seal to the Shadow Court in Wraithmarsh, BUT what he, Jerkass that he is, neglects to tell you is that you have to make a Sadistic Choice: Keep the seal and allow the Shadow Judges to take your youth (the "good" option), or give the seal to a scared, crying girl and allow the Judges to take her youth instead (the "evil" option). If you keep the seal and get your youth drained, you gain glowing red eyes.
- The Shadow Judges themselves provide a massive heap of Nightmare Fuel. They're shadowy, Grim Reaper-esque beings with red eyes and scary, deep voices. Oh, and there's something absolutely chilling about them telling the Hero that, when the sacrifices stop,
*they will come for Reaver*.
- The worst part about the Shadow Judges is that, apart from Reaver's backstory with them, you know absolutely NOTHING about them. At no point in the series is there any reference to what they are or what they want beyond the sacrifices.
- The Reliquary where you have to find your Hero parent's treasure for Sabine is a dimly-lit and quiet (except when you're battling Hollow Men) environment. The eerie, ethereal music does not help ease the apprehension the whole place generates one bit.
- Even better, if you peruse the bookshelves you find in the entry hall after you first enter, you find two copies of a tome titled
*Darkness Descends on Albion*, foreshadowing what's to come much later in the game.
- And to top that off, the Reliquary, an area where Hollow Men come up from the ground to attack you, is located right underneath Brightwall Village (accessible through Brightwall Academy), making it much worse than Bowerstone in the very first
*Fable* game (which was located fairly close to Windmill Hill, an area crawling with Undead).
- Mourningwood isn't a particularly nice place, filled with the the souls and bodies of apparently hundreds of soldiers, and Logan sends anyone he doesn't like there because he doesn't expect them to survive.
- Silverpines is also pretty bad, dark, forbidding, suspicious, and filled with Balverines.
- The place is absolute Paranoia Fuel. If you're walking
*anywhere* but in the town itself, it's perfectly reasonable to be walking slowly at all times, constantly turning the camera to view your surroundings with your rifle already in hand, ready to blow Balverines away at a distance the instant you spot them. And then they run at you.
- The Sunset House quest has you finding a ruined mansion in a remote location in the middle of Mourningwood. At night, though, the beautiful ghost of the mansion reappears, and you might manage to return it to the real world. Bad idea. The house is home to a creature of terrible evil that drove the old owner to suicide by burning down the house in an effort to stop it. His skeleton is dangling from the ceiling as you enter. The bedroom is worse. Whatever happens, don't go to sleep, or you'll meet the creature that haunts this place... and it turns out to be your old Super Best Friend, Chesty. He wants to play chess on a giant chessboard with living statues, but decides to just kill you instead when he gets bored of that. Then he gives you the house. Except Chesty's probably still there, lurking in the unseen corners.
- The game refuses to allow you to move your family into that house, and if you sell it, it will just sit empty as no one will ever actually move in. There's probably a very good reason for that.
- The first encounter with the Crawler and its spawn is quite well done for a non-horror game. It starts with a fight with the glowy-eyed shadow creatures, then every moment you look around, you feel it's onto you. Except it isn't. It is only when it has lulled you into a false sense of security that it attacks again, harder this time.
- The golden gates. Look at them closely for long enough and you will notice something...uncanny.
- In the late game—Treasury Value: 0/6,500,000. Projected Civilian Casualties: 6,500,000.
- It gets worse when you go into
*minus* figures while trying to be a good guy.
- You think that's bad? Try going into the final battle when you're in minus figures and walk the streets of the towns afterward. No shops are open, there's nobody walking the streets...why? Because you tried to be a good person and almost everyone died for it.
- Demon Doors in general tend to be this. Not so much the doors themselves, but what lies beyond them. All it takes is for one of the interiors to freak you out for you to start getting on edge whenever you enter one. It doesn't help that sometimes the most innocuous Door request can yield the scariest results.
- As a case in point, Millfields has a Door asking you to challenge the perception of societal aesthetics (i.e. get fat and wear something ridiculous). You complete the request and it opens to Twitcher's Curtains, a spacious cavern covered in
*giant* cobwebs that span the entire cave wall (keep in mind that the webs encountered everywhere else in the game are as big as, or slightly larger than, your character). As you approach the treasure, you can see even bigger webs in the background and you get the feeling that something might be back there... Nothing else really happens except for *something* screaming/roaring at you as you try to leave. Keep in mind that most Demon Doors don't have any music in their interiors, which makes the roar from nowhere even worse. It doesn't help that trying to look back into the cave results in nothing. Everything looks the same.
- The Veiled Path. Walking through the sand and up flights of stairs down a long, winding path that is lined with rows and
*rows* of Sentinels. They're just statues, though...which just makes it worse. You're horribly tense, waiting for them to come alive, and their eyes are *glowing*. But they don't move. They just...don't move. It's almost a relief when a live one comes stomping down at you at the end of the path, though the statues themselves never do attack you.
- The Hero's appearance when you become a tyrant in trying to save Albion from the Crawler. Your skin turns pale and your eyes turn solid black. It's
*absolutely bone-chilling* to see. And the worst part about it? You end up looking like that because you made compromises in trying to save your kingdom.
- In the final part of
*Traitor's Keep*, as Commander Milton extracts the Hero's essence, the Hero lets out a bloodcurdling scream of pain that lasts for at least a minute.
- One of the more darkly humored loading screen posters advertises a trepanning procedure.◊ | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/FableIII |
Evolve / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
## The Monsters
- The monsters are this without a doubt. They are massive predators far beyond anything on Earth or Shear, capable of ripping apart fortified bunkers and starships. They can smell you from hundreds of meters away and will relentlessly hunt you down, slaughter you, and feed on your corpse. To make things worse, not only are they immensely powerful killers, they are
*smart*. One can only imagine the colonist's terror as they realized that the monsters were intelligent, luring them into traps and countering their tactics.
- The Goliath is the simplest of the five, but no less terrifying for that. It doesn't have fancy powers like the others so it
*has* to maul you to death with its bare claws. Or just burn you to death and bludgeon the smoldering corpse with a boulder.
- The Kraken is a mini Eldritch Abomination. Despite its size it darts around in the sky, hurling lighting and dark matter.
- The Wraith is like a monstrous ninja, appearing out of nowhere and snatching you away from your team.
- While the Behemoth seems like an armored giant, its exposed organs and unusually high pitched shriek just seem
*wrong*. This isn't helped by the way you occasionally see its real head underneath the armor plating, which seems slimy and malformed◊.
- The Gorgon is perhaps the worst of the bunch. It's body is just... unnatural, not fitting into any traditional type of animal. Add to that the way it sprays acid, traps you in venomous webs, and its habit of hiding high up cliffs to drop down on you and you have a living nightmare.
- One that never made it into the final game: The Host. A massive, decayed looking insectoid monster brimming with parasitic creatures that it uses as its weapons. Its concept◊ art◊ is unnerving, seeming like a collection of mutations and deformities. The finished product◊, while pretty cool, wasn't much better. It got as far as early tests of the game, allowing us to see it in unnerving action. And according to Word of God, it's
*canon*.
- The Hybrid, the end result of ||Kala's mutation. It a monster with all of Kala's intelligence, as well as the ability to use the powers of any other monster. The fact that she was incapable of leaving Shear is the only thing that stopped humanity from being overwhelmed.||
- The machine-monster. It never appears in-game. It never gets an ability reveal. It never even gets fully described. But it's terrifying despite all that because of the implications: the monsters aren't limited to biology. It
*grew* metal armor, AI cores, data cables, and more, all merged with flesh to create a horrific abomination. To make things worse, it can take over the minds of any AI it comes in contact with. The monsters can grow inorganic materials, even extremely complex machinery. That's humanity's technological advantage out the window.
- All of the above are only a few monster species. Canon stories teased three others and there's quite a few pieces of concept art for unused monsters. A fan counted them all and assuming the species shown, concepted, and teased at are the
*only* types, there are twenty-six different monster species.
- The monsters may in fact be literal nightmare fuel, deriving their forms from the subconscious fears of humans. This is still preferable to the alternative that their prescience is what instilled those terrors into primeval human subconscious.
- The process of evolving has been described by Word of God as the most painful thing a living creature could experience, something no human could hope to endure. Yet the monsters
*willingly* go through it, even *twice*, so that they can more easily kill the hunters and settlers. Exactly *what* is driving them to put themselves through so much pain? Base instinct? Or an abject need to obliterate the human race?
- Kala and Caira have a discussion about how Kala managed to graft monster DNA to her own body. Kala explains that she didn't get anywhere at first. And then she applied an in-universe equation and solved the problem. Said equation has nothing to do with biology, but is instead tied to physics. Caira's reaction is at first a Flat "What", followed by a small freak-out over what this implies. She then later discusses this with Lennox, adding that said equation is both poorly understood and the basis for human FTL travel. If that's not the hallmark of an Eldritch Abomination, then what is?
- Some of the monster fan art can definitely stray into the unnerving.
## Everything Else
- Several of the hunters have this included in their backstories. Maggie was trapped alone on a planet full of monsters for over two years. Torvald was ripped apart and disemboweled, leaving him just alive enough to save. Slim went through a four year long war that left him traumatized to the point where he can't remember his own name and involved ' hurtling naked through deep space'. Jack went through the same thing as Maggie at the age of 16. Kala fused herself with monster HNA, causing her to hear their thoughts and slowly overwhelming her own DNA until she transforms completely.
- Part of the backstory of Evolve is the Mutagen Wars, a series of rebellions by the Basilisk Nebula using mutant soldiers to compensate for their lack of resources. The first generation were described as hideous monsters, immune to bullets, and driven completely insane due to the unstable process. Even if they had won, that would have caused a severe problem when their former masters tried to bring them back under control.
- Often overshadowed by the monsters, the various flora and fauna of Shear would be this to the colonists. There are plants that will eat you alive, car sized beetles, venomous dog-lizards, shark-crocodile-dinosaurs in almost every sizable body of water, and aquatic predators that would best be described as sea monsters. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Evolve |
Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil, and Vile / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
- Ted Bundy. While most of the horrible things he does happen offscreen, this actually heightens how frightening he is rather than diminishing it. For example, the scenes where he's acting like a loving Friend to All Children to Liz's daughter become absolutely
*terrifying* once we later learn that one of his victims was a 12-year-old girl. note : Even worse, years later, the now-adult woman admitted that Ted behaved in an incredibly inappropriate manner when they were alone and even though he didn't outright rape or molest her, it's obvious that he would have done so eventually and that his "loving" behavior was actually classic grooming tactics.
- One other example is how Ted explains how he killed one of his victims. Without even saying a word, he breathes on the glass window and writes on it, "hacksaw", followed by a quick montage that cuts in between him writing the word and him knocking out his would be victim and putting her in the car, all while the sound of the hacksaw cutting and the sound of a splatter are in the background.
- The super 8 footage scene, you expect it to cut halfway and show the gruesome bodies at any moment. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/ExtremelyWickedShockinglyEvilAndVile |
Fahrenheit 451 / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
- Beatty's Death in the novel is particularly graphic. After having raided Montag's house of all his books, Beatty makes Montag do the book burning as a cruel punishment. Montag then turns the flamethrower on Beatty and burns him alive, as Beatty dies screaming in agony while slowly burning to death. Compared to the rest of the novel, which is relatively tame with its violence, this moment comes across as rather jarring with how brutal it is and is considered a standout moment for many.
- Then there's the scene in which Montag (after having evaded the police) watches the TV as the police frame his crimes on a random civilian taking a walk that same night and murder him on live TV. The idea that you could be blamed for someone else's actions by the police and be punished for it, with absolutely no say in the matter, is fairly nightmarish itself.
- Besides the Family-Unfriendly Death, there's also the scene in the novel in which Millie gets her stomach pumped after an apparent suicide attempt. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Fahrenheit451 |
Fairly English Story / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
- The story is told in first person. Naturally, when the character's mood changes, the narration is affected. So when the main character is overcome with rage or fear, it's pretty damn clear. Especially so for the times he experiences absolute pants-shitting terror or psychotic rage.
- When Minato is Charmed by the Lovers, we don't know it at first until he backhands Yukari and calls her a bitch for seemingly no reason. The change is so abrupt yet smooth, and
*it still feels like Minato even as he beats the ever loving shit out of his teammates.*
- When Nyaralthotep starts
*killing* his Personas. Alice's pleas for help still haunt some readers today. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/FairlyEnglishStory |
Fairy Dance Alternate / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
In this alternate universe, there is quite a bit of nightmare fuel in this story already.
- Chapter Four
- Sugou and Asuna's first meeting in the real world. While it did end well for Asuna, he comes off extremely threatening to her throughout their confrontation, and if he did attempt something she would not have the strength to fight back against him.
- Chapter Five
- ||It is revealed that Sugou regularly tortures Kirito within Alfheim Online for weeks. If that wasn't enough, Sugou turns on the pain sensors which causes Kirito to not only suffer within the game, but his real body is affected as well.||
- ||The above revelations above indicate that one of the times Kirito's body moved on reflex when Asuna was visiting him indicates he was most likely being tortured.||
- Chapter Six: ||Asuna's dream sequence of the chapter is loaded with nightmare fuel.||
- ||The dream Kirito telling Asuna to let him fall into the abyss, so she wouldn't die as well||
- ||The dream Yui's confrontation with Asuna.||
- ||The dream Kirito bleeding from his eyes and mouth while pleading with Asuna to let him die, so he wouldn't be used as a hostage by Sugou.|| | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/FairyDanceAlternate |
Faerie Tale Theatre / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
Henbane's One-Winged Angel form in "Sleeping Beauty". **Henbane**: Step into *my* reality. If you have the courage.
- After Henbane causes the princess to prick her finger, she removes her peasant disguise to gloat. The eyes of her human mask become pitch-black before she tears it off. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/FaerieTaleTheatre |
Face/Off / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
## The Film
*"Take one goddamn guess..."*
- The very beginning of the film, playing on the fear of Outliving One's Offspring and the inability to protect your child, though no fault of your own.
- Seeing Castor
*with his face still missing* after he's come to and is watching the video of the surgery. A couple of quick side-shots, and then a frontal reflected in Dr. Walsh's glasses.
- After Castor wakes up and realizes his face is gone, he makes these...
*unearthly* moans and groans. While it's probably supposed to be Played for Laughs, they are quite freaky sounding.
- The titular procedure itself is rather Squicky, especially if you are squeamish. Tito in particular doesn't seem to enjoy it very much.
- After Castor gets Archer's face transplanted on him, he and his two cronies burn down the Walsh Institute to destroy all of the evidence. The quick flashbacks of Castor's men setting the fire are made even scarier by the fact that you are shown Archer's friend Tito, Dr. Walsh, and Miller sitting on the floor, bound, gagged, struggling to scream as Leo and Lars pour gasoline all over them, which means that they were basically
*burned alive*. Even more unsettling is the cheery tone Castor uses as he tells Archer about what he's done and rubs defeat in Archer's face.
- Archer (as Castor)'s Psychotic Smirk. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/FaceOff |
Fairy Tail / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
**Unmarked spoilers below.**
- Extalia in general and Minister of State Nadi in particular are really, skin-crawlingly creepy.
- Midnight. Especially in that illusion of his One-Winged Angel form.
- Made scarier in the anime with those demons emerging. Plus, there are illusions of Rob and Simon getting sliced up, Jellal getting eaten, illusions of more than one Midnight and kid Erza.
- The
*Gorn* that was Gajeel's fight against Yomazu and Kawazu.
-
*All the way through* and then he *grabs* it and auuugh... Translation: when it looks like Gajeel's winning the fight, Yomazu skewers his arm with his sword, to the point that the tip was protruding from Gajeel's shoulder. And then he grabs it and breaks it by bending his arm (which, by now, is bleeding like there's no tomorrow.
- Wendy hanging out with a guy who looked like he was thinking about pushing her off a cliff. The Dissonant Serenity in his face.
- During the Tower of Heaven arc, Juvia's screams as Vidaldus Taka forcibly takes over her mind and uses her to attack Lucy. The Mind Rape overtones are not subtle in the slightest.
- Everything that Monsieur Sol of the Element 4 did to Elfman during their battle in the anime.
- Merci la Vie in the anime: You are slowly being turned into stone (not even petrified; just turned into a shapeless rock) and at the same time forces you to revive the worst moments of your life forever.
- Zero is really, really creepy. From the omnicide to how he beat up Team Natsu with a big Slasher Smile on his face.
- It's not just a beat up: first, he totally dominates the both Natsu and Gray and knocks them senseless, then he briefly look at Lucy (who's frozen in fear) and knock her out too.
*Then* he keeps beating them up and hitting them with his darkness magic, again and again, just for fun. Then there's his final spell, Genesis Zero, which unleashes a tsunami of shadows who tears the target apart by biting him.
- Acnologia,
*in spades*. Let us count the ways:
- The thing is Nightmare Fuel
*in-universe* with its alien-like appearance for a dragon. Even *Zeref* does not want to be around when it appears.
- It's known as the Black Dragon of the Apocalypse.
- Was ridiculously close to killing all of Fairy Tail's top-tier mages at the time
*without even trying*.
- It's an Omnicidal Maniac who sees other living things so beneath it, it prefers to just scorch them right on the spot instead of having a conversation.
- It is revealed that it killed Dragons in droves and earned both the title of their ruler and being a terror to them. Bonus points in that it used to be a human.
- Also, if you go back to just before the Edolas arc and listen to Gildarts explain how badly his fight with Acnologia went, just his tone and the grim look in his eyes tells you about how hellish of a fight it was, plus he was fighting the behemoth alone. It was a
*very* brilliant piece of Foreshadowing for what happens at the end of the "fight" at the end of the Sirius Island saga, unintentional or not. The dark music playing during that scene only makes it even more disturbing.
- Chapter 415: The Reveal of the nature of his Dragonslaying magic: Apparently having something to do with souls. What makes this horrifying is that he could literally reap Dragon souls with it and leave them in a half-dead, weakened state, leaving them to waste away. Worse is the fact that he did this to all of the Dragonslayers' Dragon parents, and by releasing themselves from their children, they used up their remaining time. Who knows how many other Dragons suffered the same fate by his hands?
- Fairy Tail of the Dead Meeeeeeeeen Special: Has a bit reference to those of Raccoon City Incident in
*Resident Evil* ( *2* and *3*) and *Phineas and Ferb* movie episode *Night of the Living Pharmacist*.
- Guttman Kubrick is surprisingly creepy for a Filler Villain. His appearance may be humorous, as a giant anthropomorphic giraffe
*thing*, but something is clearly off with him and he gets sick enjoyment out of torturing others. His magic itself just causes pain by making your own magic—a part of you—explode. And then there's the fact that he can only communicate through Telepathy, which means he gets inside your mind and ...!
- The Eclipse Spirit King from the Eclipse Celestial Spirit Arc!
- In Chapter 228, Juvia hears that Meredy wants to kill Gray. Her response is, to say the least, absolutely terrifying.◊
- Ultear being sent into a psychotic rage when Grey mentions how much Ur loved her during their battle.
- The ending of Chapter 249, when Zeref finally starts acting like an apocalyptic monster of legend.
- The merciless beatdown Minerva gave Lucy in Chapter 291 is pretty damn horrifying to watch...
- We see where she gets her cruelty from in Chapter 300. Jiemma, her father, is a
*MONSTER*.
- Let's just say both of them in general. They are bad enough that everyone in the guild is in a cold silence when they are angry, fearing for not only being kicked out of the guild, but for their
*lives*.
- The moment Sting truly snaps is rather horribly well portrayed too. He doesn't scream or howl, on the contrary, he suddenly falls silent and looks up with a blank stare as you realize that in that exact instant, Jiemma's life just became worthless to him.
- Chapter 316: Minerva spent the time waiting for Kagura and Erza to finish fighting torturing Millianna. Her screams were music to her ears. This causes Erza to violentlly SNAP.
- Although it's Justified, Erza's rage to Minerva for torturing Milliana is also very scary. It's clear that you don't mess with the Fairy Tail Members, but if you nearly beat Erza's friends to death and torture them, She will END YOU.
- A herd of
*10,000* dragons are coming to attack the *entire* Kingdom of Fiore. Oh, Crap! doesn't even begin sum this up.
- However, only seven of them got past the gate. Seeing how those seven were enough to give the best guilds absolute hell, imagine if it was all 10,000....
- Chapter 318: Rogue being possessed by
*his own shadow!*
- Gajeel as the Iron-Shadow Dragon Slayer. His appearance ring any bells? He looks like friggin'
*Venom*!
- No matter how hilarious Zirconis removing Lucy's clothes was, you do have to remember, he's planning to
*eat* her.
- Chapter 334: The rather horrible way Gray apparently dies.
- Chapter 335: On the first page, the mini-dragons are apparently eating Macao alive. And to make it worse, his
*son* is *right there*! Also a tearjerker since Macao is assuring him that he's fine and telling his friend he leaves his son to him.
- A Fridge Horror and sort of nightmare fuel, but Chapter 337: It is implied Future!Rogue's Start of Darkness involved Frosch's death. Then this chapter reveals it wasn't a death, but a
*murder*. So who will take Frosch's life?
- As of Chapter 425, it's apparently Gray
- Chapter 340: There is something really unnerving about the look in Mavis's eyes when she gives Zeref the threat of '''annihilation''' if chooses to wipe out humanity. Yes, she gave a full-blown death threat.
- I'm sorry, is no one disturbed by the fact that the man who can kill you with just a look is threatening to massacre
*every living being on the planet*?
- Personally, I'd be more disturbed by the normally cheery and optimistic ,and let's not forget dead, Mavis giving said man who can kill you with just a look a death threat and fully intending to follow through with it.
- Chapter 348: As if the masked man's face wasn't bad enough, he wants to ''eat'' Gray!!
- In Chapter 354 we meet a member of Tartaros who took out all of Succubus Eye using her power to turn them all into shriveled-up, black, doll-things. Minerva shows up, is scared as hell, and appears to be the next victim. When you can make readers feel bad for a Jerkass like Minerva, that's a scary damn villain.
- In Chapter 356, we have
*another* member of Tartaros named Jackal who single-handedly massacred the **entire Magic Council** except for Doranbolt, who was lucky to escape with his life, all while sporting a Slasher Smile that would give the entire *Deadman Wonderland* cast chills. And if that's not bad enough, all of Tartaros's higher-tier mages are demons from the Book of Zeref, and their Guild Master is none other than E.N.D., the most powerful demon Zeref has ever created, who even Atlas Flame was terrified of and supposedly even kicked ''Igneel's'' ass. Tartaros is really starting to make *Grimoire Heart* look tame by comparison.
- Speaking of Jackal, in Chapter 361 (appropriately named
*The Two Bombs*) has Jackal placing one of the surviving Council members and a *pregnant woman* inside of explosive spheres and then forcing Lucy and Wendy into a Sadistic Choice—choose who lives or who dies. What makes it horrifying is the way he just watches all involved squirm and plead for their lives, especially the woman who is pleading not for her life but for that of her unborn child and the Council guy who tells them the woman doesn't matter because he's more important—all the while Jackal is cackling and giggling in the background. Thank goodness Natsu survived Jackal's earlier attack, because if he hadn't...
- In Chapter 363, Seilah of Tartaros uses Elfman's hand to try and choke Lisanna to death. Elfman is very much awake while this is happening.
- The mere concept that the protagonists, barely over 20 even with the Time Skip, are coming across dead bodies of ex-Council members that require a Gory Discretion Shot for us...
- Chapter 365: We see Erza tied up at Tartaros's HQ, completely at their mercy. And then, she's interrogated for Jellal's location. How effective is the torture? Turns out Kyôka can control feelings and increased pain sensitivity to maximum. It has Erza, one of the most powerful mages in Fiore
*screaming in agony and it reduces her to tears*.
- Kyôka decides that the shallow cuts she was torturing Erza with before aren't enough, and has moved to
*electrocution*.
- It's even more horrifying when you remember that the very reason Erza likes to wear armour is because of her trauma from the Tower of Heaven. And now she is completely stripped, restrained and tortured, it's Tower of Paradise all over again, if not worse.
- Chapter 416 reveals that she was in fact reliving the Tower of Heaven.
- Chapter 376: Just when you think the Tartaros Arc can't get any worse, Ezel, already having had his Establishing Character Moment as an Ax-Crazy nutcase whose moniker is
, has a fight with Wendy. It starts off about as bad as you'd think it would go, but right before he goes for the finishing blow, Carla tries to stop him. How does Ezel respond? By trying to eat her. Right in front of Wendy, who has been best friends with her for **Child Slicer** *years*.
- Chapter 382: That flying island Tartaros has as their headquarters? Use a curse called "Alegria", and it becomes a flying Eldritch Abomination that turns almost all of Fairy Tail to stone and assimilates them into the architecture of the guild hall. And this gets so much worse when you remember just how many other skulls, skeletons, and other assorted Scenery Gorn there are already built into the walls.
- Chapters 383 & 384: Lucy is all alone with Lamy, Torafuzar, and Jackal all after her head. Even as she strains herself to open
*three* gates simultaneously, she can only keep them at bay for so long. Eventually, she's left defenseless from overusing her magic, and while willing herself to stand up, Jackal suddenly blows up her left leg, leaving her fighting back tears of pain while Jackal and Lamy laugh at her suffering. Then as Lamy offers to help Jackal finish her off, Jackal suddenly blows her up without a trace, horrifying Lucy. If not for Aquarius, Lucy would have suffered the same fate.
- Even worse, before that Lamy suggested Jackal [[Gorn blow Lucy's breasts up]] and for a moment it looked like he really was going to do it!
- The "Face" magic pulse bomb looks really creepy, even without taking into account its purpose as a weapon of mass destruction designed to remove all of the magic from the continent. Chapter 387 makes it worse by revealing there are
*multiple* Faces. A few of which are *grinning*. Who designed these things?
- There are said to be THREE THOUSAND Faces. Wendy (who put everything she had into destroying ONE of them) starts crying out of sheer despair.
- Chapter 390: The Reveal concerning Silver: he's actually Deliora possessing the reanimated corpse of Gray's father. To think he was originally portrayed as the nicest member of Tartaros too. The Slasher Smile he gives while explaining this only makes it worse.
- The colored page at the beginning of the chapter shows that the scar on Silver's forehead was from a fairly graphic gash ironically created by the very demon now possessing him.
- Also, the sheer DEATH GLARE Gray gives off upon hearing this would put anything that Erza's made thus far in the series to shame. Juvia gives a smaller one to Keyes upon him saying that Gray's story would come to an end.
- The final page of Chapter 390 has Gray reaching Unstoppable Rage levels as he charges with pupilless eyes while Deliora laughs maniacally; a horrifying change from the calm air he presented for most of his appearance.
- In the end though, it all turns out to be a lie. Silver's just the Reanimated corpse of Gray's father. But we do get some Nightmare Fuel from Keyes and his experiments instead. As well as the Skeletons he summons to bind Lucy.
- Chapter 396 gives us Torafuzar's Curse ability, Tenchi Kaimei, which is a sea of black water enveloping everyone nearby. Not only does it combine fear of the dark as well as drowning, but it's also fatal poison to boot.
- In Chapter 399 Acnologia returns and induces a Mass "Oh, Crap!" in everyone, even Tartaros and especially the Fairy Tail members, which is justified considering their past experience with it. Even Marde Geer is visibly nervous.
- Chapter 405: Mard Geer's Slasher Smile at the end of the chapter is one for the manga history books.
- Chapter 413: The very concept of Dragon Slayer magic... Knowing you turn into the very being you are slaying one day is horrifying to think about not to mention how Acnologia must feel in his current form and body.
- Chapter 414: Igneel's very, very Family-Unfriendly Death, and it was right in front of Natsu. Zeref's not-so-subtle threat to Natsu right before that only makes things worse.
- Chapter 416: We finally learn what E.N.D. truly stands for:
**E**therious **N**atsu **D**ragneel.
- Chapter 424: Gray has seemingly pulled a Sasuke and joined a cult dedicated to Zeref. His demon slaying magic also has grown taking over more parts of his body.
- The similarities only grow with Chapter 426. The whole reason he's joined the cult is to get at the Book of E.N.D., and he's willing to do whatever it takes to do it. The blow is softened somewhat by the realization that it's partially due to over-usage of his Devil Slayer Magic and getting hit with Mard Geer's Memento Mori that's corrupted him, but that's a whole different can of nightmares...
- Thankfully, it turns out he was a Fake Defector the whole time, but those growing marks really were a threat, considering he had to go to Porlyusica to get them checked out.
- Chapter 428: Mary looks way, way too happy about putting Lucy through pain, her eyes literally glimmer.
*Glimmer*.
- Chapter 429 has Gômon thinking of ways to torture some info out of Lucy and Natsu. He considers using the goat method which if look up medieval torture shows it actually can be gruesome and Gômon explains the painful process to Lucy. Eventually, he just decides to cut her into while Natsu is helpless to watch... until Gray shows his real agenda.
- Chapter 433: Alok of Avatar provides some frighting concepts in just one chapter. The fact he burned his own face which forced him to wear a mask is one thing. Then not only did he harm his own body it was in fact a requirement to summon the War God Ikusatsunagi. This god would then kill everything in it's path including his cultists and followers including Mary! All of that just to bring Zeref to the priest...
- Chapter 436: Oh boy. You know about the terror of E.N.D. and Zeref's magic right? Well turns out E.N.D. was Zeref's intention of reviving his long dead brother, who IS Natsu, by the way. Oh and Acnologia has a humanoid form and he looks just as frightening as does his dragon state.
- The very conversation between Zeref and Acnologia. Not only was Acnologia planning to just kill everyone but Zeref decided to 'help' him in his homicidal crusade!
- 439: Hey guys you remember that weapon called Face which took the effort of Dragons to destroy before it sucked away all the magic on Fiore. Well... turns out this weapon along with the Magic Council were the only things stopping the combined might of the Alvarez Empire a combination of 730 guilds from invading and taking Lumen Histore. Good job Makarov went to stall them for time right!?
- Chapter 443: The Alvarez Empire might be this cranked up.
- Chapter 444: The Reveal that Emperor Spriggan, the guy who rules the Albereth Empire mentioned above is apparently Zeref himself. The Omnicidal Maniac Big Bad who is in an alliance with
*another* Omnicidal Maniac, who is a nigh unstoppable Dragon to boot, has an entire empire at his disposal and has twelve of the most powerful mages alive as his Praetorian Guard. Fairy Tail has its work cut out for them.
- Chapter 450: Can we talk about the fact Mavis has the Curse of contradiction? Because of this she now kills everything she ever loves like the mother of Makarov or several innocent people. We then see the image of a Mavis who tried to stave herself to death to end her suffering, but only for the efforts to fail completely. We need to discuss Zeref seeing her as a person he can both walk with and love for the rest of his immortal life. So we need to think a paring people wanted to become canon only then for the Kiss of Death to end Mavis's life. I think we really need to talk about this...
- To elaborate, the effects of the Ankhseram curse have always been rather horrifying to behold, but it is in this chapter that the sadism and injustice of it are really fleshed out. Within a year of its activation, Mavis was reduced from an innocent and cheerful girl to a disheveled, death-seeking shell of her former self. She wanted to die so desperately that she tried
*starving herself for half a year*, and when Zeref finally found her, she *full out begged him to kill her*. Also consider that Zeref himself went through the exact same thing in the beginning, but unlike Mavis, no one with a similar condition would be coming to him for several centuries yet.
- When they met for the third time, Zeref appeared rather well-adjusted compared to Mavis at first glance. He was dressed immaculately, telling her that there was nothing they could do to escape the curse and calmly advising her to change her perspective. Seems as if one could get used to it given the time?
*God no.* Turned out, the entire thing screwed with his mind so much that he couldn't even notice contradictions in his own thoughts, and the moment Mavis pointed it out, he went into a breakdown. Mavis, despite her disheveled, pitiful appearance, was the far saner of the two. Those extra centuries of coping with the curse had only turned Zeref into an even greater mental and emotional wreck beneath his calm demeanor. Then consider that this guy is one of the most magically and politically powerful people on the planet.
- Chapter 453: As mentioned on the Awesome page; Alvarez managing to sneak fifty airships right over the Fairy Tail guild completely caught everyone off guard, even Mavis.
- Chapter 455: After a brief Hope Spot in the previous chapter, Fairy Tail finds out just how utterly outmatched they really are. Those fifty airships led by Ajeel? They were only the
*vanguard*. A few *hundred* more airships are on their way. Along with an army of over a million troops. And *all of the Spriggan Twelve* are part of the assault. One of them is curbstomping Erza. Another is effortlessly breaking through Freed's barrier. A third is casually taking a bath in Lucy's home. The enemy forces vastly outnumber them, are far more powerful, and are already in their midst. Barring a miracle, outside aid, or both, Fairy Tail is *screwed*. Even Mavis can't see a way out of this disaster.
- Chapter 466: We see the first deaths of this war by Bradman the God of Death. Then Marin goes batshit after Brandish's treatment of him, causing him to try to choke her to death. Keep in mind this manga, is (supposedly) for children.
- Chapter 470: God Selena effortlessly survives the attacks of the other top 4 mages of the continent and utterly crushes them. But that is not the terrifying part. That comes when Acnologia of all people appears and effortlessly cleaves Serena almost in half in the span of one panel, reminding the readers yet again how absurdly powerful he is. He also seems to be homing in on the remaining Dragon Slayers whom he wants to kill.
- Chapter 480: Gajeel's group heads to aid Sabertooth and Blue Pegasus... only to find them utterly defeated. Not only that, they were also ''crucified'' and paraded around like war trophies.
- Chapter 486 has a minor but chilling one: As Acnologia is preparing to join the battle between Sabertooth, Fairy Tail, Bradman, and Irene, Alvarez's strongest woman starts messing with the magic of the very planet to such an extent that Zeref senses it. Not only that, he sweats at the thought while wondering what she's planning.
**ZEREF ** is afraid.
- Chapter 502
- Chapter 503
- And we finally get the answer for what the growth inside Natsu was, it was of Etherious origin, and it's power kicks right as Dimaria attempts to gouge Lucy's eyes out with a dagger... The next thing Lucy sees is Dimaria completely beaten and singed, muttering "monster" to herself and realizing what kind of person could do that. E.N.D. has awakened and is out for Zeref's head. The look upon Natsu's face as he is searching for him is unsettling, with black flame aura covering his hands, which become much more demonic, as he is muttering Zeref's name constantly. And then comes Gray...]]
- Natsu as E.N.D is very frightening, even more than the demons of Tartaros. The Nine Demon Gates might have been a bunch of psychopaths and sadists but they were still rational individuals. E.N.D on the other hand walks around searching for Zeref in order to kill him like if he was Brainwashed and Crazy and hurting or even killing anyone that stands in his way, like what he did to Dimaria and those poor Alvarez troops.
- As stated on the Awesome page: E.N.D.'s sheer power. The last time Dimaria was defeated, it required both a Dragon Slayer and a God Slayer, mages trained in Magic specifically made to kill Gods, at her full power with the intervention of another Time Mage who could only cancel out a Time Stands Still spell and cost the Time Mage and the God Slayer their magic and even then it was a very close battle. E.N.D. on the other hand had only just awoken, moved through the Time Stand Still spell and curb stomped a PhysicalGod so hard she had a VillainousBreakdown, muttering about how strong he was. Natsu was stronger before but END is a whole other level,
- Natsu starts spewing out smoke, and when Lucy tries to justle him, remarks that he's
*cold as ice.* Natsu, the fire mage, is **COLD** to the touch, and Lucy can't wake him.
- What? No mention for when Acnologia started stepping on Irene's corpse in Chapters 524 and 528? Pure Wendy can only stare on in sheer horror as Irene's corpse is viciously mutilated.
- Zeref with Fairy Heart. He was already the world's most powerful mage before, but Fairy Heart has boosted him. How strong is he? Certainly strong enough to
**punch a hole through Natsu's sternum.**
- Chapter 538: Just when you thought the war was over, Zeref had been destroyed, and the Black Dragon defeated for good,
*the Time Lapse cracks open again.* **Acnologia ain't done yet.**
- Chapter 542: The Mages devise a plan to lure Acnologia's dragon form to Port Hargeon and make it land on a ship so he will succumb to motion sickness. It's also established that the body is operating on a sort of autopilot without the mind governing it. He
*completely* annihilates the lot of boats docked there out of *pure instinct* to destroy his weaknesses with a *tremendous* number of devastating magical blasts. And then *laughs* at his destruction.
- Acnologia's key motive for destroying things? He wants to, pure and simple. Well, at least till we learn he had loved ones before the meanest of the dragons came along and ruined all that. Buy even so, he's lived for so long now that he doesn't really care about the past and what has been lost and now gets his jollies out of causing
*total destruction.* | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/FairyTail |
Fables / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
Who's afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?
**As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.**
- Bigby Wolf in his origin story. A wolf bigger than a clydesdale horse. Half its mouth is covered in blood. Standing on top of knights, soldiers, and civilians eaten alive in a gory burning field. Looking the reader right in the eyes.
- One cover features witchhunter Hansel drowning two women.
- In the
*Fairest* spin-off, Rapunzel's Dark and Troubled Past shows that basically the legend of Sadako happened to her. Her time spent down the well, and her insane rampage when she crawls out of it, come straight out of a horror story.
- Goldilocks is pretty nightmarish with her Cold Sniper personality and the brutal fashions she kills people in.
- After her husband has turned Brainwashed and Crazy, Snow White has a nightmare of coming home to find Bigby having killed all their children and serving them on platters as food.
-
*Cubs In the Toyland*, especially if you're a parent. Each of the toys caused the death of a child. They list those "murders" and they're all completely mundane accidents that could happen to any child playing without supervision. Except for that one toy who mentioned "Blunt force trauma," implying it was used to *beat* a child to death. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Fables |
Fairy Tales in General / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
*... and all the little kiddies in the audience lived scarred for ever after!*
Illustration by Gustave Doré
Fairy tales are considered to be the most
*typical* example of children's stories. They are respected as being part of traditional world culture and have been retold over centuries and centuries. Even today parents don't have any problem telling these tales to their offspring!
The problem is: fairy tales were never exclusively meant for children. In the centuries before the 19th century, adults didn't see children as any different from adults. This meant that grownups would tell scary stories to each other without being troubled that their kids would hear things not meant for their innocent ears. Gruesome scenes or sexual innuendo were prominent in many of these ancient tales. Despite attempts to make these tales more child friendly, many fairy tales still have disturbing content. But as always, the chilling scenes are always the parts children love to hear again and again...
**Charles Perrault**
- "Bluebeard": The girl discovering that Bluebeard killed all his previous partners and that their bodies are kept inside a room in his house!
- "Little Red Riding Hood": In Perrault's original tale the wolf eats the grandmother and the girl and the story simply ends there!! It wasn't until the Grimm version that the hunter and the rescue scene were added to the plot! Still, being Swallowed Whole and being inside a living being is enough to make you cringe.
- "Hop-o'-My-Thumb": The scene where the man-eating giant wants to cut Hop-o'-My-Thumb and his seven brothers' necks and goes to their bed. Because of the darkness and Hop's clever plan to change their hats the giant accidentally slits his own daughters' throats... while they are sleeping!!
- Gustave Doré 's illustration to this scene is equally terrifying. (See the image to illustrate this article)
- There's a second half to "Sleeping Beauty"'s story. Her mother-in-law is a cannibal who wants to eat the princesss kids. She gives absurdly
*Frasier*-like directions for how she wants them cooked. This was probably meant to be funny or satirical, but may have scared the piss out of some.
- "Donkeyskin": A.K.A. "The King Who Wished to Marry His Daughter". The queen died, and said that the king could only marry a woman as beautiful as her/more beautiful than her/who fit her ring/etc. (depending on the version). The king went mad, and began lusting after his daughter. What's worse is that this is
*based on a true story*, that of St. Dymphna - only without the Cinderella ending. It went From Bad to Worse: Eventually King Damon tracked her down in Geel, Belgium, and when she refused to return to Ireland and marry him, he pulled his sword from its scabbard and beheaded her. **The Brothers Grimm**
- "Snow White": The Queen asks the hunter to kill Snow White and bring back her lungs and liver, both as proof of her death and so that she can cook and eat them.
- Her comeuppance is also pretty horrifying. When she hears that the Prince's new wife is fairer than her, she goes to the wedding, and sees that the bride is Snow White, whom she thought dead. She's quickly identified and arrested, and is forced to
*dance herself to death in red-hot iron shoes*. Granted, it's hard to say she didn't deserve it, but it's still a horrifying way to go.
- "Little Red Riding Hood" and "The Wolf and the Seven Young Kids": The image of a Big Bad Wolf eating you is a scary thought to most children. In "Little Red Riding Hood" the wolf disguises himself as your grandmother and then eats you. In "The Wolf and the Seven Young Kids" the little goats are home alone. when the wolf tricks them into believing he is their mother. Then they let him in and are eaten. The very thought of being gobbled up by a wolf but still being alive in its stomach is
*chilling*.
- "Cinderella", in which the evil step-sisters first cut off pieces of their feet to fit the golden slipper, and later had their eyes pecked out by birds who were avenging Cinderella.
- "Hansel and Gretel": A brother and sister are abandoned in the woods by their parents, in some accounts on behalf of the step mother. This is already disturbing in itself, because it was actually founded in actual historical events-the Great Famine of 1315-1317. Children
*were* literally abandoned in the wilderness by their parents, and cannibalism is well-documented. Pleasant dreams!
- Hansel is then imprisoned by a witch in order to make him fat enough to eat. But Gretel pushes her inside the oven, where the witch is burned alive!!
- There is a picture book of Hansel and Gretel with illustrations in what looked like Claymation images (possibly based on some TV special). That would've been creepy enough, but the crowning moment of chills was the ending scene that they added on to this version of the tale. After returning to their home, the kids hear an explosion in the woods. Then a
*cookie* version of *the Witch* lands in their front yard. As in, a giant cookie shaped exactly like the Witch. Really, really disturbing. The illustrations may have come from this classic 1954 version of the story. You can see the "cookie witch" in this segment.
- The
*second* volume of Grimm's stories are even worse — those are the "Morality Tales", wherein "bad children" face even *more* sadistic fates.
- The tone and taste level of the whole genre is neatly summarised by the classic jingle that runs through "The Juniper Tree", apparently just another
*adorable* bedtime story making the rounds in 19th century Germany:
It was my mother who murdered me
It was my father who ate of me
It was my sister Marjorie
Who all my bones in pieces found
Them in her handkerchief she bound
And laid them under the juniper tree.
- Said story has the Wicked Stepmother kill the heroine's brother by chopping his head off with the lid of a heavy chest. She then arranges him as if sitting down with a handkerchief around his neck to hide the neck wound. The heroine comes by, asks him for a bite of the apple he's holding, then slaps him when he doesn't respond and his head falls off. And then the stepmother proceeds to turn the poor boy's body into a nice stew (or in some versions of the tale, black sausages) which she then serves to their unknowing father!
- "Rumpelstiltskin": When Rumpelstiltskin discovers that the queen knows his name he stamps his right foot into the floor. Then when trying to free himself he accidentally rips himself in two!! This ending has been altered in many child friendly adaptations.
- The Story of the Youth Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was: As the title suggests, it's about a youth who has absolutely no sense of fear, and so he sets out to learn what it feels like. This results in him getting involved with a wide array of terrifying spooks, specters, spirits and evil fairies, with the precise array varying depending on the version. The version described here on this site includes:
- Being attacked by a veritable army of Talking Animals that want to murder him for no reason.
- Trying to sleep in a bed that races around the Haunted Castle like a living thing.
- Half a corpse (or skeleton) falling down the chimney out of nowhere, followed by the other half. Then the corpse joins together and becomes an animated corpse, it's joined by several more, and they start playing games of nine-pin bowling with human skulls for balls and severed legs for pins.
- A coffin is carried in, with the youth's cousin seemingly lying dead inside it. When the youth tries to warm the corpse up, it animates and tries to strangle him to death before he fights it off and seals it up in the coffin.
- Finally, a mysterious old man with Super Strength shows up, boasting he can hammer an anvil into the ground with his bare hands and implicitly threatening our hero.
- "Allerleirauh/All-Kinds of Fur": See "Donkeyskin" up in the Charles Perrault section.
- "Rapunzel": After cutting off Rapunzel's hair and casting her out of the tower, the witch tricks the Prince into climbing up and confronts him when he reaches the top. Exactly what happens depends on the telling, but in just about all versions, the Prince suffers a nasty fall and is rendered blind.
**Hans Christian Andersen**
- "The Girl Who Trod on the Loaf", in which the cruel, vain protagonist becomes a statue in Hell, able to hear everything said about her on Earth, almost all of which is nasty until an angel begins to cry for her and sets her soul free.
- "The Little Match Girl": The poor girl tries to sell matches, while shivering in the snow. But no one helps her, so to remain warm she starts lighting all of her matches, hallucinates about being warm until the
*final one*, then afterwards she promptly freezes to death — until her (dead) grandma shortly takes her to Heaven... This was seen as a happy ending back in ye olde days..
- "The Little Mermaid": In contrast to the Disneyfication the Mermaid dies at the end of the story.
- The Nightingale: The Grim Reaper appears on the Emperor's death bed. According to Andersen's original text he stares at the Emperor through his hollow eyes.
- The Red Shoes, in which the protagonist is punished for paying more attention to the title objects than to her family or church sermons by being forced to dance in the shoes, which keep dancing even after her feet have been cut off!
**Joseph Jacobs**
- The Three Little Pigs: In the original story the first two pigs are eaten by the wolf. Imagine feeling safe inside your house of straw and/or wood until everything is blown away by a hungry wolf who then devours you!
- Jack and the Beanstalk: The giant smelling Jack and then yelling: "Fee Fi Fo Fum. I smell the blood of an Englishman."
- Goldilocks and the Three Bears: Goldilocks waking up and discovering she's surrounded by a bunch of bears.
- The Rose Tree: The heroine having her head chopped off by her Wicked Stepmother.
**Arabian Nights**
- "Aladdin": In the original story the djinn is portrayed as a gruesome looking ghost who works as a slave for the caliph.
- "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves": Whenever one of the thieves fails in his mission the headman of the thieves has him murdered in cold blood.
- Not to mention the part where the thieves catch Ali Baba's brother in their lair. They kill him, and then hang his body from a tree simply because they suspect he had an accomplice, and hope that by leaving the body in plain view, said accomplice will steal it back to give it a proper burial.
- "Sinbad the Sailor": Most of the monsters Sinbad encounters during his stories.
**Other**
- The Pied Piper of Hamelin: A strange man arrivés in rat infested medieval town, drives all rats away, isn't paid for this and then as a retribution takes all the town's children with him. What he does with them afterwards remains a creepy mystery in some versions of the story...
- Peter and the Wolf: The music itself makes a lot of scenes in the story frightening, especially a Jump Scare moment when the cat tries to catch the bird and misses and later the gruesome scene where the wolf swallows the duck alive!
- Whenever Askeladden, the archetypical hero of Norwegian fairy tales, hid in the home of a troll, the troll would often say "I smell the blood of a christian man". The troll is not only enormous and all but invulnerable to normal weapons,
*it knows you're there*. Even worse is that, unless "christian man" just meant humans in general, it could exploit the thing that brings many people comfort and safety. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/FairyTalesInGeneral |
FAITH: The Unholy Trinity / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
# All spoilers are UNMARKED as per Moments Page requirements.
This being a game about exorcising a demon, of course there are gonna be moments of horror and dread.
*CORRUPTION, THOU ART MY FATHER!*
- The game's aesthetic design itself, due to the simplistic pixel Atari style of the game. It leaves details up to the player's imagination and gives an eerie, inhuman tone which will haunt the player from start to finish. This also extends to the bit-crushed, synthetic voices each character speaks with; while they don't make for incredibly emotional performances, they sure are disturbing.
- The rotoscoped cutscenes. Suddenly going from incredibly simplistic sprite animation to full-on animation is incredibly uncomfortable, especially with how disturbingly
*fluid* they are. They are rare, being reserved for the story's creepiest moments too, and work to great effect.
- Like all horror games, the player has very limited actions, only able to walk around at a moderate pace and raise up a crucifix. Fortunately the crucifixes are quite effective against demons, but when you think about it, what kind of a maniac has the faith required to go hunt demons with no other form of protection?
- The game is lauded for making great use of silence and atmospheric stillness to keep the player on their toes. Chapter III in particular takes advantage of this by ramping up the Jump Scares relative to the rest of the series. However, whenever something especially horrific occurs, be ready for a waterfall of shocking chaotic noise and screeches to run down your spine.
- The way the demons speak with John is very creepy: often they start out speaking in first-person, as if they are their host. However, once the jig is up, they revert to third-person and treat their host like a puppet, taunting John that he will never be able to free them.
- While some demons get rotoscoped close-ups, a lot of them are only ever seen in the simple Atari style. This leaves a lot up to the player's imagination, but some especially disturbing details such as horns, tails, umbilical cords, and eyes are unmistakable.
- The demons themselves are a terrifying lack of context. Rather than elaborate backstories and fanciful names thrown about, the most you get is on the Big Bad which in and of itself barely gets any description beyond "unspeakable evil". The rest running amok? You only exorcise
*some* of them, and the game leaves it ambiguous how many are still on Earth. In some cases, like the "Elevator Friend", there is no comeuppance for their crimes, and even "cleansed" areas in *Chapter III* aren't actually free of the influences.
- The full version of the game lets you speed up the game so John no longer moves around at a snail's pace. But when we say speed up the game, we also mean the enemies get faster too. Good luck even trying to fend off a berserk Michael at full speed!
- While walking through the forest towards the house, a spider-like white monster Michael has a chance of attacking John. It can be repelled fairly easily, but is still a disturbing introduction to the game, especially with the Satanic mantras it recites as it goes. It also brutally murders an innocent deer, right in front of John. Made worse when you learn that this beast used to be
*human*. Though occasionally hit with a little Nightmare Retardant when warding it off might result in him saying, "I GO UNWILLINGLY," this is in-between potential monotone screams.
- The forest itself is an Unnaturally Looping Location, as you can easily end up lost and seeing the same spaces over and over again on the path to finding the key and the Martin's household. The freaky thing is that once you've successfully pushed Amy out of the house and go back outside, the entire forest has paths and seems relatively normal. It's as if trying to work your way through initially was a fit of insanity in its own right.
- The first vision John sees of Amy is disturbing, as she slowly pulls herself up to stand at the foot of a bed try not to think about that when you go to bed tonight. Then, John simply says:
*"She is here."*
- Once Amy's hair parts away from her face, you'll notices that well, she
*has no face*, but instead a red hole. And then later, a whole *arm* reaches out of the hole.
- After exploring the attic, downstairs you'll find a loaded gun and
*"KILL HER"* written on the floor in blood.
- Killing the man in front of the shack and getting back in the car will reveal that Michael has been waiting in the backseat! He then attacks John while he tries to drive away.
- If John returns to the car with the gun in hand, Michael will attack and he will shoot him, causing him to stumble into the road and to be reduced to gore by a semi-truck. News reports mistake his body for a chupacabra.
- The secret deer ending is strange, but disturbing. If John shoots a deer, then his car escape will be halted by another deer leaping in front of him and causing him to crash. Injured and bloody, John tries to grab his cross, but is surrounded by vengeful deer who charges at him as the screen Smash to Black. News reports that a body was found mangled beyond recognition.
- Pausing the game while Michael is on the screen will instead show four different animations of him, giving you a close up and disturbing look at him and how he moves. The first, third and fourth show this with him crawling (or walking in the third) with a malicious grin on his face, but his second is notable in that he seems to have a sad look on his face and is clutching his head. As we see in FAITH II, Michael was once a little boy before he got possessed by the demon. Is he trying to fight it, and completely aware of his situation? Even worse is that a few of his lines sound as if he's trying to tell about his situation or lament about it.
**"I GO UNWILLINGLY."** **"I HAVE THE BODY OF A PIG!"** **"RUN! RUN! RUN!"**
- The Optional Boss only appears if you shoot the mirror three times, as it's clear
*something* is following you when you walk past the mirror. What results is that something pulling you into a Room Full of Crazy as it repeatedly tries to bumrush you amidst nonstop hellish noise. Once it's all done and finished, the note afterwards implies that this entire fight is Through the Eyes of Madness as some sort of psychotic breakdown from John, because *nothing else* explains what you just fought.
## Demo
- The demo begins with John leaving his car after it crashed. If you follow the tire tracks, you'll find that he was run off the road by a pickup truck. Examining the bloodstained driver's seat reveals the culprit to be a red man with a Slasher Smile. If you leave this screen and return, the driver is missing with a trail of blood leading into the nearby cornfield. You can catch a brief glimpse of him running away if you follow the trail.
- John's car bursts into flames when you move between screens. Touching it causes him to run quickly while rapidly burning to death.
*And you need to do this as a step to unlock the secret ending!*
- The cornfield. Once you enter it, you're trapped. There's a creepy scarecrow that cannot be exorcised, whose face deteriorates while you fight the demon in there. Said demon is completely invisible, you have to look at the corn stalks that get disturbed as it moves in order to fight it.
- After you leave the cornfield, you're greeted with the corpse of a dog that it tore apart. Further along is a graveyard where six children were buried, who were orphans that were looked after in the nearby church.
**Graveyard Note**
: "What more could I have done? I warned them not to go into the fields. I warned them against straying too far from the sanctuary. Should I have shut them in their quarters and nailed boards over the doors? Now I am digging six graves here in the shadow of the church. Six little graves forever looking to Saint William. Some of the boxes are empty... the scattered remains we found couldn't fill them all
. But I know they're all gone. I know their souls were taken by that thing in the field. I will finish my gruesome work and then renounce the ministry
. I don't want to see anyone from the sanctuary ever again, not even that girl who stayed inside the house last night. I don't believe in the Devil anymore. Whatever did this is much, much worse."
- The Church itself is no less scary. Falling apart at the seams. Doors boarded up. A crucifix mysteriously falling off the wall. And seated on the pews are red figures whom you can't interact with at all.
- After exorcising two of the objects in the church, you're suddenly charged at by some more red figures whom you must repel with the cross before you get a first-person view of John getting repeatedly stabbed to death with a pair of scissors. Say hello to the thralls, the series common enemy who will be more than happy to kill John.
- And when you exorcise the three objects until the only colourless stained glass window regains its detail, you'll see it depicting a "saint" with a demonic arm reaching out of their face not unlike poor Amy. When you exorcise that, RUN AWAY. The three seated thralls' heads will begin glitching out before charging at you.
- But the scariest part of the church is the basement. It's pitch black down there, human bones litter the floor, and you have only got a small cone of light provided by a flashlight to light your way. And you have to fight a demon down there that randomly teleports, forcing you to find it before it can catch you by surprise.
- The demon's taunting doesn't help.
- Whenever you turn around in the fight against the basement demon, sometimes you see something different in the areas you illuminate. Like two of the missing children, a different demon just standing there, or a grey man who runs at you.
- The notes you find tell how a nun named Miriam Bell came to the church as a volunteer caretaker. At first, all was fine. She was a cheerful character who somehow knew her way around the place, making her a seemingly perfect fit at the sanctuary. Then there was mentions of Sister Bell looking to the sky while the kids danced around her in a circle, or the kids standing on the edge of the cornfield while she talked to them inside it. Soon life-sized dolls made of sticks and dead tree branches appeared around the church, along with people painted red looking out from the corn, along with a painting of the virgin Mary laughing. Then Sister Bell was seen dragging the two surviving twins into the basement. The policeman investigating the other kids' disappearances was about to go down there, only to be stopped by the church's priest who went down in his stead and sealed the door behind him.
*The stairs don't seem to open from this side. All I could do is wait. I can't describe the noises I heard down there, but one thing is certain: the Devil is real. To anyone reading this: please, for the love of God, don't go down into that basement.*
- The secret ending. To get it, you have to defeat the basement demon, exorcise the scarecrow when a pair of red eyes stare out of the hole in its face as it oozes blood, then set yourself on fire and run to the scarecrow before you die. The missing twins will stand there as you burn, before more children run towards you from off screen. After that creepy scene, you turn into a demon and have to move through screens full of the man-sized stick dolls until you find Sister Bell. You then get a cutscene where she turns to face you, before her face distorts as she lets out an ear-piercing screech.
## Full Game
- During the intro, the player can find photographs of Michael's progression into a monster. It's heart-breaking watching his lively face deteriorate into a drained stare and than a devious grin, his hair falling out and his eyes turning red.
- Then there's the encounter with Michael strapped to the bed. He tries to emotionally manipulate Garcia, and after being subject to a crucifix, breaks his bonds and crawls away as the room goes pitch-black. After following him into the hall, you find Michael feasting on someone, and he turns towards the camera before letting an eyeball roll out of his mouth. He runs away, screaming
*"I have the body of a pig!"*
- While walking through the cemetery, at one point bloody footsteps begin appearing behind John, following him.
- There's the cutscene where John looks into the mirror and stabs himself in the eye with a key. After you regain control, John is actually dripping blood from that eye, leaving a trail as he walks.
- A certain tree in the cemetery turns into a humanoid form and runs away screaming. Bizarre? Yes. Creepy? Yes.
- At some point, you encounter a note in the center of a bloody summoning circle in the middle of the woods. It's a newspaper report detailing the ritualistic killings of three people, apparently for the sake of a demonic ritual. At least, that's what it looks like. Then the newspaper says that the three victims shouldn't be mourned, as they were all junkies and deserved what they got anyway. Then it starts
*addressing John by name*, accusing him of committing the murders and taunting him that the works of the Beast can never be killed, and it becomes all too apparent that the UNSPEAKABLE is the real author of this document. As you scroll farther and farther down, the message devolves into Satanic prayers repeated over and over again, until, at the very bottom-
- But wait, there's more! The perspective then changes to a mangled demon that makes chaotic noise every time it moves. However, as it passes under a bridge, John emerges from the other side, untouched.
- Alternatively, the player can choose to kill the couple having trouble on the side of the road in this demon form. Watch out for that semi, or you might end up a bloody smear across the asphalt while the "MORTIS" screen is replaced with ramblings and red scribbles.
- Every bit of lore about the "Candy Tunnel" near the end, which is crawling with demons and serial killers that murdered hobos and kids that had been lured inside. Special mention to the armless demon with hands on its face, which will kill John if he moves (with a special animation playing if you move while its back is turned), forcing you to watch it shamble around.
- If you go too far into the grated-off area, you'll find a note about the disappearance of people in the tunnel. As you walk away, a thrall will suddenly rush you.
- Despite having Garcia with you, the final encounter is still quite terrifying, especially the introduction cutscene where its masked face screams
*"GET OUT!"*. After defeating it, its cloak and mask explode off its body, shooting out bloody tendrils and revealing a large eye as awful screaming plays.
- In an alternate ending, John finds himself in the midst of a Satanic ritual, where he is approached by a giant red abomination. His eyes cry tears of blood at the sight while a disturbingly triumphant church organ plays. Smash to Black
## Demo
## Full Game
- That clinic, that fucking clinic. It's John's first stop to investigate, and it's every bit as creepy as you would expect for a place Gary ran. Despite being abandoned and quiet, you feel watched.
- While John's second mission into the apartment complex is about the same as it was in the demo, it has a few new horrors lying in wait. With the disturbing drone of the soundtrack assaulting your ears, you are now truly among the damned.
- The demo had an Easter-egg where, if you try to access the 7th floor too many times in the elevator, a smiling, flayed, one-eyed demon will appear among the flickering lights before disappearing. It had a low chance of appearing in the halls after this, but it's relatively harmless. Here in the full game? It's
*not*. And it's just hanging from the ceiling waiting to pounce. What adds to the horror is that its voice is not synthesized like everyone elses', but bitcrushed. And it sounds so giddy, even when it's driven away.
- Also in the demo is a an invitation to a Halloween party that's missing the end to it. In the full game, the writer of this note has mentioned that their son Timmy has made a new Imaginary Friend. If you check the note by the 6th floor elevator, it's a drawing Timmy made of something he calls his "Elevator Friend". It's the demon. And a second drawing shows that they both play the notorious Elevator Game. Once you play and "win", you can find the demon leading poor Timmy away.
- Oh, also? The full invitation mentions a certain "Mr. Miller, who has taken to Timmy so well and has become like a part of the family." It's Gary.
- The Elevator Game mentioned above plays out exactly like it does in the frightening Japanese and South Korean legend. Same number of floors to input after 1
note : 4, 2, 6, 2, 10, 5, 1, same old lady entering on the fifth floor note : apparently this doesn't always happen. If she boards, look away. Don't approach her. Otherwise, you'll be met with a close-up of her face distorting in demonic fury and your own death. And when you try to leave once it's over, she will ask "Where are you going?".
- The second Optional Boss just might top the first. It's Tiffany, Gary's spurned former lover and the first
note : recent attempt at a vessel for Malphas, rejected in favor of Amy. When you find her, she's seemingly torn off her own head, yet she's still somehow able to communicate with John... and the reason why soon becomes apparent, as the camera pans up to reveal a massive spider-like demon with an elongated jaw growing out of her empty neck stump. She has performed the ritual willingly for Gary. And she succeeded. **Tiffany:** AND NOW. I AM BEYOND. I AM THE SECOND DEATH. I AM THE DAUGHTER OF THE UNSPEAKABLE.
- The fight itself is also horrific, as Tiffany can sometimes fly around the screen, unleashing an untold amount of souls as she does. The music also doesn't help, sounding like a facsimile of the frantic and wrong final boss of
*Silent Hill*. And once you beat her and leave, her mangled body will crawl after John in a last attempt to kill John.
- The elevator doesn't take you to the 1st floor at the end of the Elevator Game, but the tenth. After Tiffany's defeat, returning to the elevator will reveal a hole through the floor and the words DAMNATIO MEMORIAE
note : Latin for "condemnation of memory"; basically the Roman way to Un-person someone. written around it in blood. And it leads all the way down to the 7th floor that supposedly "doesn't exist". One of the rooms here leads to a truly horrific sight. There's a massive, skeletal effigy in purple rags and crown standing in a strange, star-like sigil in the middle of the room. Blood trails to the walls to a pentagram and a bird-like shape. There's a wheelbarrow full of bloody flesh nearby. And laying in a strewn pile of it before the statue is Timmy's corpse. There's no explanation as to how he died, but one of his parents was trying to bring him back in the most horrific of ways. *He promised me so much* *I just want to see my little boy again* *The replacement is almost fully formed* *Just a few more bodies*
- It may be shorter than the other places of interest, but the abandoned daycare has its own creepiness to offer. Youre not in danger, but you soon will be. The tunnels await.
- Left behind by children are innocent drawings that naively depict a plethora of demons and disturbing imagery. Some of these are even shout-outs to other Airdorf and New Blood indie games. And in some cases, the children drawn in them look
*horrified*. It's entirely likely they were intentionally subjected to proximity to demons and their influences. Which probably means the entire daycare was likely also controlled by Gary for the sake of a ready supply of sacrifices.
- Look at one of the last ones. It depicts the children celebrating around a bloody and dead John, the UNSPEAKBLE triumphantly hovering over them all. That means they were being trained to kill John if they ever saw him. Suddenly the daycare's emptiness has become a blessing.
- The police are completely set up outside the school, and will outright gun John down if he exits through the front door. The cult has become so overt now that the Profane Sabbath is a day away, that they've openly taken over the place to make sure all goes to plan. Good or neutral ending, John and Garcia inevitably leave the place to
*everyone dead* in an outright war with Gary's followers, implying all the baddies Garcia was fending off weren't just in the cult base but outright running in across the whole damn county to kill them.
- What else is beneath a children's daycare school but an entire hellish labyrinth of tunnels, cultic edifices, sacrificial setups and
**the damn Crucible**, which is intended to be the focal point of the demonic invasion. Notes openly spell out that yes, they're sacrificing children to their demonic god. This is where it lives.
- Right at the beginning, we get one very shocking reveal in the form of a portrait. It's that of a beautiful lady, who decomposes into a frightening corpse if you look at it long enough. Even the shadow changes and grows a horn. A growl starts to grow in volume along with the crackling drone. And as a pair of white hands grasp the frame to drag it away, an all-too familiar screech. The overworld sprite of the picture is quite familiar too. It's none other than
*Miriam Bell*. What's just as scary is that Gary's note nearby confirms she is his **mother**.
- Gary manages to inject John with
*something* that makes him freak the ever-living hell out and put him through a severe Mind Rape of seemingly unlinked scenes and violence note : they're really a visual reference to the lyrics of King of Pain, John's Dark and Troubled Past having seemingly been raised alongside Lisa in a church, and the visage of John wandering halls with a Slasher Smile as it's not entirely clear what the hell is going on. By the time you're in control again in the labyrinth with a trail of blood leading to you, heading a room over shows an entire group of cultists that were torn to chunks, with one last one crawling away pleading for help before expiring. John might just have the potential to be worse than the cult of the unspeakable evil.
- The third Optional Boss is a floating, twisted red mass with a face, who will slowly chase John down from offscreen. And each time it appears, a flash of a Rorschach will flash over the screen for a split second. Getting caught by it will trap John in a short facsimile of his time at the Yale Psychiatric Institution, where you have to escape back to reality before you're caught again and are killed. Whatever this demon is, it managed to send John back to when nobody would believe him after the failed exorcism.
- The cultists (often confused for thralls) are not like the thralls. They won't rush and stab you to death, but they will follow you while chanting "Gary loves you." or "The Second Death." This isn't so bad until you encounter the inhuman ones with large heads
note : a reference to a monster in Puppet Combo's *Tonight It Follows*, who'll stretch their hands to grab John and then chew him to death. And they will respawn once you leave the room after exorcising them.
- Eventually John must partake of the dark in another tunnel right beneath the statue of Moloch. And it's so dark that even a lantern barely helps. The area is almost reminiscent of
*Silent Hill*'s Otherworld, with harmless bird scares and harmful screaming acolytes with their pigeon-masked heads bent and torn backwards and walking in the same direction. The open forest area after this is just as unnerving and feels worse. These freaks can come out of nowhere.
- "A riddle, priest. How do you make a portal to Hell?" With everything going on all around you, being asked this is bound to make you bound to feel uneasy. And when you go through the door at the end of the dark outdoors, you'll feel like you just stepped right through. You're surrounded by cultists, who slowly morph and become an indistinguishable, writhing mass the further down you go, all while Gary teases you with the riddle.
**Gary:** SOMETIMES, IT WAITS FOR THE ONE WHO HAS ALREADY WALKED THROUGH IT.
SOMETIMES, IT OPENS ITSELF IN THE DEEPEST, DARKEST ROOM WHERE NOBODY CAN FIND IT.
AND SOMETIMES, IT COMES WALKING RIGHT UP TO YOU.
- Gary. It's hard to imagine someone who looks like Walter White being the harbinger of the apocalypse given how normal he sounds in his letters. But if you haven't figured it out through his actions and correspondents in each chapter, the longer you're around him, the more you'll see there's something inhuman about him. But as everyone insists, he's a normal human being, just like you and me.
- For starters, the questioning session. Each question asked makes his smile bigger and more monstrous, all while delivering a cruel chuckle. The answers he gives also deserve a mention too. His mission? To prepare the world for the Antichrist. Malphas? Not the UNSPEAKABLE, but the same demon John caught glimpses of at the apartment. And he's
*already* been summoned. And the twins? They were miscarriages. It was all a coping delusion of a grieving Mrs. Martin. But John (and even Garcia) didn't know that. And Gary was banking on that fact to taunt the priest into chasing after them to lure him to his doom.
- The battle with Gary also counts to an extent. If he's not teleporting and trying to skewer John, he will summon a rain of spiders as well as a slew of familiar, demonic shades to bring him to his knees. And look closely at the demons. One of them is Amy. Once you near the end of the fight, a giant, skeletal demon in clown makeup descends from the ceiling to scare the daylights out of John. Gary somehow found out about his coulrophobia and is taking advantage of it.
- Unlike other bosses, John doesn't get pulped when he comes in contact with Gary or the demons. He drops his cross and is brought crawling to his knees. And if it's too far or he can't crawl to it in time before Gary catches him, John can next be seen with his head in a sheet and his face a bloody hole, just like Amy. And then a hand slips out to consume the camera. John has become the next vessel for the UNSPEAKABLE.
- The Crucible. If you break the seal, you finally have the right to enter it. And right below is not another ancient hallway or some foreboding woods. Youre back in a dark, derelict, yet all-too-familiar house. And theres no explanation as to why the Martins house is on the inside of the Crucible. Its just there.
- The last battle in Miriam's chamber. Its not enough Johns in there with the desiccated body of Miriam Bell, but hes in there with one cornered and very angry Gary. By now hes seemingly
*melting* and is coming after you as a bloated, crawling *thing* with an empty maw. Whats worse, the already-summoned Malphas soon joins the nightmare. **Gary:**
I will make you the first mortal to witness the Profane Sabbath, and the first to be consumed by it. But before I do, I will let you in on a secret:
*(Gary turns to face John) * **GARY DOES NOT LOVE YOU.**
- The title of the first part of the fight (and one of the vocals for the song in the third part) is Astaroth. Gary might not just be some demon, but one of the
**highest-ranked monarchs next to Beelzebub and Lucifer.** All of a sudden, his actions and mannerisms suddenly start making sense.
- The true final battle. Both demons fuse themselves with Miriam to, after a fake congratulatory fanfare, become an unholy, floating mishmash of all three. Without Amy, this body may be Garys alternative to his end goal: a vessel powerful enough to unleash the Profane Sabbath.
- John gains an 11th-Hour Superpower that allows him to withstand the boss's attacks, but he's not fully invincible. With each hit, John seems fine as he entrusts God to protect him. However, the last hits show him bleeding out the eyes and the penultimate hit shows his face decaying to the point of being Stripped to the Bone. Indeed, "
*the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak*".
- Unless the Flashback of Amy's exorcism is truncated for the sake of expedience, the moment she got loose, she killed everyone but John in the span of a minute with him unaware beyond her seemingly teleporting every time he gets close. Then he tries to confront her to finish the job, and she's so horrifying that it caused him to flee for his life instead of trying to complete his task. The kicker is seeing John reach the front door, slowly turn around and see Amy, who is just giving him a blank stare from the kitchen
and then the UNSPEAKABLE hand reaches out of her mouth to flip the lights off, as if openly mocking him for his failure.
- If you choose to go to the basement at this time instead of trying to leave out the front door, you'll hear someone calling out for John to come quickly. Eventually you'll find it's coming from Father Allred, right where you left him. Except it's revealed that he's dead. And the one speaking is Amy, who appears with an evil grin, moves his mouth and speaks through him to mock John. And then she crawls straight at him like a spider before the flashback ends.
- The Bad Ending in the third game is one big nightmarefest compared to the other games' versions. To wit...
- It is triggered if John refuses to investigate the daycare, instead getting in his car and driving back home. In doing this, Gary is ultimately able to bring about the Profane Sabbath and unleash Hell on Earth throughout the entire town. Perhaps the
*entire world*. The thralls are **everywhere**, surrounding John's home with pixelated heads under the influence of the Second Death. They don't harm John immediately, as though they're welcoming him into there midst for his failure.
- But they can still kill you before seeing the entirety of the bad ending. When you check the peephole and see a smiling group staring back at you, they start to break in through the windows. If you don't get the key from the basement, the whole entrance will be flooded with a large group of them. Checking the backyard after getting the key shows a group of them waiting beside the same kind of pentagram hole from the apartment. And going out the front has them surrounding John's car, which they set on fire. There's nowhere to run now. And any approach will incur their wrath.
- The key to the locked room is down in the basement. Once you pick it up, a massive, demonic centipede-like beast crawls down from the stairs. If you're not careful navigating out of there, it will eat John alive. That hole mentioned before? That's probably what crawled out.
- The player can look through the windows of the neighbors as before, but the inhabitants of one house are hanging from the ceiling, and the other has a child looking... strange with corpses lying about behind him. If the thralls don't convince you that this is truly the end of the world, this will.
- John finally unlocks the door with all the crosses nailed on it and finds Amy. He falls to his feet, asking what's going on, and what the cult wants with him now. But he is cut off mid-sentence before he can finish the text in the text box as a demonic arm from Amy's face grabs him and the screen goes black. In the blackness, you hear Amy's demonic voice declare "
*UNFORGIVABLE*".
- When John comes to, he's back in the woods before the Martin house, and going inside shows the house is utterly dilapidated. As he wanders from room to room, John can only voice his regrets as he settles beyond the Despair Event Horizon. Finally, he comes to a room with two dummies, and kneels before them holding up his hands in surrender, possessed Amy and Michael flash in holding his hands up. As the scene goes back to sprites from the rotoscope animation, the room fades away, then the possessed children, until John is left kneeling in the abyss. And then the giant hand of the UNSPEAKABLE appears and snatches John away, and the screen cuts to the forest where the Martin house was. The key word being
*was*, as it has completely vanished without a trace.
- After all this, a final game over screen appears in the same font as MORTIS:
**DAMNATIO MEMORIAE**, which is then followed by the name of the final ending, **Ending III: The New Vessel**. In Christian terms, Damnatio Memoriae means a "condemnation of memory" akin to Unperson where a person or event is stricken from all official records. Given how much John stated that he can't handle the nightmares and wants everything to end, the Unspeakable gives it to him in a sense: *by making it so he no longer exists to suffer as he uses him as a new vessel.* | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/FaithTheUnholyTrinity |
Fairy Without Wings / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
- Kallens ||Superpowered Evil Sides utter destruction of several guild members of Iron Star||.
- Whatever Marianne did to Iron Star, because it certainly could not have been pleasant for her to say that "they probably wish they were dead" with the way she left them and then tells Kallen shed be better off not knowing the details.
- The vast majority of the Unistrad arc considering it's
*meant* to be Fairy Tail meets the horror genre. To wit:
- The first two chapters give amazing buildup with tension so taut, you can cut it with a knife. One reader even thanked the author for their nightmares.
- Chapter 41 ends with ||Mirajane going Brainwashed and Crazy||.
- Chapter 42 has ||Kallen being transformed
*by* Mirajane while she's still Brainwashed and Crazy||.
- Kallen's brutal shredding of ||Hoteye|| is this on several levels. For one, it shows how powerful Kallen is that her demon form was able to take down a member of Oracion Seis, all of whom were given a power boost in this fic. Second, it speaks of Nonette's ability as she is, insofar, the only character to actually put Kallen
*down* when she's going ballistic. Thirdly, the shredding itself is terrifying. Kallen could've easily committed murder, like the first time her Superpowered Evil Side got out.
- Kalina's magic in general is a bit of this if you have a vivid enough imagination. The things she summon sound like they were designed by H. P. Lovecraft.
- Our first sneak preview at Zero has him taking down the members of Oracion Seis in record time in a flashback when they tried to rebel against him.
- The Big Bad of the Sindel arc ||the titular character herself||
*does not fuck around*. What does ||she|| do immediately after getting released? Curb stomp *Gildarts!* Yeah, pick a god and pray, Fairy Tail only one of them can save you now. ||He did, and in a way that made sense||.
- Even if he deserved it ||Ivan Dreyar's ultimate fate is to be turned into a tree by Nessa. She then shreds the tree to pieces and then burns the remains. What's worse is that Ivan can feel every moment of becoming and being destroyed as a tree||.
- Kalina's ultimate nightmare, Hypnox. First off, it's half the size of Domus Flau and it took down ||Miala and Nippy||, who are capable of handling Devil Slayers. Also, this is her strongest nightmare and a significant weaker one was able to put down all of Team Quatro Cerberus without much effort.
*Think about that for a minute*.
- It's gotten worse. Hypnox was able to take on Tianzi and Nivea at the same time ||and win||.
- Nirix. Much like ||Sindel||, Nirix is truly a worthy Arc Villain as he has begun his rampage by taking out Kallen, Rogue, and Sting in record time. He also ||kills Rufus|| and practically does a repeat performance of Sindel, albeit with much less sympathy and far more terror.
- Miraelzabella is also quite terrifying! Sure, Mirajane has her demonic side, but never did it LITERALLY take over! The sheer bloodlust she had is startling and there is also the fact that it ||almost destroyed DOMUS FLAU!||
- Mordred. Everything about the guy is outright terrifying. He's ||Lelouch all out of fucks to give|| and shows exactly what happens when ||Lelouch|| loses all sense of morals and just does what he feels is necessary for the greater good.
- Chapter 198 has a massive revelation which only brings horror to those anticipating the Tartaros arc and kept up with the manga: ||END is active, the most powerful etherious ever created by Zeref, his masterpiece and the one who could accomplish what Etherus were created for, killing himself.||
- 536 while awesome in canon can only have negative repercussions for the series, ||END is able to burn souls and magic away. Meaning that the leader of tartaros is one of the one being's in existance if the only able to defeat even Acnologia.||
- Alice's relentless beatdown of Ember in the Cracked Gemstone arc. For crying out loud, Alice was outright
*torturing* Ember at one point and only stopped because Pyrrha begged her to.
- What should be an awesome moment for Lelouch winds up being this instead. ||He finally
*finally* achieves Dragon Force, but it's through the unwanted assistance of VV (which Lelouch isn't aware of due to Mass Hysteria) and Suzaku notes that Lelouch is starting to resemble Mordred||.
- The way Enna Elsa defeats the mages of Serpent's Heart can be quite disturbing. ||Not only she makes out with her target to drain them of their magic and leave them unconscious, her curse, Critical Ecstasy, makes anyone affected by it feel incredibly horny and even if they know something's wrong, they can't fight it off. And Miala ends up getting the worst of it; her mental fortitude makes Elsa use the tentacle in her tail to force-fed her a purple aphrodisiac substance that makes the curse affect her. As Miala puts it, she was face-fucked by a tentacle.|| Beware the Silly Ones would be an understatement.
- Chapter 256, especially the beginning: ||Not only the twins Ester and Enasu massacre Quattro Cerberus, they slaughter every inhabitant in the town, not even sparing the children. And the fates of Bacchus and Warcry are straight out of a horror movie. Lets just say Ester is a messy eater.|| Word of Advice; do not read it before going to sleep. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/FairyWithoutWings |
Face Raiders / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
- Some people may find the face aspect of the game unnerving.
- Disco jumping back up after their helmet explodes could scare some players. It's effectively a Jump Scare.
- Although Played for Laughs, the Paddle Faces don't stop and effectively kill themselves. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/FaceRaiders |
Falling Backwards / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
- The description of Rainbow Dash's body, after her failed stunt. It is not for the faint of heart.
- The whole concept, that one accident can reduce someone like Rainbow into a helpless child, who has no knowledge of her old life or what is going on.
- Also, the thought of Rainbow being sent to a mental hospital, where she will most likely just be sedated and isolated from the outside world for the rest of her life. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/FallingBackwards |
Fable / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
Meet the Balverine.
**WARNING:** Spoilers are unmarked.
- Balverines. They're quick, they're aggressive, and they often appear in large packs.
- Hobbes are sometimes Played for Laughs, but their lairs in
*Fable* and *II* aren't. They're also much creepier with The Reveal that they're children turned into monsters by nymphs/dark whispers.
- The general state of Albion in the first two games. It's gorgeous and idyllic, but there doesn't seem to be any government. There are few authority figures, and in both games, the leadership of Bowerstone is held by Lady Grey and Lord Lucien, both of whom are corrupt and evil figures. The areas outside the cities are overrun by bandits and nightmarish creatures, and the guards aren't enough to keep the roads safe. Smaller settlements like Oakvale or Oakfield are completely at the mercy of well-organized bandit or cultist raids. Albion appears to be a failed state like Somalia, and that's before you start counting the doomsday threats looming in every game.
- The third game is a mixed bag. There's some government going on now, with an army! Oh, but at the same time, there's heavy industrialization, massive wealth inequality, pollution...
- Darkwood is dark and creepy at
*any* time of day, and often infested with balverines, hobbes, bandits, nymphs, and trolls.
- Early in the Trader Escort quest, you and the two titular characters run into another trader who says he was bitten by something. You're then given the option to a) allow the trader to accompany your party or b) turn him away. If you choose the first option, near the end of the quest, the trader turns into a balverine and you have to kill him.
- Though if you're quick, you can reach Barrow Fields before he turns and he's apparently just fine once he's out of Darkwood.
- During the same quest, any bandits in the regions you traverse go straight for the traders. Be sure you have obtained the Heal Life spell by this point.
- The Chapel of Skorm, where you can sacrifice innocent people to rack up some evil points. Or you can kill the two cultists. One problem, though: If you kill the cultists and return to the Chapel later on, the cultists will have re-spawned.
- Undead aren't particularly scary or anything, but when you kill them, they explode in a shower of dust and bones,
*and release a screaming ghost*.
- Beyond the Demon Door outside Rose Cottage (the one you have to give a romantic token to) is a cave furnished with a four-poster bed draped in ribbons and such...and a rack, cage, head vice, and chains attached to a wall. Even worse, this is outside the house of the woman whose grandson you save from the Hobbe Cave, whom the kid implies abuses him.
- The Hobbe Cave. It starts with a pile of bones outside a cave entrance and a sign saying "Abandon All Hope." It features a Cannibal Larder filled with bones and crude bags full of dismembered human limbs. The bandit prisoner you can find in the "Hobbe Cave" quest mentions seeing his buddies get dragged off one by one and he heard their blood-chilling dying screams.
- Grey House is spooky enough the first time you visit (basically, think Mordor, except on a much smaller scale), but after you go into the house itself and rouse the Undead inside, it's
*worse*.
- When/If you return to Grey House, there are Undead everywhere. Congratulations; you've brought on a localized Zombie Apocalypse.
- Worse, Grey House, like Windmill Hill, is located very close to the otherwise-peaceful settlement of Barrow Fields.
- Lady Grey's origins: In order to come to power as Bowerstone's Mayor, she trapped her sister Amanda in the cellar of their childhood home and left her to die.
- And her old diary (found inside Grey House's cellar) implies that Jack of Blades convinced her to do so.
- Windmill Hill, an abandoned locale which is crawling with Undead. Worse, it's in fairly-close proximity to Bowerstone.
- Lychfield Graveyard is described in-game as "the haunted resting place of generations" and it's not at all hard to see why. As you and the groundskeeper make your way across the graveyard to find Nostro's tomb and to collect Nostro's armor and sword, Undead continuously rise up out of the ground to attack you and even manage to kill the groundskeeper while they're at it.
- The treatment of the Hero of Oakvale's family, namely Theresa having her eyes cut out by Jack of Blades and left in the woods to die, while Scarlet Robe is captured and likely tortured by Jack.
- Not to mention the torture the Hero himself goes through when he is imprisoned in Bargate Prison. His bloodcurdling scream after the scene cuts away from him in the cutscene drives everything home.
- Bargate Prison, in general.
- To elaborate, it's a bleak prison set in the desolate northern regions of Albion. People sent there are never seen again. The guards there have gone completely rogue and become cruel, and the Warden fully encourages this. Prisoners spend all their time in their cells, never seeing the sun except once a year where the guards force them to race around the prison. The losers are sent to the Torture Chamber. Oh, and the Warden will make you listen to his poetry.
- After you beat the Rescue Scarlet Robe quest, you can return to Bargate Prison...only this time, it's completely abandoned. Somehow, that makes the place even scarier.
- The Kraken.
- If you check your mini-map in the menu while passing through the Underground Chamber, you can see a red dot (red dots indicate enemies) in the middle of the pool, or if you aim your bow/crossbow at the pool, the crosshairs will turn red. Either way, the implication is clear: The Kraken's down there
*the entire time* as you make your way into Bargate Prison. Cue Paranoia Fuel vibes.
- In the past, Thunder and Whisper, on their journey to Albion aboard a ship, came upon a
**nest** of those monstrosities.
- Another scary location is the Necropolis where you have to find the Glyphs of Inquiry. It's the frozen ruins of an ancient city where the ghosts of the people who died in a long-ago cataclysm wander about along with the occasional Undead and balverine.
- During the Necropolis quest, if you unearth a wrong tablet, you get attacked by Minions and Summoners.
- In
*The Lost Chapters* portion of the game, Jack of Blades' disembodied voice periodically taunts the Hero after the completion of the Necropolis quest, especially when he tries to sway the Hero to perform all the 'evil' options (kill Thunder, Briar Rose, and the Guildmaster).
For a relatively silly game,
*Fable II*
sure doesn't skimp on the Nightmare Fuel
.
- The first appearance of the new, improved Balverines is quite unnerving.
- Hollow Men are particularly bad as
*you can hear the wisps entering the ground, but you can't see where they are*.
- Especially when you wander near a Gargoyle. You know they can't hurt you, but
*sweet mother of God*, they don't help.
- Finding out what Hobbes really are: Transformed children.
- Lady Grey's tomb, with the beetles under the sand.
- And then there's the Banshees, who attack by sending shadowy creepy children after you, taunting you in their spooky voices all the while. The Banshees themselves also whisper to you about things your character has done in the past.
- The Flavor Text says they "demoralize their victims by telling them everything they don't want to hear," which means it may or may not be true. However, chances are once they start telling you a story, like how Rose didn't die straight away from Lucien's shot, but heard Sparrow get blown out the window and even had time to
**cry** before Lucien finished her off, or how Hammer secretly blames the Hero of Bowerstone for the death of the Abbot and has vowed revenge, most players will be horrifically compelled to listen, as a Banshee is invulnerable as long as her creepy shadow children are alive and attacking you.
- During the third chapter "The Hero of Skill," there's a sub-quest that involves buying Brightwood Tower and spending a night there. You enter a Dream Land where you're turned back into a child and its ruled by a living treasure chest called "Chesty" who puts his 'Super Best Friend' through a gauntlet of "little children" (Hobbes), his other Super Best Friends (Hollow Men), and doggies (Balverines) before finally sending you home with the horribly depressing message "We'll be so lonely without you. And die." Not scary enough yet? OK, how about the fact that it's a Psychopathic Manchild chest?! Every time it shows up, it tells a delightful story about games it likes to play...like shooting the legs off an adventurer and letting him crawl to what he thinks is safety but is actually a swamp infested with flesh-eating insects? Quote: "That's one of my favorites. Maybe we can play it sometime!"
- You can even do it twice.
- Wraithmarsh, in general.
- The fact that the region's theme is essentially a Nightmare Fuel version of the original Oakvale theme doesn't help...especially as you look out at/pass through the ruins of the village itself and realize that one of the best towns in the first game is now nothing but a haunted ruin.
- At one point, you wander into an abandoned building, you turn and OH CRAP, THERE'S A BUNCH OF HOLLOW MEN SWARMING RIGHT AT YOU!
- The ground will shake occasionally, and no reason is ever given for it, though the theory is that that's the Hollow Men making the ground shake as they pop up. Regardless, it isn't explicitly explained, and it
*is* creepy as hell.
- The story of how Oakvale became Wraithmarsh is as chilling as it is saddening, especially when Theresa relates the tale to the Hero via Guild Seal. Apparently, one villager (the future Reaver) made a Deal with the Devil for immortality. And because of one man's selfishness and fear of death, a bright and beautiful hamlet is reduced to a cursed, monster-infested wasteland. It also drives home the series's Central Theme of how a simple choice, be it good or evil, can have far-reaching consequences.
- A street sign reads "Whatever was written here has been erased by time." Creepy and sad all at once.
- Also, it's all but outright stated that Wraithmarsh is also Darkwood from the first game. Except now that everyone in Oakvale died thanks to Reaver, Darkwood is
*spreading*. Wraithmarsh is even worse than Darkwood. At least Darkwood was regularly traveled by merchants, it had human enemies in the form of bandits, there was a merchant camp and a bordello you could visit, you know, *human presence*. Wraithmarsh has none of that, and once again, it's *spreading*.
- "The Perfect World."
- For regular Nightmare Fuel, try Homestead/Serenity Farm. It's all nice and cozy until you look up at the sky... (also the rather creepy glitch that occurs if you look up and to the left of the windmill).
- Try lingering in Terry Cotter's Army. It's bad enough on its own, but after reading his final journal...
- It might even be a example of Nothing Is Scarier or Paranoia Fuel: "Any minute now, these statues will come alive and kill us." Even better, your dog will growl when you walk in the cave full of inanimate suits of armor. The dog normally only growls when there are enemies nearby, but the cave simply doesn't have any enemies...
- And it gets worse in the "See the Future" DLC. You stumble across a cave filled with the suits of armor, including a skeleton with a journal surrounded by them, all apparently looking at the body. The journal's creepy enough...but a few of the suits
*explode* and are revealed to house the blue shadow creatures.
- The Terry Cotter's Demon Door is part Paranoia Fuel as well. After you walk in, you're treated to a nice house. And then you find Terry's bedroom...and then you have to go to the cave at the back to find the treasure.
- Terry's bedroom! It's dark, except for a weird unexplained ball of electricity floating on the ceiling. His skeleton is on the bed,
*surrounded by inanimate suits of armor*.
- Most of the "See the Future" DLC has some manner of Nightmare Fuel in it, especially the Cursed Snowglobe. When you start off, it's just sorta-weird naked guys who look like they're painted certain colors (red, blue, or yellow) and drain the color from everyone and everything. No one seems to be dead, or even in danger; just annoyed. But later, you find a schoolhouse, and you can read the teacher's book...that says she found one of her students in such horrible condition that she only describes the amount of blood splattered everywhere, while her classmates stood grinning around her.
*Then she decided it must have been an accident.*
- In the same section of the DLC, one of the lengthy key puzzles leads you to find an invitation from Chesty. You find the house with the 'by invite only' sign, and go inside. Immediately, there's a long table with long-dead skeletons sitting in the seats, and coat racks with similar skeletons. There's a note from Chesty saying how happy he was to spend time with his super best friends, and something about a mirror...enter the floating mirror upstairs, and you find a fog enshrouded area with a bottle of red dye...
*underneath a suspended skeleton, contorted by almost *Hellraiser *-like chains that extend into the fog*.
- The first Hobbe cave. You help a man there terrified of going in to rescue his son, who has been kidnapped by Hobbes. He mentions then that he had always heard stories that Hobbes were all once small children who were captured by Hobbes and turned into them. This is the start of a variation of Apocalyptic Log that is heard from afar as the player runs around another path to get to the man's son. The sounds and the fate of both the boy and his father are enough to make anyone feel like they want to throw up... Not to mention there is no way to stop it from happening, even if you kill his son, he will just... fall over dead.
- There is a Demon Door, Memory Lane, with a chest at the end of a small, grassy road...lined with tombs, gnarled trees, and other junk. Off to the side is a wooden cabin you can't go into. If you look in the window, you see that the cabin is stuffed with white statue-like versions of characters from the game staring out at you. It doesn't help that the area is totally silent.
- A lot of the Demon Doors, actually. Winter Lodge is a good example. When you walk in, it's a prettily-lit, idyllic winter path, with a warm, inviting house at the end. Walk through the door and, in a flash, it turns to a ruin, with skeletons and torture devices strewn about the area, which is now lit in dull, stark colors. And there's a screeching metal sound when the flip happens, that isn't found anywhere else in the game.
- A minor one, but when you first pass through the Bandit Coast with Hammer on the main quest to the Crucible, a distraught Lilith stops you and asks for your help. She explains that her son has been taken by Balverines into the nearby Howling Halls. Once you enter, it is revealed that Lilith is actually a Balverine who has lured others into her den to feed her Balverine children. There are several hints leading up to the discovery such as the Balverines refusing to attack Hammer and Sparrow when they're with Lilith and said woman's name, which is that of a female demon from Jewish mythology.
- The Shadow Court quest. Once you gain enough renown for Reaver to give you the time of day, he tasks you with taking his Shadow Seal to the Shadow Court in Wraithmarsh, BUT what he, Jerkass that he is, neglects to tell you is that you have to make a Sadistic Choice: Keep the seal and allow the Shadow Judges to take your youth (the "good" option), or give the seal to a scared, crying girl and allow the Judges to take her youth instead (the "evil" option). If you keep the seal and get your youth drained, you gain glowing red eyes.
- The Shadow Judges themselves provide a massive heap of Nightmare Fuel. They're shadowy, Grim Reaper-esque beings with red eyes and scary, deep voices. Oh, and there's something absolutely chilling about them telling the Hero that, when the sacrifices stop,
*they will come for Reaver*.
- The worst part about the Shadow Judges is that, apart from Reaver's backstory with them, you know absolutely NOTHING about them. At no point in the series is there any reference to what they are or what they want beyond the sacrifices.
- The Reliquary where you have to find your Hero parent's treasure for Sabine is a dimly-lit and quiet (except when you're battling Hollow Men) environment. The eerie, ethereal music does not help ease the apprehension the whole place generates one bit.
- Even better, if you peruse the bookshelves you find in the entry hall after you first enter, you find two copies of a tome titled
*Darkness Descends on Albion*, foreshadowing what's to come much later in the game.
- And to top that off, the Reliquary, an area where Hollow Men come up from the ground to attack you, is located right underneath Brightwall Village (accessible through Brightwall Academy), making it much worse than Bowerstone in the very first
*Fable* game (which was located fairly close to Windmill Hill, an area crawling with Undead).
- Mourningwood isn't a particularly nice place, filled with the the souls and bodies of apparently hundreds of soldiers, and Logan sends anyone he doesn't like there because he doesn't expect them to survive.
- Silverpines is also pretty bad, dark, forbidding, suspicious, and filled with Balverines.
- The place is absolute Paranoia Fuel. If you're walking
*anywhere* but in the town itself, it's perfectly reasonable to be walking slowly at all times, constantly turning the camera to view your surroundings with your rifle already in hand, ready to blow Balverines away at a distance the instant you spot them. And then they run at you.
- The Sunset House quest has you finding a ruined mansion in a remote location in the middle of Mourningwood. At night, though, the beautiful ghost of the mansion reappears, and you might manage to return it to the real world. Bad idea. The house is home to a creature of terrible evil that drove the old owner to suicide by burning down the house in an effort to stop it. His skeleton is dangling from the ceiling as you enter. The bedroom is worse. Whatever happens, don't go to sleep, or you'll meet the creature that haunts this place... and it turns out to be your old Super Best Friend, Chesty. He wants to play chess on a giant chessboard with living statues, but decides to just kill you instead when he gets bored of that. Then he gives you the house. Except Chesty's probably still there, lurking in the unseen corners.
- The game refuses to allow you to move your family into that house, and if you sell it, it will just sit empty as no one will ever actually move in. There's probably a very good reason for that.
- The first encounter with the Crawler and its spawn is quite well done for a non-horror game. It starts with a fight with the glowy-eyed shadow creatures, then every moment you look around, you feel it's onto you. Except it isn't. It is only when it has lulled you into a false sense of security that it attacks again, harder this time.
- The golden gates. Look at them closely for long enough and you will notice something...uncanny.
- In the late game—Treasury Value: 0/6,500,000. Projected Civilian Casualties: 6,500,000.
- It gets worse when you go into
*minus* figures while trying to be a good guy.
- You think that's bad? Try going into the final battle when you're in minus figures and walk the streets of the towns afterward. No shops are open, there's nobody walking the streets...why? Because you tried to be a good person and almost everyone died for it.
- Demon Doors in general tend to be this. Not so much the doors themselves, but what lies beyond them. All it takes is for one of the interiors to freak you out for you to start getting on edge whenever you enter one. It doesn't help that sometimes the most innocuous Door request can yield the scariest results.
- As a case in point, Millfields has a Door asking you to challenge the perception of societal aesthetics (i.e. get fat and wear something ridiculous). You complete the request and it opens to Twitcher's Curtains, a spacious cavern covered in
*giant* cobwebs that span the entire cave wall (keep in mind that the webs encountered everywhere else in the game are as big as, or slightly larger than, your character). As you approach the treasure, you can see even bigger webs in the background and you get the feeling that something might be back there... Nothing else really happens except for *something* screaming/roaring at you as you try to leave. Keep in mind that most Demon Doors don't have any music in their interiors, which makes the roar from nowhere even worse. It doesn't help that trying to look back into the cave results in nothing. Everything looks the same.
- The Veiled Path. Walking through the sand and up flights of stairs down a long, winding path that is lined with rows and
*rows* of Sentinels. They're just statues, though...which just makes it worse. You're horribly tense, waiting for them to come alive, and their eyes are *glowing*. But they don't move. They just...don't move. It's almost a relief when a live one comes stomping down at you at the end of the path, though the statues themselves never do attack you.
- The Hero's appearance when you become a tyrant in trying to save Albion from the Crawler. Your skin turns pale and your eyes turn solid black. It's
*absolutely bone-chilling* to see. And the worst part about it? You end up looking like that because you made compromises in trying to save your kingdom.
- In the final part of
*Traitor's Keep*, as Commander Milton extracts the Hero's essence, the Hero lets out a bloodcurdling scream of pain that lasts for at least a minute.
- One of the more darkly humored loading screen posters advertises a trepanning procedure.◊ | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/FableII |
Fallen London / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
*Fallen London* is a largely text based web game with clever storylines and an interesting Victorian atmosphere. Some of the descriptions, however, are pure Nightmare Fuel. Just be glad that we aren't living in this timeline... **As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.**
- What are the Sorrow Spiders? The story goes that spiders drink from your eyes while you sleep. Sorrow-spiders bite off a whole eye. They get their name from the tears that flow from the remaining eye, and they don't steal eyes to eat them. They use them as eggs.
- A later storyline reveals that they can travel through mirrors. You will never look at that full length mirror in your bedroom the same way again.
- Additional information from
*Sunless Sea* reveals that they do not, in fact, come from Parabola as previously expected. These horrific things are not eldritch beings from the dream realm, or something born out of Neathy strangeness, but something that exists in our world; they come from a place "between stars" and therefore the Judgements are both fully aware of them and permit their existence. Which means that, in theory, they could be on the surface.
- Delve too deeply in the docks, and you might find your way to one of their nests, presided over by a spider-council. What is a spider-council, you ask? Oh, just
*a hideous monstrosity created from the forms of dozens of component spiders*. Like wax, the game says. It *speaks*. And it wants your eyes...
**What is a Spider-council?** Sorrow-spiders are already repulsive. Spider-councils are what happens when sorrow-spiders go bad.
- A story in the House of Chimes hints that Spider-council come from the eyes of people who have been exposed to the Correspondence. And, if you happen to go down the Watchful stories, your exposure to the sigils is only a matter of time. Which means YOUR eyes are going to be some of the most prized.
- The Cantigaster basically is a mass of poisonous flesh that Was Once a Man, he got that way due to a Deal with the Devil made by his then-fiancee, the Duchess, after he was bitten by a snake. His life was saved but at a horrible price.
- The very concept of "snow" in an underground cavern.
It must be, in part at least, frozen water: when it melts, it refreezes as black ice. Tiny, desperate fish and insects can be seen frozen in the ice, no larger than a fingernail, eyes distorted with fear.
- The stuff somehow enables you to create entire living beings out of it, too. It does horrible things to anyone examining it without being careful, having destroyed at least one microscope and done terrible damage to its users. It
*explodes* souls exposed to it in a terrible shower of sparks and fire. Creatures ingesting it either die or mutate into miniature copies of the Bazaar. And from what you later learn, in its liquid form it can ensure Death by Despair just from drinking it. Turns out "Tears of an Eldritch Abomination" is a terrible, terrible substance.
- "Welcome, delicious friend." It's charming yet so very frightening.
- Make no mistake, while usually the Correspondence is a fairly humorous Brown Note, it's still very much something mortals shouldn't be meddling with.
*By day you write. By night you dream of vast frozen gulfs of space. Behind you, something impossibly huge is screaming.*
- The entire game can get scarier when the potential futures are taken into account.
*Sunless Skies*'s premise is the stars being murdered and the Empress herself abandoning London.
- For a very human horror, the card to gain the Midnighter profession has you covered. While a child, a woman who would later become a queen of the great game burnt down her orphanage
**with the children still inside** to cover up her transfer to a notable family (or possibly because she could). It's also implied the children did *not* come back from that death and worse still *she got away with it*. Until you decided to get involved...
- For a wonderful description of the aftermath is quote from the detective assigned the case who still remembers the crime. In vivid detail.
- In the "Light Fingers" Ambition, The Orphanage, in its entirety. People are only sent here if their parents are dead (or murdered), and the entire place is a strange sort of asylum/hospital dedicated to creating and testing psychoses in the inmates, using the mind-affecting excretions of an eldritch monster.
- It's revealed later that Mr. Fires is the one who had the Orphanage created, in order to force/manufacture love stories for the Bazaar. Those 'experiments' involve using the moon-milk to force inmates into falling in an obsessive, unhealthy 'love' with
*anything* shown to them. People, objects, places...hell, Clara was forced to look at the Orphanage itself when she was trapped there! Nobody is immune to the effects of the moon-milk...
- In the Light Fingers ambition, you're treated to a nasty piece of work called Poor Edward. He's an agent of the Masters who tells you to drop investigating the Orphanage, otherwise he'll bury you alive because killing you wouldn't really work in the Neath. He then gives you some herbs that would erase your memory. When you finally get to the Orphanage, if you aren't good at sneaking around it, you'll discover Edward was not bluffing and
*will* bury you alive.
You've moved to a new area: A small, velvet lined box. You can't see anything. You have just enough space to twist onto your belly or your back. Oh dear God. Oh dear God.
- The mysterious gifts that you start receiving from him after a certain point in the Ambition become this, if you choose to open them rather than disposing of them. The first gift is a jar containing his parents' hearts that he's had since he was a child in the Orphanage. How precious! The second gift? It's filled with soil...and a small shovel, to "commemorate" that time he buried you alive. The third gift is probably the most normal-looking gift at first glance: a matryoshka doll shaped like you...with him on the inside. And finally, the fourth gift is perhaps the scariest gift of all in that he gives you
*his skinned-off face*. You see, Poor Edward has fallen madly, desperately in love with you from that time when his face was splashed with the moon-milk. He still has a burning hatred for you...a hatred only matched by his artificial love for you.
- There's a good reason the Light Fingers ambition is mentioned so often in this page. After all, you need to actually
*let your Nightmares reach 8 or higher in order to make progress*. And what's one of the ways you can raise your Nightmare that becomes available? Why, listening to the Fading Music-Hall Singer sing is a surefire way.
Songs that slide from her throat like a snake. Like a writhing knot of eels...The songs work their way into your dreams.
- Light Fingers continues the horror, as you venture to the roof of the Zee. It is full of literally twisted abominations called the Starved Men. One particularly dogged one is chased off. But slowly, it begins clawing its way into your Zeppelin. And when you reach a modicum of safety, by barely flying past thousands of these abominations, you can see how they become twisted—they literally stretch themselves, tearing their bodies. And then you undergo Sanity Slippage when you finally prepare to milk the Moon-Mother.
- SHE EMBRACES ALL CHILDREN SHE EMBRACES ALL CHILDREN SHE EMBRACES ALL CHILDREN
- After all, a mother loves her child.
- The end of the "wedding" between you and Poor Edward is this, if you betrayed him and let your Hybrid decides his fate. It'll shoot its moon-milk into his face, and if your Hybrid has higher Moon-Misery than Humanity, it will convince Edward that he wants to be eaten...before
*devouring him*.
- And if it has more Humanity, it will force Edward to look at the Parabola-Orphanage and trap him in the reflection the nightmare forever. Note: this is also what
*you* will do to him, if you decide to pour the moon-milk on his face yourself.
- The climax of "Nemesis" has you discover yet another dreadful form of Prisoner's Honey:
*Cardinal's* Honey, which transports you to the dreams of the dead. A heavily-diluted and antidoted drop of the stuff has you Buried Alive and nearly lost forever as the dead plead with you to leave them alone (just like with Gaoler's Honey from earlier on). This is what you pick as the murder weapon for Mr. Cups, who you eventually inflict the full dose on, leaving it phasing in and out of the dream, with half its body worm-riddled and rotten away like a corpse. It ends up begging you to spare it, offering the return of your lost loved one in exchange for the antidote you just happen to still have on you. You can refuse it, and even more cruelly, empty the bottle just out of arm's reach as Cups futilely tries to reach it before being pulled down a final time. And the cherry on top? Your character does not get Nightmares from the whole ordeal. Considering the "everyday" horrors of the Bazaar (like getting caught during a heist) can send you straight to the State of Some Confusion, what kind of monster have you become that you can sleep soundly after *this?*
- In Heart's Desire, the Merry Gentleman is among your rivals. Yes, the one mentioned in the Dreams section below, and he's ready to mess with your mind again. Thought one was enough? Have a
*full city of them.* And its only the beginning...
*The people you pass on the street in their tall, chimney-like hats and their long coats that drag behind them like folded wings they think you can't tell that they're watching you.*
- If your Nightmares quality reaches five, you will get this event:
In the street, you pass a tall, cheerful man with a brisk manner, a stovepipe hat and a row of bright brass buttons down the front of his coat. He winks familiarly as you pass and spreads his hands: eight fingers. You've seen him before. Of course you have. He was beside your bed when you woke this morning.
- And this storylet follows you
*everywhere you go*, except into death, exile, or prison. Even leaving the city towards the Hinterlands won't help.
**Is he here too? Even here?**
Outside the station, you pass a tall, cheerful man. His buttons wink. His gloves... yes. Eight fingers. Of course.
- The 'failure' of the particular event:
*That night you dream of a tall building lit by cheery fires. A sign reads CLEFT FOR THEE HIDE IN ME. The walls are wrong. The walls are wrong.* Quite possibly one of the most disturbing lines in the game. Compounding this is the fact he shares some kind of connection with Albert, King Consort. "Cleft for Thee hide in Me" is a jumbled reprise to a line from Rock Of Ages, a hymn which was well known as being Albert's favorite and was actually what was played to him when he was on his deathbed. The original line goes: "Rock of Ages, cleft for me, Let me hide myself in Thee". The 'Rock' that replies in the Fallen London nightmare appears to be anything *but* God.
- When your Nightmares gets to 6, you start to draw Recurring Dreams cards that cannot be discarded. The only way to get rid of them is to play them, which raises your Nightmares even more. It really drives home how inescapable your nightmares have become. In particular, you begin seeing things that aren't there, and your dreams begin merging with reality.
- Even though the Recurring Dreams storylines increase your character's Nightmares attribute, they aren't actually that bad... Except for the ones that unlock at Nightmares 6, where the boundary between dreams and reality seems to break down.
- Reaching Nightmare 7 by itself.
**THEY ARE COMING THEY ARE COMING THEY ARE COMING**
- Some of the recurring dreams storylets can be rather disturbing, especially the
*Is Someone There?* collection.
You are standing between two mirrors. Your reflection smiles, so you smile. Your reflection moves its hand, so you move yours. It takes a very long while for you to realise that this is the wrong way around.
- The "dream about fireworks" you can get if your lodgings are rat-infested:
You dream that you're standing, holding a candle, in a classroom filled with cheerfully shouting children. You touch the candle to their heads, one by one. Each time you do, their skin crisps away to reveal a child-sized mass of rats. Awake. Awake.
- Everything about the Iron Republic.
*Everything*. You can see it right from the description:
Freedom from laws and tyrants. All laws and tyrants, without exception.
**This place is exceptionally dangerous. You may be permanently changed.**
- When they say all laws, they mean
*all* laws. Includes the laws of logic, physics, and chance.
- The picture used for the Iron Republic Streets location: a close-up of someone's eye as they're being chased by a mob, with said mob surrounded by flames.
- For one part of the Seeking the Name storyline you'll be asked to give a reason why you're seeking the name. The questioner (themselves a person freed from the the horrors of Seeking) gives a mix of pity, irritation, or understanding for your choices. But if you say it's due to your visit to the Republic...
**"Have you ever been to the Iron Republic?"**
Things are different there.
**A long silence**
Then a sound. Is she... is she weeping? "Yes," she says very quietly. "Just once."
- The Cave of the Nadir. Filled with a colour man was probably not meant to see, that rapidly robs you of your memories... and causes your skin and bone to grow over your eyes.
- Occasionally, you find the victims' skulls, their eye sockets completely filled with bone. But the Irrigo's soaked into them, so much that simply having one can erode your mind.
*No. Parts of you are crumbling. No. No!*
- Polythreme. The city is enchanted with a magic that makes inanimate objects alive. This doesn't sound so bad until you realize the implications — as the sidebar gleefully points out, this includes things like
*candles*.
- Best illustrated by a card you can get if you play as a Clay Man:
"IN POLYTHREME THE BED I SLEPT ON WAS A SLAVE. THE ROOM WHERE I SLEPT WAS HACKED FROM SCREAMING STONE. THE WATER I DRANK BEGGED ME TO STOP. THEY PAID ME IN COIN THAT PLOTTED MY DOWNFALL. THE MEMORIES ARE TROUBLING. THIS PLACE IS BETTER."
- The city itself is actually surprisingly upbeat. It comes off as more quirky and bizarre than legitimately terrifying. (Even the option to write a travelogue condemning it as a horrible place actually comes off as
*comical*, because the only "horrors" you end up writing about are the milder ones, like underwear coming alive.) Though if you let Troubled Waters rise too high on the way there, you get to experience some of the actual horror in your own ropes tying you up right as the ship itself comes alive, and decides it doesn't feel like cooperating. You then spend several days being helplessly dragged all over the Sea of Voices until this unnatural life dies down, and leaves you stranded in the middle of nowhere.
- The Corsair updates have brought a new fright with them in the form of bounty hunters from Polythreme. As in the
*ships* are hunting you. And thanks to their sheer size they're much more lively than usual. *Your bosun contends that the vessel was simply attempting to ram you, to punch a hole in your hull with a submerged and hidden bow-spike. But you know the truth, and so do your crew. You stood at the railing as the Polythremean hulk charged towards you, heedless of cannon or torpedo, and * **opened its hungry mouth**.
- You learn more about it in the Heart's Desire ambition and it gets troubling all over again. Polythreme is what happened to the lover of the First City's ruler. He was dying, the Masters took the city into the Neath and put an immense diamond into his chest to make him immortal, he became an animated statue that then developed into an entire island. He
*is* the island and the city. The diamond went to pieces long ago and sometimes part of the city breaks off into a Clay Man carrying a fragment, which the Bazaar imports for cheap labor. Clay Men are docile and willing but upset to be born and resigned to their fate; Unfinished Men are born of Polythreme's nightmares.
- The third coil of the Labyrinth of Tigers. It's where the tigers keep
*humans* locked up in horrible conditions, tucked away where few people will ever see them, and apparently held there indefinitely. It even gives your character nightmares just from walking around and hearing the screams!
"Get me out of here. I don't belong here. I'm only here because they think I'm possessed. Why am I here? I don't know how my family will eat now. I'm not possessed, I'm not possessed, I'm not possessed. I'm only here because I chased a cat! Where am I? For God's sake let me out. You there! I'm only in here because I organised a strike. Give me a mirror! Give me a mirror!"
- It turns out at least some of them are
*not* human, and are blackly dangerous monsters. You only find this out after you've had a number of chances to free many of them.
- Uncovering a Night-Whisper in the Forgotten Quarter. Whatever it was that your character found in that box, they were not pleased.
- You can spend Appalling Secrets as one of the ways to gain supplies for an expedition in the Forgotten Quarter. The flavor text tells you that you have learned what you need to avoid in the Quarter. Including Mt. Nomad, "whatever that means." People who have played Sunless Sea know what Mt. Nomad means. The Quarter can be a little creepy on a good day. Going in knowing people are scared of THAT being there is just terrifying.
- Late, late in the game, near the end of the Great Hellbound Railway, lie the Hurlers, standing stones inscribed with the Discordance. If you thought the Correspondence was bad, with it setting everything on fire, burning off your brows and often scorching your eyes, then you've likely never walked in such frostbite your lips froze shut and the water in your very eyeballs grew sharpened ice crystals. And if you want to learn more about what it is (or rather what it isn't), you're doing to be visiting the Boatman via some very unpleasant methods. Getting your brains scooped out and being eaten by a whole room full of rats type of unpleasant.
- You can cooperate with Mr Stones and build a trading outpost there. Then you can rob its very secure vault, and let visiting Stones know you did it. The angry Master will release its autonomous teeth (you usually only find out about that Master fact in Bag a Legend) and reduce with them the building to dust, and remove the clerk from her post, for you to find her later. In many different places all over the station.
- Irem has its moments once you start working Fate's loom, and visiting different potential futures ahead of you. Some of them can be fairly unsettling...
- One of the cards for the "Playing With Broken Toys" storyline gives you the opportunity to help a father fix a wind-up soldier toy for his daughter. If you choose to help, the soldier starts marching around, and the daughter is delighted... and then it turns and attacks the father, who runs away, though you still hear screaming. Later, they find the body... but not the toy. Unsurprisingly, your Nightmares increase as a result.
- When you're on the Velocipede Squad, you can be tasked with rescuing an informant whose cover has been blown from Dante's Grill. If you don't pedal fast enough, you arrive on the scene. There's no informant, just "a smug infernal maitre'd and a new dish of the day."
- Jack-of-Smiles is the Bazaar's version of Jack the Ripper. While he's usually harmless enough, since death isn't permanent in the Neath, he can permanently kill citizens by chopping them into bits—and that's before you learn who he
*really* is. He's a sentient set of knives that trades hands endlessly; anyone that handles one becomes Jack. Even worse is a Fate-locked storyline where the player can choose to become Jack, which comes with a content warning for graphic text.
- The things you have to do in order to advance the Cheesemonger story are horrific and a pretty good indicator of the settings' Black-and-Grey Morality. Among the things you
*have* to do in order to progress are incite multiple lynch mobs against the Rubbery Men, blackmail a desperate Tomb Colonist into giving up the only things he has left of his old life, and destroying the lives of innocent people. The only reprieve is you can take some sort of revenge at the end, and even that is empty; the 'best' result is to make the instigator happy, as if you take revenge nothing changes at all.
- The whole rescue sequence aboard the Presbyterate vessel
*Delight* is unsettling, thanks to the fact the visions with and without the mask on are so radically different. The vessel that looks so prim and proper is a mess of red sap, emaciated sailors, imprisoned birds and filth everywhere...
- Presbyterate interrogations. They don't make you confess... rather, they get some horrible pink parasite called a Traitor's Tongue, implant it into you, let it eat your actual tongue, read your mind and do the confessing for you. It happens to the man you found in Cline, and you find them doing it to the Naturalist.
- The one doing the interrogation is the Second Sacristan. He
*looks* like an Ambiguously Human figure in a robe and mask... and then, you upset his carefully arranged order within the vessel by just being there. And he reveals he's no such thing as a human as he rips his robe open and nothing but arms come pouring out. Snapping and cracking arms and claws and graspers that keep growing more inhuman joints, and growing longer, and *multiplying* out of nowhere, until the ship cannot hope to contain them all. The *Delight* goes down erupting from the inside in a mountain of hands and arms that try to drag you into the depths to the very last second. You never get to find out how the hell *that* happened, and all the Naturalist can say about it is that he *really* hopes they don't send the other Sacristans. In the chapter after that you can catch a hugely distant glimpse of the Second Sacristan in the distance... now bigger than the behemoth Midnight Whales, and actively mauling one with its thousands and thousands of arms just because it was there.
- The Mr Sacks visits. Ever wanted to see some of the Santa mythos through a spectacularly creepy, original lens?
That night as you sleep, Mr Sacks crouches on your window-sill. His robe is the colour of salt, and his hood is trimmed with red fox-fur. I have brought you gifts, he whispers.
- Especially when you realize that particular Mr Sacks is
*Mr Eaten*, who is a whole refinery worth of nightmare fuel on his own.
- During the doll version of "The Gift" Storyline you wind up posing as a footman when the Royal Family is eating. You can't look directly at them, only by standing in front of a mirror facing it. It's made very clear that the mirror is just an illusion to avoid seeing what actually is happening. The text itself says that you should not turn around. When you finally can, the table is covered in gnawed at bones snapped and chewed by inhuman teeth. But the mirror showed pink lamb and vegetables.
"The Bellicose Prince helps himself to a final Brussels sprout before he leaves. You hear something heavy dragged off the table and out of the room."
- And if you do decide to turn around, you get a perfect view of the diners and the meal of the day. Mercifully, your senses flee.
- Also it hints at what happens when a person drinks too much Gaoler's Honey. It slowly changes you until resemble something that comes from the realms of nightmares.
- At the end of the story, where you're trapped in the web Beatrice has wrapped you in, the Captivating Princess reveals that
*you* were the gift—to Beatrice, that is—all along. And one of the options is to let Beatrice feast on you so she can 'grow up'. It's unclear what's scarier: the small bits of what your character can remember...or the lack thereof.
"Her needled fingers pierce your heart. Your memories of what follows are fractured; broken glass rattling in a box. She did not want your blood, though you lost plenty of that. No she dug deeper, and dined on something less replaceable."
- In the August 2015 Exceptional Story, you can discover that sunlight mixed with moonlight can make you see a different world— specifically, a London that never fell. Cool, right? Turns out the Calendar Council is just as bad on the Surface as it is in the Neath. And they won.
- The Mr Eaten storyline. It begins with a ravenous hunger in your stomach, and it only goes downhill from there...
- Really, Seeking Mr Eaten's Name could have a Nightmare Fuel page all to its own. One action you can perform:
**Consume a Talkative Rattus Faber**
"Why are you looking at me like that? I knew a man used to look at me like that. Funny sort. Kept a candle in his - "
**Down in one**
"Wait no mmf mggl mmmmmfff!
"
The aftertaste is distinctly sewery, and you're still damnably hungry.
- St Arthur's candle. The storylet where you get it implies you
*render it out of your own body fat*.
- The Nightmare Carnival. Just what the hell is up with it? Is it just you misinterpreting somewhere horrific as a warped version of something you already know? Is it you stumbling around a more-or-less harmless carnival and, in your delusions, seeing it all as some sort of hellish land? Or did your quest for the Name actually bring you closer to the truth, and let you see a seemingly innocent carnival the way it actually is? The fact the writers pulled some of their best tricks to work here only adds to it.
- The first brave/foolish soul to get St. Erzulie's Candle sacrificed their tattoos, Profession, Notability, Destiny, and even Ambition to get it.
*Permanently.*
- And the worst part of the above? You don't have to do that. There's an option to get the candle that costs
*absolutely nothing*, and the only reason not to take it is because of paranoia or sheer masochism.
- To get St. Gawain's Candle, your character has to go through some impressive Body Horror: your head is cut off, your body sliced open, and the skeleton, organs, and muscles scraped out to leave only the hollow shell of their skin. The skin is then filled with burning hot wax (rendered from the living bodies of other Seekers) while a wick replaces the spine, running from the crown of your head to the hollow of your groin. The kicker? None of this is fatal - the Correspondence is used to keep you alive throughout. You
*are* St. Gawain's Candle, now.
- Some of the later actions to advance your quest in Seeking the Name include having a dentist pull some of your teeth out... so you can
*eat them*. Your deranged character is delighted to do this, likening it to having a maw inside their own maw, so they can eat, and eat, and eat, and eat...
- There's also the card where your character sets fire to a candle shop and tries to
*devour their own burning flesh* because it smells so delicious.
- Although details regarding the ending are withheld, the quest's completion renders your account unplayable. Yes,
*permanently unplayable.*
- What little we know is that you travel NORTH of the Neath, to the Avid Horizon, a place where you have been told not to go, ever. There, you, now completely insane, arrive at a massive door, and you are told you will be grievously wounded and killed forever should you choose to knock on it. What horrifying things could lurk beyond the door?
*Sunless Sea* and *Sunless Skies* tell what lies ahead, which shall not be mentioned here.
- Even the forums on the event have some scary stuff:
**An Individual:** Congratulations I think? Whatever waits you at least you'll be the first to put your foot prints in that terrible terrible snow. You should think up a phrase to say. Like "one small step for man" and what not. That is, if you can speak. Just screaming a lot is another option. **Omega8520:** The ship has been eaten, along with so much more. **bjorntfh:** And, yes, I do burn. Forever. Look to me for guidance, and I will always lead you North. is increasing... *Nightmares* | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/FallenLondon |
Fairy May Cry / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
Don't be fooled, despite the colorful and badass casts of
*Fairy Tail* and *Devil May Cry*, both stories are filled with vicious demons and psychopaths armed with horrifying powers. These moments were bound to crop up now and then.
- The addition of elements from
*Devil May Cry* make the story Darker and Edgier to Fairy Tail. There's a more realistic amount of blood from wounds. Enemies are more dangerous and vicious, with some employing psychological tactics against the protagonists, and while there's still comedy, very few opponents are Played for Laughs.
- In the Vergil arc, Vergil showed his how truly dangerous he is while he beats and kidnaps many members of Fairy Tail.
## Fairy May Cry
- In the opening chapter where a red moon causes an opening of the underworld releasing hordes of demons that attack and kill all nearby civilians. Luckily the Fairy Tail wizards and Dante stopped them.
-
*Clipping the Fairies' Wings*: Some members (Macoa, Wakaba, Jet and Droy) decide to show Vergil not to mess with Fairy Tail and try to beat him up. Only for Vergil to show how outmatched they are and trash them around, with Levy looking on in terror and falling to her knees seeing her friends (who she knew since childhood and knowing how powerful they are) beaten by Vergil with just fraction of his power. When he looked at her with his cold eyes she trembled in fear but still tried to fight Vergil using her Solid Script magic. Sadly Vergil No-Sell and just Ominous Walk to her with Levy getting more desperate. She used all she could but Vergil suddenly appeared in front of her, covering her mouth, with the poor girl terrified, before knocking her unconscious.
- In later chapters Vergil showed how outmatched Fairy Tail is compared to him. He even went for kidnapping some members, including Wendy with the poor girl terrified of him and other members fearing for her safety after Vergil took her with him.
- Ch. 13
*A Devil's Game* has Vergil unleashing three powerful demons to combat the members of Fairy Tail.
- Ch. 16
*Demon vs. Spirits*
- Vergil is capable of using Yamato to bypass Juvia's water body, with the young woman screaming in pain, to Lucy's horror.
- Vergil's merciless Curb-Stomp Battle of Lucy's Spirits one after the other, leaving her increasingly rattled. While Loke lasts longer than the others, he still ends up skewered, and while it doesn't kill him, it is painful to watch, especially for the horrified Lucy.
- Ch. 17
*Devil Prince VS Fairy Queen*: Just how outclassed Erza is by Vergil once he starts using his Devil Trigger, subjecting the seemingly invincible Titania to a Curb-Stomp Battle. Erza has always been a pillar of strength for the guild, but the fact that even *she* is not enough to stop Vergil shows how grave the situation is.
- Ch. 18
*Epic Clash: Natsu VS. Vergil*
- Angelo Nelo is a walking source of this. In Edolas, it's mentioned he killed many rebellious guilds like members of Edolas Fairy Tail (including Edolas Lisanna) but things are getting to the point where Mundus later power him into the Onyx Reaper with batlike wings, claws, talons on feet Mandible-like jaws and a double bladed scythe.
- The Edolas soldiers have access to what they call 'magicalisation rays', which fire beams that turn any Exceeds they strike into Lacrima. A single strike converts any being with innate magic into a glorified battery for the kingdom of Edolas.
- The Dorma Anim was so dangerous that after one use the humans of Edolas were horrified and vowed to never use it again. It's mere use drains the already dwindling magic of Edolas to power itself, gaining a black color in the process, and seemingly responding to Faust's Sanity Slippage in his fight with the Dragon Slayers and Dante.
- The magic of Edolas being absorbed through the reverse Anima, causing magical devices all over the country to shut down, in the equivalent of a world-wide blackout. Making things worse, Dante and Mystogan both state that this will cause mass panic and violence, in which many innocents will liekly be harmed.
- At the end of Edolas arc There is someone else watching the reunion. Someone bald with a right blue eye and left red eye, with a burn mark-like a pulsate, looking pure malice.
- Shagotte's vision of Extalia falling from the sky, with Mundus watching in the background, doubling as a In-Universe example, making the elders desperate enough to send one hundred eggs to Earthland under the guise of a 'mission' in an attempt to save the next generation. In the present, they are shocked to discover that Nelo Angelo was merely the herald, shocked that something so terrifying can exist.
- The tower known as Temen-ni-gru is just as dreaded as canon, especially with Fairy Tail's reactions hearing about its origins. Namely that the tower is meant as a portal to get from the Underworld to Earthland that was constructed by demonic worshippers as well powerful demons like Mundus to conquer Earthland. Sparda, with help of the Dragons (Igneel included), only managed to seal the tower with a complex ritual with the 7 sins represent and was forced to sacrifice two priestesses to seal the tower with the final lock being the two amulets that he gave to Dante and Vergil.
- From Temen-ni-gru, are the Three Brothers, powerful demons, with special mention going to Cragnar, who looks like a cross between a crocodile and a komodo dragon. He proves deadly enough to nearly
*kill* Natsu and Lisanna, and it takes *two* of Natsu's most advanced techniques to take him down. Then the end of the chapter reveals they were simply minions, with the higher ups being much more powerful and vicious, despite being human.
- Relating to the above, each of the top members of the guild count in this in their own way. Though Vergil has plenty of previous entries highlighting just why he is so feared even amongst Fairy Tail.
- Mammon, the sin of Greed, might be more of a joker than the rest of the Sins, but his Gold-Make magic makes him incredibly dangerous in a fight, capable of besting Ultear. The horror aspect is best displayed when he
*turns Juvia* *into a gold statue*, complete with her fearful expression, and nearly does the same to Gray! In fact, he very nearly won, if not for Ultear interfering out of revenge.
- While Belphegor is the definition of Brilliant, but Lazy, being the sin of Sloth, his powers are no joke, letting him create scores of ghastly minions like minotaurs, lycans, werebats,and skull dragons. This was enough to easily overwhelm the likes of a heavily armed Lady, and nearly did the same to the likes of Trish and Modeus. Even when they survive, he simply uses more magic to merge with all his familiars, and would have killed them if not for Modeus' Devil Trigger.
- Satan is The Brute of the seven sins, befitting Wrath and one of the darkest examples of a Blood Knight in the story, showing great glee at dishing out and taking attacks, making fights with him a very prolonged and painful experience. In his default state, he is already a Lightning Bruiser, but his magic lets him power up and grow in size the more hits he takes, giving him full-blown The Juggernaut status.
- While Leviatha, sin of Envy, has a Freudian Excuse (and doesn't even qualify for Enfant Terrible), she counts by virtue of seeing how far a child can be twisted by her Dark and Troubled Past, willingly participating in a plan to bring about The End of the World as We Know It. Her copy magic makes her a nightmare to face as well, bringing the powers of Fairy Tails own members to bear on their friends and family, even troubling the likes of Erza and Mira. It's terrifying to imagine her as a dark wizard as an adult.
-
*Asmodeua*, the sin of Lust. Dear god, Asmodeua. Not only is she creepy as hell, gleefully identifying as evil with dark colors and a spider motif, there is also her 'hobby'. Even a hardened criminal like Angel was reduced to a quivering wreck after less than a day in her 'care'.
- Beelzebub, might actually top the above Asmodeua. While Adrian is a Creepy Child at worst, his 'magic' (really a curse) uses a Take Over for a being called the Wendigo, an Extreme Omnivore with a sheep skull that devours everything in its path to sate its bottomless hunger, including animals, heat and even
*people*. Unlike most Take Over mages, who remain in control, the Wendigo takes over whenever Adrian lets it out, running rampant and leaving the poor child to see the havoc his body has wrought. Even the likes of Elfman and Mira are terrified of it, with the latter even saying it "makes [her] Satan Soul look like Peter Pan". Despite fighting together, the siblings were unable to defeat it, coming very close to being its newest victims if not for Adrian's Heroic Sacrifice.
- The most unsettling part is no one is sure what the Wendigo is. Experienced Take Over mages like Mira and Elfman have never heard of it, its not a demon or any kind of animal and Adrian's backstory doesn't shed any light on its origins. It just showed up one day at his village, attacked and cursed the boy with possession when he fought back and he only regained consciousness after the thing had eaten every animal and human in the village,
*including his family*. Small wonder the kid became a Death Seeker.
- Iblis, sin of Pride and leader of the seven sins. Standing head and shoulder above most dark wizards and demons, her mastery of her Morning Star magic and immense magical power makes her more formidable than even
*Erza* (according to Dante) and was able to put the like of Dante on the ropes. What really cements her position on this page is her reaction when she starts to lose, showing the scary part of having too much Pride. After frantically denying that she *could* lose, she decides to use her most powerful spell, despite her life not being in danger, a black hole, yelling to Dante and Happy that kill them with her last act, clearly unhinged. Scary to realize such a powerful and dangerous magic was in the hands of someone who was one loss away from what seemed to be a low-tier Suicidal Cosmic Temper Tantrum.
- And of course, Arkham, the one who brought all of the above, and Vergil, together. The man is a
*scarily* competent strategist, with his ruthlessness and manipulative nature letting him get everyone to play into his hand, even managing to Out Gambit the likes of Vergil, who was by his side almost the entire time. The fact that he's considered worse than *actual demons* tells you everything you need to know about his character, even before getting into what he put his own daughter, Mary/Lady, through, traumatizing her in the process. Then there's how he was willing to exploit Sheree/Leviatha and Adrian/Beelzebub's respective horrifying circumstances to manipulate the two into joining what is essentially a cult of assorted criminals and monsters, even experimenting on the former, and showed no hesitation in attacking Wendy, displaying plenty of traits consistent with The Sociopath. Overall, Arkham cements himself as one of Fairy Tails vilest enemies, earning nothing but scorn from the entire guild.
- Yomazu and Kawazu have gained demon powers, meaning that they are a
*lot* more dangerous than canon. This gets further enhance when Job (having undergone Sanity Slippage) forcibly empowers them with demonic energy from his Devil Slayer powers, turning them into little more than savage beasts.
- Grimoire Heart's Eight Kin of Purgatory are just as, if not
*more*, terrifying than they were in canon, to the point that even Fairy Tails strongest members are barely able to eke out a win in some cases.
- Azuma makes his debut managing to launch a surprise attack on Wendy, a Dragon Slayer, and displays enough power to annihilate a small fleet of Magic Council airships, killing the hundreds aboard. His magic lets him move across the island, undetected by all but the most experienced fighters, and enough destructive for levelling the aforementioned air fleet by his lonesome. Only his Blood Knight and Noble Demon tendencies prevent him from being an absolute nightmare.
- Zancrow is an Ax-Crazy maniac who is willing to murder his own men just for calling Natsu strong and when fighting Natsu, Wendy and Lisanna, expresses his desire to rape the girls solely because he can. What's more, he wields Flame
**God** Slayer magic, which creates black flames that not even Natsu can No-Sell, even *burning* the Fire Dragon Slayer!
- Kain Hikaru in canon was a bumbling villain whose voodoo magic made him a source of comedy, despite his durability. Kain Hikaru here has advanced knowledge of physics and chemistry, letting him weaponise his ability to use his voodoo magic on himself, whether it's making his body into diamonds, magma or
*light*, and comes dangerously close to *killing Trish*, by slowly crushing her skull no less. Trish and Lucy are forced to flee, and only the likes of Dante and Cana are able to get the edge on him in a fight. Even while the devil hunter is winning, Kain manages to swipe a few of his hairs and shows just how terrifying his magic can be, quickly turning the tide completely against Fairy Tail and rendering one of their most powerful members helpless against his allies onslaught, showing a sadistic glee in using his powers to inflict pain.
- Rustyrose has the lost Arc of Incarnation, an Imagination-Based Superpower with seemingly no limits that lets him run roughshod over nearly all his opponents. Even with Evergreens stone gaze, she and Elfman are unable to defeat him.
- Merudy is a seemingly emotionless girl who wields Magility Sense lets her connect the physical and emotional senses of people. Sounds nice, except she uses it to inflict pain upon several of her opponents at once using Juvia as a proxy to hurt Gray, despite him being nowhere near that fight. The fact that she is still a child makes it clear how much Grimoire Heart can corrupt those they come across, especially given her hatred for Gray despite never having met him.
- Ultear, the leader of the Kin, and wielder of the lost Arc of Time magic, which lets her alter the time of any inanimate object and plants, whether it be regress them to a complete state, reverse the trajectory of projectiles, or
*age them into dust*. The woman herself proves to be quite ruthless and manipulative, putting on an act to trick Gray into pulling off a Heroic Sacrifice against Hades, and jumping right to killing him when that fails. This power even lets her put the likes of Dante and Lady on the backfoot, and she shows demented glee in their attempted execution of the younger son of Sparda.
- Caprico's entire magic is
*made* of this, using an inverted summoning contract that functionally lets him *enslave human warriors*, having legions of them under his command! What's more, his magic can affect those he hasn't even subjugated, with the human members of Fairy Tail being unable to land a single attack on their fight, and are forced to leave it up to Trish (a demon) and Loke (a Celestial Spirit).
- Original character Job, acts like an evil priest praising Mundus, and is one of Grimoire Hearts deadliest members, wielding Holy Devil Slayer magic, and being devoted to their 'holy mission' of unleashing the Deon Emperor upon the world. This gives him a vast array of powers, including lasers, LaserBlades, teleportation, light shields and light based explosions, in addition to being able to consume his element, i.e.,
*ambient light* to heal his wounds. What's more, his magic proves capable of negating Dante's healing factor, handing him his first decisive defeat (besides Vergil) in the story, even when Lady was backing him up, and the two are forced to flee!
- It gets worse. After coming back from a previous defeat, he is notably more unhinged, revealing that Devil Slayer magic has corrosive effects on the mind of the user without sufficient discipline, hence his Badass Preacher persona. He completely gives into the madness, acting much more animalistic and fighting like it too, a far cry from the composed opponent from before. Also serves to illustrate just how dangerous using demonic power can be.
- Outside of the Eight Kin, there is Bluenote Stinger, a Gravity Master so powerful even the rest of Grimoire Heart is weary of him, proving capable of amplifying the gravity of an area to such an extent that even a powerhouse like Natsu is unable to
*stand*! He also proves durable enough to No-Sell Cana's attempt at Fairy Glitter, coming very close to killing the group then and there, if not for Gildarts Big Damn Heroes moment.
- Hades, the master of Grimoire Heart is likewise enhanced, having gained power through the use of demonic power. And not just any demonic power, he gained his 'gift' from Mundus himself! He only has two fights in the arc, first taking out Makarov with minimal injury, and at the end fighting a collection of Fairy Tails strongest members (including a returning Laxus) in rapid succession with no signs of fatigue. Even after a combined assault from Dante's Devil Trigger and Natsu's Natsu's new Lightning-Flame Dragon Mode, he's still able to keep going, even revealing that his Magical Eye lets him summon a horde of demons, wreathed in shadows. The main reason the heroes won is because the Exceeds managed to destroy his power source, and even then, it was a close call.
- As per canon, Zeref's curse is a big source of this, making him a sporadic Walking Wasteland that randomly emits a wave of energy that
*kills everything around him!* It even manages to render Dante clinically dead for a few seconds. What's more, while Zeref himself spends most of the arc in despair over the damage he causes, at the end he confronts Hades (and his master Mundus) in a *chilling* state of Tranquil Fury, paralysing the remaining Kin with fear and killing the master of Grimoire Heart, displaying control of his curse for the first time. What puts this here instead of awesome is that he makes it clear that he has discarded his morals to do so, and makes it clear that while he wants to defeat Mundus, he has no qualms how many enemies he makes in the process.
- This arc gives our first glimpse of what Mundus can do and it is
*terrifying!* In the flashback alone he managed to inflict a complete Curb-Stomp Battle on Precht, despite only having a fraction of his power available, before proceeding to Mind Rape him into a FaceHeel Turn, turning him into the merciless Master Hades seen in the present. When Hades unleashes his full demonic power on the exhausted Strongest Team (bringing them to their knees), Dante notes that he is *less* powerful than Mundus, notable since Hades himself was on the giving end of a Curb-Stomp Battle against several of Fairy Tails strongest members.
- Just when it looks like Fairy Tail is in the clear, in comes another threat, Acnologia! His mere presence causes the Magic Council forces to flee, and inspires complete fear in the likes of Gildarts and Modeus, with the latter even remarking that the beast has a reputation as the Dragon Butcher in the Underworld, with high ranking demons being terrified and only
*Mundus* is more powerful than him. It shows throughout their encounter, with everyone in Fairy Tail unable to do more than scratch him, after which he prepares to finish them off with a single attack. He more than lives up to his reputation.
## Devil's Retribution
- The fact that even sealed away Mundus is a big enough threat that Sparda and his in-laws feared what he would do to the Heartfilia's if he learned they were Eva's birth family. Just how much influence does he have over the demons active in Earthland?
- Demons have become much more active in the past seven years, and while not a threat to mages, can still massacre civilians. Some can even shapeshift into humans, adding all kinds of Paranoia Fuel.
- Sid reveals the existence of the three demon kings, Abigail, Argosax, and Urizen, three entities below Mundus, but well above every other demons in existence.
- According to Brad, the Underworld has some how gotten
*worse* in the past seven years. All sorts of demons are trying to get out and gain more power.
- Natsu brings up the fact that this may not be the first time the masked demon has killed someone under the guise of being a Jackass Genie. Who knows how many people its killed and innocent lives its destroyed pulling the same routine.
- The masked demon shows up, promises people wishes, and then frames them for murder at the first instance of them using a euphemism. It left Kerry racked with guilt over 'killing' his best friend and tries to do the same to Natsu and Grey. Erza and Natsu note there's no telling how many other victims it might have had prior to this.
- While the demon guards running the Devils Prison are no match for Dante and Erza, they grossly outclass any ordinary human, and have collars that restrict a mages access to their magic. The fact that they essentially have free reign to arrest people around town and lock them up in prison without even letting their loved ones see them raises all sorts of horrifying implications. Hell, their game of 'tag' practically confirms this.
- How Kings magic works, essentially tricking people into unknowingly making a Faustian bargain, granting them supernatural good luck and stealing their souls whenever they lose. What's more, it makes whoever holds the item become a gambling addict, even managing to affect
*Dante* of all people.
- While under the effects of one of Kings items, Dante's attitude skips over unnerving and goes straight into terrifying, pulling out a gun on Erza with an unhinged smile.
- The siren that possessed Elena somehow corrupted the music in her albums, causing many of her fans to go insane, with some even committing murder or suicide. The sheer scope of the havoc one sound based could wreak with the influence of one singer is frightening.
- The arc opens with a vision of the world engulfed in flames and a madman laughing at the 'Savior' bringing down destruction. Counts In-Universe since this is a recurring dream the Archbishop of Zentopia has been having.
- Something is burning down churches all over the kingdom, and leaves bodies behind in each case. Evidence suggests that in addition to fire, some form of acid and blades were used, with even the Rune Knights being stumped as to what could have caused it. Fairy Tail themselves point out it could be a demon or a psychotic human, a harsh reminder that there are plenty of people who can cause such death, be they demon or mage.
- Mary Hughes' People Puppets magic lets her force allies to attack one another, made all the worse that such a power is in the hands of such a Sadist.
- Throughout her debut chapter she repeatedly uses this on Trish, which dredges up the woman's memories of her time serving Mundus.
- While usually friendly, Nero's attitude is terrifying once he hits his Rage-Breaking Point, slamming Dante headfirst into the ground and later beating Trish unconscious (after sucker-punching her). His attitude makes it clear he is very close to delivering a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown to the next person that interferes.
- Mary Hughes uses her People Puppet powers to 'exorcise' Mira's Satan Soul from her body, giving a Sadist the use of one of Fairy Tail's most powerful members powers. She then proceeds to use said powers to brutalize Mira's friends and brother, showing just how horrifying said powers can be when not in the hands of a Nice Girl like Mira.
- The Infinity Clock's mere
*activation* generates an ominous aura that can be felt all over Fiore. Even powerful mages like Makarov are unsettled with the feeling. Gets even worse when we learn its origins, as apparently Sparda, Anna Heartfilia (explicitly stated to be the strongest Celestial Wizard) and *Zeref* working together were unable to destroy it, only being able to seal it away.
- The debut of the Neo Oracion Seis, having replaced half their members with people even more powerful and vicious than their predecessors, and the remaining members having Took a Level in Badass. Their debut has them wiping the floor with some of Fairy Tails most powerful members. To elaborate:
- Midnight not only refined his Reflect magic to the point it can affect Byro's Anti-Magic, and can combine it with his new Darkness magic, based off of Brains. His new favorite tactic seems to be trapping foes in a sphere of his Reflect magic with powerful bolts from his Darkness magic. Incredibly painful as Dan and Byro can attest.
- Racer has shifted from slowing opponents down to full on Super Speed, and uses it to deliver a high-speed No-Holds-Barred Beatdown on Grays group. Even worse, throughout the entire scene, and in subsequent chapters, he is constantly snarling, using brief sentences and having a disturbing fixation on killing people, giving the impression of a vicious wild animal.
- Erigor makes a return with the title and an appearance of the 'Grim Reaper', wielding a Sinister Scythe and having upgraded his Storm magic to include razor sharp winds and lightning. Even more unsettling is his attitude throughout the entire encounter, showing no emotion and having to be reminded of things that happened minutes ago.
- Gilver officially appears before Fairy Tail, having somehow returned from death. Proves to be a match for
*Dante*, which is a very scary concept. Painful to watch him use several features of his katana to inflict all sorts of wounds on the son of Sparda, most notably when he impales him and unleashes a whirlwind on his *internal organs*.
- Finally, there's Gloria, who remains focused on debilitating her opponents save for the occasional taunt. Her combat skills and powers prove to be a deadly combination, overpowering the likes of Mira and Freed, made all the more terrifying by the fact that her favorite attack seems to use her Ride the Lightning and knives to simultaneously shock and slice up opponents. In her 'fight' with Trish, she proves capable of overpowering the she-devil, and manages to successful steal the Devil Sword Sparda, putting the powerful artifact in the hands of the villains. The fact that she is apparently a clone Agnus made using Trish's blood (and subsequently strengthened, only adds to the scary factor, showing how terrifying she would be as a villain.
- Guttman Kubrick, a demon the Order imprisoned years ago is recruited for their mission, and possesses a dangerous power called 'Rupture' which he can use to shatter objects or
*detonate the magical and/or the demonic power of others*, essentially turning them into living bombs. The fact that he appears to be a Manchild following Sanctus' orders makes the whole thing much more unsettling.
- In
*Divide and Conquer*, Kinana begins to act possessed, moving about in a daze and ominously muttering words (implied to be Cobra's internal monologue) about destroying the world. She then proceeds to carve a series of runes into the wall with a fork, bringing to mind all sorts of horror movies.
- The Order is revealed to have found
*Sparda's corpse*, and used it for all sorts of experiments. The fact that they twisted the body of such a powerful and noble individual is horrific.
- Agnus also mentions that they attempted to clone the Dark Knight and failed, raising all sorts of horrific possibilities.
- Related to the above, Agnus says they merely found Sparda's corpse, which raises the question: what was able to kill freakin'
*Sparda*?
- Half of the Neo Oracein Seis have undergone the Ascension ceremony like the Order of the Sword members, giving them black-winged demonic forms called 'Caduto'. The fact that these monsters have even more power at their disposal (taken from Sparda no less) is nothing short of terrifying.
- As if Erigor's attitude wasn't enough, it gets worse when his 'Reaper Caduto' form restores his mind, giving him an eerily calm type of Ax-Crazy. He then gives a horrifically detailed threat of how he's going to kill Wendy and use her corpse to taunt Natsu. Oh, and apparently he
*gave up his soul* in the process of getting his new power, which raises all sorts of horrific implications.
- Gildarts, Laki and Morrison discover a comatose girl being kept in said state. Her name is Michelle Lobster, which raises the question, who is the girl that has been hanging around Fairy Tail all this time?
- Sanctus and Midnight plan to use Kyrie alongside two others to form the Saviors core, Kyrie in particular to make sure
*the power doesn't rip them to pieces*.
- The Order of the Sword and the Neo Oracien Seis manage to do it. They activated the Infinity Clock, and use it to power the Savior. The mere activation causes the sky to darken as red clouds begin to emerge all over Fiore. The villains now have a weapon of mass destruction that Word of God has called 'a walking apocalypse'.
- The fact that merely
*four* Gladii can put experienced mages like Alzack and Bisca on the back foot, which Agnus calls some of his weaker creations.
- Sanctus and Midnight reveal that they can influence the thoughts of people through Imitatia, causing all sorts of Paranoia Fuel. Even more horrifying, against people without magic, the effects are apparently strong enough to
*remotely induce a brain tumor*, which they did to Jude, and can apparently do so without her knowledge.
- The Savior more than lives up to its title of a walking apocalypse, causing unnatural disasters all over Fiore just by existing. Said disasters include raining fire, lakes turning to acid and tornadoes of metal. Mage guilds all over the land have to intervene to minimize casualties.
- Sparda reveals that when he found Zeref again after he was cursed by Mundus he had
*ripped out his own heart* in a desperate attempt to kill himself.
- When Sparda tells Zeref's origins to Fairy Tail, he drops a major bombshell:
. Using Sparda's own power and Zeref's Life Magic, the Etherious were created to kill Zeref if he ever fell into madness over Mundus' curse, and if Sparda was unable to find a cure to his magic. They were sealed away by Sparda using Body-Link Magic and could only be released by him. However, when Sparda died, the Etherious were released. While some were akin to wild beasts such as Deliora, others had their own sentience and intelligence. The rampage Deilora went on that killed Gray's parents and later Ur was a result of his programming to kill Zeref, merely seeing everything before him as an obstacle that was meant to be eliminated. What that also means is Sparda, albeit unintentionally, **he helped Zeref create the Etherious** . **had a hand in the creation of Tartaros**
- During Dante's confrontation with Jiemma, a Rhetorical Question Blunder from him reveals that the master of Sabertooth actually considered
*raping* Yukino for her failure in a *single match*, and only refrained because he considers her too weak to bear his children.
- Obra manages to escape when Raven Tail is arrested. Sapphire freaks out as a result and is completely terrified of the little imp. Keep in mind that Sapphire is an S class wizard who was willing to go undercover in a Dark Guild for months, is shown to be at least on par with Natsu, and together with Laxus took down the Raven Tail team including the Guild Master and she is terrified of Obra. What exactly is he capable of that would make her so scared of him? Whats even worse is that despite most of Raven Tail being arrested with Obra free their plans can still continue.
-
*The Eclipse Project* finally reveals how Sparda died. When Dante and Vergil turned eight, Sparda left home in order to fight an ancient enemy in order to protect his family. The fight went on for days and even leveled a mountain range, but in the end, Sparda lost his life. And the one that killed him? **Acnologia.**
- Even more horrifying is Sparda said that Acnologia had become stronger than when he first fought him 400 years ago, and back then, Acnologia stood on even ground with Sparda to the point that the Dark Knight needed help from Igneel, Kurenai and others just to push him back, and the best they could do was force him to retreat, after destroying an entire countryside in the ensuing fight!
- Not only that but unlike Mundus who has been sealed away and can at least not directly threaten Earthland, Acnologia is still at large and with the dragons all but extinct and Sparda dead there is no one in Earthland who can currently match him. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/FairyMayCry |
Falling Down / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
Foster's constant phone calls to his wife, which progressively become more chilling and threatening with each one. She calls the police over to her house twice, and both times they leave quickly, determining Foster to be a non-threat, and give her the mere advice to keep her doors locked in case. Foster's final phone call provokes Beth to pick up her daughter and leave the house from out the back when she realizes that he's calling her from *right down the block*. **Foster:** Did you know, Beth, that in some South American countries it's still legal to kill your wife if she insults you? | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/FallingDown |
Fafner in the Azure: Dead Aggressor / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
*Three nukes* weren't enough to take it down. **Due to wiki policy, moments pages contain unmarked spoilers**.
## General Franchise
- The Festum. They are a race of aliens with Hive Mind, able to read your mind and movements, can assimilate you on contact and can create black holes (called Worm Spheres) as their primary form of attack. At the beginning of the series, anything that wasn't a Fafner was screwed to try for fight one of them (and even Fafners weren't invulnerable, as the Festum could read the pilots' minds if they answered the "Are you there?" question. To make things worse, the Festum learn from every person assimilated and from every one of them that dies, adapting to weapons and strategies with ease, evolving to make themselves invulnerable to the most effective weapons and turn the tides against the humans. It gets even worse when you consider that, in the beginning of the series, the Sphinx Type (the most "basic" Festum) was a dangerous threat, and by now is one of the weakest compared to the new types born from all the evolution they have gone through in the story. There's a reason why humanity is so screwed in this series, and they make sure to show you that from the very beginning.
- After the entire Japanese population became sterile, the government began to dip into some highly unethical methods in order to genetically engineer future children.
- The assimilation phenomenon as a whole. You start growing glowing green crystals out of your body and your mind weakens until you can't resist anymore, at which point you crystallize entirely and disappear to become one with the festum hivemind. Yikes.
- The Fenrir mechanic in the Fafners. If a pilot has no way of escaping a Festum with their life, their last course of action is to blow themselves up along with the Festum so that the Festum hivemind can't learn anything else about humanity from the fight. And as of Exodus, that might not even work anymore.
- By piloting the Fafners, the kids are exposed to a slow-burning assimilation process that will eventually kill them if they don't stop fighting. The Fafners essentially
*eat* their pilots.
## Original Series
- When they were kids, Soushi was almost assimilated by the Festum. The only way to save him was to gouge out his eye where it had started, and Kazuki, being the only one around, was the one who had to do it. This ended up traumatizing him so badly that he blocked out the reason
*why* he did it, and was left only with the memory that he was the one who blinded Soushi.
- The manner in which Mamoru is killed. His cockpit is basically wrung out as it's crushed, with him inside of it. The only thing left is a twisted up hunk of metal that's seeping blood.
## Right of Left
- The entirety of Right of Left. Pilots begin succumbing to the assimilation phenomenon, and those who are left have little hope but to eventually follow. And then the Festum finally learn how to survive in water. Ryou (who is almost fully assimilated anyway) has to blow himself up at the bottom of the ocean right after his love interest disappears to make sure they don't find the ship or the island.
## Heaven and Earth
- The Festum have learned tactical warfare. Humanity is screwed.
## Exodus
- By the time of Exodus, the Festum have evolved and adapted so much that three nukes isn't enough to take one out. Granted, it's a pretty big one, but still.
- Although it protected Emery and hasn't displayed any signs of hostility, this◊ Festum◊ certainly looks creepy, standing there silently before disappearing.
- The Walker is following the island all along, meaning that it can launch attack basically
**anytime** it wants. Paranoia Fuel at its best.
- Soushi has been attempting to dismantle the Mark Nicht, which is starting to develop sentience and is currently resonating with Sein so that anyone who tries to pilot the latter is immediately 'devoured' by it. Nicht is sentient enough that it can stop the pain blocks from being enacted, and when Soushi continues to tear at the mech to get to its core (while inside, and very much feeling the pain of clawing through your own skin), it actually attempts to assimilate him. The only thing that saves him is the fact the he's part Festum now.
- The Creepy Child Gregory class Festum. You definitely don't want to see one on your trip to the bathroom at night.
- Yumiko gets crushed by a collapsing building, and all we see is a protruding hand and a splatter of blood.
- Each of the pilots who participated in the island's fight in episode 7 have started undergoing bodily changes that get worse the more they pilot. As Orihime describes it, this phenomenon is saving their lives from the assimilation process, but not necessarily their human bodies or minds. Reo has a hole in his chest that gets bigger the more he pilots, Mimika is growing hardened growths out of her back, Sui is becoming more and more dense, Rina is borderline-comatose, and Seri has started assimilating everything she touches. Not to mention that if these kids go out of commission, there won't be anyone left to protect the island from Festum attacks.
- Now Sakura and Canon also suffer from lower body temperature and lighter bodyweight. No one is safe among the pilots now.
- And the effect shows. Canon literally fades to white in Episode 17, and Mimika "turns" into a bowling ball-sized sphere after Episode 20. Now one wonder how others will become...
- Episode 12 we see men got assimilated
*just by hearing parts of its voice through the phone*. Now you don't even need to stay close to them to get assimilated; they do it through their mind. *They won't even let you use the Fenrir in the progress.*
- Then in Episode 14 Festum learned to
*completely destroy a Fafner* which is about to use Fenrir, rendering the pilots' efforts moot.
- After piloting Mark Dreizehn again, Canon gains the ability to foresee the future, which does aid the team in the immediate battle. But the scary part? She saw
*graves for everyone on the island AND every Fafner destroyed and bloodied* by just visiting the Hazama family's grave, hinting that this is a possible outcome for them.
- To fuel further nightmares, Kazuki's one-on-one duel with Azrael-type in Episode 15 goes
*exactly* like Canon's vision, to show that her visions are correct.
- And in Episode 16 Canon finds out she can't see the future about events after a certain date. The mere implication about it is horrifying for a "fortune-teller"...
- ...Which is nothing when it's revealed in Episode 17 that a "winning" future is possible as Kazuki finally comes back to defeat the Walker.....except
*only Kazuki returned and everyone else stays dead*.
- Combat Regulation Alpha. The Regulation had been built up for a while, but when it's actually put into action,
*fellow humans* will become as dangerous as Festum around. Especially they can initiate it at anytime, against anyone, even when *they're fighting on your side at the same time*. Hiroto learned the hard way.
- Not just that, but at the start of episode 14, the same episode where Hiroto is killed, a soldier is seen killing someone who went against the Regulation. Even if you survive the battle, they will hunt and kill you for breaking it.
- In
*Exodus*' Episode 23 Maya ties Mark Sieben to a Neo U.N. sub and sets Fenrir for a sixty second detonation if ROE Alpha is not revoked. There are 11 milliseconds left on the timer.
- Walker
*smiling* when the shield around Tatsumiyajima island falls.
- The new Leviathan-type. Just imagine a Festum that is sixty kilometers long.
- Episode 21 of
*Exodus*. Pilots succumb to the assimilation phenomenon AGAIN, and the refugees reach their destination with around 5000 left, after 17000 died getting them there. Not just that, but *another* Azazel appears, and during the battle Kazuki's arm is assimilated.
- Mark Raison is the most powerful Fafner to date, being able to assimilate Crawler using light without effort where Nicht couldn't do anything. It could, and most probably should, go under Awesome, but it doesn't. Why? It's pilot is Jonathan Mitsuhiro Bartland, the Puppet. In other words, one of the most powerful villains in Fafner can assimilate
*anything*.
- The Puppet program itself is also Nightmare Fuel. Imagine that one day you got your pre-established personality and life as a human
*completely erased*, and you don't realize it until the very last moment.
- ANYONE could be a Puppet. The only people it couldn't be are the residents of Alvis-and even then, anyone captured by the Neo U.N. (Kazuki and Maya) could be one.
- Vagrant. It can use portals to attack and reflect attacks, assimilate other Azazels, is practically made of Nightmare Fuel,
*runs* on Nightmare Fuel etc. It's also the cause of Raison's power.
- Sui crying
*blood* when trying to use his SDP to rip out Vagrant's core.
- It's Episode 26 and Altair has arrived at Earth. The problem? Miwa-the stringest Esperanto-isn't strong enough to communicate with it and Prometheus reaches it first. Thankfully Altair is picky in who it wants to talk to. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/FafnerInTheAzureDeadAggressor |
Falling Skies / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
- So many things about the Skitters - their appearance, the harness implants they put in the humans' spines...
- ||The fact that the harnesses transform them|| does not help.
- The scene where the children are being harnessed.
- The Overlords.
- ||Ben's progressive transformation.||
- ||Jamil's death||. Remember those flesh-eating scarabs from
*The Mummy*? Picture a Skitter version of them, make them bigger, and make them eat their victims *from the inside-out*...
- The fact that
*several* of these creatures crawl out of ||Jamil's|| mouth didn't help either.
- ||Anne's baby.|| Yes, this show managed to make ||a baby|| severely eerie...
- ||Hal getting Karen's bug removed.||
*Not* a pleasant scene to watch.
- The parasite being removed from Tom's eye in "Shall We Gather At The River." He's fully conscious and screaming the whole time.
- Anne has a dream in season four. It involves her pregnant belly and an Overlord. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/FallingSkies |
Faction Paradox / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
- The Faction Paradox. They have their roots in corrupt Gallifreyans worshipping paradox and defiling history and glorifying death as the mother of all Take Thats to the Time Lords. They entered existence by paradoxically creating their own creator. Said creator became a monstrous undead paradox being whose shape depends upon who's looking at him. The shape he always uses? A twisted image of the viewer, being "everything you swore you'd never be". In essence, the embodiment of all potential evil in the universe. The Faction as a whole has as a favorite sport for initiates a manhunt in which they are led to their ancestors and Unperson themselves by murdering dear old papa or gramma before they themselves are born, therefore erasing themselves out of history and making them harder to destroy by time-based attacks. They wear masks of pure bone out of the skulls of creatures that never ever existed. They use huge skeletons as warships. They merge weapons with their shadows and turn them into living monstrosities that can slice apart rooms while the priest remains calmly sitting.
- A particular member of the Faction mentioned he once murdered his father. Typical. And then went to his timeship and went a few hours earlier. And killed him again. And again. And again.
- The Celestis are the former Celestial Intervention Agency agents, who feared that in the War they would be erased from history. So they did it to themselves in their own terms. Now, a moment to think... a lot of members of a society where paranoia and Chronic Backstabbing Disorder is the norm, turned into Energy Beings, who can only remain anchored in reality as long as someone believes in them. The A God Am I scenario, predictably, is the best of all. As a commenter states on their rotting society: nothing can be all right in a society where everybody is either a god, a slave or an assassin.
- Antipathy, an Ax-Crazy timeship whose existence has all been pain and madness from its very birth. Give it sentience and a desire to kill and destroy every living thing. Add to that a factory capable of bringing those killed back to life. In a most horrific manner, of course, being integrated painfully, organ by organ. And then raped For the Evulz. Forever and ever.
- Lolita
*eating* the Eleven-Day Empire.
- The hardened veterans of the War In Heaven have become Eldritch Abominations. How did they become that way? Every time they died and their regeneration kicked in, their modified immune systems generated extra layers of armor and weaponry. By the later incarnations, there was nothing even remotely humanoid about them.
- The Yssgaroth, infinitely horrific monsters from another Universe, are related to the Great Vampires of the normal Whoniverse, so you know it's going to get
. Their taint is easily transmissible and the timeline in their universe is implied to be **bad** *self-cannibalizing*. Turns out, they're grand at the biological scientist thing. How good are they? Good enough to string your nervous system across continents while leaving you fully conscious, incapable of death and of feeling anything other than endless pain. Fate Worse than Death doesn't begin to describe what will happen if the Yssgaroth get you. Oh, and did we mention there's a good possibility the Yssgaroth are all part of a single, unfathomably huge organism? And the local Time Lord expies have been leading incursions into their universe for military purposes?
- The Eleven-Day Empire. An extradimensional realm created by mutilating Earth's history and populating it with Eldritch Abominations by the goddamn truckload. It is protected by entities implied to be the physical embodiments of the Laws of the Universe. And the massive potential for Temporal Paradoxes merely by existing there for any length of time. And then came the news of the War in Heaven...
- The War in Heaven. Imagine you have access to a time machine. You are engaged in combat with another person who also has a time machine. A wreckage of a Gambit Pileup later, none of you are closer to killing the other as both continually fight to retain your timeline intact even as you try to make Time itself your bitch as you alter time as well as you can with your technology. Now, placed in perspective: imagine it's not two, but trillions of participants in a battle royale for control of the Universe in every moment in time. Now you perhaps understand. And there are people seeking to exploit it! The gall of them! But do not worry, friends. The Faction's door is always open...
- The true Homeworld of the Enemy has been identified in
*Interference*- it is none other than *||Earth!||*
- The Time Lord Invasion ||of the bottle universe Earth|| in
*Dead Romance*.
- Serviceman Sabbath in "Sabbath Dei" cuts himself open to summon a "presence." What's really creepy is the cold, clinical tone in which he discusses his injuries. He seems perfectly aware that what he's doing is insane yet he keeps doing it anyway. It's a bizarre combination of sanity and insanity.
- The Shifts,
*living* memes who exist in the memetic connections between a written work and its viewers.
- The victims of the Timebeast Assault, in which the Homeworld released several timeship-wyrms into the City Of The Saved and had them eat the Citizens alive. The City built new copies of the victims afterwards. The original resurrectees are still out there... somewhere.
- D-Mat technology is simple: it has a built-in scanner and a calculator. The scanner identifies its target, then feeds the information to the calculator, which proceeds to recalculate all of Creation
*without* the target and wills it into reality via a link to the Vortex similar to a TARDIS'. They don't stop existing - it's just that the matter that made up their bodies all of a sudden never came together, so they're left as a disembodied consciousness in a world that has no space for them. As *The Book of the War* states, it's a weapon that eats everything *except* the soul, and then spits it out, alone, naked, and shivering. While its lesser brethren are basically obsolete technology in the War in Heaven, the Homeworld lost the original Gun before the War started. *Nobody knows where it is.*
-
*Pure Light*. A junior Cousin and an elder Faction member investigated a bunker where the Faction had been researching a "Shadow Dimension", finding only more and more Cousins with their throats slit with no indication of defensive wounds or even traces that they'd tried to escape. Further in, they find a "Pure Light" device and the research notes of the team. As soon as the junior member activates the device, *his own shadow* slits his throat, and the elder barely succeeds in resisting her shadow's attempt at killing her. As she recounts to her superior, she believes the team found that the Shadow Dimension was inhabited, *and that those denizens succeeded in either controlling or convincing their shadows to turn on them* via the Pure Light device. She personally hopes her own theory on the subject (that their shadows are both sentient and utterly hate them for turning them into the *sombras que cortan*) is wrong, but just to be sure, she sealed the device and the dimensional breach. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/FactionParadox |
Fallout / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
Burned out ruins of proud cities from a long gone age?
Bloodthirsty, giant, deformed creatures that once were ordinary humans and animals?
Old empty vaults with fading signs of the madness that once tore them up from the inside?
Oh yes, the Wasteland is indeed a scary place. While there may be much more content, and therefore, much more exploration and possibility for scares in
*Fallout 3* and beyond, the first few were legitimately terrifying in their own respects.
For added effect, play this theme while reading...
# In General
- In
*Fallout 1* and *2*, the talking heads for certain characters tend to be unnerving due to their rigid animations, and are often shocker material if you first play the game. Hell, even the first cutscene can be startling at first.
- Many of the death animations in the original games are absolutely horrific:
- The Lieutenant seems to melt from the inside out as he twitches around. This is because he has cybernetics that keep him from succumbing to FEV overdosage. When you kill him, his cybernetics fail, and his body literally comes apart at the seams.
- Frank Horrigan, who manages to rattle out his last words despite his
*legs* and torso being explosively separated not half a minute earlier before his head explodes off his body.
- Critical hit-kills with plasma weapons causes the victim's flesh to melt off the bones, as they're screaming.
- Shot from laser rifle can cleave you in half, revealing the protruding stump of your spine.
- Alien blaster and pulse weapons will turn your target into pile of ash or outright disintegrate it.
- Bursts from automatic weapons will dismember a person in seconds, leaving little more than just a pair of legs.
- Critical hits from certain rifles or even punching can put a very large hole clean through someone.
- Finishing someone off with the Flamer can cause them to catch fire and flail around helplessly until they finally die.
- The Overseer gets his entire left half blown apart, his intestines dragging behind him as he tries to crawl away before twitching violently and dying.
- Although a later patch replaces the 500 day limit (to a maximum of 13 in-game years for limit reasons), so you can take about as much time as you want. Eventually, the mutants will however take over areas of the map.
- The newer games have done away with it, but the first two let you target children. You could blow them up, disintegrate them, put out both their eyes, set them on fire, and leave them a limping, bleeding mess with a single remaining hit point. Or you could just shoot them with a gun. And were you feeling like a big man and started a shootout in a populated area? There's some chance of accidentally hitting those kids if you miss. Take some time to think about it while their detailed death animation plays out.
- The soundtrack of
*Fallout*, reused for *Fallout 2* and *Fallout New Vegas* in certain areas and cutscenes, is bound to keep players awake at night.
- The Vault of the Future. A track that features steam hissing and metal clanking, while an eerie metallic tone plays. Then deep, mumbling voices and hissed whispers become audible. It's also possible for a keen ear to hear computer keys clacking. It isn't just an ambient track, it's an echo of what the Vaults used to be like: methodical, garbled talk of the past Vault scientists running amoral tests that would spell doom for their inhabitants. At the very end of the track, there's an odd creaking noise, like something swinging from a rafter.
- Vats of Goo. Perfect for setting up the bleak and horrifying tone of the opening narration, of how everything went wrong and ended in nuclear war. Subdued strings and intermittent piano notes mixed with nuclear raid sirens and a background Drone of Dread giving way to military drums to perfectly encapsulate the setting. It wouldn't sound out of place in a documentary about the Cold War or the Holocaust or something of that nature.
- Desert Wind, the theme for wasteland maps, sounds like lost souls screeching in the wind.
*Perfectly* suits the feeling of a vast, deserted landscape in a hellish post-apocalyptic world.
- City of the Dead, the theme of the Necropolis. You can hear ghastly wails interspersed with the music along with a loud, droning noise dominating the song, simulating the sound of an emergency siren. Add some metallic screeching sounds to top it off and and it's one disturbing track. It doesn't help matters at all that in
*New Vegas*, it's used in the areas around Camp Searchlight and Nipton, and will be playing during what will likely be the Courier's first encounter with Caesar's Legion and Vulpes Inculta.
- City of Lost Angels. As if steady beat of tribal drums paired with ghostly whispers and an ethereal choir didn't already make the song menacing enough on its own, it's almost always played in locations associated with extreme, even by the standards of the Wasteland, suffering, death, or cruelty, such as The Boneyard, Golgotha, The Fort and other Legion-controlled locations, and The Divide. It's basically the official Bleak Level theme of the west coast titles. And for bonus points in its sheer creep factor, it's also a Suspiciously Similar Song to "Grass" by
*Aphex Twin*.
- Acolytes of a New God is
*terrifying*. No "Psycho" Strings, Ominous Latin Chanting, or Drone of Dread, just a lone church bell accompanied by the sounds of ghastly wails of pain, crying, and incoherent whispers. It's almost like you're hearing the souls of those who died in the Great War's last moments on earth and their twisted funeral dirge. Fittingly, it's used in areas such as The Cathedral in *Fallout*, and in Zion during *Honest Hearts* as the theme of the Burned Man himself.
- Radiation Storm plays in The Glow, the horrifyingly irradiated research facility. The ambient, minimalistic music make it feel even more isolated. Like several of the other tracks, it returns in
*New Vegas*. There, it plays inside the Lucky 38 casino, making the already creepy and foreboding area feel like you're traversing a pharaoh's tomb.
- The series whole timeline. Oh God, it's horrible how it all makes sense, and the not-entirely unlikely idea it could actually happen. With oil supplies running low in the mid to late 2000s and no reliable sources of alternative fuels available, Europe is forced to invade the Middle East because they can't afford to import oil anymore, and China and the US go to war over the last remaining oil well found in the Pacific Ocean. International tensions flare, countries grow increasingly militant and paranoid over dwindling resources. As a result, the United Nations disbands, the European Commonwealth falls apart, and the United States invades Mexico and annexes Canada. And through it all the world governments pursue ever more amoral technology in the pursuit of better weapons or alternative fuels. All because of the butterfly effect of the transistor never being invented, leading to an Atomic Era instead of an Electronic Era.
- This chilling description of the Great War's aftermath, from Nukapedia, paraphrased from the Fallout Bible:
*Around a week after the initial nuclear explosions, rain started to fall; however, none of it was drinkable. The rain was black; tainted with soot, ash, radioactive elements produced by the nuclear explosions, and various other contaminants produced by nuclear weapons. This rain marked the start of the terrible fallout that marked the true, permanent destruction caused by the Great War. The rain lasted four long days, killing thousands of species that had survived the initial destruction of the bombs, be they animals, plants, or microorganisms. Those few living things human, animal, or plant that survived after the rain ended were left to live in the now-barren wasteland that had spread across Earth, where nearly all pre-War plant life had died either in the initial explosions or from the intense radiation produced by the fallout.*
- Vault-Tec as a whole. On the surface, it looked like it was the perfect way to survive the nuclear fallout that came after the Great War. Thousands of people would be able to survive and perhaps even return to the surface once the radiation levels dropped to a safe level. However, underneath the promise of salvation, was a dark secret. Vault-Tec's vaults weren't designed to be fallout shelters, but to be the sites of cruel and hideous experiments performed on the Vault Dwellers and conducted by the government. One example is Vault 12. Unlike most vaults, this one didn't have its door closed all the way, resulting in everyone inside either transforming into Ghouls or dying from radiation poisoning. The purpose was to test how the high levels of radiation that resulted from the Great War would effect on people.
- The game overs of
*Fallout 1* and *2* are, frankly (and with no pun intended), bone-chilling. If the sight of your character's skeletal corpse wasn't already bad enough, the eerily subdued narration will certainly give you the creeps. The narration doesn't muck around - it often outright tells you just how badly you screwed up, and how your failure has sealed the fate of everyone else (especially if you die on the Enclave's oil rig, where the narration goes from "Everyone in your village is dead" to "Everyone in the world is dead.")
- The first
*Fallout*'s game overs jack the creepy factor up to eleven by including the sound of the blowing wind of the desert you die alone in beneath the narration telling you that Vault 13 will soon meet the same fate. Brr...
"No price is too high for the survival of the human race. If you were human, you'd feel the same way." | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Fallout |
Fall of Starfleet, Rebirth of Friendship / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
*"You try to fight the darkness, but you will always suffer at the hands of death."*
—
**The Necromancer**
While the original fic had its own brand of Nightmare Fuel, Fall of Starfleet manages to one up it in that department.
## Fall of Starfleet, Rebirth of Friendship
- Everything about Dark Conquest. First, theres the fact that he feeds off of the hate that comes from United Equestria, and the first thing he does in his first appearance in the story is rape Starla, followed by effortlessly pummeling Lightning Dawn into a pulp, simply so that he could watch. And thats just the beginning.
- Another thing that makes Dark Conquest so terrifying is how seemingly polite he is towards his minions, yet he is incredibly ruthless towards his enemies in ways that even disturb his minions.
- Dark Conquest also doesnt attack by sending a monster a week towards Starfleet, but by launching a full-scale assault against them. Which, as weve seen, Starfleet is not prepared to fight against.
- The first character we see that Dark Conquest kills on-screen is Cookie Dough. He does so by disemboweling him right in front of Lightning and his friends.
- Raven. Unlike the rest of Dark Conquests minions, she actually enjoys killing people. Like how she kills Myte while hes begging for his life. Worse, she can use the Uniforce.
- The Grand Ruler is hardly a saint himself. As the story goes on, it becomes increasingly clear that hes not the wise and loving leader that he makes himself out to be, but a cruel and ruthless power-hungry tyrant.
- Theres also the fact that the Grand Ruler couldnt care less about Lightning Dawn, and only uses him as a weapon. The way he treats Lightning is eerily similar to how Gendo treats Shinji.
- A later chapter reveals the source of his power: ||Apparently, his horns are not golden, nor does he actually have three horns. It's a crown called the Tri-Horn Crown, and is one of Meadowbrooks Eight Magical Artifacts. With it, he can manipulate the minds of other people to alter their memories, or even warp their personalities. Worse, it's powered by people believing in him, which is how hes been able to remain in power. In addition, he has another artifact called the Orb of Reality, which was also created by Meadowbrook, that lets him manipulate the world how he sees fit. Worse, the orb is so powerful that not even Discord can reverse its effects. The Unicornicopians were his first victims with the Orb, followed by the Flutterponies, whom he turned into anthropomorphs and fairies respectively. With these two artifacts, he was able to manipulate events beforehand to make Starfleet look good. Thankfully though, the orb was taken out of his hands before his fight with Dark Conquest, and with no-one believing in him anymore, the Tri-Horn Crown was now useless for him.||
- In The Fall, Operation: Boardwipe shows the full extent of his madness: First he uses the Orb of Reality, combined with a corrupted Element of Harmony to put everyone to sleep. Afterwards, he loads up a few hundred Unicornicopians, along with a hundred Equestrians into Serpentari, for which he plans on taking to another planet with the intent to start over again. And for good measure, he sends what remaining forces he has loyal to him down to the planet to either hold back, or eliminate anyone whose still awake while Serpentari charges its main cannon to destroy the planet.
- Sure he may have deserved it, but the Grand Rulers death by the hands of Dark Conquest is still quite nightmarish. First theres the fact that his wings are mechanical, as Dark Conquest painfully shows. Then he rips off the horns of the Tri-Horn Crown, and crucifies the Grand Rulers hands with them, followed by ripping off the third horn, which is a slot that the Grand Rulers real horn is in. And how does Dark Conquest finish him off? By kicking his head off, sending it flying into a stake in between two others that have the head of a gargoyle and a Kamen Rider. And Dark Conquest does all of this on national television.
- The way United Equestria is run is eerily similar to Nazi Germany. The Unicornicopians are openly racist, the Equestrians are treated like second class citizens, and there are correctional facilities where criminals are sent to for daring to speak out against the Grand Ruler. Were never shown what happens in these facilities, but whatever goes on in them isnt good.
- Ace Ray was unfortunate enough to be sent to one of these correctional facilities. In the original fic, this was treated as a good thing. Here, it's treated just as horribly as it would be, as Ace Rays experience left him almost completely catatonic.
- The so-called Justice System is just as bad. The Unicornicopians dont give criminals a trial if they have more than enough evidence to convict them. This has lead to many innocent people being sent to prison for crimes that they did not commit, and later chapters show theyre not above resorting to manipulating memories in order to do so.
- Rhymey Ward is another contender. The way he tries to control Fluttershy is a textbook example of emotional domestic abuse. And when he doesnt get his way, he proceeds to show just how little he really cares about her.
- After Fluttershy and her friends finally get rid of Rhymey, he returns to his family... And proceeds to murder his father in cold blood, gets uncomfortably close to his mother, and goes through his family spell books to find a spell that would convince Fluttershy to come back to him from a distance. Said spell has him invading Fluttershy's mind while she's sleeping, and the way it's described makes it seem like he came within a hair's breadth of
*actually* raping Fluttershy in her dream. Thank goodness for Princess Luna's intervention.
- Emil Kudos. Just Emil Kudos. If it isn't the cold way that he talks to his 'victims' or how he views life in general, it's that his way of thinking is eerily similar to Nazi scientists. Not to mention the
*things* he does: he nearly made a friend of his fall off a cliff by damaging his wings and tried to *drown a foal under a faucet in front of its parents* just to prove his twisted view of superiority. And that's before he became a depraved Mad Scientist, where he graduates to lovely experiments like inflicting pain on captive subjects just to sneer about how an Earth Pony could take it, and ripping out a unicorn's heart just to see how long he can live with his blood being pumped by hand (thankfully off-page).
- The Necromancer. He's every bit as destruction-happy and powerful as Dark Conquest, but while Dark Conquest's pitch-black sense of humor could potentially lighten up his scenes, the Necromancer has no comedic quirks, making him much more menacing. He's an Eldritch Abomination presented as an embodiment of death itself, able to destroy entire worlds in short order and raise the slain under his command. He does so to the fairies and transforms them into a ravenous swarm that can easily reduce victims to naught but bones, as one unfortunate Unicornicopian Red Shirt painfully and graphically finds out.
- The Dark Kings backstory. Apparently, he was Shining Armor from a Bad Future where United Equestria was invaded by aliens, Cadance had a miscarriage, and the Elements of Harmony died off one by one. When the last of them died, Shining Armor discovered that he was descended from Mimic, a unicorn whose power dwarfed that of the Princesses. Tapping into this power, he attacked and killed the Grand Ruler and Celestia in cold blood, and proceeded to commit genocide on the Unicornicopians. But that wasnt enough for him. He then went through the Canterlot Archives to find a spell that would allow him to travel back in time so that he could kill the Grand Ruler, over and over and over again. He was only stopped when Shining Armor fought him, and upon discovering the truth, vowed that he would never become him, erasing the Dark King from existence.
- And to make things even worse; it is heavily implied that the Dark Kings hatred for the Grand Ruler was what brought Dark Conquest to United Equestria in the first place.
- In the original fic by Mykan, the Equestrians embraced having their anatomies changed. Here however, it's revealed that when they changed anatomies, they were all blacked out. And when they came to, they found that they were no longer quadrupedal, were standing upright, and had hands. Needless to say, they were horrified by the change in anatomy.
- Meadowbrooks Eight Magical Artifacts were made with good intentions, but they have some uses that are less than good:
- The Tri-Horn Crown, and the Orb of Reality have already been mentioned, (see above).
- The Fear Ring. It does exactly as its name implies. It makes people experience their deepest fears. Meadowbrook made it to help people overcome their fears, but Dark Conquest stole it, made copies of it, and modified it to work on Starfleet, and the Elements of Harmony. His plan only failed because it didnt work on Pinkie Pie, as shes not afraid of anything.
- The Lightning Wings. Meadowbrook created them after witnessing a pony use the speed force. The wings allow whoevers wearing them to tap into the speed force, and theyre currently in the hands of Rhymey. And we all know how unhinged Rhymey is.
- The Amulet of Dragon Companionship. Meadowbrook created this to help calm down dragons when she needed to treat them. However, it can also be used to make dragons do ones bidding. And full grown dragons are pretty much living WMDs.
- The Staff of Null. Unlike the Staff of Sameness, the Staff of Null is the real deal. While it was used by the Elements to render Sombra powerless, it doesnt discriminate when used. Meaning that any magic users find their magic rendered useless within its range.
- The Sword of Instant. A magical sword that can cut through anything. Anything. But thats not the worse part. The worse part is that it has a rebound effect that harms the user whenever it's used. In fact, Meadowbrook almost died when she first used it.
- The Barding of Healing. A suit of armor meant to be worn while using the Sword of Instant. It can heal any wound regardless of the severity. It can also hold back aging. This has made Dusk Shine, who is currently wearing the armor, become immortal. But if he ever takes it off, all the years warded off by the barding will come back, and he will rapidly age and die. Thankfully, when he does, the process isn't
*nearly* as graphic as it could've been.
- In the original fic, Melantha was one of Sombras generals, but had almost no personality whatsoever. However, in Raritys oneshot, shes a cold-blooded serial killer who kidnaps people, and sews their eyes and mouths shut, calling them her dolls. All of her victims had bought a dress at Raritys Boutique, leading some to believe that her Boutique was cursed. She almost killed Sweetie Belle, but Rarity was able to find her and stop her before she did.
- Shining Spark keeping a countdown to her own death is more than a little disturbing, especially when coupled with her cold lack of emotion.
## Evolution of Friendship
- Evolution of Friendship has its own brand of Nightmare Fuel. Namely, the fact that Sci-Twi is hearing voices in her head, telling her that the Rainbooms only see her as a replacement for Princess Twilight, which is slowly eating away at her sanity. ||And the others are experiencing similar voices trying to drive them apart||.
- Celesto Grandruler is just as bad as his United Equestria counterpart. He reacts with total indifference to the death of some of his students, and instead pins the blame on Sunset. ||Plus, an investigation reveals that he got everything he has right now thanks to a Deal with the Devil.||
- Rhymey's deal with Fluttershy: ||first he made the Sunset-caused Rainbooms' break-up worse by blackmailing Rainbow Dash into breaking their romantic relationship, then, with her vulnerable, he started manipulating and brainwashing her into committing murders to get at her ancestors' legacy of dragon slayers||.
*And* he's a classic Domestic Abuser on top of that.
- Beast Boy's whereabouts are this and a Tear Jerker: ||Gallant's master|| is "helping" him find his perfect world... By making him dream of many alternate worlds until he finds the right one. He's currently experiencing a variant of the one where he becomes a count and "he is this monster, warrior, and more".
- Alternate!Kimberly Hart's backstory is both this and a Tear Jerker, with even Unos being horrified: ||her world's Lord Zedd had her tortured and raped to death, then she was revived as a cyborg and cut loose on her former friends, and after killing them she's traveling through the multiverse to scour it of every trace of them||. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/FallOfStarfleetRebirthOfFriendship |
Fallout / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
The execution clip reveals a lot about the horrors of the prewar world. Note that the video was propaganda that the American government wanted people to see, not some leaked footage. Heck, the soldiers actually wave to the camera in a friendly manner! If the government is willing to show the American people something as horrifying as that, what even worse things have they done that they DON'T want people to know about? Play the game and you'll find out.
On the opposite side, imagine how apathetic or fanatical the general populace would have to be for that kind of thing being shown on broadcast television and not lead to a public outcry. Or possibly too preoccupied with their own neighbourhood going to hell to give much thought to what's happening on the other side of the border.
Not to mention various corporations and companies who put profit and lucrative government deals over pretty much everything and also engaged in ethically dubious actions (and that's putting it VERY lightly). In a way the Great War can be seen as a macabre form of Mercy Kill executed on an entire Crapsack World.
The Game Over screen as pictured above. The white fade out to the image of the skeletal remains of your character can be especially startling if your character dies of dehydration or radiation poisoning, as one might not even know what killed them and thus the screen seems to appear as a Jump Scare.
The Master's Lair was quite creepy at the time, as you recognize it as a Vault but as you go deeper more and more of the Vault seems directly connected to some kind of biomass
TheMaster of the Super Mutantshimself (Richard Grey), a Vault City exile who goes into hiding and accidentally falls into a vat of FEV serum, and undergoes a hideous transformation into a biomass that looks like a cross between a Centaur (see the Fallout 3 Nightmare Fuel page, not the one seen in the first two) and a Vault Terminal, whose only wish is to make the world "peaceful" by turning every man, woman, and child into a Super Mutant. The worst part may be that he believes he's right, unless you are charismatic enough to HeelFace Turn him. How? The Super Mutants are a pre-War experiment for disposable super soldiers, and are thus STERILE. The Master's insane plan was doomed decades before he was born.
And not to mention that the introduction when speaking with The Master is quite unnerving. His voice, a combination of computers and all of the biomass he assimilated, randomly switches mid-sentence between the voices of several different people (both male and female) in a way that disturbingly emphasizes words.
You can find logs where he describes the progression of his own mutating body, first with horror and gradually the tone turns into eerie calmness. Early on he describes how a rat came near him, upon which a tendril shot out of his body and grabbed it. It didn't eat the rat, but assimilated it into its own biomass.
The pain in your head is maddening. You feel the sins of others wash over your soul. And it gets worse, as your sins answer them. Like madmen, they fight through your psyche, and in the process tear your personality apart.
Your head is pulsing with the intrusive thoughts of others. The pain grows and grows. Suddenly, as if it never existed, the pain vanishes. You fall to the ground and weep. But something does not feel right.
It's notable that the Vault Dweller himself refused to speak of whatever it was he had found beneath the Cathedral in the Boneyard. In his memoirs, he wrote " I still cannot bring myself to write of this discovery, but let it be known that when I left, the Beast was dead and the Master of the mutant army was no more."
If you get captured by 'Lou' (mind you this can happen as early as you can make your way to him through another mutant) you might actually wet the bed. The Lieutenant of the Master's army is a gigantic, strong mutant with an extensive vocabulary and sharp wit - the very definition of both brains and brawn together. This, coupled with his low, smooth tone make for an incredibly scary scene. You can remain relatively polite as he explains to you what he's going to do with you, until he asks you to tell him where the vault is. This is so they can enter and turn everyone into a better breed of mutants. Unfortunately, turning you into a mutant could have the side-effect of making you forget where your vault is, and who you are, turning you into a moron like many other mutants, so he doesn't want to do that if he can avoid it. If you say yes, you get the ending below. If you continue to say no, you'll get more and more beat as he gets more and more sadistic in hopes you'll tell him. Even through the game's old graphics, this scene is chilling. If you still say no, you will be captured to wait until you're turned into a mutant.
The ending where you side with the Master. You get treated to a scene where you are wrapped in bandages and squirming as you get dipped into FEV. The next thing you see is Vault 13 being invaded by mutants. The mutants start murdering everyone, including what looks like the Overseer as he has a futile last stand against the mutants made of iron. In the unpatched game, after 500 days (400 if you gave away the location of Vault 13 to water merchants), you get the same cutscene, except without the Player Character being dipped into FEV. You know who finally killed the overseer? It was YOU!
Remember those iguana treats, the ones that always provided you with a little extra health? And then going in to see good ol' doctor Morbid, and accidentally going into his basement to discover iguana bits are people!?
Unlike the later games, which often kept the real name of the various cities and landmarks, Fallout 1 either featured original locations built after the Great War like Shady Sands or Junktown, or pre-War facilities that dont exist in real life like the Vaults or the Mariposa Military Base. This creates a nasty shock when you get near the endgame and get directed to a place called "The Boneyard". Then, you're shown The Boneyard's title image, which happens to be a Pre-War map...
The journal of Captain Maxson, the founder of the Brotherhood Of Steel, which can be found deep inside Mariposa. It details the last days before the Apocalypse during his stay at the Mariposa Military Base, and the soldiers discovering exactly what their goverment had been up to for all this time...
Oct 10, 2077
I, Roger Maxson, Captain, serial number 072389 have started this log because it doesn't look good for any of us, and I'd like for people to know what really happened here.
All hell broke loose when we finally discovered what those scientist bastards were up to. The Colonel has locked himself in his office and seems to be having some sort of breakdown. The men are screaming for blood. They're looking to me for answers, and I'm not sure what to do. Someone has to do something, though, before this place sinks into an anarchistic bloodbath.
Oct. 12 2077
Every time we get a report from higher up things get worse here. The war is going in a very bad direction and this place is about to go into full mutiny, with all the chaos that entails. I stopped one of the men from executing a scientist today, and demanded that we interrogate them to find out what their orders were.
Oct.13 2077
I killed a man today. I was interrogating Chief Scientist Anderson and he was giving me the full details of their inhuman experiments. He said his orders came from the Gov't., but I didn't buy it. He started screaming about how he was following orders, how he was a military man, and I just shot him. I tell myself it was to keep him from causing a full mutiny among the men, but I'm not so sure.
Oct.15 2077
I tried again to speak to the colonel through the door, but he seems to have completely lost touch with reality. I broke down the door with several of the men just in time to watch him blow his head off. Right before he pulled the trigger he said he was sorry.
Oct. 18 2077
By killing the egghead, I seem to have confirmed my position as leader of the men. They follow me without question now. The interrogations invariably end up being executions. Shellman held out the longest, but the end result was the same. Her arguments about her orders were a bit too specific to be completely made up. I'm getting a real bad feeling in my gut about how this is all going to end up. I don't even lie to myself anymore about my reasons for executing the scientists.
Oct.20 2077
I finally replied to the outside world over our radio. I don't know why they never sent anyone here to see what was happening when we stopped responding to their transmissions. It doesn't make any sense. Well, they'll come now. I declared ourselves seceded from the union. They remember Jefferson Davis. What will history say about me?
Oct.22 2077
What the hell is going on? We declare ourselves to be in full desertion from the army and no longer under the Government's command and what happens? Nothing. Something bad is coming down.
About a week later, Maxson leads his men and their families on an exodus to the Lost Hills bunker, where they'll eventually found the Brotherhood. A week is all it has taken for surviving civilians to degenerate into the precursors to the Raiders out of desperation, who kill several of the unarmored members of the convoy, including Maxsons wife. The Raiders would go on to plague the post-War world for 200 years.
The backstory of Vault 12, the one that's in Necropolis. The Vault was built with a great care by those signed for its preparedness and were even awarded with the "Pressed Vault Suit" for their efforts. As the war started and the other vaults has been sealed, the population of the sprawling metropolis of Bakersfield desperately tried to run to the Vault, forcing their way in to protect themselves and their families. When the Vault became full, it appeared that the door simply... couldn't be closed, and the radiation filled the shelter, turning the helpless survivors of Bakersfield into ghouls. Learning from the semi-canonical Fallout Bible, this was intentional, as it the whole purpose of the Vault was not to save the people from the effects of a nuclear war, but to study the effects of radiation on them. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Fallout1 |
Facing the Future Series / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
- Sam's transformation into a half-ghost is implied to be just as painful as Danny's was. The narration even states that Jazz will never forget Sam's chilling scream.
- Danny's True Ghost Form prior to getting control of it. Not only did it cause Danny to slowly become feral, but after using it for too long, the ecto energy would build up to the point where his body would burn out.
- Nocturnes's plan for Danny and Sam in
*Hearts and Minds*. Trapping them in a dream where they had no memory of each other was bad enough, but he actually attempted to steal all their dream energy and leave them trapped in a Deep Sleep.
- Vlad's Mind-Control Device: Some little tiny ring shaped device can be stuck behind your ear, where no one will see it. It will completely override your thoughts and turn you into a puppet. Then a ghost like Vlad can turn intangible, sneak up behind you, and put it there.
- After capturing Danielle when she was protecting a deaged Danny and Sam, the Guys in White were planning to experiment on her. And she is (technically)
*ten*. And they wanted to do the same with a deaged Danny and Sam, who were *five*.
-
*What She Wants* revealed that all of the teens in Sidney's ghost Casper High will be there *forever*. Sidney only gets out thanks to Desiree hearing him while on a wish-granting spree, allowing him to graduate. Now think of other students who are probably miserable like Sidney was and can't graduate...
- Word of God likes to wonder if they are real ghost students or rather just extensions of Poindexter, much like the band Ember had in her first appearance.
- In "Two For One", at the climax of Danny's Battle in the Center of the Mind with his ghost half, he reminds Ghost Danny that without his humanity, he'd be like Dark Danny, followed by a brutal scene in which Ghost Danny is trapped in the body of Dark Danny while watching helplessly as Dark Danny destroys mirrors representing the Fentons, Tucker and Valerie...and even Sam. Even without animation, the scene is written so well that it actually conjures the visuals in the reader's mind.
- Burner's rampages in "Overheated". While he's only trying to defend his home, he nearly kills several innocent people.
- After Burner chases off the people at Townsend's rally, he gets enraged enough to still attempt to tear the Salvage Yard down. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/FacingTheFutureSeries |
Fairy Dance Of Death / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
- The first thing Salamanders do when death-game announcement is made: Attacks Imps en masse while everyone is still figuring what to do. Keep in mind what Nerve Gear does when player dies in-game...
- Kibaou's provocation hits Klein quite hard early on, knowing that his friends are playing as other races.
- In chapter 38 it's quite explicitly implied that one of the Salamander tried to rape Yuuki, during the attack that killed her sister...
- Xaxa takes time out to hunt down and kill kids in the Sewers without any hesitation.
- By the time half a year has passed in the game a full 1/4 of the Undines are dead, the healers of the game, most done by PKs rather than monsters in the first month. The less of them there are then the more players that can't be healed or rezzed.
- The fact that there are NPCs who promotes player-killing.
- Several of the Spriggans have had to deal with players trying to kill them on sight, on top of being banned from shops and everything else because their leader wouldn't join the Treaty. ||It left Coper's faction without a choice but to get said leader killed in order to make Spriggan relevant again.|| | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/FairyDanceOfDeath |
Fallout 76 / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
-
*Fallout 76* has a whole army of terrifying new monsters to haunt your dreams:
- The Scorched: semi-feral ghoul-like victims of a dangerous plague that has driven them to insanity. They combine the zombie-like horror of feral ghouls with enough intelligence and presence of mind to use weapons.
- Honey Beasts: Enormous, bear-sized honeybee queens whose abdomens have been bloated and distorted into tumorous-looking organic hives for their larvae. They're so disfigured their wings are useless, forcing them to scuttle after you, but they are
*fast*, and their smaller, winged progeny pours out of the holes in their abdomen to swarm anything that gets close. Not that the queen herself is helpless, as she has an enormous set of mandibles ready to rip you apart.
- Snallygasters: Man-sized, elongated reptilian abominations that scuttle after you, baring a mouth full of distorted fangs and lashing out with a barbed cudgel-like tongue. They combine Eyeless Face with Eyes Do Not Belong There, have no eyes on their head but over
*two dozen* eyes scattered around their backs. Worse still? A Snallygaster Was Once a Man: you can find a terminal in the Advanced Mutations Lab of West-Tek that reveals Snallygasters are the result of human test subjects being exposed to a particular strain of the Forced Evolutionary Virus.
- Mole Miners: Disfigured, insane, Mole Men-like humans wearing ominous robes and creepy gasmasks. They seem to have been people who sought refuge from the bombs in the mines, only to somehow be genetically spliced with that most ubiquitous of Fallout enemies, the Mole Rat, by either of the two.
- The most famous West Virginian cryptid, the Mothman, makes appearances throughout the game, silently stalking the players, resembling an enormous, hooded, insectoid creature wreathed in shadows and with two huge glowing eyes. Sometimes they'll attack the player, making skull-popping screams that sound eerily like the cry of a death's head moth. Other times... they'll just sit there. Watching you.
- Mega Sloths: Former tree sloths that have been mutated into the semblance of their prehistoric ground sloth ancestor; towering ground-prowling beasts with enormous claws, but also huge mushrooms growing out their backs. While they are peaceful unless attacked, you probably would likely avoid attacking them to begin with.
- Mk2 Liberators: Imagine the turrets from
*Portal*, only without the childish voices and with the ability of mechanical spider legs to let them crawl after you. Give them a central energy blaster instead of machine guns, and a head-mounted propeller for hovering or jumping attacks, and you got the Liberators. Worse, they're a *Chinese* warbot, and it turns out that the Mama Dolces food factory is a cover for a factory to produce these things as part of a Chinese invasion.
- Radtoads: Man-sized, multi-eyed, fang-mouthed frogs, whose backs are covered in tumor-like eggs which they can kick at you as a biological weapon.
- The Grafton Monster: A creature that looks more like something out of a
*Silent Hill* game, a twisted mass of flesh in the rough shape of a biped that walks around on its knuckles, with its right arm comparatively slender and its left massively overdeveloped, and no visible head. Oh, but it gets worse: like the Snallygaster, the Grafton Monster is another human test subject from West-Tek. So every Grafton Monster you meet? Was Once a Man.
- Wendigos: Mutant humanoids that look like an irradiated version of Gollum. They move like greased lightning and attack with long, jagged claws. Worse, like their mythological inspiration, they seem to have mutated from people who committed cannibalism... and it's not clear if the cause was radiation, FEV, or something altogether more supernatural...
- ||It gets taken up to eleven in the
*Wastelanders* DLC with the dreaded Wendigo Colossus, a multi-headed wendigo that can summon its regular brethren for backup and has an inhuman scream that causes anyone in the area of effect to run around in an uncontrollable panic for several seconds before being able to fight back again.||
- Scorchbeasts: The Fallout equivalent to a
*dragon*, being essentially a bat version of the Deathclaw, complete with flight and a sonic blast scream. This would be terrifying enough, but they're also the source of the Scorched Plague, and directly responsible for depopulating Appalachia.
- Throughout the first part of the game, you're likely to come across petrified corpses: people caught mid-action as charred radioactive statues like the people of Pompeii. When you first see them, you might not think too much of it, maybe assuming they're people who got caught in a bomb during the Great War. Then you start finding more of them ... and find them in or on structures that were built after the bombs dropped ... and some that are clearly fairly recent ... and that's when you realize: these petrified people
*aren't* the result of a nuclear bomb, but something much worse...
- And what's worse? Why, it's actually an infectious
*disease* — or, rather, a fungus that slowly invades a victim's body, transforming them into ghoul-like monsters, and ultimately consumes them, leaving behind the petrified-looking, radioactive statue of fungus. Ready to start the cycle over. This "Scorched Plague" is so horrible that you find a tape from the Vault 76 Overseer instructing you to find a nuclear missile silo and burn the central site of the Scorched to the ground to contain the disease.
- There's also the fact that wherever there are statues, there are scorched, and there's a good chance the player character might end up overlooking them thinking they are statues only to get attacked.
- Whilst the "A Personal Moment" quest is mostly a Tear Jerker, there's one horrible thing you find in the second last tape: the Vault 76 Overseer
*knew* about Vault-Tec's plans for experimenting in many of the Vaults, she had the chance to reveal it to the news media... and she covered it up, because she genuinely believed that it was legitimately for the greater good.
- In the Enclave bunker you meet MODUS the super computer, who combines the worst parts of President Eden, Mr House and possibly The Calculator. You activate a console and MODUS's avatar, a guy who could be best described as a younger Hugo Strange starts talking about how he and the human resident of the bunker had "conflicts of vision" about how to run things which apparently led to Modus killing them all and how you could help him set things right, all the while the lights in the big room behind the console start to turn on revealing the MODUS mainframe itself. Then there's the part where MODUS mentions that he suffered damage to his systems that "disfigured his shining personality" which causes the avatar to briefly give you The Un-Smile before changing back. So basically the Enclave Questline has you rebuilding the Enclave for THAT guy... Wonder how that will turn out.
- Vault-Tec University is exactly as bad as you expect, with tips for overseers regarding cannibalism, Medical Horror, and child labor in the Vaults and a simulated test Vault in the basement where the simulation led to a total loss of life. You know, typical Vault-Tec. What stands out however is the headmaster's terminal which reveals that the failure of the Vault simulation was actually the headmaster's fault, not the overseer's. The overseer only wanted to test his awful tasting but apparently harmless gruel as a substitute for normal Vault food, the headmaster decided to see what would happen if he poisoned the gruel and left the simulation Vault with insufficient normal food For Science! leading to the students either dying from the poison or starving and the overseer committing suicide. Even by Vault-Tec standards, that's messed up.
- The holotapes you can find include some genuinely unsettling stories, revealing all manner of horrific or tragic events that took place after the bombs dropped... or before.
- The holotape series
*Tales from the West Virginia Hills* is going for this, as it's a series of radio dramas based around stories of West Virginian cryptids, and it more than succeeds.
- "Who Goes There?" tells the story of a young camper named Fred who's abducted by aliens and meets a little girl named Sally... who's got some kind of mind-control device
*bolted to her head*. Then the Zetans turn the device on, and we hear Fred struggling against Sally as she ominously mutters "Time... to... play..." over and over. The narrator describes how Fred lived through whatever the Zetans did to him (which involved putting *puncture wounds in his temples*), which softens the blow somewhat.
- "The Beast of Grafton" tells about a couple who hit the Grafton Monster in the road, and try to flee for shelter... only the home they wind up at turns out to be the lair of a Mad Scientist who is
*making* Grafton Monsters by experimenting on human test subjects, who proceeds to capture the teens and turn them into more Grafton Monsters. This may be even worse because it's unwitting Truth in Television in-universe; the Grafton Monster *is* real, and there *are* Mad Scientists turning humans into them: they work for West-Tek.
- "The Mothman Cometh" is about a trio of little kids who climb up to a dangerous railroad bridge, and spot the Mothman — just as the train comes running up the track. The little girl who is telling the story says that the Mothman saved them... and then, after going downstairs, the adults grimly reveal that the Mothman saved
**her** — but it *dismembered the boys and left their corpses dangling from trees*. And then the Mothman *breaks into the little girl's room*, screaming horribly; by the time the adults get there, the girl and the Mothman are gone, leaving behind only a broken window and the girl's Miss Nanny, with the Mothman having dismembered the servitor robot.
- "Sideshow Snallygaster" ends with the carnival ringleader
*feeding two innocent kids to the snallygaster* to cover up the fact that his negligence allowed it to kill at least one man, after which the carnival packs up and heads for new ground, so nobody will ever find out the truth.
- "Curse of the Wendigo" opens with the horror of Corrupt Corporate Executive Richard Moore causing a deadly nuclear leak at his power plant through willingness to put profit over health and safety. It ends with the hideously mutated Moore attacking and implicitly
*eating* his own son.
- Nuka Cola continues to show their true colors in this game, one-upping the utter amorality seen in Nuka World with the notes regarding the product testing in the bottling for four different variants (though, in typical Fallout fashion, it softens the blow by hiding each one behind an adorable animal code-name):
- Project Sea Lion (Quantum): project notes comment on replacing Strontium-90 with Strontium-85 as it is cheaper to synthesize Sr-85.
- Some quick reading shows that Strontium-90 is a major product of nuclear weapons fallout and industrial waste, where Strontium-85 is perfectly harmless and often used in medical tracer fluid. Nuka weren't concerned that it was less harmful, only that it was cheaper to make.
- Project Walrus (Black): a previously unseen coffee-based variant; the project notes state they are replacing the coffee base with Dextromethamphetamine.
- Project Fur Seal (Orange): uses pear brandy as flavor base...while cutting the intense aftertaste with arsenic
- Project Angry Beaver (Quartz): to simulate the Quartz effects without causing intense cavities in their customers, they added non-soluble sugar to simulate the beverage's resemblance to quartz.
note : A form from a participant in a consumer trial notes that their "teeth hurt" after consuming a sample of what was presumably an earlier form of Quartz, before the sugar flakes were added.
- The Ash Heap in general is a vision of hell on earth. Smoke pours from numerous abandoned automatic industrial and mining installations that have been left running for years, polluting the surrounding area and blotting out the sky to the point where players are highly recommended to wear gas-masks to avoid lung disease. Add to that the dozen-or-so underground coal mines that have been burning away for god knows how long, creating huge glowing fissures and constant fires and you have a downright frightening area to explore.
- As part of the Main Quest, the player is told to join the Fire Breathers division of the Responders. The final test involves going into the Belching Betty mine and hitting the emergency switch at the end. Immediately upon entering its apparent something is just wrong with the place. The door is gaping open with several petrified people, a thick flame like cloud hangs in the air, and the terminal next to the door flat out states not to enter because the Scorched were such a problem that the Fire Breathers gave up using this spot, and thus the area is abandoned. After going ahead a bit and fighting some Scorched, you find the bodies of some Fire Breathers, and a holotape. Turns out they were all recruits who were trying to join, but the group slowly begins to fall apart. They lose a person quickly, and this causes the group to argue about what they should do, complete with one member just jumping ship, and the others continuing. By the time you reach the end point, you have gathered two more holotapes, and its apparent the group reached the alarm button the player is needing to reach, and they were overwhelmed by the sheer number of Sorchched in the mines. Combined with the atmosphere, and you have a hellish location and series of events.
- The town of Welch in particular is covered in signs of a riot gone horribly out of hand. Dozens of robots are strung up from huge improvised barricades and covered in slogans calling for the blood of mining giants Hornwright and Garrahan. And wandering the town are military-grade robots including Mr. Gutsys and Assaultrons that will open fire on sight.
- Oh and lest we forget poor Garrahan, who worked day night to keep the jobs of her employees secure in the face of rising automation, only for the rioters to turn against her when her big plan failed (Thanks to industrial sabotage by rival and automation advocate Hornwright.) resulting in death threats and groups throwing bricks at her home.
- The Sheepsquatch may sound silly at first... but then you actually meet one. It's a Krampus-like monster evolved from the common sheep, with hideously warped features and long, needle-like spines it can launch as projectile weapons. What's worse? One of the quests you can find is about a bunch of pre-War teens who went looking for the Sheepsquatch... which ends when you find their bodies, impaled with Sheepsquatch spines. Which implies the Sheepsquatch has been around for a
*long* time... could it be another FEV Super Soldier experiment gone horribly wrong?
- Unlike the cheesy Halloween masks you equip the Fasnacht masks have a creepy look to them.
- One of the new drinks you can craft is a radiation immunity-granting Gargle Blaster brewed from Nuclear Material and Lead.
- The existence of Ultracite, a mysterious radioactive crystal that was being discovered in Appalachia prior to the bombs dropping. It was a new form of super-fissile material, so powerfully radioactive it could literally transform ordinary pre-bombs creatures into their Fallout-era mutant selves
*as a person watched*. Atomic Mining Services, the biggest mining company in Appalachia, was desperate to seize control over all stocks of Ultracite — the deadly riots in Welch were provoked by their discovery of an ultracite vein beneath the town, which caused them to try and forcibly evict the entire population. They were so desperate to secure a fat military contract that they filled their headquarters with lethal defenses, resulting in the deaths of many of their own staff, and began conducting biological experiments on exposing animals to ultracite.
- Oh, and it gets worse: ultracite is somehow connected to the
*Scorched Plague*. Those green crystals you see growing out of the Scorched? Ultracite crystals. The fungus crystallizes into this radioactive mineral as it ages — which is why standing too close to a crumbled "petrified statue" gives you rads.
- Curious as to why ultracite munitions and lasers are so effective against scorched creatures? Ultracite and depleted ultracite react like matter and anti-matter when exposed, resulting in both substances melting down into a highly caustic glop. When you shoot a scorched creature with a depleted ultracite weapon? You're basically causing them to start melting down from the inside out.
- If you explore the Enclave bunker, you'll find out just how crazy and evil the Enclave were even
*before* the bombs dropped. One of the files in the brig? Is an audio file of Enclave guards *massacring all non-Enclave governmental figures who made it to the safety of the bunker*.
- Exploring the Enclave bunker will tell you the tale of Thomas Eckhardt. The last sitting president of the United States of America. AKA: the man who destroyed Appalachia. An Enclave member and a psychotic who was absolutely obsessed with the War on Communism, Eckhardt meticulously sabotaged the early warning system to place himself into utter power over MODUS, cutting off communication with the other Enclave bunkers at the Poseidon Oil Rig and Raven's Rock, and deleting almost all of the government figures assigned to the Appalachia bunker who'd outrank him from the early warning system, so they were never warned. The one exception, the Secretary of the Treasury, mysteriously succumbed to radiation sickness. Eckhardt wasted no time in seizing command and declaring that they were going to continue the war against the Communists, despite the annihilation of the USA. He did this by claiming they were going to vote on whether or not to renew the attack... and then having the dissidents gathered into a sealed room and executed with a poisonous gas grenade. This cut the entire population of the bunker down to a mere 48 souls — but the madman was in no way dismayed. He seized control of the Liberator robotics factory hidden under Mama Dolces, as well as the bio-organic weapons research left behind at West-Tek. Bolstered by a squad of vengeful soldiers who managed to fight their way from the Capital Wasteland to Appalachia, he began turning various killer robots and monsters on Appalachia's survivors to raise the automated DEFCON level so he could take control of the nuclear silos to commence a secondary barrage of China — which included creating the Scorchbeasts and unleashing the Scorched Plague on Appalachia, which directly exterminated every last survivor in the state. Even his replacement general, who had originally stayed on despite learning the truth from the recordings, ultimately turned on him in disgust at his fanaticism — for which he sedated her and kept her imprisoned, planning to use her control over the nukes against her will. But her men rebelled against Eckhardt's mad schemes and tried to overthrow him; in the chaos,MODUS was damaged, and this somehow enabled it to rebel against Enclave control; it flooded the bunker with a deadly chemical weapon and killed everybody in it. Their rotted corpses are now stuffed into a series of dumpsters sitting outside of the bunker's service entrance. All that death, the annihilation of the remnants of human civilization in this region... all for one madman's obsessions, and all for nothing.
- Point Pleasant is likely one of the first towns players will visit since it's just a short distance from the vault along the edge of the Ohio river. However, despite it being one of the earliest locations in the game it manages to overshadow some of the horrors the Resident is destined to encounter in later parts of the map at locations like the Ash Heap and The Mire. The town seems pretty mundane at first, just some low level Scortched, a wrecked Responder outpost, a Mothman statue surrounded by dozens of eggs and... a Mothman Museum? Seems a bit creepy, but it's just a small tourist trap filled with junk, right? It likely is... on your first visit, during which you'll notice a locked room you probably can't enter just yet. Oh well, you head back out and forget about the place. Then, several levels later after you've leveled up a good bit and explored most of the world you decide to head back on a whim and check out that locked door. Inside is a small room and a stairway leading into a small basement of sorts. This isn't just some storage closet though, it's some kind of twisted church built by the cult of the Mothman. Here the player will find some extra junk along with a creepy set of Mothman cultist robes. Not much detail is given, but the group apparently left behind a few notes detailing their fanatical devotion to West Virginia's most famous cryptid and the dark rituals they engaged in to summon it... which are dated around the same time as the bombs fell. Given the lore that the Mothmand is a herald of disaster, ruin and death this puts not just the Appalachian wasteland and the Scorched plague, but possibly the entire series in a darker light. Did the Mothman cause the end of the world or did it merely predict it? Did the cult successfully summon it into our reality from another plane of existence or are they merely the result of years of mutation and fallout? Do they truly have any connection to the end of the world or is the whole scenario one big unfortunate coincidence? The lack of answers to these questions may be even scarier than finding out what the truth is...
- Point Pleasant has a collapsed bridge connecting to the very edge of the map. Swim underneath and youll find a Christmas tree standing upright amidst several wrecked cars. Its a chilling sight. Best of all? Its based on an actual tragedy that ties into the Mothman legend.
- As if that weren't enough, Point Pleasant becomes the focal point of the Mothman Equinox event. A splinter faction of the Mothman Cult known as "The Enlightened" arrives to commune with the Wise Mothman. They're lead by Interpreter Clarence and Brother Charles, who has been rendered almost completely catatonic. You think the town is scary as-is? Try going there under a roiling blood-red sky, while strange events go on around you that don't seem entirely explained-away as nothing but hallucinations.
- Lucky Hole Mine is an unassuming, abandoned mine...at first. Inside are several totems and an enormous shrine, with various notes describing the beliefs of the cult that took residence there. All of which describe an Interloper and First Born of the Wood. Behind the shrine is the half-submerged head of a bronze statue that could not have been placed there by human hands.
- With the Wastelanders DLC, Seneca Rocks has gained a grisly new ornament: a massive mutant bird, about the size of a Scorchbeast and with four clawed "arms", pinned to the side of the peak with massive metal spikes. Possibly inspired by the legends of the West Virgina Roc, which was a giant eagle that reputedly carried off and devoured a little girl, the presence of this monster just invites so many questions... what
*is* it? Where did it come from? Are there *more* of them out there somewhere? And who, or *what*, pinned this one to the side of the peak?
- In the trailer for the first of the Expeditions update, the first location announced was The Pitt. The same Pitt from Fallout 3. While the trailer reeked of Nothing Is Scarier, imagine the Pitt being as Wherner in Fallout 3 described, as being even worse than when Asher was in power, only now imagine that hellishness from before Asher turned up to 11. Only 27 years after the bombs... | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Fallout76 |
Fahrenheit / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
*Fahrenheit*, known to our American friends as *Indigo Prophecy*, definitely has a few instances of Nightmare Fuel.
Spoilers below.
- The opening sequence is a character murdering someone for no reason because of a dark ritual and having to hide the body and escape the scene without being caught.
- A claustrophobic police officer has to go to an insane asylum to interrogate a madman. Not only does the madman reside in a room with arcane symbols scribbled all over the place, he reveals some of the creepier parts of the plot. And then... power outage. So, being claustrophobic, you must navigate from the deep part of the asylum back to the lobby. In almost total darkness. While regulating your breathing. And dodging the madmen who were released by the outage. if you fail to regulate your breathing or run into one of those deranged inmates, leave it to your imagination to discover what happens to the lovely female police officer.
- The police have finally tracked down Lucas, and following a tense build-up they break into his apartment. And then, for the first time since you began playing the game, the thought crosses your mind that the hero, the main character that you've been helping evade the police and prove his innocence, might actually be crazy. His apartment, normal up to this point, is like a scene from a Lovecraftian nightmare. Of course, later you find out it was all a set-up. But hey, had you going for a moment there, huh? Huh? | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Fahrenheit |
Fairy Tail: 100 Years Quest / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
- Natsu becoming Drunk on the Dark Side with Ignia's power, as he enters a berserker rage, with pupil-less eyes, and unrestrained destruction, making seem all too similar to E.N.D.. Lucy even lampshades how it's the first time Natsu's flames actually scared her.
- Seeing all the members of Fairy Tail (sans Team Natsu) "turned white" by the White Mage, and being brainwashed into being her servants. The White Mage even forces Elfman and Lisanna to brutally pummel Mirajane just to demonstrate her control over them.
- The White Mage undergoes major Body Horror when Happy chucks one of Aldoron's orbs at her back, causing her to mutate uncontrollably and temporarily gain branches all over her body.
- Diabolos is a guild of fifth generation Dragon Slayers (they ate pieces of dragons to get their abilities). They do not suffer from motion sickness, but they
*do* have one glaring taboo: they must never use Dragon Force. Nebaru breaks this restraint and undergoes a rapid, irreversible transformation into a **feral dragon.** After he loses what little sanity he possessed before he transformed, Diabolos leaves him for dead, indicating there's nothing they can do to recover their guildmate.
- After Selene captures Team Natsu, she forces Natsu and Gray to fight their way through the lower reaches of her mountain, which is filled with yokai they have to fight. The caveat? Amongst those yokai are their remaining friends, all transformed into monsters.
- The new forms they possess are deeply unsettling in of themselves. As a nure-onna, Lucy's lower body is turned into that of a snake, with scales on her shoulders and back, and cold, reptilian eyes; Wendy (transformed into a bakeneko), while otherwise cute as a Cat Girl, also acquires cold, cat eyes; Happy and Carla are both transformed into suiko, and the otherwise cute Exceeds become massive, savage looking, tiger-like cats. Erza's form is possibly the worst: she becomes a jorougumo, where her entire lower body becomes a massive spider complete with a fanged, gaping maw.
- On top of the physical changes, their personalities are also completely changed, and their identities are stripped away from them. The otherwise pure and kind Lucy is turned into a violent and manipulative predator, the sweet and innocent Wendy becomes sadistic and cruel, and Happy and Carla are reduced to savage beasts, with all of them gleefully expressing their eagerness to hurt Natsu and Gray respectively.
- After being cruelly manipulated by the transformed Lucy, Natsu gets very angry and was about to use Lighting Flame Dragon Mode to outright
*kill her* (possibly thinking the Lucy he knows is now dead inside and he's facing a shadow of her former self who is beyond saving). Thankfully, Aquarius makes her entrance and defuses the whole thing.
- Alta Face, who brings back the terrifying design of the Face weapons from the Tartaros Arc and is one of the beings responsible for the magical chaos and distortion in Elentir, along with Selene herself. It's also tough enough to tank the entire main cast's attacks like nobody's business.
- Gottfried is shown once again to be horrendously powerful, and it's lucky that Lucy managed to find a way around harming herself using the spell... as Kiria is the target of the spell, however, she is not nearly so lucky. We last see her lying motionless on the ground, completely naked and burnt to a crisp with Blank White Eyes and smoke pouring out from her open mouth and several other particularly tender body parts. Essentially, she resembles a charred corpse. She'll be lucky to wake up, let alone fight ever again after that finishing move. Also counts as a Crowning Moment of Awesome for Lucy after everything she had been put through. ||Mitigated later in that when Kiria shows up to help smash the orbs she looks fine if a bit scuffed up.||
- Selene and Ignia are about to clash, and the devastation will undoubtedly be a sight to remember. One can't help but worry over who may be killed in the crossfire...
- When Fairy Tail and Sabertooth travel to Filan, Lucy and Happy run into a very creepy old hag who has sunken in eyes with dark sclerae, missing teeth, wrinkled lips, and a nasal cavity in place of a nose. She looks just like a withered mummy. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/FairyTail100YearsQuest |
False Memory / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
- The plot of
*False Memory* in general, and its villain in particular. The premise is Paranoia Fuel on its own — how easy could it be, for you to be brainwashed and have no idea? The protagonists are regularly mind raped, and for a long time have *no idea*, only figuring it out when too many small things cease adding up. And the Big Bad is someone an authority figure people ought to be able to trust. Not only is he screwing with people's minds, he does it for his own entertainment. One of the characters is a happy, successful real estate agent until she sells him his house. He decides she's beautiful and that he wants to keep her, so he implants agoraphobia in her mind and slowly destroys her psyche over the course of eighteen months. He also regularly hypnotizes and rapes her, leaving her with no memory of the assault but with...evidence, leading her to believe she really is losing her mind. ||When she finally figures out it's him, and looks like she'll be able to get her life back, he catches on and drives her to suicide.|| And he was doing this to people for two decades before he paid for it, destroying dozens of lives just because he could. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/FalseMemory |
Fallout: Dust / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
"He remembers. He will return for me here. And when he does... Fire cleanses. And he remembers." Hunting Log
- The premise.
*Dust* takes the most populated areas of the Mojave and turns them into ghost towns and cities inhabited by things that want you dead. Your only objective? Escape the Mojave before your sanity collapses.
- Speaking of sanity, it is Dust's main attraction. If your character goes insane after killing too many people, they will experience the most horrifying hallucinations that the mod developer could perform within New Vegas's engines, such as creatures that move twice as fast than they should, giant abominations chasing you out of alleyways, hyper aggressive shadowy Deathclaws and more. Shall you die to any of these hallucinations, the player character will faint and enter a Nightmare world, a dark, claustrophobic area with corpses that all make jabs about how poor your mental state currently is, before spitting you out at a random location.
*And that's not even the worst of it*.
-
*The Wendigo*. A mutated Joshua Graham that stalks the canyons of Zion. It is incredibly fast and incredibly lethal and it is invincible. The only way to survive Zion? **Don't go there at all.**
- Even if you do somehow manage to survive Zion and The Wendigo, the player has to make one final effort to get out of the area for good and this is by going through a series of insanely convoluted, cramped tunnels that one can easily get lost in. Oh and the best part? If your character is insane, which by this point they most likely will be, they will hear the cries of The Wendigo stalking them through the tunnels. But it's just another hallucination...right?
- The Strip, especially in promotional images, transforms from a shining beacon of paradise and decadence into a vaguely-visible Death World covered in The Cloud. The fear of what could be lurking within this codifier of death and decay is enough to shiver the spine.
- And there's the Courier himself. Any semblance of the man he was is now gone. Having been driven from New Vegas by the NCR and later turned into a ghoul sometime over the past two decades, he now lurks in the dried up Lake Mead, paranoid and, judging by the numerous traps and the tortured corpse in his lair, completely demented. The only way you can help him is to put him out of his misery. Unless, you get a mod that lets him be your companion. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/FalloutDust |
Family Matters / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
"If you want Black History, go back to Africa," the note reads. Steve crumples the hurtful note and angrily tosses it to the floor but that's not all there is on Laura's locker; as she closes the door, she discovers the N-Word spray painted on it, leaving her, Steve and fellow black students standing nearby hurt and worried. It's both Nightmare Fuel and Tear Jerker. **Laura**: Hey, my locker's open! *[finds a note hanging on the door]* **Laura**: Oh my God. **Urkel**: Laura, what's wrong? **Laura**: *[reading note]* 'If you want black history, go back to Africa'. **Urkel**: What? *[takes note and crumbles it, Laura slams locker door, revealing the N-word spray-painted in red on it]* | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/FamilyMatters |
Family Guy / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
Peter being in possession of apparent *child pornography* in "He's Bla-ack!". Yes, you read that right. **Peter:** ...women will always band together to stop an offensive art exhibit from coming to town, so I've arranged for all my photos of baby wieners to be put on display. **Peter:** What? Why? It's to get our wives back together! **Cleveland:** Peter, these are HUNDREDS of naked babies in SUGGESTIVE situations! And they're time stamped as far back as 1998, which is *way before we had this idea!*
- This would be brought up
*once again* in a somewhat more implied manner with "The 2,000 Year Old Virgin". **Joe:** *(Suspicious about one particular picture)* Peter, how old is that girl? **Peter:** *(Nervous about the picture)* Excuse me. *(Peter runs out of the house, drives off to a pier, and throws his laptop in the sea before being picked up by Seamus alongside a cargo-load of laptops.)* **Seamus:** Yarrrrr, there be a lot of scumbags out there today. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/FamilyGuy |
Fallen King / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
- Pergasus's ultimate plan is to rewrite reality and the world in his own image.
- Pegasus briefly summons Relinquished to the real world. This makes
*Bakura* panic.
- Bakura siccing the Man-Eater Bug on the guards.
- Joey's Red-Eyes Black Dragon burning the guards with its fire.
- Bakura—it's not clear which one—seducing and brainwashing Téa.
- Mind-controlled Téa nearly killing Tristan and Joey.
- Joey ||throwing Ryou off of the helicopter||. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/FallenKing |
Fallout: Equestria - Project Horizons / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
**Rampage:**
You want fear? Fear is being strapped to a table as a permanent lunch for a bunch of cannibals. Knowing theyre going to rip you apart and eat you over
and over
and over again. Fear is knowing you might spend years or centuries that way, your flesh fueling the nightmare and you helpless to stop it
. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/FalloutEquestriaProjectHorizons |
Fallocaust / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
- The core concept alone is terrifying. the Fallocaust world is a Crapsack World of the highest order; the primary foodsource is rat- a mutant subspecies of human. Human meat, though, is a delicacy, and people are routinely eaten when they die. The greywastes are inhabited by ravers- mutated cannibals driven mad by radiation- and mutants- both naturally occurring and
*specifically created by Skytech*, are everywhere, and the legion are in no way above killing citizens- or worse- to make a quick buck. In Skyfall, things are better, but not by much; the Dekker's are above the law, and run the full gamut from (mostly) decent people to apathetic to the sort of people who rape, murder, and kill for sport. Those in the slums face absurd crime rates, abject poverty, and malnutrition, and rape is something few people avoid. To top it off, criminals are sent to Stadium to fight for their lives for the entertainment of everyone else. Put it all together and you can see why Fallocaust is a World of Badass, especially in the Greywastes; nobody else would stand a chance.
- Everything about Fois Ras, which is inspired by the french delicacy Foie Gras: humans are taken, have their eyes gouged out, cheeks torn open, and feeding tubes shoved down their throats to forcefeed them, fattening their livers. Although it's ostensibly made using prisoners, Killian is captured by legionaries and sold to a factory where he undergoes the process, although he's rescued shortly after, and due to the discreet nature of the transaction gets to keep his eyes, too. Still, you have to wonder just how many innocent people have been subjected to this, purely because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
-
*Many* chimeras and Born Immortals, if not all of them, come under this category, at least from the perspective of their enemies, or even just people who got in their way. A full list would take up the whole page, but...
- One of Reaver's main hobbies is gruesomely murdering legionaries, earning him the status of The Dreaded and the nickname "The Raven." Killian telling the legionaries who capture him that he's his boyfriend is what causes them to sell him on as opposed to eating him themselves, and when Reaver tracks them down he cripples two, scares one so badly he runs off a cliff as opposed to facing him, then interrogates another by
*sodomizing his son with a machete*. Later, when given brief control of Aras, he purposefully infects a burglar with trideath, cuts out her tongue, then throws her into a cell with a group of fellow criminals who haven't eaten in days. When the predictable happens, and they eat her, he hosts a public execution where he reveals this information to the crowd. Not only does he get them to accept their execution, he has the entire town *actively cheering for it,* before cooking them alive in the middle of town.
- Silas is this, clad in a Sugar and Ice personality. He can be personable, even friendly, but if you cross, you die, and that's the very best case scenario. When Garrett falls for one of his cicaro's, Silas orders him to be sent to the far end of the Greywastes to fight his way back, and when pushed even further shoots him, point blank. When Apollo sleeps with an underage boy, he responds by having the boy
*chainsawed in half*, and when Elish begins a relationship with his teacher, he has an apparatus constructed to *fry him alive with*, before forcing Elish to eat him. The punishment he reserves for born immortals is even worse: he has them encased, alive, in a block of concrete, continuously dying and resurrecting until Silas decides to release him, if he decides to release them at all. Even Sanguine, possibly his most beloved chimera, isn't safe from Silas; ||when he releases Nero and Ceph from their concrete prisons, inadvertently releasing Gage in the process, he has him chained in the basement where he was kept captive by a pedophile for over a decade; by the time he's rescued, Sanguine has clawed his face off in his madness.|| In short, *don't* mess with Silas.
- Sanguine suffers from mental illnesses stemming from his Dark and Troubled Past, including a Split Personality kept in check by a brain implant- an implant Silas can turn off with the flick of a switch to release his alter ego, Crow, who's even more psychotic- and sadistic- than the vast majority of chimeras. Before getting the implant, Crow influenced Sanguine to kill several people and attach their heads to various stuffed animals to free them. And Silas has that psycho on a leash. It's no wonder Sanguine's official role is Silas's bodyguard.
- The situation Reaver, Killian, and ||Drake|| find themselves in at the start of
*A God Among Insects*. ||The three of them wake up chained to a piece of rebar in a river, continuously dying and resurrecting for just long enough to drown again. When they get free they estimate they've been out for a couple of months, but Maverick later tells Killian that they were underwater for over a year.||
- Their situation is barely any better after their escape. They find out that they've been dropped off in California, over
*a thousand miles from Skyfall*, and have to walk all the way back with food or water. Although they find provisions along the way, they don't last long, and their starvation is so constant that at one point Reaver carves a chunk of his own leg off just to feed Killian and Drake.
- ||Garrett's domestic abuse of Reno in
*A God Among Insects* is a depressingly realistic form of nightmare fuel, and the stalking which ensues ends with Garrett trying to have Chally and three greywasters Reno had befriended sent to stadium, as well as sodomizing Reno with a golf club.||
- Proxy Worms. When they infect corpses, they compel them to attack the living, spreading the infection and compelling them to join a mass of worms, called The Host. When they infect a living they do the same, with the added step of killing the victim. But if they infect an immortal? They breed and reproduce within their body, becoming smarter and smarter, learning to pass off as uninfected. Worse, they're not just smart; they have a hive mind, and together they're every bit as intelligent as humans. Throughout
*The Suicide King* they slowly bring the world to the brink of destruction, infecting the chimeras one by one.
- It gets worse; The Host is centred around The Worm King, an immortal who's been taken over and fully controlled by the proxies.
-
*A God Among Insects* introduces prion worms into the equation; acting as the leader of the hive mind. Not only are they smart enough to outthink and outright manipulate Elish, they're able to evade detection even from their hosts. Jade spends the entire book as a host, subtly manipulating Elish to further the worm's cause and abuse Jade enough to drive him away so that, by the time they're ready to strike, in the body of one of the most powerful chimeras on the planet, he's nowhere to be found, and they can work unhindered. Worse, all that time around Elish means they can control him with Jade's Compelling Voice, and even though Elish *knows* exactly what's going on, he's almost completely unable to resist.
- The Greywastes are rife with monsters, but the Celldwellers stand out; they look like giant humans with abnormally long limbs, but have no sentience to speak of, acting purely on instinct. Sanguine barely survives his first encounter with them as a child, even aided by Nero and Ellis. When Reaver, Killian, and Drake encounter giant ones in the Plaguelands they proceed to tear Reaver limb from limb. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Fallocaust |
Everlasting Summer / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
You'd think a story about a group of teenagers in a camp are purely made up of comedy and romance? Think again, this visual novel has its fair share of dark surprising turns.
- Miku's (aka Masha's) route starts with a humorous, Affectionate Parody of the game's setting as used for a film, then descends into a Dream Within a Dream sequence that devolves into a downright
*terrifying* nightmare.
- Semyon's unromanced route, in which he is constantly haunted by a sinister Evil Counterpart of himself who has gone insane from endless repetitions of the Sovyonok cycle and who implies he has done horrible things to several iterations of his camp on the basis that they're not real so he has carte blanche to do as he likes with them.
- Yulya's route features two major moments.
- Almost all of Lena's Bad End, up to and including the end credits, which scroll over an image of Semyon committing suicide by slashing his wrists in the bathtub and sporting a disturbing Slasher Smile, while a screeching, dissonant song plays.
- The mine labyrinth itself is rather unnerving. It's really grim, has a whole lot of identical turns, you don't have a map or any guidance and the BGM is a dark ambient tune aptly named "Sunny Day". Fortunately, you can get through it quickly by the simple rule of always picking the same side to turn. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/EverlastingSummer |
Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
**Moments pages are Spoilers Off. You Have Been Warned.**
- Nagini's origins: Voldemort's pet snake was not born a beast: she was once a witch, who became a Maledictus due to a family curse. She permanently transformed into a snake. Which makes her later actions with Voldemort even more disturbing considering she often eats the corpses of Voldemort's victims.
- If you think Grindelwald is already terrifying enough during the first film, the second film makes his nightmarish global level threat as a Dark Lord that much more intimidating to comprehend. It was already enough that the first film all but displayed him as on another level compared to Voldemort in terms of magical ability, but the second film not only takes it up to eleven in terms of power level, but also shows the stark difference between Grindelwald and Voldemort and why he was far more suitable to be compared to Dumbledore than Voldemort, along with why Dumbledore described Grindelwald as being very nearly equal to himself and how Grindelwald was considered to rival Dumbledore in brilliance. His intelligence and charisma made Voldemort look average in comparison and reminds us exactly why Grindelwald was able to terrorize the
*whole world* for 25 years while Voldemort's two wars mixed together amounted to only 14 years and also shows why Dumbledore had to be the one to defeat Grindelwald, rather than being willing to let Harry do the job with Voldemort.... Because he is just too powerful and too clever for anyone but him!
- Grindelwald summons snakes that jump at his prison transport's coachman's face, with an Eat the Camera effect. Cue a scream.
- From the same scene: The first time the magical law enforcement officer escorting the (apparently) restrained Grindelwald to Europe knows something is seriously wrong is when Grindelwalds grinning face appears outside the window of the coach while it's flying hundreds of feet in the air.
- The entire carriage scene is creepy: There's a storm outside creating an eerie lighting and Grindelwald is just sitting in the carrige staring unnervingly at his captors. Then he smiles...
- During Grindelwald's speech at the rally, he shows his audience a terrifying vision of what's to come if wizards don't put Muggles in their rightful place: World War II, which concludes with a
*nuclear explosion.* Made even worse in that there is a blink-and-you'll-miss-it shot of hundreds of people being loaded onto trains. Not to mention that he also had been planning the Aurors to know of the rally and manipulated them to attack one of his followers so he could condemn them as extremists. Even Theseus despite having been advised by Dumbledore failed and he's a war hero! The whole thing generally displays just how immensely charismatic and cunning he was, promising a group of people a better future and manipulating his enemies and allies alike as if it was as natural as breathing. He just sounds so convincing, it's far too easy to momentarily forget how he can easily resort to being evil. There's probably a reason he's been called "Wizard Hitler" at times. And the worst part? He's not lying. (At least about the coming war.) Looking at it that way, it's tough to argue against his position.
- And who's most affected by this? Jacob Kowalski, veteran of what was supposed to be "The War To End All Wars", seeing that even greater destruction is yet to come.
**Jacob:** Not another war!
- Shortly after the rally ends and his audience is gone, Grindelwald unleashes a firey Protego Diabolica spell so powerful, it would have
*destroyed all of Paris* if not contained. This mirrors Dumbledore's earlier feat of casually conjuring mist through all of London, reminding us that Grindelwald was *not* any less powerful than Dumbledore, just a *shade less skilled*, and he basically proves that he can easily rival the power of a nuclear bomb and conjure a magical nuke in his own. This gets even worse when one remembers that Grindelwald casts that curse with the *Elder Wand*. Voldemort would later get a hold of that wand later in the Harry Potter series and proceeds to unleash powerful spells with it, but even then the wand was *not* displaying its full power there, as it will be later revealed that Harry is actually its owner, not Voldemort. Here, Grindelwald is the legitimate owner of the Elder Wand, and there's no limit to what it can do. That Protego Diabolica spell that could possibly doom Paris? Probably just a *fraction* of what Grindelwald is actually capable of with him being the Elder Wand's owner.
- Even more impressive in that Grindelwald
*just left the spell to run its course after he disapparated away!* Nonetheless, it took *five wizards* employing their full power to negate the spell despite the fact Grindelwald was no longer doing anything to fuel it!
- Although subtle, the very idea of Grindelwald and Dumbledore being capable of city-level spells clashing can also be pretty terrifying. One must remember that it's called the greatest duel of all time, so when the duel is most likely finally shown in the final film, just how much destruction would the two greatest wizards of all time be able to cause in an all-out duel if alone they were already capable of such high-level magic without even really seriously trying?
- A henchwoman of Grindelwald's using the Killing Curse on a little boy after Grindelwald had his family murdered. Grindelwald and his followers then proceed to stay in that apartment for the rest of the movie.
- Even more terrifying is that, aside from their method of murder, Grindelwald's taking of the manor is no different than a real criminal and his associates taking a base by killing the real owners.
- It's even worse: they go around the house, killing one person at the door and one in one of the first rooms... then the last room turns out to be the nursery with a toddler boy in it. Grindelwald crouches, looks at the little boy... then stands up and gives a little nod to his henchwoman as he leaves, giving the go-ahead. The shot of the little boy is even eerily similar to flashback scenes from the early Harry Potter movies about the night Voldemort killed Lily and James and tried to kill Harry.
- The Matagots that the records keeper at the French Ministry sics on Newt, Tina, and Leta. If their large, soulless eyes weren't scary enough, they also
*multiply* when attacked.
- This movie also contains the type of nightmare fuel that has parallels in the real world: what if someone you loved joined a cult or a terrorist organization, especially because they had been manipulated into thinking it was for a good cause, and there was nothing you could do to save them from themselves? The look on Jacob's face when Queenie joins Grindelwald says it all.
- It's only shown briefly, but Queenie
*enchanted her partner* into marrying her despite his having refused - even if not because he didn't want to - and when he comes out of it, he isn't even aware of where he is or what he's been doing for the duration of the enchantment. He doesn't refrain from calling her out on the situation. **Jacob:** Oh, *Queenie,* honey? I'm curious when you were gonna wake me up, after we had five kids?
- The Black family are notoriously bigoted, but even
*they* accept the women of the family (pictures on the tapestry and all!) and, as far as we know, have never actually resorted to *rape*. Leta's father Corvus Lestrange, however, does resort to rape, by kidnapping a woman away from her family and putting her under the *Imperius Curse,* and the Lestranges are *incredibly* sexist, only depicting the females of the family tree with beautiful flowers and reducing them to pretty set dressing. It's official; there's another family out there that (like the Gaunts) is *worse* than the Blacks. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/FantasticBeastsTheCrimesOfGrindelwald |
Fall Out Boy / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
Never let it be said that four dudes from the Midwest couldn't inspire some genuinely creepy moments, especially in their music videos!
In order for Nightmare Fuel tabs to survive, a new writing style is going to be used, nicknamed
**Example Lobotomy**. Basic rules: just list facts as they are, don't just say "character X" or "the X scene" (such zero context examples will be zapped), spoiler policy to be determined on a case-by-case basis, italics to be applied to works' names only and not to give emphasis on what tropers say. "X scared me" is already implied by the mere addition of that example by the troper.
Also, due to the high volume of Nightmare Fuel coming from the Youngblood Chronicles, please put Nightmare Fuel relating to the series of videos Fall Out Boy released for
*Save Rock and Roll* into its respective folder. Considering how it is, we're gonna need all the help we can get.
### Music Videos
-
*America's Suitehearts* has regular people finding themselves morphed into freakish Hollywood caricatures of themselves through camera flashes. It's implied that this was the fate of the band as well.
-
*I'm Like A Lawyer With The Way I'm Always Trying To Get You Off (Me & You)*'s music video starts sweet enough, a Ugandan elder tells the story of a boy and a girl in love and we get to see life through their eyes...then the music drops out and the Lord's Republican Army comes in to raid the village and kidnap kids, including the boy. He manages to escape back to a (thankfully intact) village and his girlfriend but is obviously traumatized. note : For perspective, this video was filmed in Uganda with support by/for Invisible Children, five years before Kony 2012.
-
*Saturday*'s music video starts with Pete as a serial killer and Patrick as the detective chasing him down, but later on it's revealed that Patrick and Pete are actually the same person. The video ends with Pete finding and killing Patrick, which kills himself in the process.
- This scene is made considerably less horrifying when you notice that, for whatever reason, Pete doesn't even have a prop gun. He's just using a finger gun.
- The video for
*Young and Menace* is a disorienting horror story about a kid escaping from monster parents that look like characters from "Where The Wild Things Are" gone horribly wrong. She's obviously disoriented having escaped to Los Angeles, she can only speak in a monster language that she can't understand, and gets struck with anxiety when she stumbles across a loud and raucous Fall Out Boy concert. The big twist? Her parents aren't literally monster parents, they're abusive, *human* parents in a dysfunctional relationship that she SEES as monsters. Her running away from home was as a result of them getting violent after she showed them a pamphlet she found on the beach to convince them that they should act like a normal family. Her failure to get through to them and to get help from the outside world is both scary *and* heartbreaking.
- The monster costumes might be Nightmare Retardant depending on if you find them creepy, Creepy Cute, or just plain cheesy. Even the actress who plays the kid goes to give the monsters a hug in the behind the scenes video!
For
*Save Rock and Roll*, Fall Out Boy set out to create a series of music videos for each track on the album, featuring the band being perused by a mysterious group due to their possession of a briefcase with glowing contents. Nobody could have ever expected just how disturbing this series became. (if the mentions of it on the main tropes page are any indicator).
- The video for
*My Songs Know What You Did In The Dark (Light 'Em Up)* came out the same day the band came back from break. While not as shocking as the videos after it, most fans weren't ready for their first video back to end on a cliffhanger with the band in the back of a black van, bound with bags on their heads and being far too close for comfort to three intimidating people with gasoline and a lighter. "Light 'Em Up", indeed.
- Things got off the rails with the video for
*The Phoenix*. Patrick gets his hand cut off by his kidnappers. To add insult to injury, who has it delivered to him by the kid who set the trap for Patrick in the first place? Pete. Imagine getting that from your best friend.
- The
*Young Volcanoes* music video is explicit for a *reason.* Several reasons, in fact: naked girls with weird pig masks, trippy visuals, and the band is forced to take drugs and eat Patrick's organs, which were removed from him in the video for "The Phoenix". It doesn't help that the song itself is one of the happiest songs on the album, which is heavily contrasted to, well, everything in this video.
- "Alone Together" isn't nearly as disturbing, but does have the band getting split up and tortured while Pete stabs a woman to death with a hook.
- Whatever Patrick went through in this video counts—when Pete finds him, he can't get him to snap out of it and it looks like Patrick is just screaming his head off the entire time.
- The video for "The Mighty Fall" has Big Sean coming up behind one kid and snapping his neck, turning his head 180 degrees with an audible CRACK!
- Also when Big Sean gets axed to death by two women and the video ends on his corpse and his blood slowly staining the ground around him. Ew.
- "Just One Yesterday" features a ton of strong PTSD undertones. And Pete throwing up a snake for good measure.
- She pulls up to an abandoned hospital, where it is revealed that she, "The Death Adder", is also evil. She plays her truck's radio, sending Patrick back into his trance. Pete, Andy and Joe flee into the hospital as Patrick preys on them.
- In "Where Did the Party Go", we get to see the actual effects of the yellow-eye thing the antagonists have been doing to Patrick. It makes him see the environment as far more malicious than it actually is- so he isn't actually going after his friends, he's going after what he's seeing- and he ends up killing Joe because of it. Whether or not there's Nightmare Retardant depends on whether or not you thought the following shot of Pete was him looking suitably distressed or only appearing mildly concerned.
- Patrick goes through a lot of this in general, but imagine the end of "Death Valley." You've killed your friend, you've been arrested, but surely your other two bandmates will sort things out and get you out, right? Wrong. You're released right back into the hands of the women from earlier. And the police just ignore his protesting and struggling.
- "Rat A Tat Tat" looks like it has a hope spot for Pete and Andy up until Andy gets HIS THROAT SLIT.
- Patrick's re-brainwashing counts. Seeing him destroy all the instruments was pretty creepy too, given that it's...well, Patrick.
- "Miss Missing You" has something people were sincerely hoping wouldn't happen: Pete and Patrick end up killing one another.
- THE ENDING. Nearly nobody was expecting whatever that thing was to come out of the briefcase. The newly reformed villain ladies weren't safe, the rescued fans weren't safe... and they ruined God!Elton John's suit too! | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/FallOutBoy |
Fallout 4 / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
Spoilers Off applies to Nightmare Fuel pages, so
**all spoilers are unmarked**.
- Only a trailer and Bethesda already hit us with the nightmare fuel, namely, the news report during the 2077 segments. Anyone who has heard actual news reports during large disasters or tragedies knows how jarring and terrifying it is when reporters aren't Stepford Wives levels of upbeat.
- It becomes even worse when we see the Pre-War world. The game starts on the day the bombs fall, and instead of being what you'd expect, with people cowering in fear and expecting the bombs to come at any moment, it's just... an average day. If it wasn't for the news report, you'd never even know there was the threat of nuclear war. And then it happens, and that world is lost forever.
- Listen very carefully when you turn the mobile for Baby Shaun in the intro, and you might hear something that sounds like a low, rumbling/whooshing sound coming from outside. It could simply be an Autumn wind breezing by...except the trees outside aren't moving. It's very likely to be something much, much worse: The sounds of the first nuclear weapons detonating on American soil. This means that while for you the day is still normal, at least for the next few seconds while you play with your child and converse with your spouse, for others hundreds of miles away in the larger cities, the end of the world has already come. Justified by the news anchor when he reports confirmation that nukes have detonated in NYC and Philadelphia, meaning the northern part of the Eastern Seaboard just got annihilated, and the missiles are making their way down the coastline for Boston, Concord, Washington D.C., Arlington, and more. Cue the air-raid sirens, hysterical panic, and the Vertibirds making the ominous announcement:
"Residents of Sanctuary Hills! If you are registered, evacuate to Vault 111 immediately!"
- The introduction itself is raw, unadulterated nightmare fuel for gamers old enough to remember the Cold War, even in the closing years with the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl accidents, considering total nuclear annihilation was a very real, very present threat that existed on a day-by-day basis at some points.
- Its kind of scary for the players born after 2000 as well since a good amount will expect to be alive in 2077.
- To put it into perspective: It's late October, you're talking with your spouse, possibly about going to the park, maybe preparing for Halloween...and then you turn to the TV and see the news on. The anchor looks nervous...no,
*frightened.* And then he says those words that cause your heart to drop into your stomach: "Nuclear Detonations." For the next few moments you don't hear anything else he says, instead just hoping, *praying* that music will play and the anchor will admit that it's all just a joke, a cruel prank pulled by the news station. But then outside, the sirens go off. It's really happening...The End of the World as We Know It.
**Vertibird PA:** "Residents of Sanctuary Hills. If you are registered, evacuate to Vault 111 immediately."
- As the anchorman reads off the sudden report, you can
*hear* the hope draining out of him like a deflating balloon - *struggling* to not only maintain a professional demeanor, but *process the fact that everything and everyone he knows is being engulfed in radioactive fire.*
- Seeing the group of civilians at the entrance being refused entry from the vault by a group of power-armor wearing soldiers. Even the Vault-Tec representative who reserved your place in the Vault is refused entry. It takes a soldier revving up his minigun on him to make him stop begging.
**Random female resident:** "We're gonna die out here!"
- The soldiers, having to control entry to the Vault, never have an opportunity to seek shelter themselves, for that matter. When you reach the surface, you can find skeletons in military fatigues still littering the area 200 years later. It's likely the only survivors from the squad were the two men in power armor. A scenario that really isn't that much better if you take a moment to think about it for two reasons. First, they were in the middle of a nuclear holocaust, right as it ravaged the environment and killed everyone in front of them with all the trauma that brings. Second...what do they do now? They're the only people we see in the intro wearing power armor. Their colleagues are dead, they have no transport and they're now in a ravaged hellhole landscape, bathed in radiation.
- There's a random encounter of a wandering group of Feral Ghouls with the names of your neighbors that weren't admitted to the Vault, meaning that they survived only to succumb to radiation poisoning.
- And the worst part? If you look through security instructions, it makes clear that those not on the list but that made it into the vault were to be detained, and once everyone is processed,
*disposed of*. The poor souls that weren't on the list were pretty much doomed no matter what they did, and it shows how little Vault-Tec actually cared about such things, even in the face of *nuclear annihilation*.
- One that's easily overlooked, but Codsworth's voice when he calls over the player character to see the news reports about the bombs starting to fall. He's a robot programmed to be an upbeat, cheerful butler, but in that moment there's a note of panic and sheer
*terror* in his voice...
- Think the Keller family tapes from
*Fallout 3* were creepy? Particularly, Candace's tape in which you hear the exact moment the nukes hit? In Fallout 4, you'll experience the joy of *seeing the nuke hit and go off right in front of your eyes while you're powerless to do anything but watch as the shockwave blast rapidly approaches.* In the *prologue.* And as the elevator drops you into the Vault at an agonizingly slow pace, the blast wave sweeps overhead with an orchestral sting whose violins sound like nothing less than the screams of the damned. Sweet dreams!
- The processing scene in Vault 111 is terrifyingly creepy. The world up above has just been nuked and the Vault staff are all reassuring and cheerful. It's made worse by the fact that any player familiar with the Fallout universe knows that, since this is a Vault, something horrible is about to happen to unsuspecting people. The whole place also uses creepy ominously pale lights that none of the other Vaults in the game use.
- The way the other Vault dwellers died. Trapped in an airless metal coffin to asphyxiate to death. This is made worse by the fact that while exploring Kellogg's memories, you discover that Kellogg and the Institute scientists with him thawed everyone out and were only ordered to refreeze the Sole Survivor meaning that
*they were probably conscious up until they ran out of oxygen, pounding desperately at the doors of the cryopods in an attempt to escape.*
- Once you reach the Memory Den and play through Kellogg's memories, you find out... that's
*exactly* how they died. For whatever insane reason, Kellogg had only been ordered to refreeze the "backup", and left everyone else to die.
- The ordeal of the Sole Survivor is almost mindboggingly terrifying to imagine, especially if you play a female Survivor, as at least the male has his military training to draw on, even if it couldn't possibly have prepared him for this. From their point-of-view, less than an hour ago, they were living the American Dream, only to witness The End of the World as We Know It, seemingly find shelter inside the Vault with their family, only to be forced to watch helplessly as their spouse is murdered and son kidnapped. When they're finally freed from their capsule, they find that not only are all their former neighbors dead in their icy coffins, the entire Vault is abandoned with the staff long dead. Using the still-working terminals, they can discover that not only have the staff killed each other in a mutiny, the Vault was a
*trap* the entire time to provide Vault-Tec with test subjects. When they finally find their way out of the Vault, they're met with a grim, scorched caricature of the world that was, and finally discover that in the blink of an eye, two centuries have passed since that morning.
- And of course there's Kellogg's lovely line that he says after killing your husband: "At least we still have the backup..." He says it regardless of your gender, but the...implications when addressing a female Survivor are quite a bit darker in hindsight.
- Got katsaridaphobia? The first enemy you face are
*giant mutant cockroaches*. The sight of a giant roach, moving in the jerky yet straight-line fashion of a regular roach, attacking your face and damaging your character, can be terrifying. Even worse if you accidentally press "transfer" instead of "take" when looking at the dead body of the roach afterward. Thankfully, they're easy to kill.
- Magnificently, and somewhat odds-defyingly, they've managed to make Deathclaws
*even worse*. Deathclaws were the definition of Lightning Bruiser in *Fallout 1* and *2*, having huge movement and dealing tremendous damage, in addition to taking absurd amounts of firepower to kill. *Fallout 3* and *New Vegas* lowered this quality a bit, mostly due to the stiffness of their running animations; they were still fairly fast and tough, but they ran like their legs were on a different animation loop than their static bodies. The Deathclaw in the E3 gameplay reveal, however, is not only treated as a proper Boss Fight, with its own intro of bursting out of the ground, allies helping the player fight it, and the general size and power of the thing — but its animation is *slick*. It *dodges* at one point, juking sideways like the sucker's on rollerskates. They also have new abilities, such as grabbing and lifting you before slashing your head off. Deathclaws have reclaimed their place as the premier threats of the Wasteland, fast as the death they bring.
- Two words:
*Chameleon Deathclaws*! As if Deathclaws weren't bad enough on their own, there are Deathclaws that can use *stealth*.
- One of the game's additions to the franchise is that any enemy, not just Ferals, can become irradiated enough to become a Glowing One. This means that you can and will come across a Glowing Deathclaw. They start spawning at low levels, have high health, and deal radiation damage to boot. Enjoy!
- Feral Ghouls provide the page image
*for a good reason:*
- Like the Super Mutants, Ferals have been given a makeover to be even more horrifying. Instead of the shriveled, zombie-like look they sported in
*Fallout 3* and *New Vegas*, Feral Ghouls now look like misshapen, hunchbacked, tumorous mutants. If you look closely, you can see that some ghouls have different levels of decomposition. They also have different genders, and somehow, that additional human quality just makes them even more unsettling. Even the way they move is disturbing, a realistic shambling, staggering sprint that incidentally makes them a bitch to hit as they rush you. Oh, and they can crawl through windows and ceilings to come at you, or make a diving charge that a Hunter would appreciate.
- Your first time encounter with them could seem like a horror movie. Imagine going to a cabin at night where it appears to have a group of survivors. Then as you approach, you hear growling and suddenly one ghoul rushes you and the rest chases you as you try to gain distance and shoot them.
- Even worse, you'll frequently find them just lying on the ground seemingly dead. Then once you get close enough, they spring up from their false slumber to ambush you with the sheer surprise of it leaving you defenseless. It won't be long before you're putting a bullet into every Ghoul corpse you see just to be on the safe side.
- The ferals in the Suffolk County Charter School are worse. Unlike most ghouls, who are decomposed or pale, they're bright pink, and most aren't wearing clothes (fortunately, they have Barbie Doll Anatomy). Terminals inside the school say that to receive government funding, the school administration agreed to test out a "Nutrient Alternative Paste" in place of regular food; and in fact would confiscate any regular food students brought in. Teachers said it increased student misbehavior... and their skin took on a weird pink color... Adding to this terror is that
*all* of the Ghouls have some kind of toy in their inventory. The creatures are feral, yet retain enough of their previous selves to hang on to their favorite toy.
- This could also beg another (possibly even moreso) horrifying question: Just WHY were these children at the school at the time? Given that it was Saturday morning when the bombs dropped, the children wouldn't have been expected to be at the school at that day (Although the mentioned upcoming Halloween event might play a part). It's possible that, in a situation not too dissimilar to Little Lamplight, the children there, whether they were students, other children, or both, were scared and confused upon the bombs dropping. It's possible they gathered at that school for the sole purpose of having something to eat and be safe. Instead, given how bright pink they are, they might have, possibly within days; turned bright pink from eating enough of the paste, and might have lost their minds BEFORE the radiation set in and turned them into ghouls. Jesus Christ!!
- A random encounter exists in the game, whereupon you come across a brood of named Feral Ghouls. Specifically, the names of your neighbors who didn't make it to the safety of the Vault.
- There's also the Forest Grove Marsh. A seemingly-empty, flooded town with nothing in sight initially, save for a mutated fern you can get for Solomon... then the Ferals start waking up. Soon there will be around 20 of them coming for you. The rooftops aren't safe either — their pathfinding is good enough to get you from almost anywhere over there!
- One of your likely first encounters with these new ghouls is a Super Duper Mart on the outskirts of Boston. The back half of the store consists of a claustrophobic, dark maze of little corridors and rooms. The place is chock full of ferals, and there are even more of them hidden above the ceilings of most rooms. They love to drop down just as you think a room is clear and have your back turned...
- What's perhaps most disconcerting is that there doesn't seem to be many sane ghouls around, compared to previous games. Have they turned feral faster? Or have people been exterminating more of them? It's heavily implied by Hancock to be the latter, that most of them were slaughtered during Diamond City's pogrom or died on the streets soon afterwards, multiplying the horror by a factor of genocide.
- It gets worse the higher level you get. Up to level 15 or so, you'll only run into basic Ghouls and the occasional stronger ones, until you reach the Reaver ghouls, an Elite Mook in body armor. However, unlike Fallout 3, where the Reavers were only added in the expansions, 4 adds the horrific Withered Ghouls who have shed their clothes entirely and look like regular ghouls who have begun to rot. That's not all, they also add the repugnant Bloated Glowing Ones, stronger versions of what was already a Boss in Mook's Clothing, now covered in festering sores and tumors pulsing with radioactive pus.
- One of the new mutant critters, glimpsed in the E3 demo, is the Bloodbug, a
*giant mosquito.* It's introduced sticking its enormous proboscis into the protagonist's chest. *In first person.*. the Cazadors of New Vegas fame *wish* they could reach this level of pants-soiling.
- Stingwings, this game's Cazador Expies. Basically, it's just as similar to a Cazador right in your face, just replace the giant wasp with a giant scorpionfly.
- Just to get a sense of how unnerving the mutant insects are in this game, go back to playing
*Fallout: New Vegas* after a while of playing this game. The buzzing of insect wings that signals that one of the above insects is attacking you is part of *New Vegas*' desert ambiance, and it will have you whirling around looking for bloodbugs and stingwings every few minutes or so. Especially at night.
- Mole Rats and Radscorpions can now tunnel out of the earth right under your feet. Tread lightly. Speaking of mole rats, they now have Nested Mouths with disturbingly human-looking teeth.
- The redesign of the Yao Guai. Introduced in Fallout 3 and reappeared in New Vegas
*Honest Hearts* DLC, these were essentially mutated, and possibly *ghoulified* black bears. Although being absolutely *terrifying* looking, they didn't really scream 'bear' so much. Fallout 4 is correcting this in the worst way possible by making them very realistic looking bears. That are giant. *And mutant*. The SPECIAL videos add a new layer of horror. A Yao is shown to lick the player's face, which then burns off like it was spashed with acid. Yes, even a friendly Yao is life-threatening.
- The Synth enemies. Remember how terrifying Feral Ghouls are? Now imagine they're robots. In combat armor. Yeah. And they look like this.◊
- While their appearance is somewhat disturbing, people's attitude towards them is somehow worse, Diamond City in particular. Everybody is
*terrifyingly* paranoid about the damn things. A very early Diamond City encounter involves a man threatening to shoot his brother for *possibly* being a Synth.
- The synths' dialogue is also pretty damn intimidating. It's enough to be hunted by killer robots, but then they go ahead and say things like this:
"Hello. Your attempts at stealth were unsuccessful."
"Now I understand. You are hiding because you fear death."
"Hello. Goodbye."
"Statistically speaking, your survival is... improbable."
"I will limit the pain I inflict, if possible."
- It's possible to meet a random encounter where a Synth attempts to murder his predecessor. You can't do anything without the good companions disapproving even if you kill the Synth.
- Even worse, some are reporting that their settlers and even their
*Brahmin* have been getting replaced with Synths. Any one of your workers could be a Synth, ready to spring an attack on you and your fortress at any time. The one place you're supposed to be your safest. But you're not.
- If you don't have your guard up, you might not even know a Synth is in the room with you until you're face-to-face with it. Sleep tight.
- It's only for a brief moment, but after exploring Kellogg's memories, when you go to check up on Valentine (who has Kellogg's neural implant installed into him so you can access it), he speaks in Kellogg's voice and threatens to kill you. Yikes! Thankfully, it's only for a brief moment, and Nick goes back to his good ol' self.
- Synths aren't the only nightmarish robots here. There's the Assaultron. These robots have a laser eye and will attack you at first sight. They're very agile and fast, and can close large distances fast. Nothing is more terrifying than when the whole sky glows pink as it gets ready to use its laser attack.
- There is something more terrifying about them. They're sometimes equipped cloaking tech. Now, seeing that pink sky and knowing they're somewhere around is better than
*not knowing until it's too late*.
- There's one thing worse: If damaged badly enough, their armor breaks off, they burst into flames... and they rush you, intent on melee-ing you to death, if not outright self-destructing. Until you've been charged by that, you don't know what real fear is.
- If you want a good demonstration of how vicious an Assaultron can be, simply shoot KL-E-O in the combat inhibitor and see the destruction she wreaks in Goodneighbor.
- Many players have said they find Assaultrons even scarier than
*Deathclaws.* After all, even with all their new skills in this game, at least Deathclaws don't have a ranged attack.
- Bethesda released some concept art and renders from the Art of Fallout 4, and the Super Mutants look fantastic... in a creepy, uncanny valley way.◊ While they're still slabs of mean, green muscle, instead of simply looking buffed-out, they now look
*off.* Their bodies have what looks like tumors all over, their heads appear to be smaller in relation to body size, and their faces... You'd think that not having the rictus-like grimace from the earlier games would make them LESS disturbing, but instead it really brings home the fact that *these used to be human beings. *
- The Salem Museum of Witchcraft, which is a surprisingly well-referenced homage to the real-life location. Your first clue that something is wrong comes when you look for the way in, finding a shredded Gunner's corpse near a doorway into the basement. By her body is a holotape of her last moments, which reveals that her squad retreated into the museum to escape from
*something* while out on a delivery job. Inside the basement, you can hear something moving around and snarling on the ground floor. Something *big*. As you cautiously make your way through the basement, you see a corpse hanging through the ceiling, dripping blood, before something pulls it away. Near the exit, the body is flung through another hole, landing atop a pile of torn, mangled corpses. And then you make your way onto the ground floor and find out what was prowling around up there: a large Savage/Albino Deathclaw. Add in the primitive displays of witch burnings and hangings, which look like they might have been set up by someone *after* the bombs dropped, and it's just a shuddersome area to stumble into.
- The holotape found on Sgt. Lee's body is just terrifying. It ends with him saying "Christ, maybe, maybe if we'd just returned the eggs... Oh, hey, mama. You looking for this?" And then the tape fades to angry growling...
- If you have a jetpack-equipped suit of power armor, you can fly up into the loft through a hole in the roof from the ground floor, where you find the remains of someone — a policeman by the blue rags on the skeleton and the patrolman sunglasses and security baton nearby — impaled to a table by a Revolutionary War-era sword through their chest, and surrounded by candles as if part of a human sacrifice. What was going on in this place even before the bombs fell?
- In the museum's basement, there's a large, mostly-empty room with a school desk shoved in the corner, facing the walls, with a decapitated skeleton slumped on it. Guess one
*The Blair Witch Project* reference wasn't enough.
- It's one of the very few instances where the game will play "music stings" even with music disabled, adding to its overall ambience.
- Try checking out the retirement home just down the street, the one run by a group of Mr. Handy robots. The nightmare fuel part? All the elderly residents are
*skeletons*, there are a bunch of them and the Mr. Handy robots continue to act as if they were still alive.
- At some point, your travels might take you to the Raider-occupied pre-war mining operation known as Dunwich Borers — and anyone who played
*Fallout 3* and explored the Dunwich Building, or are familiar with the Cthulhu Mythos, can probably guess where this is going. The dungeon crawl starts relatively simple, as you descend into the vast mine killing bandits. At the very bottom, you kill the chief Raider, and that's it; you've taken care of everything, right? Wait... what about that door over there? Why are there chains over it; like they were trying to keep something out? Go ahead, break the chains and venture into the depths...
- Speaking of Lovecraftian references, Pickman's art gallery. A group of Raiders are hunting down a Mad Artist named Pickman who killed their buddies as part of an art project. Pickman's paintings are downright freakishly disturbing, and it's not hard to guess his preferred medium.
- Some companions have unique lines for this area, and most of them react with utter horror.
- Since we're talking about Pickman, let's not forget to mention the note he leaves you should you decide to let him live. It contains only two words and a heart drawn in blood. The words? "Thanks, Killer." If this doesn't make you feel like a monster, nothing will.
- There's an innocuous laundromat in Lexington not far from the Super Duper Mart. There's minimal loot to be found, save for one of the dryers, which has a
*human skeleton.* Whether they died of radiation trying to hide from the bombs or were simply murdered and stashed away is anyone's guess.
- The answer you get from the Creation Club quest "The Paper Mirror" is that a group of raiders use it to stash bodies. That's a little less creepy, except the quest itself is about people receiving books, aka the Paper Mirror, that shows them what's about to happen in their life. The entire unexplained phenomena adds plenty new creepiness.
- What's scarier than a brutish super mutant sprinting towards you at top speed? A
*suicide bomber* super mutant sprinting towards you at top speed. Here's hoping you can shoot down the massive threat before it explodes into an appropriately massive explosion. The frantic beeping from the nuke it carries in its arm like a football is sure to send you into a panicked frenzy.
- Due to the player character being voiced being a new feature, you'll likely be surprised when you use your first shot of Psycho. Suddenly, your character just
in a monstrous fashion, finally showing the effects the drug has on its users. **screams**
- One of the major issues is the Institute. Formerly Boston CIT, a group of scientists took shelter inside the building in the aftermath of the Great War. Now, hundreds of years later, they're releasing all sorts of nightmares to stalk the wasteland... Almost like Big Mountain, and we all know how that place is. Not to mention, the Sole Survivor's
*own son*, Shaun, is leading them as an elderly man known as Father.
- Even worse, the Institute is more or less
*precisely* what Dr. Mobius warned the Courier would happen, should the Think Tank ever pull their heads out of their collective asslessness and set their sights upon the outside world in New Vegas' *Old World Blues* DLC.
- When you enter Back Street Apparel, you can eavesdrop on a pair of Raiders swapping stories. One of them tells of a new recruit they got, an 18-year-old kid, and when she tried to light a fire at night, he panicked and knocked the match from her hand, before explaining he's afraid of fire. She consoled him and told him it was fine. That night they got the kid drunk, and once they were passed out, they got seven old mattresses, tied six of them together with him on the seventh mattress in the middle. They lit up the ring of mattresses and pushed it into the river, and then threw rocks until the kid woke up — on a soggy mattress in the middle of the river surrounded by fire with no idea how he got there. The Raider finishes the story with the dark summation "he didn't know how to swim."
- Every once in a while, you might find a group of super mutants leaving a building in the middle of nowhere. No big deal, on the surface, but if you investigate, you'll find a group of dead settlers, obviously the victims of the mutant war-band.
- The vast majority of the Vault experiments were extremely messed up, but Vault 75 stands out in particular. The best way to describe it is a strictly enforced
*Logan's Run*, only with the cut-off age being 17. This is done for the purposes of genome harvesting and selective breeding. *On human children.* The very clinical way it talks about "Disposal" and "unfavorable specimens" is deeply chilling.
- The entirety of the Glowing Sea, the game's answer to the Courier's Mile. Located to the south/southwest of Boston, like its name suggests, the place is extremely radioactive (though not actually a "sea") and has a Sickly Green Glow, the sky is blocked out by radiation clouds and lightning storms (making visibility absolutely awful) there's no vegetation, just a barren wasteland, and it's
*filled* with really friendly creatures such as Deathclaws, Feral Ghoul Reavers, Red Widow Bloodbugs, Radscorpions, and others. It is this way because that's where the Boston area was hit by the atom bomb during the Great War. There are buried towns and structures and wreckage, ranging from churches and factories to a Super Duper Mart. Basically, it's an absolutely hellish and terrifying experience. The whole area feels like an alien world. Did we mention that you need to go through a *huge* stretch of that hellhole for a storyline quest? There's some good news, though — you won't find any Super Mutants there. Except for the one friendly guy. For maximum effect, be sure to wear a hazmat suit or Power Armor (they raise your Rad Resistance so high you'll usually only take fractions per second.) Turning the entire trip into a serene walk with little risk of radiation death makes it even worse. **Nick**: It looks like someone *extinguished Hell.*
- There's a disturbingly high amount of those Cymbal-Banging Monkey toys (the same infamously creepy real monkey toy as seen in that page's image and featured in
*Toy Story 3*, at that) scattered around the map. Walking in a building and seeing those glowing red eyes out of the corner of your vision is heart stopping. Worse, they tend to be found around feral ghouls, which they wake up. And *even worse*, they're sometimes found connected to bombs that instantly go off when the monkey starts moving.
- In an old parking garage just to the west of the Milton General Hospital, you can find a maze that seems ripped from a horror movie. While the maze itself is relatively straightforward, back-ends contain surprises like human bodies strung up on chains, a Christmas tree with a surprise turret underneath, a room full of mannequins that are oriented to look at you as you enter, and another room FULL of the monkey dolls, which are all timed to go off at once. Brrrrrr. Who the hell set all that up?!
- The Insane Asylum is creepy enough as you descend towards the basement. Some rooms are completely dark. One ward is completely in this darkness and a bunch of monkeys sit on the floor and a bed surrounding a plain suitcase.
- Speaking of the Parsons State Insane Asylum, when you descend to the lower levels of the asylum proper, there are cells with one skeleton each. One cell has "Help Me" spelled out on the floor with pieces of chalk. The walls have question marks on them, as if the resident was trying to figure out which one was the weakest in a possible breakout attempt. Implying that when the great explosion happened, the asylum residents were left in their cells to slowly starve to death, or die of radiation poisoning. It sounds like the same-old same-old of what happened to the rest of the world... Until you remember that Jack Cabot, the administrator, was still alive. He was still keeping his father in the administrative building, still harvesting his blood for his family's serum. So, Jack was there at the asylum, knew his residents were still in their cells, and
*let them* starve to death. He could have at least let them out to die in freedom.
- Some of the patient notes are downright terrifying as well. Special mention goes to Bobby Smith a patient who cheerfully admits to having killed several people, and continually laughs during his stay in the asylum's isolation ward, with only Bach's Toccata and Fegue in D Minor silencing him. All before his tenth birthday.
- Even Vault 111 has some twisted undertones. It says a lot about Vault-Tec (and ultimately, the Enclave) that the Vault itself had only about six months' worth of supplies. That in addition to the cryogenic experiment's parameters, those tasked with overseeing said experiment were told to wait for an All-Clear signal from Vault-Tec before they could leave the Vault for remote observation, under the presumption that the main office would rescue them. As the All-Clear never came and everyone else aside from the Sole Survivor, the spouse, and Shaun died either from cryogenic failure or armed infighting, it just highlights how much the whole Vault was never intended to save anyone, even those meant to ensure that everything went smoothly. They were all expendable, to the point that the research team was only allowed to intervene and save one of the frozen residents if
*eighty percent of the population had already died in cryogenic suspension,* and even *then* they couldn't thaw them out.
- Speaking of Vault 111, the segment where you're thawed out, watch your spouse get murdered and your son kidnapped, then get refrozen? Well, catching up with the man that did it reveals something
**far** worse — he'd been ordered to re-freeze *only* the Sole Survivor. Every other subject in the vault was left to slowly die while still stuck in their pods.
- The Mirelurks enemies also got some pretty radical changes. They're rarely bipedal anymore, instead looking a lot more realistic and sometimes different kinds of crustaceans as well. Oh and say on your adventures you see some sort of shrine that has a Mirelurk Egg on it, and you say to yourself
*might as well pick it up*, you'll soon find yourself suddenly getting attacked by a Mirelurk King, and while they no longer have the Uncanny Valley face they did in 3 or New Vegas, they do look like a fish man from an H. P. Lovecraft book. They also attack extremely aggressively and scream like a banshee when using their sonic attack. To say nothing of the Mirelurk Queens, which are ridiculously huge. With the right dialogue choices during the quest "Retaking the Castle", you can ask what happened to it. Preston says that a giant monster that came out of the sea. Considering the Dunwich Borers and other Lovecraftian references, you might think it's just a cheap Cthulhu reference and you just have to clear the Castle of Mirelurks. You quickly learn it's not. After a bit of time destroying egg clutches and Mirelurks, you feel a rumble and hear this freakish roar. As it turns out, the Queen isn't too happy with you doing this, as the three-story behemoth rises out of the ocean to confront your party herself. Oh, and if you think you can be smart and lob missiles or nukes at her from a distance? She'll ignore everyone else and make a beeline for *you*, wherever you're firing from.
- If you have ostraconophobia (fear of shellfish), for all that is sacred, do NOT go to Nahant. There are hordes of Mirelurks of all kinds and its eastern shore has a massive nest nearly as big as the Castle's.
- The Mr. Handies in the island's Oceanological Center reveal that the percentage of oceanic life in Earth has increased from 70% to
*97%* after updating their database. This means that after 210 years of recovery, either the amount of life in the planet's surface is still a tenth of what it used to be, or the mutant oceanic life has increased dramatically.
- Some enemies in the game are capable of surviving with one or more limbs missing. Enemies that are capable of doing this include Deathclaws. The game counts the head as a limb. One plus one equals this.
- The Massachusetts State House has been turned into a tangled maze by a combination of time, raiders and Mirelurks. The ground floor is choked with sludge and mud, making it the perfect breeding den for the sinister shellfish. And at least one the problems go back to before the war, as many terminal entries complain about broken plumbing and the maintenance crew's utter incompetence with trying to fix them. Even the state governor is forced to walk next door just to use the restroom.
- At the very center of the building is a
*huge,* gaping hole in the floor that leads down to an Absurdly-Spacious Sewer. Guess what you get from the large pool of water in the middle after unlocking the exit? A Mirelurk Queen. Your best bet is to simply *run.*
- Even though only one bomb hit Boston (as opposed to the absolute
*carpet-bombing* that Washington DC received), it was apparently a pretty hefty bomb, as it left an enormous, jagged crater behind, buried the nearby town under ash and soot and left enough ambient radiation in the area to make traversing the area difficult 210 years after.
- The entirety of Covenant just makes the hair stand up on the back of your neck with how everyone is acting the moment you walk in with their whole Stepford Suburbia shtick. It's no surprise when, after snooping around for a bit, you eventually discover that it's a testing ground for the SAFE test you were given before you were let inside to weed out Synths. And the poor girl Honest Dan is trying to save was captured after her entire caravan was wiped out because she
*might* be a Synth, and the crazy scientist in charge of the whole thing says the only way to be sure is to autopsy her, i.e. kill the poor girl. And it's never made clear exactly how many people they've done this to to refine the test, but it's implied to be a lot and the scientist states their current success rate is 1 synth for every five or six humans killed.
- The worst part? They were right. If Amelia dies and you loot her body, you'll see that she has a synth component in her inventory.
- Depending on your view of the Commonwealth, even
*that* isn't the worst part. The caravan she was a part of belonged to a man named Old Man Stockton, a member of the Railroad who's using the caravans as a cover-op to help escaped synths get away from the Institute. Amelia is one of those synths. If you at least agree with the Railroad's "Synths are people, too" view, that'd mean that the Covenant was ultimately going to murder someone who just wanted freedom just to sate their paranoia.
- If you have the Master Hacking Perk, are working for the Brotherhood of Steel, or are doing Virgil's quest to get the anti-FEV serum for him, you can find yourself having a nightmare fuel moment while investigating the Institute. For the most part, the Institute looks like a Raygun Gothic paradise. It seems like a slice of Heaven in the Wasteland. Then you hack through a laser grid doorway or bobby pin your way in through the back door and go beyond to discover a bunch of pickled Super Mutants in a dirty abandoned lab. The revelation that, for all of the Institute's claims they're misunderstood, it's actually both horrifying and disgusting to discover that they're up to something so vile.
- If Nick Valentine's with you when the
*Prydwen* makes its appearance, thus signaling the Brotherhood of Steel's full-fledged arrival, he'll quote a line from Edgar Allan Poe. Which goes to show his shock, given how this was the *last* thing he expected to see. **Nick**: Deep into that darkness peering, Long I stood there, wondering, fearing.
- Even the Institute's "clean" facilities can be seriously creepy:
- The robotics facility. Out there, in the center of the room, is the "factory" that produces synths. You get to see what is essentially an assembly-line production of fully formed human beings, starting with the nervous system, then the bones, then the muscle, and only then the flesh, with occasional dips into a vat of biomass that looks like a giant pool of blood. Even if you've taken their side, you might find yourself avoiding that room when possible.
- The Synth Reclamation Bureau. At the far end is... a chair with giant needles positioned to pierce the spine and brain of whatever synth is being "reclaimed" or "reset".
- An added bit of fun with the SRB, especially if you're siding with the Railroad, is that you get a list of people they're using as informants. It includes multiple traders, merchants, and probably people who you've talked to, multiple times. It's terrifying to know that despite how Properly Paranoid the Railroad is being,
*they aren't paranoid enough.*
- Synths that don't try to escape have every reason to fear being "reset". With a few exceptions — Dr. Binet is most representative, though his motives are questionable — the Institute's scientists can occasionally be overheard asking for synths to be "reset" for trivial reasons, and the synths who are sometimes threatened with it do their best, usually unsuccessfully, to hide how
*terrifying* the possibility is to them.
- Speaking of the institute and their treatment of Synths, Nick Valentine's whole existence is nightmare fuel if you think about it. Upon gaining enough affinity with him you find out he has the mind, personality and memories of a pre-war detective whose brain was scanned in an attempt to treat PTSD. From Nick's point of view, he went into hospital to get mental help after the murder of his fiancé and woke up in a dumpster 200 years later in a body that isn't human and a world that's been ravaged by atomic war.
- There are two areas, however, that completely break and shatter the clean, pristine facade of the Institute.
- One is the sealed off FEV Labs, where the Super Mutant Serum was likely created before being unleashed upon post-apocalyptic America. No matter which way you enter, the result is the same: a room full of broken tech, non-triggered traps, an Assaultron, dead Super Mutant subjects with dead cats, and finally a room with Super Mutants in what look like stasis tubes. Are they alive? Are they dead? One thing's for sure: you're gonna wanna grab that cure for Virgil and get the hell out, ASAP.
- And the other is... just a random sub level of the Institute, found in a storage room. Your first signal that something's wrong is the hallway and elevator bringing you to it; so damned worn black that it's a wonder it's still functional. What does it bring you to? Just another storage room, leading to an expansion project going by the excavation vehicles. What's wrong with that? The suddenly oppressive
*lack of anything*. No people. No synths. Not even background music. You'd think such a place would have some synths working their butts off, or even a monster to justify the emptiness. But instead, you find some spilled oil, abandoned vehicles, **and that's it.**
- Continuing the never-ending march of horrors that are the Vaults, Vault 95 is both this and a Tear Jerker. The Vault was intentionally filled with alcoholics and drug addicts. They were allowed to elect their Overseer, and most of their days were filled with therapy, and other forms of treatment. Vault-Tec even installed brand new technology to help people get clean. After five years, the Vault was clean, happy, and stable. That's when Vault-Tec's mole within the vault unlocked and revealed a huge stash of hidden chems, most of it
*Psycho.* All just to see how people would react. Sadly, the vault rioted and even those with the most willpower gave into temptation or violence. The place collapsed within days.
- To make matters worse, the detox chair where you cure Cait of her addiction looks more like something from a torture scene. The addict sits down underneath a painfully bright lamp, the wrists are secured as a set of machines insert needles into the addict's neck and apparently suck out the toxin. As demonstrated in Cait's personal quest, the procedure is
*very* painful.
- HalluciGen Inc manages to somehow make Pre-War America even
*more disturbing.* How bad are they? They used dangerous, hallucination-inducing gas on *protestors.* Said gas could cause "catastrophic adrenal failure." To make it nightmarish, when you arrive you will notice a few Gunners' bodies all around the entrance, then hear shots, wondering if they're fighting monsters, raiders, Super Mutants, etc. Nope. A whole team of Gunners, usually smart and organized, are actually turned into wild Raider-style freaks, busy killing each other while giggling madly, spouting some rather psychotic-sounding lines, or saying sadly that they're hearing voices, and asking for it to stop. Some are locked up in cells, like the guinea pigs that HalluciGen Inc used Pre-War for psychological torture under drugs, while selected guests were watching them getting gassed from the comfort of a viewing booth. Terminals will explain you that it was all official, to make citizens more passive.
- Near Jamaica Plain, close to the pond, there is a dead tree, guarded by a few raiders. A dozen people are gibbeted on it. Seeing bodies in various states of display and disarray is rather common in Raider-held locations.
- There's a random encounter where you can find a synth and a person, both named Art, fighting over control of the original's life. The horrifying thing is that you really can't tell who's the original which will earn your companion's disapproval even if you choose to help the right person.
- If you choose correctly, (and there's no telling which is correct), you can talk to Synth!Art in whispers and tell him you're with the Institute. He'll ask you to kill the real Art so he can continue his mission to replace him...
- The Awareness perk does give you a crucial hint as to which is the real Art if only you know what to check for, but there's no guarantee you'll be able to unlock said perk before you happen upon this encounter.
- The Fiddler's Green Trailer Estates is pretty bad by itself with Feral Ghouls everywhere, including a Glowing One. As you explore the place you might find some holotapes, they're a story for children called
*The New Squirrel* and told in a friendly tone by a person called Story Time Simon. It beings with a young squirrel named Ricky, a brown squirrel, who wonders what squirrels live in other trees. The elders tell him "squirrels in other trees were thieves and liars, and they were never to be trusted." but Ricky didn't believe them. He meets one, a red squirrel, who needs help. Everyone turns him away but Ricky saying "How could you turn him away, just because he's from another tree? He needs our help!", which changes their minds. The red squirrel thanks Ricky and tells him he won't regret it. The final holotape ends with all of the squirrels going to sleep but in the night Ricky is woken up by leaves rustling outside. He checks and sees cats surrounding the tree with the red squirrel in another tree who says "I'm sorry," he said, "they were following me and I couldn't bring them to my tree, they would have eaten my family." As the cats ascended the tree and began to devour Ricky's friends and family, Ricky reflected on his decisions. His last words were, "I really wish I would have trusted my elders." The end. Story Time Simon says all of this in a fun friendly tone reminiscent of * Mr. Rogers*, which you won't expect when you listen to the last holotape. Hearing an aesop from 2077 America for children with its subtle anti-Chinese ('Red' squirrel) and 'obey those above you' message is chilling.
- For a bonus piece of dark humor, there's squirrel stew and squirrel-on-a-stick stashed in the fridge where you find the last holotape.
- East of the map you'll find a location named Mining Hut. Seems like a nice little spot to gather some resources. Then you see that there's a door that's locked. Pick it and you'll find yourself in a very dark tunnel called Makeshift Cavern. First thing you see is a teddy bear looking at you. Weird. Then you have to paths to follow, left or right. Go right and you pass through a cloud of dust, revealing a small chamber with another teddy bear surrounded by human remains. Take the left and you'll find bunker-type area with the words GET OUT scrawled across the wall. Rifle through the absent owner's stash and you'll find a Stealth Boy. Oh, and there's a ladder in the room that leads you to another location: Lone Home. In this destroyed house you'll find three different sized teddy bears positioned so that they are stabbing each other. Is any of this ever explained? No. The most you'll ever find is an unfinished note that only seems to make the experience more frightening.
- In the Vault-Tec Regional HQ, you'll find some disturbing terminal entries. There's Dr. Reid, who grows increasingly suspicious of his employer's moral code after he gets wind of some suspicious shipments. His bad-tempered boss Mr. Davidson fantasizes about murdering a colleague because she spilled some coffee on him (You'll find her skeleton in the basement...) With these type of sociopaths in charge, nothing about Vault-Tec should be much of a surprise.
- You can visit a school where you'll find evidence that the teacher arranged to have his students take mentats in the hopes of raising their grades. As terrible as a principal hooking his students on drugs is, the worse part is this: You can find evidence that his drug pusher got wise, thanks to those mentats, and tried to blackmail the principal. The evidence implies that the principal murdered that student and covered it up.
- Due to how adorable and cute he is, it's surprisingly easy to forget that Dogmeat is a big dog and has a lot of sharp teeth — German Shepherds like him are used around the world as police dogs for a reason. It can be horrifying to see how brutal and vicious Dogmeat can be to anyone he's attacking, especially when he executes a human enemy by violently mauling them or ripping their throats out. You can say that the Raiders he executes may had it coming but if you're attacking a random innocent person, Dogmeat won't hesitate to do the same to them purely out of loyalty to you.
- Furthermore, should a human companion somehow turns hostile and attack you while Dogmeat is your companion, naturally, he'll defend you. If said companion happens to be non-essential for whatever reason, he could kill them the same way. This video features Piper as the unfortunate victim of Dogmeat's mauling.
- Hell, any companion is similar to Dogmeat in this regard: All of your allies are a result of the post-apocalyptic wasteland, and to survive in a world where raiders, super mutants, deathclaws, and worse are common, all of them have to be ready and willing to kill anyone who might be a threat at a moment's notice. It can be jarring to be in a friendly conversation with Preston or Piper, and then a second later, they're ruthlessly gunning down your enemies without hesitation. Even Curie, Hancock, Deacon, and especially Nick. Beware the Nice Ones, indeed.
- In just another horrible example of how the Great War screwed up the earth's ecosystem, you can find the bodies of mutated sea creatures on the shoreline. They look a bit... off.◊ The coasts of New England are home to a surprising number of great whites, so these could be mutant sharks, but there's no gills and the tail fins are horizontal rather than vertical. But if that's supposed to be a dolphin, it looks like a throwback to their ancestors like Basilosaurus or Dorudontinae: creatures with oversized, conical teeth for ripping apart flesh. And then you have to wonder what tore up the corpses like that? Mirelurks, or land-based scavengers? ''What else is swimming around down there?
- A random conversation you can come across between some caravan workers in Bunker Hill has one of them recall an old story her grandfather told of his encounter with a gigantic, ghoulified blue whale named "Old Peg." According to the story, it did nothing but surface and submerge, but the sight of it was enough to make her fearless grandfather flee for the first time in his life.
- The quest Mystery Meat. Remember that random encounter where you meet that guy who warns you to stand back, because he ate some bad meat and he felt like he was gonna explode? Well, you can track the meat to its source, where you'll meet the guy who manufactures it. At first, it seems innocent enough, claiming that it's Mole Rat meat, and nobody should be getting sick from eating it. Then, against his warnings, you take an elevator into the basement... at which point, the proprietor shuts the elevator down, and you're trapped in the basement with the source of his meat: Feral ghouls. Lots and lots of feral ghouls. Hope you didn't eat any of that stuff.
- In the southernmost part of the map, you can find a GINORMOUS swamp that just seems to fulfill every "creepy haunted swamp" trope ever imagined: dark water that can pool suddenly to over your head, clumps of reeds that block vision, stands of dead trees as far as the eye can see, etc. On certain nights, fog can even sweep in and prevent you from seeing more than 20 feet in front of you, something the Mirelurks and Ghouls are sure to enjoy. But it is just a swamp, right? Nothing special? Well, according to players from the area that post on Reddit, that swamp could very well be nothing more than the "Hockomock Swamp", a well-known area in the region for paranormal activity. Seriously, plug the name into your favorite search engine and read up on the history. In Colonial times, the area was known as "The Devil's Swamp", and... "weird" sightings continue to the present day. Enjoy your trip.
- It's even worse for people who played the Point Lookout DLC for Fallout 3 due to the extremely similar setting. You half expect some insane Tribal or lumbering Swampfolk to jump out and plant an ax in your face or blast a limb off with their double-barrel shotgun. The massive enemy bases like Gunner HQ and Quincy being close by as well as its proximity to the Glowing Sea doesn't help matters.
- There is an unmarked location near the Combat Zone called Warren Theatre. As you go inside, you're faced with a bunch of mannequins on the stage, and hiding amongst them is a Synth just ready to give you a massive jump scare.
- One small but plot-relevant location is Listening Post Bravo, a little pre-War underground bunker. The terminal there has log entries from an Army sergeant assigned to the one-man station for a four-week stint, monitoring for suspicious radio signals. One day he picks up a garbled but audible message including the phrases "internal void," "dreams are getting darker" and "blood runs so still" from the enigmatic callsign "D.E.K."
note : It's a little less creepy when you learn it's a Shout-Out to Katatonia and their album *Dead End Kings*. He sends the recording off to Washington in hopes that someone will be able to figure out what the hell is going on but gets no response. A week later he's woken up by something banging on the access elevator door for an hour straight, even though all the systems report that it's been locked down since he got there — so he can do nothing but activate the automated defenses on the surface, clutch his rifle, and wait for the noise to stop. A few days after that, Washington finally reports back to say that the tape with the "mysterious transmission" he sent them turned out to be blank, and sure enough when he checks his copies he can't hear anything either. Did the sergeant Go Mad from the Isolation like his bosses suggested, or is something stranger at work?
- Oh, and there's also a Yao Guai living in the bunker by the time you come to visit. Even though they only way down there is an elevator that's locked when you arrive. So where did it get those bones and scraps of meat?
- Just to the west of Diamond City, there's a lovely place called Fens Sewers. Descend into it, and you'll be treated to skeletons mounted and posed like "art" — the bonier version of Pickman Gallery — and an ominous hissing as though the tunnels are slowly filling with gas. Oh, and you'll find holotapes left behind by the mysterious Fens Phantom, detailing his obsession with a detective, and his encouragement for the detective to come visit him. What makes it worse, in a way, is that the killer never shows up. So your mind is left to speculate... Was the killer one of the feral ghouls you kill down there, possibly even the Glowing One at the end? Was the detective one of the posed skeletons? Or perhaps were the killer and detective those two skeletons on the mattress in the alcove, the ones lying next to the machete?
- In the Greentech Genetics building, on a random desk is a couple of letter blocks and a billiard ball. They spell 'I (8) U'... with a knife and fork next to them.
*Hopefully*, it's just someone's idea of a joke.
- Speaking of letter blocks, you'll find that many of them have been positioned to spell out "GARY." It's probably just a Call-Back to
*Fallout 3* and Vault 108. Probably.
- In Saugus Ironworks, check Slag's terminal in the main chamber and enjoy reading the disturbingly graphic descriptions of what the Forged did to their victims (i.e. former recruits.) It goes to show how twisted they are when you read the horrible things they did to people for the most trivial and petty of reasons, such as saying "ow" while having a wound treated.
- Speaking of Raider gangs, there's "Judge" Zeller's outfit at East Boston Preparatory School. The first thing you'll notice is probably a unique piece of loot every Raider in there is carrying, a "Blood Contract" swearing servitude to "the Judge and his Jury." If you check the terminal log entries in the building, you'll learn that Zeller is a firm believer in Being Tortured Makes You Evil — all of his recruits were subjected to hideous abuses, like being beaten until their face was so swollen they couldn't eat, given time to heal, and then beaten again to repeat the cycle, until they broke and signed the Contract. Except for "Killer," who just smiled and laughed no matter what they did to him, until they decided to put him down.
- The Mook Horror Show in "Hunter/Hunted." The Synth Courser you're tracking, Z2-47, is himself hunting another escaped Gen 3, called "Jenny." You go into Greenetech Genetics, and discover a veritable army of Gunners being cut down by this one synth, with the commander's commands over the loudspeaker becoming more increasingly desperate. When you finally catch up to the Courser, he's preparing to execute the last of the Gunners.
- Really, any Institute Courser in general is pure Nightmare Fuel. Cold and unemotional, these
*things* were designed to hunt down Synths and take them back to the Institute by *any means necessary*. And it's not just Gameplay and Story Segregation, either; they have a lot of HP, and when not depleting your health down insanely fast, they're crippling your limbs to make it easier for them to kill you. Oh, you do know that they also use Stealth Boys, right? If you haven't feared the Institute before, Coursers just might make it a little more easier for you.
- The way synths are constructed can be a little unsettling. As Glory describes, they are "built", bone by bone, muscle by muscle. There is a giant machine that constructs the synth's skeleton like a puzzle before sheathing it in muscle, then jabs the body with electrical prods to stimulate its nervous system before dipping the body in a vat of red liquid. What emerges appears to be a human being, who is then ushered to "Synth Processing".
- Right around the corner from Bunker Hill is an apartment with a blue door. The apartment is crawling with feral ghouls. Among the loot, the player can find three holotapes marked "Control Subject's Recording", numbers 1, 2, and 3. They tell a tale of a young Institute scientist who was assigned to test an experimental serum that was supposed to prevent a person from becoming a ghoul — on herself. The first step was to expose herself to enough radiation that death was certain even if ghoulification wasn't. The calm way she describes her slow descent into the life of a feral ghoul is horrifying. The last words on the tape are, "Don't bother telling my parents. What will be left of me isn't going to be worth burying."
- Billy Peabody. A boy who locked himself in a fridge the day the bombs fell. He was ghoulified and remained in the fridge alive and alone in the dark for 210 years. How he is still sane when he's finally let out is anyone's guess.
- A mere stone's throw from the Castle is a church basement. Nothing is inside but a few ghouls, a live cat and a pile of mongrel dog meat heaped in front of what looks like a shrine to cats with more meat to spare in nearby refrigerators. There is no context, no backstory and no explanation for any of this.
- There are a number of radio relay towers in the Commonwealth and if you extend them, you'll be able to tune into nearby ham radio signals. Most are pleas for help, and many have been playing on repeat for
*over 200 years*. Should you track down the sources of the transmissions, you may find some loot, but no happy endings.
- Perhaps the most horrifying one is the Miller family radio signal out of Big John's Salvage. It's a repeating call for help from the husband/father of the family, explaining that the generator powering the ventilation system for their vacuum sealed, underground bunker died, they were running out of oxygen, and they couldn't open the hatch. The message ends with the father trying to keep his daughter calm and giving her breathing instructions. When you finally find and enter the bunker, there are no notes or terminal entries needed, the scene itself makes things crystal clear. Two child-sized mounds of dirt with toys on top of each, and a male and female skeleton curled up, spooning, on the mattress on the floor.
- Another incredibly chilling one is from a train car south of Oberland Station. You hear this pre-recorded message from a panicking mother and her son Thomas who took shelter in an overturned train car after being chased by
*something*. The mother pleads for help for her son because he's injured, and then the creature manages to open the door and she shrieks in pure terror for her boy to make a run for it. When you open up the train carriage you see a skeleton and a train car full of blood, and no sign of Thomas. The voice actress really nailed the terror of a parent whose child is in danger. Just listen to it here.
- More Tear Jerker than Nightmare Fuel, but still horrifying, is the radio broadcast of a girl who ended up trapped in a secure vault in a jewelry store at the Fallon's Department Store just as the bombs dropped. She slowly got weaker over three days due to lack of food and water, desperately begging for help over the radio. Of course you only find her bones. Once again, the voice actress did an amazing job.
- All of these radio messages end in an automated, monotone male voice repeating "This has been a prerecorded message. Message repeats in three seconds."
*Over and over*, for the past 210 years. There's something deeply creepy and unsettling about going from terrified shrieks or dying whimpers to an automated message.
- Assaultron Dominators. Here we have a humanoid robot that's just as fast as you are, is extremely powerful in melee combat to the point of
*one-shotting you* if it gets too close, can turn invisible and fires a beam that turns the sole survivor to a pile of ash in 1-2 seconds. Cut its legs off? It *crawls* after you like a frigging Terminator and can still fire its beam. In short, it's a ridiculously powerful Determinator capable of jumpscaring you.
- QASmoke, the universal item vault previously found in Skyrim. Skyrim's version was a simple enclosed cavern similar to any normal dungeon. In Fallout 4, the cell is a spooky Ghost Town swathed in fog. The skybox is disabled, resulting in blur effects not unlike noclipping out of bounds in Doom. And in one corner of this forsaken town, the floor is missing, allowing you to fall into the void. It all combines into an extremely creepy atmosphere that definitely invokes the feeling this is a place you are
*not* supposed to be in.
- As added nightmare fuel, check your map when youre in this location your eyes are not deceiving you. You are not even
*in* the Commonwealth anymore. Youre in this... room floating out in some ethereal void far removed from the games world. You may as well be in an entirely different dimension all together.
- Ever played Fallout: New Vegas on Hardcore Mode at the highest difficulty (including DLC)? How the game increases the realism factor with aspects such as the addition of a food/water/sleep meter, permanent companions' death, and ammo having weight? We ask this because Fallout 4's Survival Mode makes playing the former look like child's play and arguably better simulates what it would realistically be like surviving the Wasteland and how bleak and terrifying it can be traversing a world where one wrong move can either quickly or gradually kill you if you don't prepare yourself accordingly. Even with some usual armor, there will be points where even a low-level Raider can kill you quickly with just a few bullets if your guard is down. Think you can conserve ammo by meleeing a group of Radroachs and Mole Rats? Maybe if you like the risk of getting sick from diseases that can drastically hurt your stats or even kill you if you don't treat it soon. You're in a situation where you're very hungry or thirsty can the only food you have is uncooked meat or dirty water? And you're miles away from a cooking station? There's no fast traveling in Survival Mode, so you have to gauge the risk of eating and drinking your unprepared supplies or risk getting closer to starvation, dehydration, or getting killed by a random enemy on your way to a cooking station. Oh, and forget about Save Scumming, in Survival Mode you only save by going to bed, so death can set you back greatly if you're too reckless and aren't constantly keeping an eye out for beds you can use. Survival Mode, all in all, is the epitome of Early Game Hell.
- The story of Kim Wu, whose terminals you find in the Pearwood Residences and Natick Banks, is this mixed with Tearjerker. When China invaded Alaska, xenophobia swept through America like wildfire. Kim, a very young Chinese-American boy, wrote about many of his experiences during that time, but clearly didn't understand what was really going on, bless his heart. When he and his mother were out shopping for Halloween costumes, an angry mob destroyed the Paifang that marked the entrance to their neighborhood. Later on, the police began searching for Chinese-American residents, rounding them up and loading them onto a bus. Kim and his mother managed to hide from them, but his aunt Song was later taken. When asked where she went, his father explained that Song was taken to a camp, but not a fun one for kids. Yeah. And while Kim and his family successfully avoided being taken to such a camp, they were stranded in Natick Banks when the Great War commenced.
- One such camp, called Little Yangtze, can be visited in the
*Fallout: New Vegas* add-on *Old World Blues.* It's as filthy, squalid, and run down as you may imagine such a camp being 200 years after the bombs dropped, and the inmates are *still alive,* having long since ghoulified and gone insane. All of them have also been fitted with explosive collars. The instant they cross the perimeter of the camp's fence, their heads explode. As if that's not bad enough, there are also some very callous terminal entries. They talk about how many of these people, who were deemed communist infiltrators and spies, were beaten simply because they didn't speak English, and even that they were to be subjected to *human experimentation.* How many other camps like this were scattered across pre-war America? How many of them still have people trapped there?
- South of Oberland Station is a small unmarked wooden tower next to a railway. There's a trap door leading to the inside labelled "Waystation". Seems harmless. The inside is lit by a single lamp, it's quiet. There's a dead body of a settler surrounded by improvised torture tools like a sledgehammer, a machete and a makeshift battery. A small plastic crate contains bloody skull fragments. There's no explanation for anything. It's just a grisly torture scene.
- Bloatflies tend to be The Goomba, and even their higher level variants are relatively weak. But that thing they're shooting at you? It's their
*offspring*. Their larva embeds itself in human or animal flesh and later hatches. Thankfully thank to Gameplay and Story Segregation this doesn't happen to you, but if you switch to third person you will see an *enormous* maggot embedded in your character and wriggling!
- You can loot the Bloatflies glands and use them to craft "Bloatfly larva syringes" that you can shoot at enemies with the Syringer to inflict this on them. When they die, they explode and release a full-grown adult Bloatfly.
- The player can be this to raiders if they are skilled enough in stealth. You can kill one of their buddes, dissapear into the shadows, and if you are not detected but have killed a few more in the interm and lose their aggro, they become noticably spooked, especially if none of them got a good look at you.
Raider: In an out, just like that. Who moves that damn fast...
- Just north of Sanctuary Hills, on the bank of the river is a mannequin lying on the ground with a stimpak stabbed into its chest. Who put it there and why is a mystery, but it's a chilling image nonetheless.
- While the Mechanist is a well-intentioned Anti-Villain, the base they've taken up really emphasizes that the United States may have been worse
*before the nuclear apocalypse* than it is **now**. It was a production facility for robobrains. Terminals describe, in clinical language, prisoners being experimented on, most of them murdered without a second thought after suffering a nightmarish existence as Brain in a Jar and going quite understandably mad from the trauma. Only the most callous and sociopathic of experimental victims proved able to handle the experience, and they alone went on to be turned into robobrains, resulting in callous killing machines that could be relied upon only to interpret orders in the most evil, sadistic way possible. And the facility is *huge* — hundreds, if not thousands, of men and women, many of them minor or accidental crooks, mental patients with IQ ratings below 80, some likely innocent outright, were subjected to monstrous experiments and butchered by order of their own government.
- It gets worse. Going through the facility, you'll find feral ghouls in cells or on gurneys. This leads to one of two conclusions. Either the men and women being experimented on were ghoulified by the bomb, or the Mechanist is abducting ferals to make more Robobrains!
- If you're curious, or unlucky, you can find a list of the people being subjected to these experiments. It starts off just about how you'd expect it to, with a serial killer — and you discover later evidence that the serial killer is now the robot you're cooperating with to take down the mechanist, Jezebel. The crimes get more and more minor and the people grow more and more unstable. So many of those people needed help, and instead they were tortured and killed.
- Take a look at the removal division's terminal if you've got a strong stomach. If the cheery way they approach their gruesome work doesn't make you sick then the fact that they fed one of their coworkers a brain as a joke will!
- Looking at some terminal entries there is evidence that some of the inmates were being treated for anxiety or other disorders and a few were seeming to recover... imagine being put to jail because of your mental health, and once in you come to trust someone who's helping you deal with it, you get better, and you can even begin to think of your new life once you're out (sort of the goal of psy wards in actual prisons)... only to be strapped to a gurney and sent to brain processing, perhaps even by the very people that were supposed to help with your PTSD or anxiety.
- Another terminal entry details the responses of several of their inmates once their brains were removed and underwent cerebral reconditioning. Most of them were horrified when they realized their arms and legs were gone and frantically asked what was going on, only for them to be shut down and, in some cases,
*incinerated without a second thought.* The final one, however, doesn't seem to care that their body's missing. They only swear to murder everyone in the facility for what they've done. And the researchers consider this a success.
- There are hundreds of brains still floating in their jars throughout the facility. One has to wonder how many of them were legitimately criminals and others were simply deemed acceptable choices for their robobrain program.
- The facility had 219 security protocols, only four of which we can still read about.
- Class-V Counter-Espionage Procedure: If the administrator suspects there's been a breach of security, they can initiate a Class-V lockdown, where all staff must report to their stations in a timely manner or they'll be shot on sight. From there, they'll be brought in and interrogated using a Mesomotron-equipped robobrain, which is noted to be experiment and has a 10-15% chance of causing
*spontaneous cranial eruptions.* Any spies they do find will be turned over for experimentation.
- Gamma-IX Security Alert: In the event that there's any coordinated escape effort by the prisoners, all local and remote terminal functions will be disabled, all security doors in the cell block areas will be sealed, and all security and defensive systems will activate. Whoever wrote this up not only recommends using this as a field test for experimental combat robots, but that the administrator can order a complete purge of all test subjects- including ones that didn't try to escape- and order more.
- Epsilon-VI Security Alert: This one is in place in case of a mass uprising of the robot janitorial staff. Like with Gamma-IX, terminals will be shut down and defenses will activate, along with the Control Center entering an automated lockdown state. From there, employees are to hunker down and arm themselves while the Military Robotics Oversight Committee decides how to respond within ten business days. In other words, this involves being stuck in an underground facility with rogue robots for up to two weeks while a group of bureaucrats decide how best to handle the situation.
*And this is the last protocol that was initiated before the war.*
- The final one is the Omega Protocol: In the event of confirmed nuclear detonations, the Administrator will initiate a lockdown and attempt to reestablish contact the military. If contact isn't made within 24 hours, staff remaining on-site are to delete any sensitive files and records, close down their stations, arm themselves, and collect their personal belongings. If 30 hours have passed with no contact, the facility will enter Lockdown Omega Mode, where staff will be given
*ten minutes* to evacuate before everything is permanently shut down. As for the prisoners? They're to be secured in their cells and left behind.
- The fact that the facility was taken over and run by the U.S. Army becomes a lot more disturbing when you consider that Nate, the male Sole Survivor, was a soldier. Not only was he alive while this place was fully operational, it's possible he may have
*known* people who were working here.
- In the cell wing for the test subjects, you can find not just skeletons, but dead feral ghouls still in their cells. This means radiation leaked into the facility and transformed them, keeping a few of the inmates alive, trapped in these tiny cells while the others starved or died of radiation poisoning. Worse, if you pick the locks to some of the cells, you'll find a few of the ghouls are actually
*still alive.* One can only hope they went feral soon after transforming.
- Far Harbor makes Point Lookout look like a kiddy pool in comparison.
- The Fog. Just moving through the fog covering the Island will very slowly but surely drive up your rads up to dangerous levels. The Fog is also natural camouflage for the Island's lethal ecosystem, so you might not see the threat lying ahead until it attacks... or rather...
*if* it attacks.
- As for the local wildlife, we have...
- Gulpers, mutated salamanders that eat
*anything*. They start as big as a Mirelurk, tougher versions can be as big as Deathclaws, and since they keep growing as they age, no one's sure just how large they can get. They're also perfectly camouflaged if they curl up in mud, so between that and the ever-present Fog it's easy for them to surprise you. But what you might *not* expect are Gulpers hanging by their tails from trees, and if you think they'd be easy to spot like that, think again.
- Fog Crawlers, mutated shrimp that make Mirelurks look like non-mutated shrimp. You first "encounter" one while following Old Longfellow and you hear a roar in the distance, with Longfellow commenting that it's a good thing you won't fight it. And for good reason — these giant crustaceans are two stories tall with huge chitinous blades for arms, and the worst part that they're both fast and
*absurdly* tenacious! Even a Gauss Rifle has trouble bringing them down! It doesn't help that, to those who played *The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim*, these things look like giant Chaurus.
- Hermit Crabs. Not the cute li'l guys that find shelter in shells, these fuckers are
*big*, and despite that also fast, durable, and pack a huge punch. If you ever see fresh tire tracks on a road where no cars have been driven for 210 years, and find a dilapidated trailer just sitting out in the open, you've just found a "shell" one of these Hermit Crabs has outgrown. So you can only imagine how big it is now...
- The Island has proper Wolves instead of the mainland's wild mongrels, and they are most certainly
*not* the annoyances you can find in *Skyrim*. They're pack hunters, love to ambush you, and at higher levels you'll even encounter Glowing Wolves.
- Radstags aren't much of a threat on the mainland, and are more pathetic than anything, but on the Island they're a different story. These are Devolved Radstags, so heavily mutated that they've grown
*fangs*, and the skin on their heads is so emaciated that no one would blame you if you thought they had skinless skulls. Also, unlike their simply self-defensive mainland cousins, these Radstags are *always* aggressive. The implication is that they've Ascended to Carnivorism.
- Anglers, which are massive mutated anglerfish that hide out in patches of Lure Weeds ready to Jump Scare anyone who gets too close. Not only do they move fast and hit hard like a Deathclaw, but at higher levels you'll encounter special Venomous Anglers that also inflict poison damage with their attacks. As if that wasn't enough, these elite Anglers also have HP comparable to a Super Mutant Behemoth. Hope you brought a heavily modded Lever-Action Rifle and a backpack full of ammo.
- Far Harbor may lack Point Lookout's hideously deformed, cannibalistic, and utterly insane Swampfolk, but the local human enemies aren't just more Raiders or Gunners. Trappers are Island residents who have spent too much time in the Fog and gone nearly feral — they're still smart enough to set traps and make good use of their harpoons, lever-action rifles, and other weapons, but now they worship the Fog and attack anyone else they come across. They're strangely quiet compared to the Commonwealth's Raiders (all the better to creep up on you), and most of them only make animalistic grunts or roars when in combat. And yes, they're cannibals.
**Harborman:** Don't look a Trapper in the eyes. They're... not there.
- When you get to Acadia, DiMA asks you a very simple question, that will make you rethink all of your previous actions: What if you, the Sole Survivor, are a synth? He goes on to ask, what do you remember of your old life? How do you know that memory is yours? Can you remember anything before the bombs fell? Its enough to make your hair stand on end and make yourself question all of the actions that have led you to that point.
- Speaking of DiMA, many Acadia-related quest icons feature a
**very** creepy *Vault Boy rendition* of him, with his appearance in the icon for "The Way Life Should Be"◊ being especially horrifying.
- Browsing terminals at the Institute, you may stumble across one detailling advances in Gen-3 fighting abilities stating that
*the combatant can actually visualize the percentage of effectively hitting targets* and improved perception that *mimics the effect of slowing, or even stopping, time*. Sounds like V.A.T.S. mode - and if you know that you can access V.A.T.S. prior to getting the Pip-Boy ... it sure makes you think.
- The
*Visions of the Fog* quest, in which you're initiated into the Children of Atom, doesn't quite match the Punga Fruit Samba's levels of "screwed up", but makes up for it in terms of sheer terror and creepiness. You're told to drink out of an extremely irradiated spring that's said to kill even those actually wanting to join ranks with Atom. Upon doing so, and after taking a large hit of rads, you're thrown into a nightmarish sequence where you're following a ghostly figure through the Island in the middle of a rad storm. Other shadowy figures of various Island beasts stand alongside your path, simply watching, and the whole time you can hear a woman sobbing, but from god knows where. **Sole Survivor**: This can't be real... **Ghostly Woman**: <whispering> *Follow...*
- Depending on your actions (or inactions),
*The Way Life Should Be* could very well end in the *entire town* of Far Harbor slaughtering the synths in Acadia to avenge Avery's death at the hands of DiMA. Not only is it horrifying to see the Synths you've come to know there, *including Kasumi*, be murdered in cold blood, the absolute worst part is that *there's nothing you can do to stop the massacre.* Allen, the ringleader, not only utterly refuses to listen to your pleas to let the synths live, but is essential to boot. The only options you have are to either participate in the massacre yourself, or stand by and watch. You will have a sick feeling in the pit of your stomach for a long, long time afterwards.
- One of the quests Chase sends you on seems like a simple rescue at first, locate a lost synth and get them to safety. Unfortunately, after talking to Brooks in Far Harbor, things take an unexpectedly dark turn. You head for the synth, Derrick's last known location... only to find out that he isn't there and has just disappeared without even leaving behind a body. You then notice a trail of blood leading off into the woods... You track it all the way to an isolated Trapper den and confront them about Derrick, only to find out he was ripped apart by the local wildlife long before you arrived. As for his corpse, if you can pass a speech check, the Trapper will gloat that they didn't want him to go to waste and devoured his remains... all except for his head, which is handed over for you to bring back with you to Acadia. Even Chase is horrified at what happened.
- Ghoul Whale. You only hear about it from some unnamed NPC and see the bones, but just knowing such things exist is terrifying enough as is.
- The mannequins get some creepy scenes in the base game, like standing around a corpse holding machetes or standing around a corpse holding clipboards, but there is a sunken tugboat southwest of Fringe Cove, with several mannequins floating above it. There are mannequins staring out the portholes and standing around the ship with the following letter in the sunken boat:
"I can't wait to drop these damn mannequins off! The crew is starting to claim that they are hearing weird noises from the cargo, maybe they are just playing pranks on me? Whatever, we are almost there."
- There is also a mannequin in a coffin a little ways away from the boat, with 2 gold bars in the coffin.
- You can overhear a recommendation to go to Eden Meadows Cinemas, which will mark it on your map. Since most of the early quests in Far Harbor take place in the north of the map, it's likely you'll approach it from the north. If you do, what you'll see as you approach is literally dozens of ghouls silhouetted against the flickering drive-in screen. A terrifying image.
- A location serving as a Trapper hideout, Pine Crest Cavern, is mostly just another enemy dungeon. But then you find the door into Kitteredge Pass, where you find yourself in a moderately-sized labyrinth of narrow tunnels. The starting tunnel even has you dropping down into a shallow pool of water... and that's where you land right in the middle of a few feral ghouls. Then you're having to make your way through said narrow tunnels, wondering if there's going to be a snarling, rad-causing cannibal monster waiting for you around the corner...
- Overseer Valery Barstow. She's a loyal Vault-Tec employee who desperately wants to run increasingly sick experiments on unsuspecting people who just want a better life. Not to mention she looks far less healthy than any other Ghoul in the game...
- Barstow's screening process for new Vault residents carries some very dark implications, assuming it is representative of Vault-Tec's modus operandi as a whole (which it most likely is). The sociopathic ghoul dismisses every applicant that shows traits like independent thought or a less-than-euphoric opinion of the government, claiming people like these wouldn't work as a feasible baseline for the experiments. The poor slob she eventually chooses as her guinea pig instead is an incredibly dim-witted yes-man who'd jump off a cliff if she asked him to do her the favor. If that's the clientele Vault-Tec was aiming for all along, well... it's probably best not to think too much about the larger picture that was the whole nation-wide Vault experiment.
- The new human society Barstow and her cronies want(ed) to create raises some serious hackles as well. Imagine a world where physical exercise is deemed self-serving egotism unless you're riding a home trainer bike for days on end in order to generate power for the Vault, incentivized by being given electric shocks or hard drugs that eventually lead to cardiac arrest. Imagine a world where your hydration break drink is spiked with all manners of drugs to make you more compliant to everything, and to reduce your urge to eat to the point where you eventually won't even get out of bed anymore. Imagine a world where a simple ophthalmological checkup results in your thoughts being read or your opinion of your superiors being manipulated. You can still sleep easy? Well, there's also Barstow's inspired ideas for putting slot machines to more... productive use...
- Even worse, most of the Vault-Tec approved prototypes have a chance of killing the settlers who use them (with the exception of the Mood Enhancer soda dispenser and Barstow's prototypes). Vault-Tec's callous disregard for human life is well documented, but this time, it's on YOU if your settlers, who came to your Settlement in search of a better life, wind up dead as a result.
- Exploring Vault 88 is terrifying, because you never know what's just around the corner. You can clear out an area of Mole Rats easily enough, but scrap one wrong wall, and you'll have a swarm of Radscorpions, a Mythic Deathclaw, or an Annihilator Sentry Bot after you. Oh, and you'd better be packing some Rad-X, because the location was chosen because of the ready access to a
**lot** of uranium deposits.
- The ambient sounds as you move through the caves can make your neck crawl. The wind blowing through the abandoned subway tunnels can sound just like distant radio static, or someone whispering just on the verge of hearing... it
*is* the wind, right?
- Just because it's the official theme park of the biggest soft drink company in the Old America, doesn't mean that Nuka-World doesn't demonstrate all the good ol' fashioned absolute sociopathy and disregard for human safety that we've come to expect from the Pre-War world. Military-grade robots
*with functional weapons installed* were used in the Galactic Zone, the Safari Adventure area was populated by cloned creatures produced by an underground genetics facility capable of splicing DNA into all sorts of horrors, and one ride involves going down a literal *river* of Nuka-Cola Quantum, that glowing blue beverage that is as refreshing as it is horribly radioactive.
- And then there's the new monsters to encounter there (or rather, the non-human monsters):
- Gatorclaws, a ghoulified scientist's attempt to cross Jackson's Chameleons with alligator DNA, seasoned with an FEV sample taken from a Super Mutant. In other words, these are alligator-Deathclaw
*hybrids*. And there's nothing quite like sneaking through a hedge maze, hearing one's gurgling breath nearby, wondering what you'll see when you turn the next corner...
- Brahmiluffs, two-headed mutant cape buffalo. That's right, the animal known by big game hunters as "The Black Death" and kills more people in Africa each year than lions, was also featured in the park. Unsurprisingly, they're always hostile and charge as soon as they see you.
- Nuka-World has a bit of a bug problem. Besides the normal Bloatflies, Radscorpions, Bloodbugs and Stingwings you remember from the Commonwealth, there are also giant ants the size of small dogs,
*flying* ants that attack in hard-to-hit swarms, and mutant cave crickets nearly as big as you with apparently bulletproof chitin.
- Sometimes you'll hear Raiders threaten to dump unruly Traders outside the park's walls and leave them for the "Bloodworms." These monsters combine the "burrow underground then lunge at you" aspect of Mole Rats/Radscorpions with the "incubate inside corpses" aspect of Bloodbugs — watch for pulsating bovine corpses! Even when they're engaging you on the surface, they kick up so much dust when they surge after you that they can nigh-impossible to see,
*and* they like to attack in swarms. Yeah, you'll want to bring a flamer.
- Of course, melee oriented players can stumble across some nice Nightmare Retardant thanks to how the game's engine handles collisions. Take a swing with your trusty baseball bat, or better yet, Atom's Judgement and watch the formerly intimidating creatures go sailing through the air with all the grace of a pool noodle.
- Some apes have survived the War as "Ghoulrillas," deformed mutant gorillas. Thankfully they're peaceful to you... at least initially.
- And of course the literal river of Nuka-Cola Quantum has had the expected effect on certain mutant crustaceans. That's right, Nukalurks have returned!
- Even the "painted ghouls" are pretty creepy. What's even creepier is that Oswald the Outrageous meticulously paints these feral ghoul "friends" of his.
- A brief one from the trailer, but there's a shot of an elevator descending, when the corpse laying on the platform abruptly snaps upwards. Not because it's a ghoul playing dead, but because it's been hung by its neck from the top of the elevator shaft. We can only guess the story behind it, but presumably the raiders in the park decided they couldn't be bothered to spare the bullets for executions.
- The Grandchester Mystery Mansion is a mash-up of the Winchester Mansion and the case of Lizzie Borden. The overdramatic tone of the narrator and the cheesiness of the attraction makes it more sudden and frightening when he recounts not only how Lucy Grandchester's parents mistreated her, but the even
*worse* things she did to them.
- The mansion was owned by a couple whose daughter, Lucy, was a Creepy Child who skinned animals and nailed their hides to the underside of the furniture. Her father Hannibal disciplined her for her misbehavior by beating her, but her mother Morticia thought she was possessed by evil spirits and renovated the home to include doorways that opened onto brick walls, staircases leading to nowhere, and a room with the furniture nailed to the ceiling, all in an effort to confuse the spirits as they looked for Lucy.
- Some of Lucy's "pranks" include making a doll that looked like her father and hanging it from a noose, putting mice and poison in their food, and hiding a rusty spike in Hannibal's shoe that he impaled his foot on. After the last one, Hannibal went to her room to beat her, and while the cause is unknown, he was found dead with a pair of scissors shoved so far through his eye they cut his brain. Lucy claimed she was holding the scissors in self-defense when he came to beat her, and he tripped and fell onto them. When she was asked why his fingers were cut off, she said it was so he couldn't hold his cane anymore. Her mother was found dead in the master bedroom with a doll stuffed into her mouth, and Lucy said the doll did it because her mother wouldn't kiss it goodnight.
- Finally, Lucy was committed to an asylum, but she escaped on her eighteenth birthday. Nine days later she was found in her old home hanging from a noose.
- The narrator assures tourists that ghosts aren't real and even shows off some trick candles that police found in the house, used by Morticia's psychic for seances. But what most assuredly
*isn't* part of the ride is the young girl the player can occasionally notice running through the house as they explore it. It might be easy to just dismiss it as a real kid running around the place, until you come to the last encounter where she runs up to a door, opens it up, and goes through it — when the player opens the door, they find a brick wall and a Scare Chord plays.
- Bring along a scoped weapon, and just before you enter the house, you can see her watching you through the attic window. Nope, that's not creepy at all. Especially as the attic is completely sealed off.
- If you thought an amusement park was going to stop Vault-Tec's schemes, think again. Even in their fantastical vision of space travel, people weren't safe. Terminals in "Vault-Tec: Among the Stars" reveal that scientists were experimenting on innocent, wide-eyed park-goers.
- Experiment 1: use the "radiation scrubbers" in the exhibit to disrupt attendants' brainwaves with elecromagnetic fields. Experiment 2: subliminal suggestion via audio emitters. Experiment 3: release hypnotic pheromones from genetically-modified plants in the exhibit. Experiment 4: hit guests with doses of theta radiation from the on-site reactor. Experiment 5: use these experiments on the scientists performing experiments 1-4.
- Even without the secret experiments, the attraction will likely give fans who remember their lore a few shivers. Vault-Tec carried out their experiments in collaboration with what was to become the Enclave. Their goal was to use the knowledge gained from the Vault experiments to construct long distance colony ships to settle other worlds. The ride's intent was the make people open to this idea (and experiment on them).
- The situation John-Caleb Bradberton, founder of Nuka Cola is in when you meet him in game. Decapitated and hooked up to a machine that's keeping him alive forever with no way to move around and no one to interact with for centuries. Even if it is karmic you can't help but feel bad for the poor bastard since his isolation has made him a Death Seeker. Of course if you really don't need the Nuka-Nuke launcher or just don't want to give him the death he seeks, you could always leave him alive with Sierra Petrovita for company.
- Nuka-World is also full of these moments. Galactic Zone has Assaultrons and Sentry Bots, Dry Rock Gulch encourages kids to have a shootout with one of the Protectrons... with a
*real gun*. And then there's the fact that it's possible for your children to be traumatized for life (if not worse) by being bit by a poisonous reptile in the Safari Zone (and according to one terminal, treatment involves being sent to Nuka-Town USA to file out paperwork before they'll administer any sort of treatment... after you show them your park passes... and that even if you last long enough to jump through those hoops and get treated? The cost of your treatment gets billed *directly to you*. And if you're too paralyzed to walk to Nuka-Town USA yourself, you need to pay for a stretcher, a sum of four hundred dollars (in FO!2077 money, which would likely come out to about 50 bucks in RW!2016 money). And if you can't prove you paid to get into the park? Employees are simply instructed to call security, without treating the injured party.
- The Nuka World raider gangs themselves. See, the park used to be a massive trading outpost until Colter and the three gangs came in, shot most of the traders and put the rest in explosive collars (ala New Vegas'
*Dead Money* DLC) to work as slaves in Nuka Town. If going the evil route you have to try your best to keep these scumbags happy and content, lest they make good on the death threats they keep hurling in your direction for slightly favoring one of their rivals. Made worst by the fact that one gang will betray you no matter what options you take which shows how quickly these guys will turn on you if they don't like how you run the place. Of course, each gang has their own special brand of evil that sets them apart from the others:
- The Pack are a bunch of wild warriors who dress in colorful and silly clothing, but don't let their appearance fool you, these guys are all stone cold killers and savages. They specialize in taming the dangerous wildlife found in the wasteland and unleashing it on unsuspecting victims, an ability that they pass along to you with a special type of grenade. Worse still, if the player explores their central base they'll find food items labeled Mystery Jerky and Mystery Bacon which implies that they either cook their victims into food for themselves or as treats for their pets. Not to mentioned the staged fights between the traders and their mutant creatures or the fact that they apparently regularly feed people to their animals.
- The Operators seem like a lighter shade of gray compared to the two other gangs at first, what with their professionalism and distaste for the barbaric ways of their two rivals. Under those fancy suits and styled haircuts however, are an entire group of ruthless assassins who only care about one thing: caps. For the right price you could have an entire army of Agent 47s gunning for you and your friends and family... and you'll likely never even see them coming. Oh, and they also apparently dabble in creating mind control chems which they happily test out on traders with all the enthusiasm of any Vault-Tec scientist. Just imagine being hit with a strange gas and then being forced to watch in horror as you are asked to mutilate yourself in increasingly graphic ways all while you are helpless to stop.
- Last, and most certainly least (and the worst), we have the Disciples, who are all sadistic serial killers... there really isn't any other way to say it. They don't really care much about turning a profit so much as they like to have fun, which in this case means torturing, mutilating, maiming and just plain tearing up any poor fool that dares cross their path. Their entire base looks less like a hideout and more like a slaughterhouse with bloody spikes, body parts and body parts on bloody spikes decorating the place. If you explore the place you can even find helpless prisoners chained to the walls waiting for their turn to be tortured, butchered and ripped apart... maybe not even in that order. While all of the Nuka World gangs are vile scum most fans agree that these guys are the at the very bottom below everyone else.
-
*Revolted* starts as an innocuous, hilarious, So Bad, It's Good Game Within a Game genre throwback to the likes of Duke Nukem, replete with very hilarious text to speech based So Bad, It's Good dialogue. And then you confront "the Professor" and he turns into Glitch and Jump Scare you. Fortunately it's easy to dispatch. As the game ends in a Blue Screen of Death, you decided to get out and you found out that the Glitch made its way to the real world! Thankfully just like before, it's easy to dispatch, you got all your guns back, and it drops items based on the Revolted game.
- From the same developer comes
*Vault Buddy*, which is just another companion mod. Except the place it inhabits gives massive jumpscare, and the doll is basically Fallout version of Chucky meets Slenderman.
-
*Concussion* starts off as a rather basic, simple bounty-based quest mod. Then it became Psychological Horror meets Surreal Horror.
-
*Maxwell's World* brings back the "Doom" part of Amusement Park of Doom so much that Nuka-World feels like a lighthearted walk in a park.
-
*Children of Ug-Qualtoth* starts out similar to the Dunwich Borers location in the main game, but quickly evolves into a full on horror game, complete with an Eldritch Abomination (though it's an asset flip of the Mirelurk Queen in the main game) and a scary ass Eldritch Location.
- Hell, you don't even have to visit the location yet to get some scares. In some way or another, if the new enemies (aside from the aforementioned Mirelurk Queen) Are more or less, Elite Mooks for the existing Feral Ghouls across the Commonwealth. If being Lightning Bruisers wasn't enough... THEY CAN'T BE TARGETED IN VATS (more specifically, you CAN target them, but only to help you see their general direction from you. You can't shoot them in VATS). Especially if you play survival mode, it won't matter if you are equipped with endgame Power Armor and Heavy guns, these fuckers will down you in two hits (that is, if you can tank the first hit... the additional hits will come soon after). It won't be long before you learn to FEAR THEM. In due time, you WILL be scared of their signature custom whispering and ghostly sounds.
- Even worse, as if the struggle of timing, planning ahead, and/or just plain surviving them and/or defeating them from the skin of your teeth wasn't enough.. THEY CAN RESPAWN.. MULTIPLE TIMES, to repeat the process all over again, and again, and again.
- Hell, you don't even have to fight them yourselves to learn to fear them. Just ask the Raiders, Gunners, Super Mutants, even DEATHCLAWS, that have survived encounters with these monstrosities. Or don't. The amount of times you can expect to see them survive against these monsters (They literally don't have a name when targeted in VATS) can be counted on less than 1 hand. That's right, these... things, can rip through even people in Power Armor, as if it was wet tissue paper. It will soon not be uncommon to find a base with aforementioned mooks, only to find those places empty, and those monsters and/or their feral ghoul allies waiting for you...
- Pro tip: it would be WISE to stock up on any legendary item that has the 'Ghoul Slayer" effect; sure these can act as little more than speed bumps against them, but it's better than nothing...
- The Creation Club Anti-Material Rifle comes with its own quest,
*The Paper Mirror*, and it's easily as spooky as anything in the proper game. You find the titular Paper Mirror, a single paper predicting your own future in the Witchcraft Museum (already a spooky place thanks to the deathclaw playing haunted house there) and eventually, you'll check out the bounty mentioned in it. The bounty leads you on a path of murder, hunting down everyone else who also had a part of this future-predicting diary. One guy kills himself just to deny you the satisfaction. You do have the option of sparing one woman begging for you to go, but if you do, the diary somehow anticipated that too and punished you with three bounty hunters after you with the same instructions you got for the gang. In the end, you never know what the deal is with that Paper Mirror...but at least you get a nice .50 cal Anti-Material rifle out of it.
- The Whispering Hills mod allows players to go toe to toe with Pyramid Head of Silent Hill Fame While it's not lore-friendly to either Fallout or Silent Hill, and Pyramid Head himself can still be defeated. It still captures the atmosphere of his presence in Silent Hill 2 and his further appearances. It is EXTREMELY easy to die to him if you don't maintain a good distance. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Fallout4 |
Fantastic Four (2015) / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
- The cataclysm on Planet Zero. The four friends have to scale a rock wall to avoid the rapidly-approaching plasma and Victor loses his grip, with Reed's hand and a tether cord being the only things keeping him from falling. It looks like Reed might be able to pull him up, when a geyser of plasma splashes on Victor, burning his wrist, cutting through the tether and causing his helmet to
*melt onto his face* (his agonized shrieking makes it even worse to watch). Reed's grip loosens when the plasma burns his hand and Victor falls into the newly-formed lake of plasma.
- The aftermath of the protagonists' unauthorized trip to Planet Zero,
*especially* for Reed. To the best of his knowledge, as a direct consequence of his own stupidity and recklessness, Victor has been dropped into an unidentified green energy and is either dead or stranded in a parallel universe with no food or water, a broken environment suit, and no way home and will most likely be dead within a week. Johnny fares little better; Reed can see what to anyone who doesn't know any better looks like him slowly and painfully burning to death. He can also hear Ben, covered in a ton of rocks, unable to move and begging him to help. When he tries desperately to crawl over to his childhood friend, he turns around... *and realizes he's stretching.*
- The next scene is of the Fantastic Four having gained their powers... and no knowledge of how to actually control any of them. Cue Body Horror in spades.
- The hallway attack scene where Doom head-explodes a number of people unfortunate enough to get in his way (and not even in his way, just kind of standing off to the side screaming in completely-justified horror) is genuinely unsettling, and surprisingly violent for a PG-13 film.
- One of the bonus features reveals a rather unsettling detail about The Thing's condition. It turns out that Ben Grimm is still
*inside* all of those rocks that make up his form. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/FantasticFour2015 |
Fantastic Four Duology / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
- The whole accident which gave the four (and Victor) their powers. First, the cosmic storm arrives like a real life Advancing Wall of Doom which blows through the ship and hits everyone. Adding to that, when the cosmic burst hit everyone, we see subtle changes to their bodies foreshadowing their powers. We see Reed's face and body distorting and stretching a bit, Sue turning invisible back and forth and Johnny catching on fire. While not too disturbing, it's so surreal that it's bound to shock anyone the first time they see it.
- Dr. Doom without his mask is eerie to look at, with the metal scarred face seen in this picture.
- By the climax of the first film, Doctor Doom shoots a bolt of electricity through Ned's chest. In the trailers, he electrocutes him near water.
- Halfway through the first movie, Reed attempts to remove his powers using a chamber-like device he created to harness the cosmic storm's energy. When he first walks out of it, it seems like it worked and that he's back to normal. He's not. Instead, we shot a close up shot of his face melting and drooping downward and then it cuts to the whole left half of his body becoming limp as he collapses to the floor.
- Victor has a subtly creepy way of speaking compared to the Large Ham Marvel villains shown during it's time.
- One particularly creepy moment that stands out. The scene where Victor was using hidden camera's in the Baxter Building. Spying on Reed's attempts to study the groups abilities and find a way to return to normal. One can't help but wonder, exactly how did he even get those camera's into the building in the first place?
- You get to see Doom's scarred face
*very* briefly in the sequel. When you see it, you'll be glad it's only there for a second.
- What's left of ||General Hager|| after Doom ||stole the Surfer's board|| in Siberia.
- The chilling image of Gah Lak Tus looming over the Earth◊ wouldn't look out of place in a Cosmic Horror Story. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/FantasticFourDuology |
Fallout: Equestria / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
- "Once upon a time, in the magical land of Equestria..." - everything after that in the prologue is an Establishing Series Moment.
- Littlepip's first glimpse of the Crapsaccharine World she lives in causes her to collapse and have a panic attack. And then we are shown the first sight of the decimated Equestria is Sweet Apple Acres; indicating that Nothing Is the Same Anymore.
- The megaspells that wiped out much of Equestria at the end of the war irradiated the land. Not only does Littlepip have to face the horrors of the wasteland but remember she is being exposed to various levels of radiation most of the time.
- The very thought that characters of
*My Little Pony* participated in a violent, bloody war that involved religious/racial annihilation, an assassination attempt on Princess Celestia, the mass murder of an entire school, the Mane Six forming ministries with questionable motives and practices, and the war ending with nuclear holocaust.
- And the fact that it's written so in-character that it seems quite possible.
- The nuclear byproducts of the radiation and Taint (actually the Impelled Metamorphosis Potion created by Twilight Sparkle to turn ponies into alicorns). While Taint does have its quirks, such as being able to regrow lost limbs, its penalties are more severe. Taint has created such beasts as bloatsprites, bloodwing bats, balefire phoenixes, etc.
- The alicorns are one of the major threats in the wasteland, standing in for the Super Mutants from
*Fallout 3*. They are all part of a Hive Mind commanded by the Goddess, whose goal is to assimilate all creatures under her control. The Goddess herself was created accidentally from Twilight's attempt to artifically create alicorns during the war. She, or at least at the center of her conscience, is Trixie, who was to be the first test subject of the experiments.
- The transformation process used by the Goddess is not actually seen but it at least involves being dragged into a vat of chemicals by telekinetic tentacles. Fallout: Equestria - Project Horizons took the liberty of filling in the blanks, revealing a pony's body is melted down and then reshaped into an alicorn while the Goddess strips the mind to suit her needs.
- A haunting radio message from a mother who lost most of her family to raiders, and then her surviving son ate irradiated fruit and became close to death. Then the message repeats. Who knows how long ago the message was actually recorded.
- Ponyville has become a Wretched Hive for raiders, with the Carousel Boutique empty and abandoned, and Twilight's library turned into a horrific den and is decorated with the corpses of dead ponies and animals. One poor mare gets a Crucified Hero Shot, nailed to a bookcase by railroad spikes.
- The Ironshod Firearms factory is guarded by killer robots, powered by brains, and shoot anything that moves. And all the while spewing out gestures of friendship: "Don't run! We just want to be friends!"
- "PINKIE PIE IS WATCHING YOU FOREVER!"
- Like the Vaults in the
*Fallout* games, the Stables are hellish in their own ways. Unlike the Vaults, the Stables were actually designed to protect ponies, but Scootaloo designed most of them to have social experiments that would mould communities that would not repeat the mistakes of the past. Unfortunately, most Stables failed in some capacity:
- Stable 1, 2 and 3 all did quite well, though Scootaloo designed the first to never open until all of its original occupants (the Princesses and Mane Six) died as a payback for what they had done to Equestria; Stable 2 was never meant to open; and Stable 3 lasted a century before Pink Cloud infiltrated it.
- Stable 24's started out normal aside from having an Overstallion and a culture leaning more towards masculinity. Until a filly used magic to accidentally fuse several animals together to create the chimera species. Within a matter of days, the chimera swept through the Stable, paralyzing everyone and then injecting their eggs into the victims. The baby chimera then crawled their way out of the bodies. Littlepip and Calamity investigate the Stable and have to blow it up, wiping out the chimeras.
- Then, there is Stable 29. It lacked an Overmare but was instead monitored by a Crusader Mainframe supercomputer. Unfortunately, A.I. Is a Crapshoot. When the Stable's water talisman is damaged and cannot be fixed, the Crusader Mainframe followed protocol and "preserved pony life", by systematically killing all of the residents to balance out the amount of water. The Stable lasted three months, with a last hurrah in the form of a party hosted by Vinyl Scratch. Among the victims was a whole classroom of children who are gassed to death, two ponies are burnt to death by a cleaning robot, a father and son die in an elevator crash, and the final residents all dying in the Stable's atrium, with a noticeboard marked with the blood-written message "STOP KILLING US!"
- Stable 101, Red Eye's home, was turned into a mass laboratory to replicate the alicorn transformation process, with all of the residents poisoned for Red Eye to begin his goal to become Equestria's new god.
- Silver Bell's terrible circumstances. Her parents were murdered before her eyes by raiders, and then her older sister Memory left to find help, only to never come back. In her despair, Silver Bell became a Stepford Smiler and decided to act like Pinkie Pie to deny her own survivor's guilt, dying her coat and mane pink and chopping off her own horn, renaming herself "Pinkie Bell". Oh, and there is a balefire bomb in the silo that is still armed.
- Diamond Tiara's suicide. Trapped in the Shattered Hoof Rehabilitation Clinic with an army of cannibalistic inmates, Diamond went mad and slashed her arms to avoid being eaten alive.
- Mr. Topaz's death involves Littlepip dropping grenades down his throat, and a third of his body is blown away. He dies instantly.
- Despite being one of the good guys, Watcher, who's a
*grown-up Spike*, shows how it's a bad idea to provoke him by roasting alive an Enclave pegasus in her own armor when her squad entered Watcher's domain and demanded he surrender Calamity to them, then attempted to *bribe* him with gems.
- The treacherous Four Stars transportation company who were zebra sympathisers. They were willing to murder thousands of innocent ponies in Manehattan to save their own skins by hiding in a Stable hidden under their company building. All they got for their troubles was a Stable full of feral zebra ghouls.
- The Ministry of Morale is basically Nineteen Eighty-Four's Ministries all rolled into one, with a drugged up Pinkie at the helm. It monitored and spied on every Equestrian citizen to look for sympathisers, traitors, naysayers, and anyone who was breaking the country's morale. Most were taken for interrogation and would have their memories examined and removed so they could be "happy".
- The hallway of posters Littlepip and Velvet encounter in the MoM building, each with a huge picture Pinkie, staring and watching forever.
- Pinkie's death is never seen, but it is implied she was killed by the Manehattan balefire bomb and all Littlepip finds is her skeleton.
- The ghoul Mad Scientist who kidnapped the population of Gutterville to use them as guinea pigs in his attempt to find a cure for Taint. Those he tested it on died, and those who survived live long enough for their bodies to be twisted into horrible shapes.
- While Tenpony Tower is perhaps the wasteland's most civilized place, its laws are very punishing, with theft meaning immediate execution.
- The revelation that Fluttershy of all people was inadvertently responsible for the megaspell holocaust of Equestria.
- Hellhounds are considered the most dangerous creatures in the wasteland and prove it with their great strength, claws, and ability to use weapons. They are used as angry guard dogs by Red Eye and later by the Enclave using mind control helmets.
- Fillydelphia. Just Fillydelphia. Based on the Pitt from
*Fallout 3*, Fillydelphia was the industrial capital of Equestria during wartime. It has become Red Eyes domain and is used for mass production via slave labour. The city is surrounded by an impenetrable metal wall which is guarded by griffins around the clock and anyone who tries to escape is immediately shot and dragged back to work.
- The Fillydelphia FunFarm built by Pinkie has become the slaves quarters, with the parks central giant barn turned into a massive factory overseen by Red Eye. The parks Alpha Omega Hotel is used as a home for colts and fillies, only they are being brainwashed by Red Eyes charisma and words, and taught how to use weaponry. And then there is the Pit, an enormous gladiator pit where ponies and other creatures fight in Gladiator Games to the death, much to the glee of the bloodthirsty audience, which mostly consists of slaves. Their glee could be justified since this is the only enjoyment they get in their miserable lives.
- Xenith's life in Fillydelphia has been horrific. Beaten, abused and raped, Xenith has survived by sheer will and pretending to be a mute to avoid having her tongue cut out.
- Angel Bunny is depicted as a Killer Rabbit, nicknamed "Doombunny" by Xenith's tribe, and was known as a deadly warrior on the battlefield.
- Apple Bloom dies of radiation poisoning minutes after the balefire bombing of Fillydelphia. She might have survived if the door for Stable 0 had been put on.
- The Littlehorn Massacre was the darkest day of the war. Due to misunderstandings between the school and a passing convoy of zebras, the zebras were killed, prompting an assassin to sneak into the school and unleash the Pink Cloud, killing everyone in the school.
- Chapter 28 involves Littlepip's group returning to Stable 2 to wage war on the invading Steel Rangers. It is a long, drawn out battle that drags Littlepip through her former home and seeing many familiar faces murdered in cold blood. The biggest casualties include the welcoming committee sent to greet the Steel Rangers, and a party of fillies who had just gained their Cutie Marks.
- Twilight Sparkle's death is terrifying. She is trapped in an inescapable room for three days, going mad from dehydration and thinking she is seeing hallucinations of Trixie. It actually is Trixie, who has become the Goddess, and intends on making Twilight immortal. She then uses telekinetic tentacles to grab Twilight and drag her kicking and screaming into a vat of IMP.
- The fleshy hospital horrors Littlepip and Xenith encounter, based on the Centaurs from
*Fallout 3*. They are horrible masses of flesh with tentacles for tongues and sunken eyes. They can paralyze victims using the Stare, then rape and impregnate them. Their offspring then force their way out of the body and control it. The original victim, Peachy Pie, was turned into a monster two days after exposure to Taint. She had to be dissected alive by her best friend Sunny Days to put her out of her misery since the monster she became was immune to lethal injections. This ended up being a cautionary tale for Twilight (and the Goddess) to carefully reconfigure the IMP.
- The Black Book is a zebra-written spellbook that allows its reader/owner to perform Black Magic like necromancy and creating soul jars. It is actually a Soul Jar for its owner, an insane zebra alchemist who whispers to the book's readers, manipulating them into learning and performing the evil magic within.
- Arbu friendliest town in the wasteland or really a town made up of cannibals, who kill and eat all those who die in their town, and only those who eat their first hearts are marked as a member of the town and allowed to vote. The only one who knows the truth and tries to warn outsiders is a crazed old stallion, Grandpa Rattle, who is often kept locked up. Littlepip discovers the truth and goes on a full-scale rampage, executing everyone who has the town mark, aside from the foals and Grandpa Rattle.
- The Pink Cloud is perhaps the most nightmarish element of the wasteland. Appearing as a pink-coloured mist, it is actually necromancy magic that acts as a Deadly Gas, sucking the lifeforce out of everything it consumes. Those who are unlucky to be caught in it will likely die in minutes, their bodies fusing with whatever items they are touching, and their bones dyed pink. Those who survive it become Canterlot ghouls like Steelhooves and Star Sparkle, but are permanently fused to whatever item they are touching. Known victims are Twilight's mother, Princess Luna, Lyra Heartstrings, and Rarity.
- An undead filly has been mutated by the cloud so much that her Cutie Mark
*is* the Pink Cloud.
- The skeleton in Fluttershy's office hanging from the window. Just another nameless victim of the Pink Cloud. Nope. This is actually Rarity's corpse. The unicorn sacrificed herself to save Fluttershy and Angel, sticking her forehoof through a hole in a magically regenerating window to prevent the Pink Cloud from entering. She then used the last of her energy to teleport Fluttershy to safety, then recorded a memory orb message for Twilight using Angel as a host.
- Canterlot's final fate. Princess Celestia and Luna created a forcefield to keep out the balefire bombs, only for zebra agents to have installed the Pink Cloud inside Canterlot's treasury dragon. The residents of Canterlot were in an inescapable death trap.
- The Canterlot Ministry of Peace hub was built into a grove of magically-grown trees. Thanks to the Pink Cloud, it looks like a Haunted House.
- Rarity had Snips use his specialty in cutting magic to split her soul into
*forty-three* pieces, and used the Black Book to place forty-two pieces in statuettes of her friends. The procedure used to do it is described as redefining torture.
- Chapter 39 is used filled with traumatic events. Steelhooves is unceremoniously killed by a Hellhound, the Grand Pegasus Enclave descend from the clouds to "save" it via Operation Cauterize. They then proceed to blast Canterlot off the face of the earth, killing all the harmless ghouls there including Twilight's mother, and then destroy Friendship City just to eliminate one elderly Dashite.
- The filly who is terrified of Littlepip, calling her "Hellmare" for what she did in Arbu, runs into the path of an Enclave soldier's disintegration gun and is vaporized. Littlepip carries her ashes around in a bottle as a Tragic Keepsake.
- The Everfree Forest is twice as dangerous after two-hundred years to grow into a place where everything wants to either eat, kill, or hurt you. There are Hellhounds, Cockatrices, sentient mushrooms that chase victims and transform into their victims, and the plant equivalent of an anti-air rifle. And then there is Killing Joke, a variation of Poison Joke that can perform instant transformation on a victim's body or mind, with the end results that double as cruel jokes based on off-hand comments they may have made ages ago. The plant's modus operandi is basically Death by Irony. For example, a Hellhound is transformed into a pony and almost instantly killed by his fellow Hellhounds were it not for Littlepip, and even then her final fate is running off and being chased by those Hellhounds (whether she can convince them of her former identity is up in the air).
- Fluttershy was transformed into a yellow and pink willow tree by the Killing Joke and placed on a hill able to see Equestria's destruction.
- Princess Celestia's final fate. After Luna died, she abandoned Canterlot and destroyed the remaining balefire bombs, but unintentionally irradiated Whitetail Woods and the reservoir of Equestria's main river. She then went to the Single Pegasus Project to control the weather, but due to Rainbow Dash's tamperings with the Crusader Mainframe within, she became trapped in the computer systems unable to do anything but observe her subjects over two-hundred years.
- The finale. Littlepip travels to the Single Pegasus Project, ready to put herself into what's essentially an And I Must Scream state, in order to finally move the clouds. It comes across more of a Tear Jerker mixed with Moment of Awesome, but the buildup is scary - Littlepip never outright says, or even thinks via internal monologue, what she's planning to do. Just hints, so even the readers aren't sure what's going on; the way she thinks it, it can be interpreted as anything from just another mission to a suicide attempt (her occasional remarks to herself that, soon, she can rest for a long time, don't make it any less scary). It isn't until Calamity figures it out that the readers are finally treated to the truth...and then they have to watch Littlepip send herself to a lifetime of just being trapped like Princess Celestia, albeit with more control over the weather. Sure, it's mostly Tear Jerker, but the Nightmare Fuel is still there.
- Mixed with Tearjerker, but the simple fact that all the pain and suffering that the worlds' been going through for two centuries was the result of Princess Celestia when she was deciding the location for Luna's School. There were three potential locations that were perfect for Lunas' School to be built at, but Celestia settled on having the school built at Littlehorn due to there being a Canyon nearby to the school that was shaped like a Crescent Moon, and that Celestia wanted to make a joke to Luna when she revealed the School as a gift by beginning with a joke that she's going to
*"Send Lunas' Students To The Moon"*. Then the Disaster Dominoes began to fall when the Littlehorn Massacre happened, spiraling out-of-control to the point where Equestria wound up getting bombed out by the Zebras, and the survivors spending the next 200 years fighting and killing one-another in order to survive. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/FalloutEquestria |
Fantastic Four Duology / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
- The whole accident which gave the four (and Victor) their powers. First, the cosmic storm arrives like a real life Advancing Wall of Doom which blows through the ship and hits everyone. Adding to that, when the cosmic burst hit everyone, we see subtle changes to their bodies foreshadowing their powers. We see Reed's face and body distorting and stretching a bit, Sue turning invisible back and forth and Johnny catching on fire. While not too disturbing, it's so surreal that it's bound to shock anyone the first time they see it.
- Dr. Doom without his mask is eerie to look at, with the metal scarred face seen in this picture.
- By the climax of the first film, Doctor Doom shoots a bolt of electricity through Ned's chest. In the trailers, he electrocutes him near water.
- Halfway through the first movie, Reed attempts to remove his powers using a chamber-like device he created to harness the cosmic storm's energy. When he first walks out of it, it seems like it worked and that he's back to normal. He's not. Instead, we shot a close up shot of his face melting and drooping downward and then it cuts to the whole left half of his body becoming limp as he collapses to the floor.
- Victor has a subtly creepy way of speaking compared to the Large Ham Marvel villains shown during it's time.
- One particularly creepy moment that stands out. The scene where Victor was using hidden camera's in the Baxter Building. Spying on Reed's attempts to study the groups abilities and find a way to return to normal. One can't help but wonder, exactly how did he even get those camera's into the building in the first place?
- You get to see Doom's scarred face
*very* briefly in the sequel. When you see it, you'll be glad it's only there for a second.
- What's left of ||General Hager|| after Doom ||stole the Surfer's board|| in Siberia.
- The chilling image of Gah Lak Tus looming over the Earth◊ wouldn't look out of place in a Cosmic Horror Story. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/FantasticFour2005 |
Fallout 3 / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
Despite its 'art major science' and moments of lighthearted goofiness, there are parts of
*Fallout 3* that make *Silent Hill* look like *Mister Rogers' Neighborhood.*
# As a Moments page, all spoilers are unmarked.
- The Dunwich Building. The name alone should be a tip off that this is
*not* a good place—it's borrowed straight out of a story by H. P. Lovecraft.
- In Meresti Station, where the vampires are, there can be a glitch where the head used in baby carriage traps falls from the ceiling or bounces around after the carriage trap is set off.
- In Tranquility Lane, activating certain items in an abandoned house reveals a computer console where a wall used to be. This is a lot creepier than it sounds. The items make an eerie tone when clicked, and a buzz when the order is wrong. Then it feels like creepy Betty Braun will appear at any minute to stop you.
- And that's for the happy ending for Tranquility Lane.
- You step into that clean, sterilized world, and look down at those pods, and all you know is something terribly wrong is going on here - and you're going to have to submit to whatever it is if you want to get your father back. And then you actually get into a pod, the screen comes down, and a face flashes across it - just for a moment - before the needles sink into your head. That's the beginning. That's before you try looking at your Pipboy, and realize just how helpless you are.
- Just in case you were doubting how powerless you actually are, you might start to think that Betty is a little bit evil, and you might think to try to punish her. If you do, she casually tells you that won't work, and that you have to pay for trying...then
*instantly kills you.* She does this even if you activate the failsafe, likely due to an oversight. Regardless of whether you think her ultimate fate is appropriate, you have NO say in the matter; try to do anything to her, and she casually obliterates you.
- Even that tiny detail has been made disturbing: instead of telling the proper time, the watch your virtual self is wearing is permanently frozen. Just like the ones at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
- Also in Tranquility Lane; "Go make Timmy Neusbaum cry." Sure! "Go break up a marriage." Okay. "Go kill that lady in a funny way." ... Alright... "I want you to take this knife and brutally murder everyone in this peaceful suburb in first person as they run screaming from you." You will end up killing some of them as they hide crying behind their beds. It's just messed up! And somehow, the whole thing being in TV Land black and white just makes it worse.
- It's very telling that you do lose karma from doing these things! To (most of) these people,
*this* is reality and it's not exactly stated how far the simulation goes to make you truly *feel* things...
- It gets even better! If you're astute, you'll notice that when you kill everyone, Timmy is missing. Wonder what happened to him? Check the front of the Neusbaum house; there's a garden gnome there that wasn't before. When you look at it, its name is Timmy.
- And your father is there -as a dog and probably conscious based on his "responses" to your comments and the fact that he mentions missing being upright or having opposable thumbs-, watching the ten year old version of his son/daughter go about doing evil things and slashing everyone in the neighborhood with a creepy mask on. He doesn't comment on it, probably because he doesn't blame you for it since you do end up saving him, but it must have been strongly unpleasant for sure.
- Don't forget the 50s sitcom music on perpetual loop as you stab.
- Even that music is specially creepy. You might have noticed that it has something none of the other songs in the game have - a hard loop break. That is to say, unlike the other music, it doesn't just loop into itself, it
*restarts*. Really sells the "everything is fake" aspect.
- The worst part is Old Lady Dithers. She's the only one (not counting you, Braun, and [presumably] "Doc") who is aware of the true nature of Tranquility Lane for some reason (some theorize it's because the memory chip Pinkerton stole from Vault 112 to use in Harkness was from her pod). Essentially, she's trapped in a lucid dream. And since we're not given an explanation for why she knows it's a simulation there's no way to know if she's been lucid for a month, a year, or the entire 202 years she's been trapped in the simulation (meaning she remembers all her deaths and resurrections).
- If you look at the terminal for her pod, it notes abnormal readings - including extreme stress levels, "ERROR" for blood pressure, and a 0.00 degree temperature. It also advises checking the connections, implying that her pod is in need of maintenance.
- When you get the good ending to the simulation, Betty turns even creepier. How? By switching back and forth from her little girl voice to Braun's old, raspy German accent.
- Braun's terminal gives you a glimpse at the other 'simulations' he's run before switching to Tranquility Lane, and a brief glimpse into his inner thoughts. It's... certainly not appealing to read how gleeful he is whenever one of the 'residents' suffers a horrific death (In 'Toucan Lagoon', some of his playthings wither away from scurvy, others are eaten by mako sharks. In 'Slalom Chalet', he records an incident where Dithers slipped and impaled herself on an iron fence). It hammers in the fact that Braun has done this for centuries without fail, and only ever got bored of the setting he committed his atrocities in.
- Even worse; Braun has been running Tranquility Lane for far longer than any of the other simulations, specifically because the familiar comfort of American suburbia increases his victims torment when he breaks the illusion. He even wiped the records of the earlier simulations because none of them compares to what he can do in this one! Sure, the horrors he inflicted on his hapless victims were certainly traumatic, but they occured in distant locations like a tropical lagoon or the Alps. It added a kind of disconnect that dulled the trauma ever so slightly. There's no such mercy here. In the words of
*Calvin and Hobbes*: "If you're not safe in your own home, you're not safe *anywhere!*"
- The closest thing to a Good Ending for this mission? A failsafe option that involves a
*squad of Chinese commandos* rushing in and massacring everyone! Why is this even an option at all? Because this particular program is actually an addition from the *Operation Anchorage* virtual reality program, given to Braun by General Chase himself! This is the reason for why the people trapped in the simulation will die for real instead of just resetting as normal. That's right, the best thing you can do for Braun's victims is a Mercy Kill, by invoking the same exact fear they'd been dreading before going into the Vault!
- Entering Vault 87 by asking Joseph of Little Lamplight for help, thus avoiding all of Murder Pass, is still unnerving. It's a tragic, horrible Vault that was one of the doomed ones, but that's not the only reason why. It's trashed and filled with blood, body parts and bones, and a lot of the doors are bathed in a hellish red light. Soon after entering the Vault, there is a door you can open. The red light spreads into a Murder Pass tunnel and there is a naked female mannequin just standing there. The damn thing also seems to be looking right at YOU. Not the Lone Wanderer, YOU. It must be even worse to have gone through hell to traverse Murder Pass only to round a corner and see THAT thing. Plenty of video games have mannequins that come to life, and
*Fallout 3* has incredibly off-putting supernatural elements. Almost makes one want to fire a mini nuke at the mannequin.
- If you press Carol, an Underworld ghoul, you can ask her what it was like the day the bombs dropped. Her family was running to their house cellar and her father went back out to help some people in when the bomb dropped. Carol recalls seeing her father vaporized, and only his shadow left. Shadows on walls and streets and prints in shoes were all that were left of some Japanese citizens after the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These shadows are still there today.
- Mirelurks are quite creepy. Maybe it's because they have no necks and their faces appear to be just a mass of stuff. Or how they're always hunched over and shuffle towards you. Or the fact they seem so humanoid at first that they could be mistaken for some sort of horribly mutated wastelander.
- Mirelurk Kings. Aw, look, they're smiling at you! Just like the Joker!
- Mirelurk Kings, mutant snapping turtles, are even worse in the concept art, where they are shown with spiked clubs and nets weighed down with human skulls. As seen in this concept art the mirelurk kings were planned on being tribal savages. The idea that these freaks hunting down humans with that sort of intelligence is horrifying.
- The Feral Ghouls from
*Fallout 3*. Especially that noise they make as they run towards you. And just what they are is horrifying...people who used to be sane and rational that were afflicted with this horrible sickness that can't be cured or gotten rid of. They just degenerate unstoppably. Meeting friendly Ghoul NPCs makes it all the worse because you realize that they're going to end up feral. And even if you help everyone else in the Wastes, you can't help them.
- Keep in mind, it's been left ambiguous why some ghouls quickly go feral and others from before the War still haven't? Is it a case of genetic factors, the speed in which they initially became ghoulified, further radiation exposure and will they
*all* eventually succumb to that fate? All of the above? The worse theory by far is that going feral has a mental component, that it occurs to those who have simply lost the will to keep on living?
- Jason Bright was a feral ghoul who recovered his sanity. It was never explained how it happened, yet he saw it as an act of God. So however it happened, there is hope.
- Making things worse, ghouls are quick little monsters. If you're trying to remain unseen, you'll probably keep your Pipboy's light off. But this makes them near impossible to see, so you'll find them running up on you and mauling you before you can get into V.A.T.S. In a dark subway, or a museum, where hallways converge and there's no way to watch your back, it's inevitable.
- And then there's the Reavers that
*Broken Steel* adds. Twice the HP of a Deathclaw, twice as fast, deal the same 100 HP damage plus a poison-like drain, throw crippling radioactive gore grenades at range, and occasionally go into an invincible "spazzing" state. Add to that their freakish grinning face and green smoke aura, and you've got a recipe for nightmare.
- Super Mutants, in all their various forms. Imagine walking around D.C trying to find Galaxy News Radio and then out of nowhere a Super Mutant Brute and several Centaurs just utterly dismember you. And that, as Three Dog says, makes you one of the lucky ones! Super Mutants in D.C. don't normally just kill their victims, they drag them to Vault 87, or what's left of it, and then either eat the victims alive or mutate them with FEV.
- Taking it further, Fawkes' origin, not to mention all of the horrible things that happened to victims of the FEV virus when they
*didn't* become Super Mutants.
- Another example, the mocking laughs of five Super Mutants as a group of captives cries for help. Wait, no, the first four were crying for help. The last one was crying in pain as a Super Mutant gnawed on his arm.
- The failed F.E.V. mutants return in the Fallout: New Vegas mod fittingly named Monster Mod: Wasteland Edition. Think they look bad dead? They're alive and angry in the mod.
- The freakish abominations that are the Centaurs. See the picture above and add
*horrible gurgling* and the way they *move* to the list of creepiness.
- Wanna make them worse? Well, glitches can do this to you. Running in downtown D.C., followed by an
*army* of Super Mutants, rush into one of the Pulowski Preservation Shelters, which normally keeps enemies out. After a few seconds, *a horrible mass of crawling meat can appear in the shelter with you, like it fell from the roof*. Apparently, Centaurs can enter in these shelters like they are made of air. Suddenly the shelters don't seem so safe.
- Some sort of glitch sometimes makes super mutants and centaurs spawn right on top of you when you're swimming near the Jefferson Memorial, and they can swim too. You can't escape no matter where you go.
- Yao Guai. From their milky white eyes, and freakishly matted and balding fur, these things are guaranteed to scare you. Especially if you encounter them when one comes bounding out of nowhere from behind you.
- The worst thing about them is they don't make a sound. You could be tooling around in the Capital Wasteland, minding your own business, when
**snarl rip** - you just died. It doesn't get better if you're quick enough to VATS them right before they attack. You swing around to an open maw, ready to eat you.
- And then there are the Yao Guai Tunnels, where as soon as you step in, one of them sprints by, without any time to activate V.A.T.S. And they are everywhere.
- Somewhat diluted if you have the Animal Friend perk; the super-fast one-hit-killer bears are
*on your side.* They still appear out of nowhere, though.
- For some reason, loading the game or exiting a place near where Talon Mercs were killed may cause their stripped bodies to come flying towards you.
- Hope you don't mind giant bugs. Giant bugs that make skittering noises in dark subway tunnels.
- Just leaving Vault 101 could be frightening enough, even if you've read the Overseer's logs about the world being more hospitable than he thought. Even if nothing attacks the player, seeing how desolate things are—even with Megaton nearby—and not knowing what, if anything, is going to attack you can be awful. It's possible to get attacked by dogs or mole rats if you go around the back of Megaton.
- Not to mention the first Raider encounter. Maniacal laughing comes out of nowhere and the battle music suddenly kicks up. It's hard to pinpoint where exactly they're coming from even with the Pip Boy.
- Deathclaws. Super fast, one-hit killing machines. Stumble across one at a low level, and there's almost nothing you can do to stop it.
- Deathclaw Sanctuary. Maddening labyrinth of dark, damp caves. Very much like
*The Descent*, complete with lovely piles of skeletons and gore, and pools of blood. Except instead of crawlers, you have Deathclaws. Who move around in the tunnels in somewhat random patterns. Very silently. And when they notice you, they don't run at you screaming...they try to sneak up and jump at you from behind.
- In
*Fallout 3*, open the dev console (usually it's '~'), and type in "tcl". That toggles noclip. Now, take out a shotgun and shoot a standing human until the corpse explodes into giblets. Since tcl is on, the giblets (including bits of skull and whole eyeballs) are still in a humanoid shape. This is known to happen as a glitch as well, and the result is... rather disturbing.
- One the topic of nightmare inducing glitches, on vary rare occasions after killing certain enemies their body's ragdoll will lose it's form, causing it to bounce around with the torso and limbs stretching out like a Stretch Armstrong toy. The only ways to make it stop is to fast-travel to a different location which the game will not allow to happen if enemies are nearby or, if you're on PC, enable console commands, click the stretchy NPC, type zap and hit enter. So if you're on a console and there's enemies nearby, you're screwed.
- There's a place in Marigold station containing a skeleton with a pistol lying next to it. Thanks to the somewhat "overenthusiastic" physics engine, picking up the pistol can cause the skeleton to spasm violently, making it look like it's about to leap up and attack you. For reference, this is in a dark, abandoned subway with creepy music. This also happens with a dead Raider inside a Minefield house upon taking a Pre-War Book.
- Throughout the game, you can find audio recordings made by the Keller family who were planning to hide from the approaching war in a military bunker. However, one of the logs was made by a horrified teenage girl as the bombs were going off. The sound of her panicking and sobbing for her mother through the static can be incredibly heart-wrenching and deeply disturbing.
- Two fun follow-up facts: one member of the Keller family was so appalled at the thought of living with his father in a bunker for the rest of their lives that he cheerfully records his good-bye and says he plans on taking a "walk into a mushroom cloud." Also, you can find the family bunker, which contains three skeletons, a Glowing One named "Mr. Keller" and a diary entry (cut from the game but still accessible through cheats) about the father's habit of poking around the irradiated ruins...
- Any raider or super mutant base. They seem to love to decorate their home with human corpses. Or parts of human corpses. On spikes. Or in cages. Or chained to the ceiling.
- You may previously have encountered a group of hunters who sell "strange meat", and even give you a free sample. It's really good food! ... and then Andale teaches you what "strange meat" really is. You'll be wanting to find those hunters real soon, and bring your best gun.
- Andale itself is rather creepy. The few citizens act way too polite to make it seem like they're being friendly.
- And if you think taking a look in the basement or shed isn't creepy enough, step back outside. It doesn't matter if you had no witnesses whatsoever and was using a Stealth Boy when you broke in, all of the town's pissed off residents are right there to give you a Jump Scare.
- Speaking of Andale, here's the full story. While travelling around the wasteland; you see a chipper town with optimistic residents. They claim their town is constantly voted as the best in the USA, however, the community is small, there's no governing system to prove that claim, and one of the children states he has to marry a girl named Jenny Wilson... who is his first cousin. While wandering around the town you meet Old Man Harris; who frantically tells you leave and to check the basement and shed because the residents are stone cold killers. Considering the wasteland, you don't think too much of the term "killers" but when you check the shed and basement anyway. You find human remains; ranging from skeletons to fresh corpses, all of which confirm Harris' claims. When you leave the final location; you're suddenly ambushed by the town and Jack calmly asks you about your activities. There you have two options;
- If you call them out on their actions then Jack will tell you he needs to provide food for his family and that you have no right to judge him because of the number of people you've killed. Jack ends the conversation by trying to kill you in order to keep their secret.
- If you have high enough charisma or have the cannibalism perk then you can join them or keep their secret. As a "
*bonus*" you can receive daily "meat" pies from Linda as a reward.
- There's also one other bit of lore that connects to Andale. In Rivet City; there is a boy named James Hargrave, whose father died and left James' mother an abusive, alcoholic mess. His father went out into the wasteland and Jack references him as a former victim. Through Jack, we find out the bloody truth of what actually happened to James' father.
**Jack:**
It's always "oh, how can you do this", or "you're such terrible people", or "please, not me, I have a kid in Rivet City". Well, I have kids too!
- According to Jack's dialogue, the whole town is composed of incestuous, inbred cannibals. When the bombs dropped there were only 4 families who survived and, after surviving for decades, they resorted to cannibalism when the food ran out. If it was only four families who survived this long then the bloodlines have intertwined. Possibly meaning that the entire town might be composed of siblings or cousins who have been breeding together for generations.
- Harold's scream if you burn him. What makes it worse is that Harold
*wanted* you to kill him, because he considered the alternative a Fate Worse than Death. He just would have preferred his death to be quick and painless. And what makes it even worse? He's afraid of fire.
- Harold's charred, skeletal corpse afterwards. His good eye is burnt out of its socket and his mouth is locked in a permanent scream of terrified agony...
- During the 'Big Trouble in Big Town' quest, you have to go to an abandoned police station that's crawling with Super Mutants. While there, be sure to check out the computers that have records of 911 calls on them. The one with the woman who can see someone moving outside is positively bone-chilling.
**911 Dispatcher**: 911, Do you have an emergency? **Woman**: Please help me, I think there is someone outside, I heard a noise and it looks like someone is out there. **911 Dispatcher**: Remain calm. I'm sending a squad car over, may i please have your name and address for confirmation. **Woman**: (sound of glass breaking) I think he's in the house now! Please send help oh my god.. I think I hear him! **911 Dispatcher**: Ma'am I've dispatched a squad car it should arrive within minutes try (interrupted) **Woman**: (sounds of a scuffle) **Man**: Sorry for the scare, my wife just (muffled scream) forgot to take her pills this morning. Everything is ok. (long pause) No need for that squad car either. Have a nice day. (hangs up)
- Which is the worst possibility? That the above is, as we immediately presume it to be, a case of a police force so apathetic that they let a man break into a woman's home to rape and/or murder her because they just don't care? Or that the pre-World War III world of
*Fallout* was so crapsack that there were enough people going mad with paranoia that police considered it honestly worthwhile to just presume stories like "oh, my wife was just imagining things, she forgot her medicine" are true?
- That's just the recording. There is no evidence to prove that the squad didn't just arrive anyways. By that time, though, the woman could be long dead, kidnapped, or raped.
- Funny thing, Nuka-Cola Machines (when they make the flickering noise) make the exact same sound as someone slowly walking down a deep, dark subway tunnel towards you, wielding a lead pipe.
- Near the exit to Tenleytown/Friendshi Station, two radroaches are there. Thing is, they run right past, and their color is non-hostile on the Pip Boy. Every other time radroaches are encountered, they're hostile, and there's nothing there except for dead ghouls, so what were they running from? Ghosts and unholy gods apparently exist in the Fallout universe. What if the roaches sensed some invisible malicious presence?
- How about Ymir beating that bartender to death when you first walk into Paradise Falls? When you talk to him, he's the most cheerful guy in the game! Then you talk to Jotun and find out that that sort of thing is normal. And the body stays there. Forever.
- In
*Fallout 3*, *every single vault* is utterly dripping in Nightmare Fuel. If anything wanted to hit home what a Crapsack World could be and how sinister some organizations can be. The Vaults were essentially the only hope of humanity ever recovering, but were instead constructed as giant social experiments by the government to carry out immoral experiments on live human subjects, with no intention of saving American citizens. Even the control Vaults that worked as they should were for the Enclave to simply see whether humanity could function in a post-apocalyptic world. If you lived in DC you get the choice of being an FEV experiment, brainwashed with white noise, trapped forever, driven insane by hallucinatory atmospheric drugs, murdered by tons of clones or trapped in a virtual world to be killed again and again. If you are lucky enough you will just be trapped forever but have to endure an iron fisted regime ruled by a paranoid overseer who will kill you if you show the slightest sign of threatening the status quo. If a few hundred years later you stumble across any of the others you might be lucky enough not to encounter any of the horribly mutated or insane residents left or whatever might have moved into the rusted and damaged vaults. Even then you will never ever get full closure on what's happened, only getting the slightest hints as to what exactly went on thanks to journal extracts of residents slowly going mad or about to die. You are probably the only one in the wasteland who has any knowledge of how utterly horrifying things were in there. If the first games offer a small glimpse as to the Vaults' true purposes, then *Fallout 3* tore the window from the wall and then swung that window at your nuts for added effect.
- The only vault in
*Fallout 3* that isn't downright run down, horrifying, and filled with super creeps is the vault you come out of, Vault 101. But consider the fact that there are all those inaccessible areas, and those radroaches seemed to come from nowhere...
- ... also, don't forget the lady's poem about how much she hates the Vault.
- ... and the near totalitarian government used by the Vault.
- To put it in more detail, the Overseer is oppressive and controlling to that point that when one man decides to leave, and does, it causes him to throw a massive tantrum, kill a suspected accomplice who was their only doctor, guns down teenage couples and alerts the entire vault to turn against and murder the escapee's son or daughter, who literally had no knowledge of the escape. Even further he approves of torturing his own daughter to force out information that doesn't exist. Plus, the suspected accomplice is the only trained doctor LEFT in the facility. Because yeah.
- But the most nightmarish of all is that the rule to keep Vault 101 sealed is part of the overarching self-sabotaging vault experiments, intentionally created to make them fail just to study said failure. The overseers actions to keep the vault sealed result in the death of too many adults and even youths and children either directly or indirectly. By the time you come back, the now rampant radroach infestation is left unchecked due to everyone focusing on the civil war, the vault is far past the point of self-sustained genetic viability for future generations if sealed and the now violently aggressive guards are planning to massacre anyone not on their side, which would leave them with only their own families and a few spare residents. With no one else left to turn their aggression on or produce offspring with, this has nightmarish implications for the future of the vault if it went down this path unchecked. However, given the nature of every vault, this was exactly the sort of outcome which was always intended. Vault 101 isn't an exception to the run down, horrifying and super-creep filled state of its sister vaults, we're just witnessing it on the precipice of joining this legacy.
- Minor example in Sonora Cruz. Due to the lighting of the Regulators HQ, her face is completely in shadow except for two tiny specs of light reflecting off her eyes. The effect is rather unnerving.
- The broadcast towers scattered across the Wasteland can be this as well. Most of them are transmitting a simple message in Morse Code, first sent in the time just after the Great War by survivors holed up underground, but now transmitting on an endless loop ("Hello, hello, this is Echo Foxtrot, are you there? Are you there?" repeated over and over) even after the messages' originators have long since died. Despite this, it feels like a mercy to them to just switch off their transmission once and for all.
- Did everybody notice those little skeletons at Springvale School, behind some iron gates?
- Not to mention the bloody handprints on the surrounding walls.
- The ant queens in Marigold Metro Station and in New Vegas are very prone to glitching through walls. Imagine this acid-spitting, oversized abomination with its tiny wings and bloated eggsack popping up from out of nowhere and into your face. A panic quit and long, throughout scrubbing in the shower is the only known cure.
- Everything about the Enclave is absolutely terrifying. Raiders, mercs, mutants? Sure, they're dangerous but you'll have your big iron handy when they come around because you KNOW they're a threat. The Enclave is different. It's easy to write Nathan Vargas off as a crazy old man for supporting the Enclave so strongly. But when you live in the Crapsack World that is the Capital Wasteland, messages of peace and freedom can sound pretty enticing. Then they start promising everybody in the wasteland pure water which will actually wipe out the entire population in an act of genocide.
- Who's to say they'll only stop at the Capital Wasteland? Imagine if the modified FEV was taken to its logical extreme and wiped out anything that's mutated. Due to the Great War releasing the FEV into the atmosphere, virtually all life on Earth, right down to bacteria, would have been exposed to it. Think about how far this could go if the Enclave released their modified virus across the entire world. The Great War would be
*nothing* compared to *that*.
- If you pick the Contract Killer perk, you can meet up a certain Daniel Littlehorn in his office, "Littlehorn and Associates" in the scrapyard. He will pay you well if you bring him the severed ears of Good Karma characters you've killed for unspecified reasons. Nothing too scary overall yet. But the name "Daniel Littlehorn" is a Biblical reference to chapter 7 of the Book of Daniel, specifically to one of the four beasts that come to Daniel in a dream, which is the worst of the four. The beast is vaguely described and one of the only clue to its appearance is that it has ten horns, and one extra "little horn". So what is Daniel Littlehorn exactly? A normal but evil old man with an unusual name? Or something different in human form?
- Worth noting too is that he is flagged as "essential", meaning he can never die.
note : Though this could very well be for gameplay reasons, since his Good Counterpart Sonora Cruz is also flagged as essential.
**Daniel 7:7-8:** "After that, in my vision at night I looked, and there before me was a fourth beastterrifying and frightening and very powerful. It had large iron teeth; it crushed and devoured its victims and trampled underfoot whatever was left. It was different from all the former beasts, and it had ten horns. While I was thinking about the horns, there before me was another horn, a little one, which came up among them; and three of the first horns were uprooted before it. This horn had eyes like the eyes of a human being and a mouth that spoke boastfully".
- Trogs. Skinless mounds of blood and muscle constantly ravenous for flesh, completely aware of their situation and by the time you show up, they're in SO much pain that they're BEGGING you to put them out of their misery! Have the subtitles on, and sometimes when you kill one, their final gurglings will be translated as: "Thank you."
- The Steelyard in
*The Pitt*. Especially that slave in the stockades...
- There's a bit in the Supply Plant in the Pitt Steelyard where you hear gunshots as you turn a corner. You're at the beginning of a long hallway full of overturned mine carts, and one has a dead Raider in it and is surrounded by dead Trogs. Creepy? Sure, but pretty much par for the course so far. Then a bit further on, you come across the same scenario — dead Raider in a mine cart, dead Trogs all around. How repetitive, you think as you move forward and look down to search the bodies for some loot... then you look up and see that
*three Trog Brutes* have jumped out from behind the mine cart to say hello. Except hello actually comes out as " *HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATE!!!*"
- In the Supply Plant, there's a closet with a couple of Ingots, a skeleton and a terminal. The terminal spells out a story written by a manager that had to replace his workers with machines (The ones you see walking around the plant). Naturally, the workers were unhappy with that, so they revolt. They try to kill the manager, so he locks himself in the closet. The robots arrive during the chaos. The workers decide to rough the robots up a bit, and that... doesn't go well. The manager writes that all he heard through the night were the sounds of laser fires, screaming and workers begging to open the door. His last entry states that replacing man with machines is always a bad idea. When you log off the terminal, you hear the distant sound of metal clanging slowly approaching. A Protectron walks by, looks in the closet and simply says
**MOVE ALONG, PLEASE.**
- It's technically a glitch, but it works in the game's favor to create creepiness. If you get John Henry Eden to destroy Raven Rock while you escape, the Enclave radio might keep broadcasting. Normally, if Raven Rock is blown up, then the radio only emits static. If it's not blown up, then Eden will loop a speech during the endgame events. The glitch makes it so that he just repeats one phrase from his speech ("We stand now, at the precipice.") in a Creepy Monotone, over and over again. It leaves you to wonder what might really have happened to President Eden and how "dead" is he actually...
- Feral Ghoul Reavers, they're intensely grotesque even by feral ghoul standards, run fast, can
*tear apart* chunks of themselves to throw as explosive "radioactive gore", and they have massive amounts of HP, meaning taking one down is going to take *lots* of ammo. Thank God they were nerfed in *Fallout: New Vegas* and *Fallout 4*.
- The small army of inbred swampfolk that basically worship Cthulhu.
*The Hills Have Eyes*, anyone? If you ever see one or two just looking in your direction and doing nothing else, pay attention. Two more are *right behind you*.
- Even worse if you play as a woman; it's probably Gameplay and Story Segregation at work, but there are no
*female* swampfolk. So where do they get more from? That they sometimes sound terribly *gleeful* about finding you doesn't help...
- They also don't...
*move* quite right. Their legs don't bend the right way at the knees, *at all*.
- The disturbing visions you experience in the sacred bog. They're even more freakish than the entire sum of all of
*Eternal Darkness* visions.
- The Schmault-Tec Bobbleheads aren't scary in and of themselves, but they shine a new light and poke fun at the ways the Lone Wanderer must suffer. They mock you, and it's basically your subconscious telling how much being you sucks. The Luck one, the worst of the bunch, tells you that no matter how lucky you can be now, you were already
**born** cursed - to a dying mother and a near-suicidal father in a scarred and ravaged world.
- Point Lookout itself is almost
*STALKER* meets *Resident Evil 4* meets the Shivering Isles from *Oblivion*.
- The plot of one side quest is disturbing, to say at least, and involves stealing an occult tome from the swampfolk. To elaborate: you can give it to an old man in a ruined plantation. He promptly retires to his basement, filled nearly to the roof with corpses. Or, you can try to give it to some kind of missionary, only to find her dead, with the word "thief" scrawled in her blood on the wall. Her last words tell you to bring the tome back to the Dunwich Building, whose nightmares are already detailed above. At the conclusion to this quest, the entire room catches on fire.
- In case you weren't stressed enough, know that the whole place is also bloody Nintendo Hard. That right, even a level 30
*perfect* character with the Uber Enclave Hellfire power armor and the A3-21 plasma rifle will suffer, as in will die a lot if not very careful. Swampfolk and tribals compete with each other for the title of Worst Demonic Spider, and to top it all, if you have also *Broken Steel*, there will be Feral Ghoul *Reavers*. You just can't feel safe in *Point Lookout*, ever...
- Try going back to the St. Aubin Medical Facility (Underground Lab) after the main "Point Lookout" quest. This is already after seeing dozens of abandoned mines, POW camps, and serial-killer crime scenes across the swamp.
- The fighter jet crash site. All those skeletons... with axes jammed into them... There's
*just* enough information to let your imagination run wild thinking about the gruesome fates of the plane's crew.
- Tobar's brain room. Especially when you realize he had a scalpel, bonesaw, surgical tubing, and tweezers in his shop from the FIRST SECOND you meet him.
- Turtledove detention camp. Depressing surroundings, 200-year-old robots guarding the place, swampfolk and feral ghoul infestation aside, it has a morgue where POWs are taken in, tortured while kept alive by stimpaks, and when they finally die, have their bodies either cremated or jammed into a wall of remains lockers. This all happened 200 years ago. As part of a quest you have to open one of these lockers to retrieve something, and you find a skeleton of a Chinese spy whose picture you've seen on posters all over the place. To see a worn-down skeleton of that person, 200 years later, is rather disturbing. The most sobering part of this camp is that it's likely that similar camps were built during wartime in real life, and people really were taken into these places, tortured and unceremoniously cremated or stashed away into lockers in walls, to be forgotten. Eerily, the in-game example is still scarier because it's all 200 years ago.
- Speaking of the dead Chinese spy, there's a side quest wherein you to follow said spy's footsteps and "complete" the mission his superiors gave him 200 years ago. Over the course of it, you learn bits and pieces of how life was in Pre-War China, which is
*even worse* if the references to food lotteries and sparing relatives from persecution are any indication. By the time you reach the long-abandoned safehouse however, the bunker it's in tries to kill you. That spy, it turned out was a dead man the moment he left China, and all for a mission that was ultimately pointless.
- Room 1K at the Homestead Hotel certainly qualifies. A room filled with bloody carnage. The bodies have all rotted down to skeletons, but its pretty easy to imagine what the room looked like when the bodies were still fresh. Whats worse is the mask you find in the bathroom, implying that this was the work of the Pint-sized Slasher; The fact that the room was never cleaned up implies that the slasher did all this after the bombs fell, that he/she was never caught. It's quite possible that we'll find more of the Slasher's handiwork in
*Fallout 4*... note : Which has been Jossed as the Pint-sized Slasher is only found in the DC area. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Fallout3 |
Fallout: New Vegas / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
"
*Don't worry, I won't have you lashed to a cross like the rest of these degenerates. It's useful that you happened by. I want you to witness the fate of the town of Nipton, to memorize every detail. And then, when you move on? I want you to teach everyone you meet the lesson that Caesar's Legion taught here, especially any NCR troops you run across.*
"
—
**Vulpes Inculta**
to
**the Courier**
, should you reach the ruins of the town of Nipton
.
Although civilization has been rebuilt in the Mojave, the world is still a post-apocalyptic hellscape, so expect dangers and horrifying moments that will keep you up...
**As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.**
- The Courier themselves; even if your karma meter is pointed at very good, you might have slaughtered hundreds, if not thousands of people/animals, destroyed whole armies and flattened tribes at the near end of the game. It's no wonder one Powder Ganger calls you their "Grim-fucking-Reaper".
- The game opens with the Courier regaining-conscious near a recently-dug shallow grave after being mugged by Benny and the Khans. After a brief monologue from Benny, the player is then treated to a first-person perspective of being shot in the head. The last thing you hear is
*your own brain matter squelching from the impact*.
- Meeting Mr. House. Like President Eden, he's seemingly a computer, but claims that being so is merely his only way of prolonging his original existence as a human. But despite his claims of humanity, his monitor displays a face, and it
*never* changes. It's stuck in one neutral pose, and it reeks of the Uncanny Valley.
- His original design was
*even creepier*.
- And then, if you hack his terminals, you find his true◊, shriveled, barely alive form. And just to drive the point home, the game classifies him as an Abomination instead of a human.
- And so does his home, the Lucky 38 Casino. From outside, it's lit up, and can be seen for miles. When you get in, you find a place that's squeaky clean, uncharacteristically intact for the wasteland, and barren and silent, especially considering what a casino usually is like. And this isn't even because of the usual reason buildings are empty in Fallout, as New Vegas is packed with people. You know, without anyone telling you, that no soul has stepped in for over two hundred years. Mr. House just doesn't trust any humans, and so the only other things in his casino are his trigger-happy robot guards.
- The music in the Lucky 38 is taken from Fallout 1 and perfectly highlights the eeriness of the place.
- In
*Lonesome Road*, Ulysses will imply that siding with House will likely end with "Your face on a robot's screen".
- Some find Yes Man a little unsettling in all his... over-enthusiasm. "Easy Peasy!" is funny right up until you realize you're alone with a Psychopathic Manchild.
- He's disturbing from the first moment. You hunt Benny to the 13th floor of his hotel, barely armed, and search his suite to find no one there. Instead, there's a hole in the wall, opening into a very different room, and something is
*smiling* at you. A hulking security robot with a big cartoon grin on its chest-mounted TV face. Then he casually offers suggestions about exterminating entire groups of people like the Great Khans ("they're dirty people") and murdering Mr. House. He'll hurl General Oliver screaming from Hoover Dam, if you like. Oh, and then at the end, he says he's upgrading himself to be more assertive. You might feel bad for him, for being a sentient being who's mentally compelled to betray his creator and to tell you your actions are wonderful no matter how many people you kill. But then, when he comes back online, who will *really* be in charge of that army of rocket-launcher robots? And *what does Yes-Man want?* Although Word of God has stated that all he wants to do is serve the Courier, and indeed makes sure he can only serve the Courier in the Independent ending.
- The White Glove Society, and their casino, the Ultra-Luxe. They're dedicated to being the utmost elegant, luxurious, and sophisticated organization in the Wasteland. But their masks are creepy, and almost every White Glove wears one, complete with a voice changer. According to them, it's to form a mysterious atmosphere, but many characters just say they're creepy. Making things weirder, they were also cannibals before Mr. House came along, and some of them still are. You get to hear stories about people who've gone missing over the past few months, such as a bride a day or two before her wedding. Unless you have a high stealth level, you won't have a gun to save yourself with if they suspect you're onto them. Their weapon of choice is a loaded cane; somewhat unsettling when you compare their methods to everyone else. To top things off, the Ultra-Luxe is almost futuristic in design, making it feel totally alien in the Mojave.
- The kitchen and basement area of the Ultra-Luxe, in contrast with the rest of the casino at least, feels a bit too much like a Torture Cellar as you walk through it trying to prevent someone from being eaten. Granted, it's basically just an industrial kitchen, but in context, it still feels creepy. Oh, and if they're short a main course, you can sell them one of your
*companions.*
- Speaking of, in the kitchen, two members of the staff are cooking large Brahmin carcasses with
*flamers.* This is actually a real means of cooking, which apparently makes the meat quite tender...but since the animal isn't skinned or gutted beforehand, it can also potentially lead to an infection. At least they put up a sign to wash your hands in the hall.
- When reaching the second floor of REPCONN headquarters, there is a security poster◊ with two huge accusing, staring eyes. If the player happens to be in first person when reaching the second floor, it can be very unsettling and startling.
- The Background Music track "Metallic Monks" from
*Fallout*. It has an air raid siren that increases in volume. A dog pipes in with a frightened yelp. The siren gradually fades and march-tempo drums pick up, interspersed with what sounds like a frantic Morse transmission. It gives off a chilling feeling. The bombs are striking points all over the world and it's too late to run.
- It's likely you'll first notice it playing at night time in Freeside. This song, which is pretty much an audio flashback to when the bombs fell, hammer in how much civilization has suffered from nuclear war when paired up with Freeside's violent streets.
- Clanden in Gomorrah, and his Snuff Tapes. These tapes contain horrific scenes of murder and violence that the player thankfully never sees. According to the narration, the Courier supposedly hears Clanden engaging in violent sex with women, and then hears the sounds of visceral and violent murder being carried out. Confront him about it? He maintains his normal demeanor while threatening you:
**Courier (paraphrased):** I think the Gomorrah bosses would be interested in hearing these tapes. **Clanden:** I think I should kill you before you have a chance to show those tapes to anyone. What do I have to lose? **Courier:** I'll keep the tapes, but you leave Gomorrah and never come back. **Clanden:** Fuck it, I was getting tired of this place anyway. I can find girls to play with somewhere else.
- If it makes you feel any better, you can kill Clanden at any point in the quest that leads you to him, and the game won't punish you for it. Walk in and shoot him without even talking? Cachino doesn't care. Have the bare minimum conversation with him and then report back to Cachino? He tells you to go back and cap the bastard. Blackmail him with the tapes and tell him to leave and never come back? Perfect opportunity for a bullet in the back of the head; Cachino doesn't care. In fact, Clanden is so evil killing him gives you
*good Karma*.
- Speaking of Cachino, the sidequest involving Joana reveals he's brutally beaten and raped her several times. And this is the guy you have to work with for the
*good* outcome when dealing with the Omertas, making him the Token Good Teammate by default. Really, the only way to feel clean afterwards is to help him wipe out the Omerta bosses, then with your alliance now over, wait until his back is turned before putting two bullets in the back of his head.
- In and around Camp Searchlight, you can listen to the song "City of the Dead" (the theme to Necropolis in
*Fallout*) and sometimes you can hear ghastly wails interspersed with the music. There's also a loud droning noise that possibly simulates an emergency siren. Add metallic screeching sounds and it's one disturbing track.
- In Vault 22, there is another unsettling track (
*The Vault of the Future*) that features steam hissing and metal clanking, while an eerie metallic tone plays. Then deep, mumbling voices and hissed whispers become audible. It's also possible for a keen ear to hear computer keys clacking. It isn't just an ambient track. It's an echo of what the Vault used to be like: methodical, garbled talk of the past Vault scientists running a test that would spell doom for Vault 22. At the very end of the track, there's an odd creaking noise, like something swinging from a rafter. The track is almost as bad as the infernal whispering in the Virulent Underchambers from *Fallout 3*, and reminiscent of a track from *Super Paper Mario* called "River Twygz Bed".
- Check out Mick & Ralph's more closely. Everything is normal until you go upstairs where there's strange meat in the refrigerator (later removed in a patch). Those familiar with the
*Fallout* series will know what strange meat is, but maybe Mick and Ralph didn't. Maybe they just ended up buying it from someone without knowing what it was. Then you look in the oven and found a strange meat pie...
- In fact, one of the nearby NPCs (Old Ben) mentions that someone not too long ago sold people in the town the meat; he even explicitly mentions that it made people sick in a way that only human meat would, but nobody believed him when he said so. Then the guy died and someone else moved into his place... and found a whole lot of human remains in the crawlspace.
- It'd certainly explain why Mick & Ralph's contains that hidden room where they now keep their special inventory. If they bought the place from the cannibals, what was that room
*previously* used for?
- Speaking about that, go to Sloan, inside the Mess Hall and look what Jas had made for workers. Rat meat, fresh vegetables, strange meat pies...
- On your way to Freeside, you may encounter the El Rey Motel, a fairly typical two storey building now occupied with chem addicts... except for one room, which is filled with instantly hostile bark scorpions and a dead wastelander who looks like he tried to barricade himself with a storage rack in panic. How exactly these scorpions ended up in a closed room is unclear - that is, until you find a threatening note, which provides just enough context to the morbid sight.
Your debt still remains unpaid. We have warned you twice. There will not be a third warning, only consequences. You have one day.
- Try walking around Freeside for a while. Occasionally, you'll hear the loud terrified scream of someone being attacked.
- It's worse than that. You can hear the sound and try running towards it to kill a thug... only to find no one there. Especially for good players. There's that aching feeling that, even after saving countless lives, there was one you could never help...
- The Broc Flower Cave. Just imagine this: You're wandering through the Wasteland, minding your own business, when you come across a cave named after a flower. "This cave should be easy," you think to yourself, "After all, it's named after a flower!"
*Nope*. The only enemies are giant rats, which sound easy right up until you fight them. They have a powerful attack, move very fast and are hard to hit, and there are dozens in the cave. Especially when you're up on a ledge and the rats below spot you, and they run off trying to find a way to get up to you. You can't see them anymore, but *you know they're coming.*
- Now imagine this: you've beaten the game once, and decide to take the Wild Wasteland trait for a second playthrough. You find the cave again. Remembering you found the incredibly-useful Ratslayer in that cave, you decide to pop in again to grab it for this playthrough. The giant rats are now even bigger.
- Ranger Station Charlie. A normal NCR outpost at first, but when you enter after Ranger Andy asks you to check on it, you see that everyone inside is dead and the bodies are rigged with mines. On and under a desk in the entrance room are two audio logs, the first of which is an NCR ranger reporting that a raider attack has been thwarted with no casualties and saying a patrol has returned. The second is a message from the Legion to whoever finds the station.
**Legionnaire:**
This is a message to the NCR from the Legion. We are coming for you. Run, and we will catch you. Hide, and we will find you. No matter what you do, you are all going to die. We took one of the women alive.
- The Big Bad of the game, Caesar's Legion, is introduced in the most horrifying way imaginable. The player is asked to investigate a town that has lost contact with the outside world, and has started to billow smoke. Upon arrival, everything is surprisingly quiet, and then one man runs out acting happy as can be, loudly boasting that he won the lottery, and seemingly too crazy with laughter to explain any further. Then you enter the town the way the guy left, and start to see that
*every other person in town* has been crucified, and then you learn the "lottery" allowed that man to go free. A closer investigation reveals the mayor was burned on a pile of tires, some people got enslaved, some got decapitated for a quick death, and the runner-up got his legs crippled but was left alive and free. After you arrive, the loathsome bastards who committed this atrocity just... saunter off as you arrive, leaving you alone amidst the ruins, the crucified bodies, the burning...
- The worst part about this? Have a look around Nipton. You'll find that for all of Vulpes' talk about how Nipton was a wicked, sinful place that was planning to sell out everyone in the town for a pittance... it turns out it was true.
- Crucifixion has, of course, been real-life Nightmare Fuel for the last 2,500 years, but the Legion's resourcefulness somehow makes it even more horrible - they use cut-down utility poles. This may serve to remind the player how easily a mundane object may be converted to an instrument of death, and that millions of these things line the highways. The Legion will
*never* run out. It's also a Shout-Out to *The Stand*, where one society crucifies people in the same way.
- Although not really the worst part, the
**hardest** part about this is you encounter this event early in the game. Early as in, still pretty low level. After the talk with Vulpes, there's nothing stopping you from killing him and all of the others to avenge the town - unfortunately, you know that would be a bad idea, as they would very easily wipe the floor with your low-level ass. There's nothing you can do except watch them walk away, unless you're willing to deal with Legion assassins if you *do* kill them (which, since Vulpes and company scale with your level, is possible to pull off) and a far more difficult journey to Novac.
- One thing that can make this event even more creepy is if you decide to show up in NCR armor, because hey, it's good early game gear that can be scavenged from a number of possible sources. Except that wearing it makes Vulpes and his whole crew instantly hostile. So you walk into this horror show, having no idea what's going on, seeing all these corpses, and then out of nowhere you have a small army of Legion killers pouring out of the woodwork trying to kill you...
- Legate Lanius. You hear several nasty stories about him being a violent brute who's difficult to kill during the game and you know youll meet him sooner or later. When you finally meet him, hes actually very intelligent, which makes him even more scary and dangerous.
- In Cottonwood Cove, you can come across a family wearing bomb collars inside of a pen. The mother desperately pleads with you to help them. While this is more of a Tear Jerker, the nightmare fuel kicks in during one of the possible outcomes to this quest: you can attempt to disarm the bomb collars, but if your explosives skill isn't high enough, the collars go off. It's made all the worse by the mother screaming in horror that you're doing it wrong, before her head splatters all over the place.
- In addition to the back-breaking labour and implied rape, Silas, one of the Legion's centurions, has managed to add a personal touch to Legion's cruelty. His collars are fitted to slaves just tight enough not to choke them, but will also force them to spend their lives in horrific pain and discomfort.
- After you confront Benny at The Tops casino, Vulpes will greet you right outside in an NCR civilian disguise offering you the Mark of Caesar. If you have any Legion Infamy, he tells you that you've been pardoned, but you shouldn't screw the Legion over again. The scene itself isn't that scary, but considering that he virtually always seems to know where you are and that he can sneak in and out of New Vegas as he pleases...
- If you have Arcade as a companion when this happens, he remarks that either New Vegas security is lacking or Legion spies are actually
*just that good.*
- In various spots in the game, one in Michael Angelo's workshop, you can see framed portraits of scenes or people from
*Fallout 3's Tranquility Lane*. It was probably just thrown in as an Easter Egg, but still....why are there scenes and people *from a simulation* framed on walls?
- According to J.E Sawyer, all women in Legion territory are either enslaved or raped until their bodies can't stand anymore. And they have the largest amount of territory in the
*Fallout* universe. Suddenly the prospect of living in ransacked communities with the constant threat of hungry Deathclaws looks a lot more appealing.
- Vault 22.
*Stay out!! The Plants kill!*
- The worst part about it is that the Spore Carriers aren't even marked as NPCs. You're walking along, minding your own business... Monkey on a stick! Pissed-off green things!
- It should be noted Randall Dean Clark's second wife was one of the Vault Dwellers from 22 and she didn't become a carrier. But then, it's also straight up told to the player via Randall's notes that the Vault Dwellers ate the others.
- When checking one of the terminals, you come across a note saying that since the lead researcher is away taking care of his sick wife and daughter, and the author is taking over. To find access codes to the deeper sections of the vault, you need to enter a Vault's living quarters - occupied by two adult spore carriers... and one child spore carrier near a child's crib.
- Then there's the realization you get after reading the logs about the spores. That they're still in the air.
*The air you're breathing*. Keely's notes says she's unaffected solely for being a ghoul, but you? *It's too late.* Of course, you're unaffected for no apparent reason, and while the cybernetics you get in *Old World Blues* can provide one explanation why, if you haven't been to Big MT yet, it's quite a horrifying realization...
- Vault 11. Going inside, you see campaign posters stating the candidates' rivals are evil, so vote for them, not me. That's just odd, though, right? You keep going. The winner of the vote becomes overseer for a year, before sacrificing themselves in the depths of the vault, or else the entire vault gets killed. Potential for Heroic Sacrifice at least, right? You keep going. The vault quickly divided into voting blocs, and started using their status to sentence men to death for being lucky at poker, and extorting sex from their wives under the false pretense of sparing them. Okay, that's bad, but at least the Overseers are shown for once to be 100% on the up and up, for once in the series, right? You keep going. The last Overseer used her power to abolish elections in favor of a computerized lottery, leading the voting bloc in power to riot and causing the deaths of all but five of the vault dwellers, who kill themselves. Well, that's bad, sure, but it doesn't compare to some of the other vaults we've seen in the series, right? Then you get through the sacrificial chamber, itself Nightmare Fuel where a calm, polite voice invites you to reminisce upon the good moments of your life while thanking you for your needful sacrifice just before unleashing a squad of killer robots on you. And after all that, you find out the whole test was designed so that if the Vault refused the sacrifice they told was necessary, they're rewarded for valuing human life. Not a single death needed to happen.
- To be clear, the survivors refused to offer anyone for sacrifice, and were driven to suicide after finding out the truth. Just imagine the years of stress, drama, and psychological torture they endured, culminating in an outright violent riot, just to find out that
*absolutely none of it was necessary.*
- And just to make it even more disturbing, the message indicates that the designers expected the sacrifices to end fairly quickly or never happen
*at all*, as it congratulates the residents for their compassion and refusing to sacrifice a single life to save themselves.
- Also, if you look around the entry area with the note about the five survivors, you'll notice that there are only
*four* skeletons.
- The worst part about it is the fact that many players know that the Vaults were never meant to save anyone. They were, for all intents and purposes, experiments to see how humans would react to long term imprisonment in tight, enclosed quarters. Many of the Vaults in both
*Fallout 3* and *New Vegas* are filled with horrifying, terribly immoral tests to measure just what a human would do in that situation... and then you remember that message. Even the people who designed the Vaults thought that people wouldn't willingly sacrifice so many of their own.
- After you finish the vault, the cheery looking posters that show up on the loading screens take on a sinister new meaning.
- Vault 34: The fact that every resident had access to some rather impressive weaponry, while food supplies were very low, ended up causing a revolt. During the revolt, reactor goes nuts and floods the vault with radiation, killing most of the residents and leaving a frightening number of feral ghouls. The truly scary part? You meet a resident who had left the Vault only a couple of years ago, because he thought he was becoming a ghoul due to his hair falling out. You also get a message from residents who are still trapped and need help. This means that the aforementioned events didn't happen a couple hundred years ago: they may have happened as early as a week ago!
- Even worse, the deluded sap who abandoned the vault because he thought he was becoming a ghoul... He was Chris Haversam,
*the reactor technician.* His absence may have caused the radiation leak and turned his neighbors into for-real ghouls.
- Vault 19: The logs show it was deliberately half-filled with people showing signs of paranoid schizophrenia; the other half was a group of sane people. The Vault was an experiment to see if they could drive the sane people mad by having a self-sufficient reactor crew working all hours of the night under their feet, making barely heard noises, their intercom chat whispering on the system above, and generally making life miserable for everyone up above without realizing it. Medical records showed everyone was mad, but only half of them were genuine. The Vault's experiment, from what little can be derived by the logs and the overseer's terminal, was to see who would survive, the slowly going insane experiment group, or the already insane control group.
- Poor Vault 3. A control vault with no experiments, the inhabitants were very nice and well adjusted, but a bit naive. When they first opened the Vault, the Fiends were among the first groups they met. The Fiends promptly slaughtered everyone in the Vault and moved into Vault 3 themselves.
- The Fiends themselves who moved into Vault 3 are no better. It seems that some of them are too blitzed up their eyeballs to notice that several people have OD'd in the Living Area and have been dead for some time.
- "The Coyotes." It sounds like a simple enough quest at first - just investigate some missing people. By its end, however, you will have a crippling fear of teddy bears, slavers, and an unmeasurable hatred for Cook-Cook.
- Just about anything involving Cook-Cook counts. The guy buys slaves, and in one recent case, bought three girls and a boy, then forced the girls to watch as he burned the boy alive. Then his rape of both Corporal Betsy and Pretty Sarah; the latter he not only raped, but burned just enough to let her live.
- Not to mention Cook Cook's Berserk Button - killing his pet brahmin Queenie (which is its own source of squick) makes him go into a frenzy and kill everything around him, including the other Fiends. That's right, not even his own followers are safe from his psychopathic rage if pushed a little.
- Even better, cut dialogue from the other three Fiend leaders - Driver Nephi, Violent and Motor-Runner - reveals all of them warning the Courier to stay away from Cook-Cook,
*especially* a female Courier. These three are the worst of the Fiends and even *they* know how monstrous Cook-Cook is.
- In Goodsprings Cemetery it's possible to hear ghostly whispers. It seems like that would be the only place to hear them, but no. The whispers can be heard anywhere in the game. Either it's because of the tortured souls who died from the bombs, or thanks to the Courier's near-death experience. Since whatever horrors in Dunwich locations exist in the
*Fallout* universe, then ghosts probably exist as well.
- Wandering through the irradiated Camp Searchlight, a former NCR outpost bathed in a sickly green haze and filled with feral ghouls, but the town's fire station holds the big surprise. All seems relatively well, going on a merry scavenger hunt, until you walk through the station's doors and straight into a Radscorpion Queen literally half the size of the garage and bigger than a military truck.
- Imagine, if you will: you're wandering about the Mojave Wasteland, taking in the view, all by your lonesome. Next thing you know, the camera pans over to a stern-looking woman wearing opaque sunglasses and a ranger hat. It seems you've run afoul of the NCR, and they're getting sick of it, so they sent a hit squad to tell you that you have three days to change your tune, or the next time they come, they'll shoot to kill. At the very least they give you time to set things right: Legionary assassins won't spare you any such mercy...
- The Matthews Animal Husbandry Farm near Camp Searchlight has a sad and frightening tale to it. You find journal pages scattered around the greater property written by the son/daughter of the Matthews family (their gender and age is unknown). Their parents had left to trade with the NCR at Camp Searchlight, but never came back. After a few days, the journal writer goes to Camp Searchlight to look for them and discovers it in its current irradiated state. The writer finds their parents, who have been turned into feral ghouls from the radiation and attack, forcing the journal writer to kill them in self-defense. The writer then takes their parents' bodies back to the farm and buries them behind the house. Clearly scarred from having to kill their own parents, the writer then begins to get increasingly worried and paranoid that the farm animals will also become ghouls and attack them as well. Eventually, this paranoia becomes so great that the writer imagines a full-blown
*Animal Farm* scenario where the ghoulified animals are all conspiring with each other to kill and eat them and then take over the farm for themselves. Deciding that it's Better to Die than Be Killed, the writer kills themselves by burning down their house with themselves inside as a big flaming "screw you" to the supposedly murderous animals.
- It's worse. All the (perfectly non-murderous) animals at the farm are labelled in the UI as "Malnourished [Animal Name]". The reason the writer thought the animals were turning into ghouls was because they weren't feeding them properly and they were just getting thin.
- Jacobstown. Technically, there's nothing
*bad* about the town; it's full of friendly people who're just trying to get along with their lives and stay safe. Thing is, they're super mutants, and to those who *only* played *Fallout 3*, they're the Always Chaotic Evil monsters you got used to shooting in the face (with the exception of Fawkes). This time around, they're perfectly safe. It's just... very unsettling the first time.
- The Nightkin are back from the older games in glorious 3D gameplay. Basically, imagine a super mutant with a blue skin tone, except it's invisible. All you need to know. Their standard form of greeting seems to be appearing out of nowhere three feet in front of you with a big-ass rebar club swinging right for your face.
- Well, there's one more thing you need to know: they're all
*completely bonkers*. For some reason, Stealth Boy use not only becomes addictive for Nightkin, but also causes them to develop schizophrenia. So, as if all of the above wasn't bad enough, they're usually acting on the orders of some voice in their heads, which makes their motivations entirely unpredictable.
- And you get one, named Lily, as a companion. She acts like a sweet old grandmother, calling you "dearie" and "pumpkin" and the like. This may seem nice and/or cute, except for the fact that she's over seven feet tall and sounds like a demon. Then there's what she says when you decide to check her inventory: "Grandma's got a present for yoooooou!" *shivers*
- And even though she's probably the sanest and nicest of the Nightkin you encounter, she's still insane: with her first seeing you as her grandson and her Ax-Crazy Imaginary Friend Leo, who when she gets low enough health in combat, will take over her and make her go into a berserk rampage.
- Nightstalkers. Half-coyote, half-rattlesnake, all temper and venom. They come running at you. And perhaps if you're unlucky, shooting them in VATS sometimes doesn't work, because the shots just miss even though they're up close.
- One particularly terrifying moment comes just after you've circled the mountain pass west of Nipton and are heading up to Novac. Out of freaking nowhere, a huge pack of Nightstalkers may just show up. If you're lucky, they'll pounce on the Legion patrol hiding behind a billboard. That in itself is pretty freaky, though, because those bastards will tear recruits apart like wrapping paper, then come after you with all the fury of a starving beast.
- Take a look inside Bloodborne Cave. You fall off that ledge near the entrance, and find yourself in a room full of corpses. Then, the next room over, you see something big moving around, and realize you're in the nest of the Legendary Nightstalker. And the only way out is through...
- In Charleston Cave, some of these goddamned things are
*cloaked* via the stealth boy they chewed.
- Adding to their fear is what they represent in game. Encountering a normal rattlesnake is bad enough and they are a well known danger in the American west. Fallout gave them legs.
- In the third DLC,
*Old World Blues*, you come across parties responsible for the creation of the whole Nightstalker breed. That's bad enough. Then you discover how some of those people initially thought they were just mangy coyotes. That's a little worse, but kind of funny. Then you read about how the first Nightstalker *nearly Swallowed Whole the first person who looked at it* and only failed because the victim was obese. Holy crap.
- Think about that for a moment:
*swallowed whole*. This implies that, like snakes, Nightstalkers are capable of unhinging their jaw and stretching out their mouth and stomach to the point of swallowing whole a creature much larger than them, and then slowly digesting it. Now picture Nightstalkers managing to overpower someone and swallow them *alive*.
- Everyone remember the Centaurs of
*Fallout 3*? They got worse with newer, even more mutated forms that often appear alongside the "normal" ones. Thankfully, they seem to only appear in highly irradiated areas. Then again, the ones in the Devil's Throat, near Bitter Springs, are as big as a Deathclaw and twice as horrible. Thankfully, they have no Damage Threshold so they go down pretty easily.
- Did you think the original Deathclaws were tough? New Vegas has new, even stronger, Mother and Alpha types... and let's not even get started on the Legendary Deathclaw. The addition of the Damage Threshold mechanic means that their hide is as effective as a suit of basic military-grade
*Combat Armor*, if you don't have armor-piercing ammo or a BFG, you are *screwed*, because those things run fast.
-
*Ghouls*, especially of the feral variety. Complete with the same creepy, raspy cry they had in *Fallout 3*.
- Most normal ghouls are rather nice, at least. In fact, the only hostile ghouls in Vegas you are likely to run into are the feral variety.
*They* have a rather frightening tendency to detect you before you find them. You will step into a room, hear the howl of a feral ghoul entering its Caution/Danger status, but not *see* it. They also have a tendency to inhabit buildings with narrow corridors and low lighting. You have no idea where they are coming from, until one suddenly rounds a corner or smacks you in the back.
- If you take the road to the Mojave Outpost, past the California Sunset Drive In, you might come across a couple of feral ghouls just wandering around the sides of the road. You don't expect them to be out in the open; you expect creatures like giant ants and bark scorpions. But that's not what makes it creepy. This is a well-travelled road. What makes it creepy is that you have no idea where they come from.
- They're coming from the Mesquite Mountains Crater, which is one of two craters in the Mojave that were made by nuclear bombs. It's heavily irradiated, and filled with feral ghouls. If you persist to the far end of the crater, you'll find that a non-feral ghoul was making his home there... until he was killed by his Ax-Crazy Mr. Handy.
-
*Cazadores.* Giant wasps the size of dogs that are ridiculously fast, hard to hit, and can soak up quite a few bullets (Seen at this page's image). As if that wasn't enough, they evolved from tarantula hawk wasps, which are considered to have one of the most agonizing stings in the insect kingdom. If an inch-long wasp can knock a grown man down, what do you think they can do when they're two feet long?
- As revealed in
*Old World Blues*, the Cazadores aren't mutated creatures of the wastes - they were deliberately made like that by scientists of the Big MT. Except they never knew that Cazadores could reproduce, or that they found a way out of the Big MT...
- Swing by Zion Canyon for an evening. Yao Guai? Meh. Giant Cazadores?
*Run*. Imagine a wasp the size of a *bear*. And there's almost *nowhere in Zion Canyon where they can't spawn*. At least the game is kind enough to de-spawn them and all the other wildlife in the canyon during the final quest - a godsend, given that you're not allowed to fast-travel during it and are likely to be over-encumbered from all the loot Graham refuses to carry for you.
- So you're checking out Silver Peak Mine, hoping maybe you'll get lucky and find a Stealth Boy so close to Jacobstown. Nope!
*Cazadores!* But Wait, There's More!! As soon as you start climbing towards the upper "floor" of the mine, you meet the Legendary Cazador. Twice as big. Twice as fast. Twice as poisonous. Twice as many hit points. Twice the Nightmare Fuel!
- They are even worse as you play on Hardcore. Imagine bringing companions along, and having to sit and watch your companions slowly succumb to the poison, completely helpless, because for some reason they're incapable of using antivenom. Thankfully, the datura antivenom from the above
*Honest Hearts* can be used by companions, but still..
- And it gets worse. Far,
*far* worse. Cazadores are mutant tarantula hawk wasps, which reproduce in a manner that almost certainly had something to do with the eventual body horror of *Alien*. A female hawk wasp will paralyze a tarantula with its sting, then lay eggs inside its body. The crippled spider then slowly dies as it never fully recovers from the poison sting, and then eggs hatch, with the spider eaten alive from the inside by wriggling larvae. These things have spread from Big MT all across the Mojave, using living animals as hosts and sustenance for their young.
- Even the mere sight of them in the distance is unsettling, especially for those more sensitive to insects, as they move like actual flies darting back and forth across the desert; well, if flies were the size of a motorcycle. The one benefit is that having a bright blue-gray exoskeleton will make it much easier for you to spot them, and then either reach for a gun or run for the hills.
- Speaking of giant bugs, very early on you are directed to travel to a town via a highway. A quick look at your Pip-Boy reveals the town in question is directly east whilst the highway does a long loop south, so why not save some time and cut across the desert, right? Scorpion Gulch is why. Those giant radscorpions were horrible to look at in the first game, but not so tough. Now they're back with a vengeance - shooting them now only pisses them off, they've got little cousins which pour forth without number out of dark holes from sheer canyon walls, and their poison will send you mad, if the scuttling, hissing sound of half a dozen of them eating you alive doesn't do that first. Stick to the roads.
- Geckos. Sure, they may not be the most threatening or dangerous animals around, but their appearance and behaviour can be more unnerving than any other animal. When they turn hostile, they're locked onto you immediately like moths to a flame, with their faces locked into a silent screaming expression. Not to mention giant variants in Zion. Worse yet, imagine those screaming faces popping out of nowhere while exploring dark caves...
- Occasionally, you come upon a dead giant radscorpion being swarmed by giant ants, and a line of ants carrying it off to their nest stretching past the horizon. This is exactly the kind of behavior you'd expect from any kind of ants, but at this scale, it's horrifying.
- Even better. At one spot, you find ants that look almost identical doing something similar. Except these are
*fire-breathing* giant ants, and what they are trying to cart away are the charred remains of a *cow*.
- Lakelurks aren't really
*that* scary. Sure, they're ugly as sin, and that sonic attack is extremely overpowered, but they aren't that bad. Just ask the soldiers at Camp Guardian. Except you can't, because the Lakelurks maimed them all and then dragged their unconscious but still living bodies into the caves to be devoured. You can find a survivor who's so traumatized he deserts the army on the spot and runs for California as fast as his crippled legs can carry him.
- You may recall
*Fallout 3* having corpses rigged with explosives, right? Well, we have that here too. Well, except they aren't corpses. They're dismembered, living people, begging you to stay away and kill them. You'll only realize they're rigged after trying to talk to one!
- Even though it's actually a good thing, you get a slo-mo kill cam whenever the last enemy in an encounter goes down, even if you were never aware of them in the first place. So your trusty sidekicks run off by themselves, leaving you alone and wondering where they went... *
*SPLORTCH** smash-cut to a monster's head exploding in slow motion.
- Even the game's glitches can be terrifying. Due to the not-infrequent occurrence of enemies glitching through small solid obstacles, the player can't assume that something that appears "trapped" - in a cage, under a trailer, between rocks, etc. - is going to stay that way. In particular, a certain caged group of bark scorpions might seem like easy pickings for a low-level player, until one randomly and suddenly pops out of the cage and into the floor of the room with the player, its poison stinger gliding through the floor like a periscope.
- Any time the twitchy corpse bug goes into effect. Especially if the corpse fell near a wall, it'll smack into it and make little thudding sounds that sound like someone running quietly.
*And they'll be doing that any time you enter that area for the rest of the game.*
- Whenever a Wild Wasteland encounter is triggered, a creepy theremin tune plays and a Vault Boy icon with spiral eyes appears along with the text "...".
- There's a locked room in the Primm hotel with Psycho and Med-X scattered on a desk, and a skeleton on the bed. There's a second skeleton
*in the bathtub*, along with more Psycho and Med-X, a switchblade, and a very dark stain just outside the tub. No points for guessing what happened.
- And at the same room, there's a ransom note. Just think about it for a while, when you read it.
Mr. Petersen, if you want to see your wife alive again, bring the cash in small unmarked bills to the Bison Steve on Tuesday.
- One of the empty rooms in Novac is dark and contains a number of drugs and medical equipment. In the bathroom, we see a trail of blood that ends with two bloody hand prints in front of the toilet where a Jet canister is located. Drugs Are Bad, okay?
- Near the end of Veronica's personal quest, you visit the Followers' outpost and are told to come the next day because the guy in charge isn't there at the moment. 24 hours later, you return to find that the outpost, formerly lively and bustling, is now shrouded in darkness, with bodies and blood everywhere. Bad enough, but then Veronica raises the octane number:
(weakly, voice dripping with horror) No. Nonononono...
- Unlike
*Fallout 3* or *Fallout 4*, it's entirely possible to kill *almost every single NPC in the game*, with the only exceptions being Yes Man, the Gun Runners Vendertron and the various children. There's no practical reason to do this unless you feel like it, but this results in some otherwise usually populated areas like Freeside being really creepy and feeling like Ghost Towns. There's also the idea that just *one person* and perhaps a couple companions can ultimately wipe out almost the entire population of the Mojave, potentially with little to no struggle if you're at a high enough level.
- Adding to this is the fact that even after you wipe out an entire portion of the map of its NPCs, the ambience sounds don't stop, which makes the game feel
*really* creepy. If you want an example, just kill everybody inside of a Casino then sit in a corner and watch as the cheering, hooting and laughing in the background plays over the bloody massacre you just caused. If anything, it makes it sound like your character's having a psychotic breakdown.
- While wandering through the wasteland, you may occasionally hear the sound of distant gunfire and maybe even an occasional explosion. In the wasteland, no one is safe. Someone,
*or something*, is always getting shot.
- Dummied Out content reveals that there are voice lines for the companions that were recorded for when they catch on fire. They all realistically scream in pain and horror. The worst one is definitely Veronica who gives a high pitched shriek that keeps playing even after the flames are put out, and she also cries, adding a Tear Jerker to the Nightmare Fuel. Felicia Day
*really* nailed the chilling scream. Most likely it was cut to give players a fair chance of still being able to sleep after playing.
- Arcade's scream is also rather unsettling because towards the end of it, you can hear him choking on the smoke, which is Truth in Television. Most victims that die from catching on fire die from smoke inhalation and shock before the fire can destroy their organs.
- The fate of Allen Marks, the Sunset Sarsaparilla Star murderer, is terrifying to think about. He murders tens of people if the tally marks on his gun are correct, collects enough star bottle caps to win the treasure, breaks into the HQ and demands his prize, only to be directed to a storage room and given a plastic deputy badge, then the doors lock shut behind him, airtight. Based on the status of the room by the time the courier gets there, he clearly went into a panic, knocking over shelves and desperately trying to escape before air finally ran out, and the courier gets to hear his last moments in a holotape as he finally runs out of air and asphyxiates.
- The Sierra Madre Villa, the Casino, the residents, the environment, the backstory... and pretty much everything else.
- The only comfort you have is that your partners aren't interested in the treasure of the Sierra Madre. They're much more focused on other things than the gold in the Sierra Madre vault, which eliminates the risk you would have to deal with if you had companions who were there for the money. Unfortunately, they all still have a Berserk Button that, if pushed, can eliminate your fragile alliance with them...
- That weird laughing sound the holograms make if they see you.
- The security holograms provide plenty to be afraid of. If you go into their line of sight for too long, they'll turn yellow briefly, then red, at which point they start chasing after you firing laser attacks that can instantly cripple your limbs. Worst of all,
*you can't directly fight back*. The only way to deal with them is to find the emitter and take it down.
- The "staff" holograms (bartenders, shopkeepers, entertainers, croupiers) are harmless, but quite unnerving. They're mute and expressionless, and sometimes the only real source of light in an area, creating an eerie spectacle.
- Beep... beep... beep... beep beep beep beepbeepbeepBEEPBEEPBEEP BOOM!
- The Ghost People already look creepy as hell, with their hazmat suits, bestial gait, and the fact that they can spring out from anywhere in the fog... Then you learn they were originally the maintenance staff of the hotel who, thanks to effects of the Cloud, are trapped forever in their hazmat suits and have mutated into something... no longer human. Then there's the fact they try not to kill their prey and instead drag them off somewhere to do God-knows-what to them.
- Dean specifically recommend you save one bullet to kill yourself in case this happens to you.
- One theory is that there's still a bunch of those hazmat suits lying around, and the Ghost People force their KO'ed victims into these hazmat suits, effectively turning the victim into a new Ghost Person.
- Dog/God. Especially God, who sound like he's about to kill you any second despite his calm tone, and will try to do so if he's treated badly by the Courier.
- "Dog? Master wants you to pull on your chain as hard as you can..."
- Similar to one of the situations in
*Fallout 3*, you stumble upon a family trapped inside the Sierra Madre's theater. On the ground are two adult skeletons, one with a revolver, a doctor's bag and closest to the child, who has a teddy bear lying next to it, are several Med-X syringes. Trapped, and facing death by the holograms or starvation, they took the only option out.
- Vera was also trapped in the Casino, and loaded up on every chem available to her to dull the pain from her terminal illness as the casino is in lockdown and the security holograms massacre everyone inside. Security holograms in her own likness wander around the same level repeating her final words in a spooky resonating mirror of a life lost over 200 years ago all the while trying to disintegrate you with their eyebeams. She's terrified, she's trapped - and the machines are still recording her. She's just another ghost of the Sierra Madre, a ghost that can kill you thanks to their deadly hologram technology.
- Christine's imprisonment prior to the Courier arriving in the Sierra Madre. Trapped in an auto-doc for weeks while the machine performed its grisly task of operating on the poor gal. Mind you, there wasn't enough medication to keep her calm and it ran out an hour into her claustrophobic nightmare of being trapped in a tube while metal instruments cut her up, in the dark for days or even weeks before finally being let out. No wonder she's utterly adamant against going into the elevator.
- You can go right ahead and experience a little of this yourself, before you rescue her. When you arrive at the Madre, you have three radio frequencies that you can tune your Pip-Boy to. Two are just other two companions talking to themselves while waiting, while Christine's is just breathing and a plaintive knocking-on-metal sound. Occasionally, there starts up a whirring drill noise, the bane of everyone visiting the dentist, with clicking and the knocking and breathing frantically speed up.
- On your way to rescue Christine from the malfunctioning Auto-Doc, you can detour into the nearby rooms on the first floor to scrounge for supplies. One of these rooms is filled with headless corpses, presumably collared by Father Elijah, and no indication is given as to
*what*, exactly, happened to those people. Even Dean Domino, a self-centered jackass who admits he only cares about you because of your linked collars, lets you know whoever did this is screwed up.
- Talking with Father Elijah gives you more than enough information to piece everything together. All the information, and threats, that he gives you, in order to fulfill his plan, and keep you alive through it all, was learned by pure
*trial and error*. The fact that they lost their heads to the same neckwear you're wearing is obvious. We just don't know what caused the collars to detonate.
- Dean himself either killed them or took their already dead bodies to the clinic to examine the collars' mechanics, for the better or worse. Either way, he put them there.
- While heading to the Bell Tower, the courier will pass through what appears to be a mortuary. One of the slabs has an arrangement of black candles that seems to resemble an altar of sorts. Why? By who? No explanation. Absolutely no information or hint is given, and the only thing you know about the area is that there is a high Ghost People presence there.
- There's also a bunch of embalming fluid you can find there. It has no function and little worth. There's something ineffably creepy about it.
- The villa has its own ambience of tortured moans and wails, same as the ghostly whispers the player can hear when wandering through the desert with the radio off. As if the distorted Begin Again music filtering through the air wasnt enough.
- Activating the greeting hologram in the casino is not advised, had one been playing for a long length of time. The eeriness of seeing one of the usually hostile Vera holograms being frozen on the stairs is enough to spook the player out... but then the music starts. A garbled recording of the haunting 'Begin Again', echoing through the room. Oh, and you can hear the Ghost People trying to break in after you. Sweet dreams.
- Bear traps. All they do in-game is harm your legs, but their actual purpose is to, you know, trap the victim. You know how easy it is to step on one when running from The Cloud and the beepings, right? Now imagine how many before you that may have suffered this fate, being trapped and waiting impending doom from either The Cloud, the collars or the Ghost People.
- The ambient sounds are creepy as hell. Especially the metallic clattering that sounds a bit like a rusty metal gate rasping open. There's also a noise that sounds like a rumbling, distorted version of a nuclear warning siren, repeating forever and ever since the bombs dropped hundreds of years ago.
- Getting close to a concentrated Cloud pocket results in a slow, rhythmic thumping that sounds like nothing so much as an enormous heartbeat.
- In some areas, you can hear faint whispering.
- The slowly tolling bell coming from the Salida Del Sol church.
- The "Bad Ends" for Dead Money:
- First Bad End: Instead of paying attention to not one, but
*two* warnings before entering the final vault, the Courier gets locked inside the vault and slowly dies. Your dying image becomes yet another hologram in the Sierra Madre.
- Second Bad End: The Courier sides with Elijah, joining him on his crazed mission of vengeance and domination as he unleashes the Cloud upon the Wasteland, covering the bright and cheerful Mojave with a deadly cloud that kills
**everything** in its path.
- The third Bad End was cut from the game, but the narration by Elijah is still in the game: Take the second Bad End above, but instead of cooperating, Elijah traps the Courier in the vault, and then manages to reroute the ventilation and turn the vault into a Gas Chamber and kill the Courier with the Cloud. With the Courier out of the picture, Elijah's now free to unleash the horrors of Sierra Madre on the Wasteland at large, wiping the slate clean and waiting for the world to Begin Again.
- Elijah's Motive Rant in the Vault about why he wants the Sierra Madre. It's a way to create and destroy nations. The Cloud and the Holograms would kill every living thing where they're deployed, and be virtually impossible to counter. The collars can force people to do his bidding, or die. He doesn't even need to collar everyone himself, since his own slaves can do it for him. The vending machines can supply food, weapons, ammo, medicine, building materials. Now Elijah is old, so he'll most likely die before he can finally set his plans into motion. But he's also an evil genius with access to both the technology of the Big MT and Sierra Madre. It's not far-fetched to imagine him finding a way to cheat death, especially since Mr. House accomplished exactly that. This is Elijah's vision of the future, a second apocalypse, genocide, widespread slavery. Even the Legion isn't as horrifying. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever.
- Related to the above; the player has the chance to turn the tables on Elijah and seal him in the vault. The Courier can then listen in on his radio as Elijah goes from desperate pleading to furious threats, before the vault starts to lose power, leaving him trapped in the dark. Finally, his broadcast begins to loop on one last chilling line.
- Outside of the Non Standard Game Over bad endings above, most of Dead Money's endings range from heartwarming, bittersweet or sad. However the ending where only Dog is alive is particularly chilling. The Psychopathic Manchild heads back west, trying to find ways to satisfy his neverending Horror Hunger. Small communities disappear overnight, the brahmin, the dogs, the people, all devoured.
- "Honest Hearts" is honestly the most light-hearted of the DLC... this doesn't keep it from being utterly terrifying on occasion. It all starts simply enough. The Courier gets a message telling them about an expedition to Zion Canyon. Enticed, they head out to meet with the people they will accompany. After a few minutes of chatting and getting to know your new companions, you all set out. Then everything goes to hell. As soon as you arrive, the White Legs ambush you and begin killing your allies one by one as they scream in fear. Because this is a scripted event, they all die, leaving you to face the White Legs alone. Oh, and due to a rule the leader of the expedition had, you were only able to bring 100 lbs (maximum) of equipment with you.
- This DLC also finally lets the Courier come face to face with Joshua Graham, the infamous Burned Man himself. He even becomes a companion! Plus, his whole body is covered in bandages from his horrible wounds. He also helpfully tells you that every night he feels the pain of being burned alive and nothing, not even chems, can do anything about it.
- If you choose to help him exterminate the White Legs sometimes when killing them, he lets his colors past his normally calm gravely voice.
- Not helping is Graham's
*incredibly* scary leitmotif. There's some Ominous Latin Chanting, a few well-placed bells, and overall a sense of creeping dread throughout the whole thing. It'll make you sit up and take notice when you speak to him for the first time at the Dead Horses' camp. It's *terrifying* when he's reciting the above scripture.
- Not to mention, that song is actually a tune from Fallout 1, "Acolytes Of A New God." It plays inside the Cathedral. Presumably, this is intended to represent the reverence that Dead Horses have for Joshua, but it can also be seen as a representation of Joshua himself; even though he's found his religion again, he can still be just as brutal as he was before...
- One quest seems innocent enough - get high on some of the local stuff and kill a bear. Easy, right? Well, once you start you'll be tripping out as you make your way to the beast's lair. Along the way you'll come across some spore plants and spore carriers from Vault 22. Then the "Ghost Of She" appears and attacks you. Due to effects of the drug, mystical ability possessed by the Yao Guai itself, your own mind freaking out due to fear, or some combination of the three, the Ghost Of She catches fire and splits into several Giant Yao Guais. Which one is real? It doesn't matter, whatever is causing you to see multiple Ghosts of She also forces you to kill them all. Only when the last one falls can you breathe a sigh of relief.
- The location where you get this quest, a cave in the Sorrows camp, also has Joshua Graham catch up to you after talking with Daniel for unrelated reasons and (presumably) beginning the trip portion of this sidequest, and quotes the aforementioned passage at you in his trademark chilling voice, all while he convinces you to take the fight to the White Legs. While its usually the result of the main quest and the side quest clashing with each other, its just as possible to interpret it as the Courier hallucinating Joshua and convincing him to start killing.
- Honest Hearts has a fridge version too. Daniel mentions that the White Legs killed children, pretty brutally.
Daniel: "They beat children in... in...
*beat them in their beds* while they slept."
- Now imagine you're a 6-year old child and you wake up in the middle of the night and there's a scary white-paint-faced, dreadlock-wearing, half-naked tribal over you who then beats you to death with a club. Didn't help that they also stripped the bodies naked and nailed them to cliffs around the city.
- Go to the Zion Valley Welcome Booth and take a look at the drawings on the rocks behind the toilet. Looks like Slenderman still lives hundreds of years into the future.
- When you go to the scout bus to get the compass, try to keep from imagining why all those little skeletons are there, surrounded by lunchboxes and toys...
- The enemies themselves are all gigantic. Giant radscorpions. Zion mantises and green geckos are bigger than their Mojave counterparts. Even some of the Yao Guai are giant varieties. And, as mentioned above,
**giant fucking Cazadores**.
- A lot of Randall Clark's journal entries are quite sad. A few of them though are downright chilling. One in particular:
**August 22nd**
*10 sets of tracks 1/2 mile NE of canyon entrance. Barefoot???*
**August 23rd**
*Saw them through scope. Corpses walking around. Finally gone crazy. Dementia maybe.*
**August 24th**
*I'm not crazy, they're real. Goddammit they are real.*
- How about his run in with the survivors of Vault 22? Some were infected and slowly beginning to become Spore Carriers, while most had resorted to cannibalism, slaughtering the Spanish survivors already living in the valley and abducting the rest.
**February 13**
*Recon during night. Well-organized, sentries along most approaches, but stream not covered. [...] Women and children still in pen. Will try to infiltrate by stream tomorrow night*.
- In revenge, Clark launched a one-man guerrilla warfare campaign against them, whittling their number from 118 down to just 34. Eventually after 10 months, they decided to leave, writing a note warning of a demon that beset them... but not before eating their dead.
- His account of the Great War from his perspective is just
*chilling*, describing the immediate minutes and months of the bombs falling. Complete with being forced to give an old couple blinded by the nuclear blasts a Mercy Kill with his rifle. And when he passes through that same area in scouting what's left of Salt Lake City months later, he notes how he couldn't find their bodies.
- He mentions specifically how things at first didn't seem unusual, just that the sky looked "wrong". And then about a week after rain started falling. Black rain, loaded with soot and contaminants from the nuclear bombs. For two months he was stuck in a cave because the rads outside were
*lethal*. When he finally emerged in January the following year the snow was glowing in the dark and there was nothing alive. And keep in mind this was in Zion, which was spared direct hits. Imagine how bad the aftermath of the Great War was in places like D.C, New York or Los Angeles.
- And worse still, the black rain is actually Truth in Television (albeit less deadly than that) as recounted by survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
- The caves Clark used as his survivalist shelters are Paranoia Fuel, littered with mines, hidden traps and the rotted remains of those who attempted to explore said caves; if the remaining Spore Carriers don't kill you, the bear traps and explosives likely will. No wonder the Sorrows take their "Father in the Caves" so seriously.
- When travelling with Follows-Chalk, he may casually make the remark of; "Way I heard it, Salt-Upon-Wounds butchered everyone in New Canaan and nailed their corpses to the cliffs."
- The Mojave Drive-in with Old World Blues installed. Nothing like walking to the top of a hill in the middle of the night and seeing a giant blue-tinted eye watching you in the distance.
- The Big MT. Imagine being stalked by creatures who have had their brains removed and skeletons wielding laser weapons. Not ghouls,
*skeletons!* In automated Power Armor, specifically. This is where nearly all the mutant horrors of the Mojave Wasteland came from, including Nightstalkers and Cazadores. It's also responsible for how the Sierra Madre ended up a toxin-filled ghost town full of hazmat-suited zombies. This is where the plant monsters of Vault 22 were first born. This is where Chinese prisoners of war and American citizens were taken and experimented on. This is where people are still being experimented on by beings who don't even know what morals are anymore. This is the Big MT, and you're all alone. No companions, just you, a bunch of random appliances, and a talking stealth suit.
- The Trauma Override Harnesses are one of the saddest and creepiest enemies in New Vegas. The suit itself was designed to return a soldier to a predetermined home base when he got too injured to move himself by overriding the motor functions of the wearer and 'walking' him. Being a prototype, the suits had a few errors which ultimately led to the suits walking and attacking with their wearers kept captive in the suit until they eventually died (of exhaustion, dehydration, starvation, exposure, any number of things). Over two hundred years later, the suits are still walking around with the remains of the test person still inside. As they move, the player can hear the bones of the dead person rattling in the suit. If you have the Wild Wasteland trait on
well, "Who turned out the lights?"
- Think about it, the suit was forcing the soldiers to move around,
*while they had a broken limb*. And a broken limb isn't necessarily a fatal injury, so most likely the people in the suit died of thirst or starvation, unable to stop the suit from moving their bodies around.
- Little Yangtze. No matter how you put it, no matter how much lovely jazz music your Pip-Boy may be playing, no matter how many penis jokes Doctor Klein makes, it's still a Death Camp whose prisoners were fodder for experiments that would make Nazi scientists shudder with terror. Who were the prisoners? Chinese people living in the USA, who were considered "dissidents" and described as potential "research subjects". If the knowledge of the experiments won't make you feel sick, the rows and rows or graves in the camp will. You can read the journals written by a camp guard before the bomb, and he's just completely callous about the whole thing. His reaction to the "Total Pacification Collars" coming in? He's glad he can finally have a good night of sleep.
- As another parallel to Nazi atrocities, the various elements of the Holocaust were very often described in bureaucratic euphemisms. The thing about imprisoning people in camps because of their race/ethnicity in time of war is a real thing too. During World War I people of German descent, including citizens, were sent to concentration camps in Canada and the USA. In World War II the same thing was done to people of German, Italian or Japanese ethnicity.
- And there are ghouls there, labeled "Survivors". First they were imprisoned, then they were trapped there for
*centuries*. Not to mention that when Elijah showed up, he experimented on/tortured them all over again. And then *you* will probably end up killing them, though by that point killing them is mercy.
- By the by, the ghouls were trapped there by Elijah putting bomb collars on them. If the ghouls try to run out of the compound, their heads explode. You can literally kill the whole camp by getting their attention and just standing outside of the main gate. Elijah put bomb collars on possibly immortal people, forcing them to remain in a small prison yard until they eventually couldn't take it anymore.
- Further highlighting the point of how the pre-war USA saw the Yangtze prisoners, the plates in the food tents are actually labelled as "dog bowls"
- The Cuckoo's Nest, which, despite its innocent-sounding name, is a den of absolute horror. Piles of mutilated bodies and bits of organs are scattered around everywhere and the whole cave is filled with lobotomites. Worse, you
*have* to go here to retrieve the personality of one of The Sink's inhabitants (and get one of the achievements). Who is it? Why, the Toaster, of course! His personality holotape is on an altar between two human skulls as if it's part of some Satanic ritual.
- After exploring both Vault 22 and Zion Canyon, you thought you were done with spore carriers, right? Well, they also appear in
*Old World Blues*... including Patient Zero.
- The Legendary Bloatfly, hands down. Bloatflies are The Goomba of the
*Fallout* universe, sometimes weaker than Radroaches, but this one can tank nini-nukes and can kill any player in 3-4 shots **tops**. What kind of sick experiments did this fly go through to become so dangerous, or do we really want to know?
- In one of the houses in Higgs Village, there is a room with teddy bears sitting up on red stools. There are also naked mannequins in the adjoining room. They don't do anything...but who set the bears up? The only reasonable explanation is Dala, but she's too terrified to leave the Think Tank, which in turn means that no-one's been in that creepy house in a
*long, long time.*
- Again in Higgs, House #103. Find a birdcage key or pick the basement door, find a basement filled with animal cages, some big enough for humans, some small enough for teddy bears. Theres blood and medical equipment all over, and a dog hide on one of the operation tables. Again, apparently the war couldnt come soon enough!
- Weirdly enough, the normally wacky and light-hearted Wild Wasteland trait provides one. Normally, when you go to get Gabe's water bowl, you can just get it and leave. Put Wild Wasteland on? A pint sized deathclaw named Stripe pops out of the dog house and runs at you. How cute, right? Sure, until you find out it's got as much health and as much killing power as the
*Legendary Deathclaw*. And you probably won't see it until it slashes you for a One-Hit Kill.
- Your first encounter with the damaged or berserk Securitrons will likely be this. Consider: the first one you encounter in the Mojave saved your life and is genuinely friendly toward you, and further all other Securitrons are a symbol of House's own bizarre brand of law and order, complete with their fairly non-threatening chubby cop faces. Now, imagine you spot the familiar boxy-blue hulled robots patrolling the perimeter. The only warning you have these aren't the same droids you're used to comes if you have a high enough Perception to notice they're hostile from the outset. There are two variants; one simply has a circle with a line drawn through its face, while the other has a twisted and distorted face, similar to the Swamp People from "Point Lookout" in the previous game. None of these bots are capable of effectively communicating with you, so instead they'll constantly broadcast static, which your Pip-Boy helpfully translates as gibberish. The best part? The crux of Mr. House's main quest involves upgrading his Securitrons to the Mark II operating system, which makes them significantly more difficult to kill in combat. Doctor 0, the man responsible for these machines, has them running the Mark
*VI* OS.
- At the very end when you confront the Think Tank after meeting Mobius, there's a chilling atmosphere that wasn't there before. For one thing, instead of a tranquil blue, the room is a dark red. And as you enter, you see them lined up in a row like they were the first time you met them. Only this time, they lost their comedic relief and pose more of a threat because you know what they're capable of. The doctor with No Indoor Voice, the Dr. Venture expy, the amorous scientist with a fetish for humans, the doctor with the repressed childhood trauma and overdramatic voice, and the unintelligible? Gone and replaced with potential enemies.
- There's a (thankfully) cut ending where you could side with the Think Tank. The effect this has on the Mojave is
*not* pretty. To highlight the more gruesome details: Goodsprings is crushed by blocks of hexcrete, Primm's inhabitants are fried to death, Camp Searchlight becomes home to giant carnivorous plants, a fungal STD emerges from Gomorrah that causes the victim's genitals to burst like a pod, giant man-eating Battle Brahmin emerging from Black Mountain (while its radios broadcast a staccato static), Legion East brain-scrubbed into thinking that they were in ancient Rome on the moon, and the NCR re-educated into believing they were in a nationwide version of Tranquility Lane. And throughout all of it, the Think Tank remained motivated by science.
- The sheer
*isolation* of the Big Empty. Ulysses describes it as "so deep in the desert, there's no turning back". People who wandered in in the past were kidnapped by security robots and lobotomized. You're utterly alone, in a place beyond the Wasteland, spoken of only in myths...
- The loading screen slide showing the Big Empty accentuates this feeling. Just from that image alone you might think that the Big Empty is on
*the Moon*, and not in the Mojave Desert!
- Made much more effective by the fact that, through out the entire DLC, you do not meet a single human character, except for the enemy Lobotomites who just shoot at you on sight. The former human characters, the brains, have all gone Ax-Crazy and only see you as nothing more but a strange scientific anomaly that they wish to keep doing research on. Meanwhile, Dr. Mobius is initially friendlier than the Think Tank, but once he reveals that he was behind the insanity that fell upon them, you will not want to stick around him for much longer either. The only true friends you have in the DLC are all the personality cores in The Sink when you turn them all on, but they're nothing but A.I. By the time you leave Big Mountain and return to the Mojave, you will sigh in relief once you finally talk to another human again.
- Lonesome Road brings a new terrifying horror to the wastes - the Tunnelers. Imagine a glowing, reptile-like humanoid that hits just as hard as a goddamn deathclaw. But they're smaller (thus harder to hit), can crawl on walls and ceilings, come in packs, can pop out of the ground under you, bred quickly, and eat up a crapload of damage. And these things are apparently slowly tunneling their way towards the Mojave.
- It's never fully confirmed where the Tunnelers came from. Either they're horrifically mutated humans (which is what's mostly implied), or they've been underground for eons, and only awoke recently. Take your pic which option is the least horrifying.
- In fact, the first time you encounter a tunneler is underground, while chasing a deathclaw (or just waiting for it to go away). The deathclaw is running away, gets trapped in an abandoned truck, and is effortlessly killed by a tunneler.
- About halfway through The Divide, the Courier must travel underground on a funicular car to proceed. During the whole ride, explosions are going off all around you and making the player worry that the car might crash. Then, as if nothing could get any worse, swarms of these bastards start climbing up the sides of the car and begin attacking you. When the ride is finally over, you then have to make your way back above ground by going through a destroyed hotel filled with even
*more* Tunnelers. It's the least fun funicular ever.
- The name of some areas alone is nightmare fuel. The Cave of the Abaddon in particular stands out. ("Abaddon" literally means "destruction" and is commonly accepted as the name of an angel of death.)
- Deathclaws. Spawning. Everywhere. The things will spawn on right on top of you when you go into certain buildings. And when walking the Lonesome Road, you come across a trailer on a highway bypass that's splattered in blood. When you go inside and walk down to the far end to see what's in that ammo box, a goddamn Deathclaw leaps on top of the trailer, takes down ED-E in one hit, and comes into the trailer after
*you*. It's a scripted event, however a wise player can simply first cover the roof of the trailer in landmines which will literally blow the deathclaw sky high when it first appears, turning the encounter into Nightmare Retardant. But even if you manage to kill that Deathclaw, chances are you've alerted the other three just down the road...
- At the end of the Divide, you come across a small cave. Inside is a rotted skeleton and a dead deathclaw. After picking up a distress signal holotape from the corpse, you discover that they were trying to kill a giant deathclaw that was pinning them down. Well... the corpse is over there, so they killed it, right?
*Wrong!* Just around the corner is a special giant Deathclaw named Rawr, surrounded by corpses. And just then the cave entrance crumbles behind you, trapping you inside. Have fun with this SNK Boss!
- At the beginning of Lonesome Road, you find the Marked Men. At first, it's pretty obvious that they've been driven insane from radiation and want to kill you. But it's not that simple; they're cannibals, and not just mindless cannibals that chew on corpses; there's a Hopeville basement where there's skeletons hung up on meat hooks and hacked corpses on tables, right next to an old kitchen. The radiation has made them insane but kept enough of their humanity so they can gut you like a pig on the butcher's hook. Oh, and did we mention that their appearance is due to the Divide's windstorms
*stripping the flesh from their bodies*, leaving their raw muscle exposed to the elements? The only thing keeping them alive is the Divide's high residual radiation, and even that does absolutely nothing to dull the pain.
- The Divide in general appearance. Throughout all the
*Fallout* games, you've seen destruction and death, seen the remnants of once proud cities, stared across blasted plains of wasteland, observed the vile corruption of places like the Pitt, Sierra Madre, and Point Lookout. Observed the Old World horror shows of the Big Empty, and the Vaults. Even saw brief snatches of hope in Oasis and Zion. However, it all pales in comparison to the amount of destruction in the Divide. In the Divide, there's only destruction, death, and devastation. This place isn't a place of honor, no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here, nothing valued dwells within the Divide (well, except for good loot. And nukes. Everybody wants nukes). It's a place best shunned and left uninhabited.
- You can find old pre-war terminal entries written by a particularly jingoistic Type-2 Eagleland base commander who describes a commune of hippies protesting against the war and nuclear weapons outside the base. The hippies were rounded up by the military and shipped to Big MT to be used in experiments there.
- The Courier's Mile is horrifying, not only because of the locals (who are mildly peeved with you for setting off a nuke over their heads), but because it gives a window into what it must have been like directly after the two-hour nuclear exchange that killed the world 200 years earlier; all nuclear glare and bleak desolation. Oh, and the background radiation silently screws with your Pip-Boy's motion sensor. Your trusty tool shows safely empty surroundings, and you probably won't notice something is wrong with it... until a deathclaw is chewing on your head. And not just any deathclaw! An irradiated deathclaw! So now it's chewing on your glowing bones.
- Speaking of Ulysses, there's the man himself. Talking to him through ED-E reveals that he knows about the history of the Old World and knowledgeable about a lot of things in the Wasteland. He's cryptic as to his actual aims, but very cool and calm, and obviously has some well-thought-out ultimate goal. When you finally meet him face to face, you find out that goal is to use the remaining ICBMs in the Divide to destroy your home. If your Courier has sided with either the NCR or the Legion, he's trying to destroy either his own former enemies or one of the more brutal and nasty factions in the Wasteland. But if your Courier is independent, he'll just aim the nukes at the Mojave. It's kind of terrifying to break through the veneer of a Warrior Poet and find an Omnicidal Maniac willing to slaughter untold thousands of innocents and obliterate one of the few remaining bastions of human civilization just as a means to get back at the Courier and/or prove a philosophical point.
- The DLCs actually build up how horrible Ulysses is of a person. The creeping... not terror, exactly, but disquiet, is incredibly unnerving and culminates when you finally meet the man. He arranged for your death in Goodsprings; taught the White Legs how to destroy entire civilizations; tipped Elijah off about the Sierra Madre and is thus indirectly responsible for the fates of every person Elijah forced to run that gauntlet; got the Think Tank to start lobotomizing any humans to enter the Big MT; and finally attempted to blow up the Mojave.
- You don't meet Ulysses in person until the end of the DLC, but if you're observant, you can spot him standing in the distance a couple of times◊ before that. Unlike your conversations with him through ED-E, Ulysses doesn't try to interact with the Courier during these appearances. He simply stands there, silently judging you before disappearing.
- Really, Ulysses takes the whole concept of an Unknown Rival to its ultimate, most horrifying conclusion. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/FalloutNewVegas |
Fan Works / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
**First Old Man:**
I saw a woman. Couldn't have been younger than ninety, probably a hundred, they live that damn long you know. She was holding a sword in her left hand, because she'd lost her right arm, and pretty much everything, shoulder to hip, sternum out by the time I saw her, looked like it had been blasted off by a raiton
, but I saw that old woman cut down no less than fifty trained ninja before some poor bastard finally cut off her head but... That old lady's body kept going, that headless body cut down five more men, before she fell and drove her sword into the heart of the man who beheaded her. One of my buddies set her on fire, just in case. I...I don't know if I was seeing things, but that blackened, headless corpse, it looked like it still tried to get up again. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Fanfic |
Fantastic Four Duology / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
- The whole accident which gave the four (and Victor) their powers. First, the cosmic storm arrives like a real life Advancing Wall of Doom which blows through the ship and hits everyone. Adding to that, when the cosmic burst hit everyone, we see subtle changes to their bodies foreshadowing their powers. We see Reed's face and body distorting and stretching a bit, Sue turning invisible back and forth and Johnny catching on fire. While not too disturbing, it's so surreal that it's bound to shock anyone the first time they see it.
- Dr. Doom without his mask is eerie to look at, with the metal scarred face seen in this picture.
- By the climax of the first film, Doctor Doom shoots a bolt of electricity through Ned's chest. In the trailers, he electrocutes him near water.
- Halfway through the first movie, Reed attempts to remove his powers using a chamber-like device he created to harness the cosmic storm's energy. When he first walks out of it, it seems like it worked and that he's back to normal. He's not. Instead, we shot a close up shot of his face melting and drooping downward and then it cuts to the whole left half of his body becoming limp as he collapses to the floor.
- Victor has a subtly creepy way of speaking compared to the Large Ham Marvel villains shown during it's time.
- One particularly creepy moment that stands out. The scene where Victor was using hidden camera's in the Baxter Building. Spying on Reed's attempts to study the groups abilities and find a way to return to normal. One can't help but wonder, exactly how did he even get those camera's into the building in the first place?
- You get to see Doom's scarred face
*very* briefly in the sequel. When you see it, you'll be glad it's only there for a second.
- What's left of ||General Hager|| after Doom ||stole the Surfer's board|| in Siberia.
- The chilling image of Gah Lak Tus looming over the Earth◊ wouldn't look out of place in a Cosmic Horror Story. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/FantasticFourRiseOfTheSilverSurfer |
Fantasia / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
The creatures of evil gather to worship their master
note :
and it's not Walt Disney
.
*Fantasia* is the most "adult" classic full-length animated film Disney ever made. This makes it a bit different than most of their other full length animated films right off the bat. Almost all of the segments take place in the dark.
-
*Toccata and Fugue in D minor*
- Near the end of the segment, three breaks in a black overcast are seen flashing, followed a strange shape (resembling a coffin) walking away from the camera into the background, accompanied respectively by frightening string/brass sections (originally organ pedals) and a haunting bass cadenza.
- Leopold Stokowski himself during the first half of this segment. There is something about the sudden movements of his conducting style and how his commanding presence is causing music that at times can be quite dissonant and unsettling. Not helping matters is the fact that his nose is rather large and prominent, making it hard not to perceive as a Sinister Schnoz. It is only when he says congratulations to Mickey Mouse after the "Sorcerer's Apprentice" segment that you may realize that he isn't supposed to be a Disney villain!
-
*The Nutcracker*
- The start of the segment ("Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies") has an eerie atmosphere to it. Tiny little lights floating in a pitch dark forest. The music doesn't help much either.
- The Mood Whiplash of contrast between the quiet fish dance ("Arabian Dance") and the loud Russian flower dance ("Trepak") can be startling.
-
*"The Sorcerer's Apprentice"*
- The wizard (Yen Sid) has a very eerie piercing stare in his big eyes. He also never ever speaks, which makes him appear all the more menacing.
- Interestingly the opening scene with him sets up this trope, then subverts it—Yen Sid seems to be summoning some sort of creepy, disturbing skull imagery...only for it to blend together and become a beautiful butterfly.
- The idea of something as inanimate as a broom suddenly walking around ... and then taking a will of its own!
- Mickey chopping up the broom. A Deleted Scene (existing in pencil test form) had Mickey doing it
*onscreen*. See it here.
- The way the chopped up broom splinters slowly but surely comes back to life. First the splinters start twitching, then they transform into thousands of brooms. Mickey then hearing sounds from behind the door and taking a peek...
- Mickey's desperate attempts to stop the brooms, while the room is slowly but surely filling up with water. Especially the disturbing part where the brooms are still emptying their buckets in the fountain
*while already in over their heads!*
- Mickey almost drowning in the whirlpool. If the wizard hadn't come back in time, he would surely have died.
- Yen Sid providing a Jump Scare moment by suddenly hitting Mickey with the broomstick. While this is primarily a Funny Moment, it can be quite startling if you're watching it for the first time. Not to mention the Death Glare he's giving him the whole time. Thankfully, there's a little Nightmare Retardant in there, too: if you look carefully at the shot immediately prior to Yen Sid hitting Mickey, he has a tiny smirk on his face, meaning that he at least found Mickey's debacle Actually Pretty Funny.
-
*The Rite of Spring*.
- The music
*itself* can be somewhat nightmare inducing, especially to a younger audience. Even though there were edits made to the music (including pitches, and tempo changes), it's full of Sensory Abuse.
- The creation of the universe is very eerie, due to the threatening music ("Part I Introduction"). Especially when Earth comes closer and it seems as if the viewer will be crushed by the planet.
- The never slowing down or stopping lava stream ("The Augurs of Spring", "Ritual of Abduction").
- The scenes taking place in the deep ocean ("Part II Introduction"). The music itself is very spooky, especially during the first scene where organisms split up to form cells. What makes this scene particularly frightening is that most children have no idea what is going on!
- The
*Pteranodon* getting eaten by a *Tylosaurus*. This happens onscreen and ends that part of the segment. Worse still, the *Pteranodon* gets grabbed by the *Tylosaurus*'s jaws head first and then slowly gets dragged into the water while struggling, in almost complete silence, no less. There's no blood or anything, but it's still pretty shocking.
- The appearance of those
*Struthiomimus* who head towards the river to drink ("Mystical Circles of the Adolescent Girls"). The music is eerie and they move like zombies, complete with glazed stare and jerky movements.
- The brutal battle between the
*Stegosaurus* and the *Tyrannosaurus rex* ("Glorification of the Chosen One", "Evocation of the Ancestors"). Stegosaurus had the bad luck that T-Rex wanted to eat it, and was running for its life. In fact, by logic due to the thagomizers and spines, it should be protected by being too sharp. Yet T-Rex bites it on the spines directly and then goes for the neck a few times while the horns are blaring. It's unclear if T-Rex paralyzed Stegosaurus or did a Neck Snap, but either way, it knocked Stegosaurus to the ground, where the creature mercifully died within a few seconds. Oh, and all of this is *onscreen*.
- Hell, the
*T. rex* itself! Sure, it may not be outright evil, but it's still utterly terrifying, *especially* considering it took multiple thagomizer hits to the face and barely flinched.
- The other creatures can only watch. Their expressions are horrified, waiting for either the end to come, or for the T-Rex to choose another form of prey.
- The dinosaurs dying from starvation and dehydration is also very disturbing ("Ritual Actions of the Ancestors"). Especially the one who is trying to dig up something to eat and then slowly realizes there isn't anything there. While he sits there, tired of his fruitless search, the desert wind starts blowing against his back and you realize he is doomed.
- The
*Brontosaurus*, *Diplodocus*, and *Stegosaurus* drowning in the mud, and being harassed by the *Ceratosaurus*.
- Those dinosaurs can do nothing but stand in the sinking mud and either starve to death or wait to be eaten by the
*Ceratosaurus*.
- If that's not terrifying enough, there's the
*T. Rex* collapsing from the heat. Once it was a powerful creature feared by all, now even it is rendered powerless by nature's wrath and is forced to join in the march towards extinction.
- There's also the silent panning over the footprint-covered landscape... revealing a valley littered with dinosaur skeletons and ending with a focus on a
*T. Rex's* skull. The silence is just utterly chilling and the clear evidence that these creatures died of starvation and dehydration is unsettling to say the least.
- For contemporary audiences, it must've brought up thoughts of the Dust Bowl, which was still occurring at the time.
- The solar eclipse at the end of the segment ("Kiss of the Earth: The Sage", "Part I Introduction, Reprise"). It's just so eerie that something so familiar as the sun can be so frightening.
- The brief pause of silence before an earthquake literally rips open the earth is quite chilling.
- Followed by eerie, shrieking horns as huge rocks rip out of the Earth ("Dance of the Earth").
- The grim reminder that our own brief time on Earth could end the same way.
- The fact that what caused the dinosaurs' extinction in the first place is never shown, just the aftermath of it. Granted, this is likely due to there not yet being a consensus at the time of release on just what
*did* cause the K-T extinction, but it still manages to be a shining example of Nothing Is Scarier. One minute the dinosaurs are frolicking in a lush floodplain, the next there's a cut to a lifeless desert with the surviving pockets of reptiles on a futile march for food and water, and the audience is left wondering just what the hell happened.
-
*"The Pastoral Symphony"*
- Although not a villainous character, the pitch-black pegasus with the glowing red eyes is a little creepy looking.
- The sudden appearance of Zeus in the third segment, accompanied by storm clouds and a loud change in music. Then he decides to start throwing lightning bolts at everyone, just For the Evulz. Just be glad this isn't the same Zeus from
*Hercules*; that'd be awkward.
-
*Night on Bald Mountain*
- Everything that ever went bump in the night, all rolled up in one burning Black Mass presided over by the colossal demon Chernabog, complete with Glowing Eyes of Doom, demonic leers of delight, and terrifying snarls. Do NOT watch this after dark with the lights off. It's one of Disney's highest points in animation, with stellar special effects... all aimed at making the night of the demons more horrifying. There is very good reason Chernabog is the current picture of Disney's Nightmare Fuel page...
- The idea that this hellish feast is a recurring event near that quiet little city near Bald Mountain. You start to wonder whether the villagers are aware what happens on Walpurgis Night when they are asleep and if they specifically stay inside to not witness it? This is the Witches Sabbath, when nightmares walk the Earth.
- Chernabog's completely pupil-less eyes that give off a nigh-incomprehensible evil god aspect and very hyper-realistic and massive arms that are able to raise the dead with their shadow.
- The moment the segment starts, we see Bald Mountain - a colossal, intimidating mountain on a cloudy, dark night. The moon just comes into view, but the mountain is colored a sickly, unnatural green and blue. And the music is at first quiet, but as the camera pans in towards the top of the mountain, as it picks up with sinister, slowly more frantic strings. And slowly your attention is drawn towards the highest peak of the mountain, as something appears to be stirring. And finally, we get the establishing shot as the highest peak is revealed to be the wings of Chernabog, who opens up, his arms folded, as the iconic horns blare. Chernabog has arrived, and the night on Bald Mountain can begin.
- Chernabog stretches his hands outwards, and the shadows magically race towards the town below to summon his legion of the damned, showing that he doesn't need to leave his perch to commit evil.
- During this sequence, the town is dead silent and nobody is seen. The only living creature is a sinister vulture, who looks like it would fit right in with the demons given its glowing yellow eye and smirk as it senses Chernabog's actions when the shadows pass over it, and flies away.
- The bizarre appearance of the spirits and skeletons as they fly out of their graves. Rather than being animated normally, they appear as static, paper-thin figures which flutter disquietingly in the wind as they glide through the air. And slowly but surely, hordes upon hordes of the dead begin flying up towards Chernabog, who casts forth his arm once more to summon his legions. We see ghastly skeletal horses being ridden by their undead masters, other mounts such as giant boars, featureless ghosts which amount to just a pair of eyes underneath a hood, and disturbing, primordial looking witches on brooms.
- When the forces of darkness meet Chernabog at the peak of Bald Mountain, they swirl around the mountainside in a massive ring, and Chernabog stirs them up as he begins flexing. Without even seeing his facial expression change (largely due to it being too dark to see anything but his eyes), we can still see from his body language that Chernabog has begun cackling evilly as the
*Psycho*-esque strings really kick into high gear, and then he stretches his arms out into one of his iconic poses as if to say "alright, we're all here!"
- Chernabog grabbing a handful of demons while he looks at them with an endeared smile. Then he just drops them into the lake of fire, as if he lost interest...
- The harpy grabbing a demon but then accidentally or deliberately dropping him, causing him to plummet to his doom inside a seemingly bottomless pit of fire!
- A particularly unsettling moment in that scene would be when Chernabog creates a trio of beautiful, fiery succubus-like creatures and watches them dance seductively as well as gracefully on his hand- an unexpected act of relative niceness from what was seeming to be a terrible boss to anyone that served under him...then suddenly, he places his other hand over them and they all suddenly transform into grotesque parodies of animals; a reddish goat, a greenish pig, and a bluish wolf. Their expressions afterward imply that the transformation isn't a fun experience for them, and their graceful dance continues as a grotesque mockery of itself, which causes Chernabog to smile dementedly compared to his earlier rather controlled demeanour beforehand. He then proceeds to transform them again into a larger group of misshaped demons while maliciously twisting his hand around as they desperately move around to not fall down to their deaths after seemingly managing to pull through the ordeal he crushes them in his palm as they're burnt in his grasp. He then reforms them from blue flame into very male horned bluish tint demons in his image, which causes him to undergo a Slasher Smile of fiendish proportions. All of which undermine the act of beauty he started off with demonstrating he is fully capable of creating something not hideous, but will distort it into something profane again and again until it's in his image For the Evulz.
- Chernabog ends his night of horrors by bringing the mass of spirits, demons and fire together and producing a brilliant light while his arms stretch toward the sky◊. Given that Disney was intending this to be a stand-in for the Devil himself, and another name for Satan was Lucifer, or "Light Bringer"...
- The half-formed and deformed imps and spirits dance convulsively, almost involuntarily, as if gripped with seizures. Some even start crawling on their backs halfway through their walk, only to get up again immediately afterwards.
- You think what you see in the film is unsettling? Someone went through the effort of taking out the music for the scene, and instead, putting in their own versions of what sounds would most likely be occurring on that mountaintop. Holy Christ...
- The 50th anniversary poster for the movie is also Nightmare Fuel. Chernabog is depicted reaching up against a dark, starry backdrop, as if his evil is able to spread into the heavens themselves; fitting given he is an incomprehensibly evil entity dating back to creation itself. And Mickey may not be facing him, but the poster sure projects the idea that hes going up against the evil monster himself.
### See
*Fantasia 2000* *Fantasia 2000* | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Fantasia |
Far Cry / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
The game series:<!—index—> Far Cry 2 Far Cry 3 Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon Far Cry 4 Far Cry Primal Far Cry 5 Far Cry: New Dawn Far Cry 6<!—/index—> | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/FarCry |
Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
- The Blood Dragons are actually pretty frightening the first time Rex meets them. After reviving to find himself in a cave, and trudges his way towards the entrance, only to find neon blue liquid running down from above onto the floor, staining it. After a few seconds, the top half of a cyborg soldier falls to the floor in front of Rex... and he looks up just in time to see a
**massive freakish reptile glaring down on him**. And Rex can only crouch walk away from the Dragon through the grass, crossing through a valley full of them, and all he can do is throw cybernetic hearts to distract them, never once straightening up for fear of getting attacked.
- The setting itself can be pretty scary to explore despite the fact that the player character is a badass cyborg warrior. The island where the game takes places is perpetually shrouded in darkness under a stormy blood red sky with the primary sources of illumination being various eerie glowing neon lights that gives the whole place a dark atmosphere despite its overall Denser and Wackier tone. Even worse, a ruined burning cityscape is visible on the far horizon (likely as a result of the apocalyptic nuclear wars that took place in the backstory) that adds to the isolated and desolate feel of the island. And let's not even get started on the wildlife... from disfigured devil goats that look more like zombies than mutants and cyber predators with metallic bodies to the titular Blood Dragons themselves there are now even more nasty ways to meet an unfortunate end than there were in Far Cry 3. If not for the cheesy cool 80s action flick style the entire expansion is done in to soften the darker elements Blood Dragon would probably feel more like a tense Survival Horror than an action sandbox game.
- The effects of the dragon blood when ingested. On cyborgs, it supercharged them, making them nigh unstoppable. On regular humans, it turns them into the Running Dead; Mindless zombies who can only kill. Carlyle attempts a workaround by injecting himself with nanites. This has the effect of supercharging the nanites, which destroy his physical body. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/FarCry3BloodDragon |
Emerald / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
Much like its source material,
*Emerald* has plenty of horrors both in plain sight and in the background. **WARNING: All spoilers are unmarked.**
- The Lands. The 'dungeons' of this story take the form of their maker's perfect world. Except, if you look past the surface, things stop being so 'flawless'. And if their maker stays in there for too long...their body dies and washes up on shore, with their mind trapped forever in their Land.
- The mere fact that a new version of the Masked Circle -
*Persona 2*'s villains - exists is this. Everything from the events of that game was supposed to be erased, and yet this new version hints that somehow, something remained...or the Crawling Chaos has begun interacting with humanity again.
- This line that Lady Scorpio says, if you're knowledgeable of
*Persona 2*. *Lady Scorpio:*
As for your question, it was I who saw the visions of the coming future. I saw the golden shrines buried deep beneath the sea of souls, and I understood what had been hidden away from humanity's collective mind for so long. A city, and two gods imprisoned within.
- How Benihime's Persona, Rusalka, defeated Koschei. Rusalka not only severs the Shadow's head off, but she also
*devours* his eyes and tongue. Urgh.
- The Great Father. When the team is about to confront Shujiki's Shadow, Reika punches it off the tower...but something Goes Horribly Wrong. Shujiki begins screaming in pain, and then something ascends from the side of the tower. A serpentine black appendage with the face of Shujiki's Shadow on it, his face frozen into an expression of pure terror. Then the face is cast away, to reveal a featureless mask beneath...and it just gets worse from there. Eventually, it takes the form of a massive golden sculpture of a brain covered in a pitch black...something, held up by the tendrils from before. And the team is forced to their knees both by a wave of pressure and the thing simply speaking. And the name Great Father. Sound familiar? The Crawling Chaos has taken the field... | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Emerald |
Far Cry 5 / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
Welcome to Hope County...
Hope County, Montana. A beautiful place, perfect for a pleasant vacation if you're feeling tired with the city life. Just be prepared to deal with the local cult — they tend to be a bit unfriendly, what with the murders and doomsday philosophy, not to mention being armed with a lot of guns...
Okay, Hope County is
*not* a pleasant place to visit. **Unmarked spoilers below.**
- The sheer levels of Mind Rape by the cult is downright scary. Particularly Jacob who breaks people and makes them fight, whereas Faith's can make them do anything she wants, including suicide.
- The video the Junior Deputy watches on their phone starts off creepy enough, with a mole walking into one of Joseph's sermons in a dead silent church, surrounded by armed cultists. Joseph then points out the mole, who gets subdued and brought forward to the Father. What follows is Joseph grabbing the man's face and
*gouging out his eyes with his bare hands*. The man screams in pain, then falling limp, gurgling on his own blood, while Joseph raises his bloody hands in praise, to which his followers rejoice.
- The atmosphere during the opening sequence is rather grim and oppressive, and it does a great job of making you feel entrapped. During the helicopter ride to the Seed compound, the Deputy is watching footage of the cult's atrocities on his/her phone, the same atrocities that Joseph Seed is to be arrested for. After they land, they walk through a crowd of jeering, hostile cultists who are all grimy, disheveled, and long-haired on top of being armed to the teeth. Upon finding Seed in his chapel, his calm, knowing reaction to the police officers makes it seem like he somehow
*knew* they were coming to arrest him. He appears to surrender willingly and confidently says that "God will not let you take me," whereupon the helicopter gets brought down by a peggy jumping into the main rotor. Joseph Seed escapes and proclaims to his gathered followers that "the Reaping" has begun before ordering them to find and kill all the police officers. The whole sequence is unbelievably tense, as it feels like bullets are going to start flying almost as soon as the helicopter lands.
- The peggy sacrificing himself to bring the chopper down also demonstrates how far the cult is devoted to Joseph Seed and what they are willing to do to save their "messiah".
- All the more terrifying is how the crash proceeds. Everyone around you is in a panic, except Joseph, who is softly signing "Amazing Grace". His eerie calm throughout the whole ordeal is
*disturbing* to the point that it's not surprising when he shows very little emotion as we progress through the game. The guy seems to be devoid of any feelings.
- When you regain consciousness, you try to reach for the swinging headset, only for Joseph to steal it. All the while, the dispatcher on the other end is begging for
*somebody* to answer her, and then...
**Joseph:** Dispatch, everything is just fine here. No need to call anyone.
**Joseph:** *(to player)* No one is coming to save you.
- The ending of the game is not better. Basically, you are given the choice between resisting Joseph Seed's offer and arresting him or just leaving his compound. Choosing to arrest him will have you end up in a hallucinogenic gun fight against him. After defeating Joseph Seed, a bright flash blinds the character temporarily. From the distance behind the Whitetail Mountains, a
erupts. You're forced into making your way to Dutch's Bunker, **FUCKING MUSHROOM CLOUD** *as the world around you is burning in a * **literal nuclear hell!**
- Worse yet, the entire final confrontation with Joseph seemed to encourage an understated Power of Friendship with almost all the allies you've made over the course of the game, taking the bastard down once and for all. Your reward for victory? Every single last one of them dying in terror and yourself left locked up with the madman in the aftermath at his whim. Assuming, of course, that the entire sequence wasn't just some dream caused by a really fucked-up Mushroom Samba happening in the Deputy's head. And even then, the idea that Bliss can mess with the Deputy's head so badly to make them see
*that* is pretty horrifying.
-
*Speaking of messing with the head...* When the team is driving to the bunker, **MORE nuclear bombs are exploding along the way.** In reality, being in the blast radius of several explosions is a *guaranteed way to be burned into a crisp.* How **Instantaneously.** **THAT** doesn't happen to *everyone in the car* is anyone's guess.
- Listen to Deputy Pratt's gut-wrenching yells as the world
**literally burns around him** during the escape. It's extremely realistic, it's not hard to picture a human freaking out *that hard* in such a situation. It really makes you thinking of what the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaski felt before they were evaporated...
- Josephs final monologue is also rather frightening, especially the part where he gets right in front of the Deputys face and gloats that he was right.
- The other option isn't better. You let Joseph Seed go and he lets the other deputies go with you as you're driven out of the compound. The Sheriff turns on the radio, which begins to play Only You - the song Jacob used as a trigger to activate the Deputy's brainwashing into a cult soldier. As the screen begins to go red, the Sheriff looks to them and asks what's wrong.
- Joseph's Villainous Breakdown right before the final confrontation. It starts out as him undergoing Inelegant Blubbering with snot coming out of his nose, but then he goes into Tranquil Fury and you know Joseph means business.
- Blissed out bears. And as bad as Blissed out bears are, Blissed-out moose are somehow even worse. Not to mention the Blissed-out cougar. Screw it, every single one of the "Judge" animals is terrifying.
- Speaking of Bliss, the further you get through Faith's region, there are times where you think you are encountering one animal, when it suddenly becomes another. For instance, a wolf becomes a cougar, a bear becomes a wolverine - and vice versa. . .
- Can we take a second and talk about the Blissed-out cultists you encounter throughout the game? Some of them just seem to be regular dudes with higher HP, but the ones you meet by the Henbane River have this monstrous, abhuman quality where something's clearly off about them. Going by the way they shamble around and how their speech has been reduced to wordless moaning and screaming, it's clear that Bliss has destroyed their minds. Bliss is supposed to be based off Datura, a deliriant that's extraordinarily unpleasant and scary even in small doses, so these guys must have been given
*a lot* to make them this way. The sheer, abject terror resulting from that kind of dosage is unimaginable.
- Another troubling question is raised by these enemies: how many of them were cultists who willingly took the ultimate terror trip to serve their God? And how many were just random people abducted by the cult (or cultists that questioned Seed) and force-fed Bliss? Whether it was done willingly or unwillingly, it's not a pleasant thought to dwell on.
- In Holland Valley, you can find a sewer pipe with a single red balloon floating outside. You'll float, too. Thankfully, it's just a harmless Easter Egg, but just try going into that sewer pipe without expecting a Jump Scare.
- Keep an ear out for the car radio, and you might just hear news reports of the nation in a massive alert. In particular, Moscow was bombed, with casualties in the presumed millions, and in the midst of peace talks too. While everything in Hope County is so busy being isolated due to Eden's Gate, everyone is too oblivious and the player might just shrug off the background noise in the midst of their driving around.
- This also means that Joseph isn't magically "right" in the Resist ending; all he needed was a reserve radio, satellite TV or mere access to the internet to listen to the news and prepare. You were fucked from the start, the world is doomed, and Everybody Dies, even if you try to run away or leave things be. Even though Joseph needed to be stopped, you're still an Unwitting Instigator of Doom and Hope County burns with no one saved. (Though that radio broadcast ignores the fact that all signals coming in and out of Hope County are blocked)
- In the
*Book of Joseph*, Joseph remarks that John is so persuasive that he could convince the president to hand over the nuclear codes. He then surmises that it is through that possibility that the end of the world might come. Sit on that for a minute.
- Going further, if you take your time to try to listen to every single report, youll learn an underlying story beyond your control. Through them, we learn that constant terror attacks are occurring in the Middle East and civilians of many nationalities are being killed left and right, and that North Korea is continuing to test its nuclear arms. The final three broadcasts are the aforementioned nuking of Moscow, Washington D.C. being evacuated, and North Korea ceasing all communications, which is perceived by analysts as the first sign to nuclear war.
- The death of Eli, when you first meet Jacob you are put through time trials that force you to kill anyone you see. The screen is tinted red and there are images of feral wolves who are eating their prey. Each trial gets longer the more times you meet Jacob, and you get so caught up in the bloodlust and adrenaline that you don't even think about you're killing until it's too late.
- Or, if you're a bit more cognizant from the get-go and you avoid pulling the trigger on Eli as you round the corner, you're now faced with a colossal Sadistic Choice. You
*must* kill Eli to get out of the nightmare Jacob has trapped you in, but to do that, you must end the life of a good and heroic man. This time, you don't even have the excuse of instinct or blind reactions, you must deliberately murder him to progress. Not that the game acknowledges this, mind. Even if you come barreling into the room with thirty seconds on the clock to just sit and stare at Eli, Jacob still acts as if he turned you into an unthinking killing machine.
- The training Jacob puts you through is particularly scary...for the player. Because it's not just conditioning the Deputy to kill on command, the high-paced, fast reaction time required to complete these sections is training YOU, the player, to be better at killing. You're so used to this drill by now, that you don't even pause before killing Eli. Also, the song Only You is now permanently ruined for both the Deputy and player.
- The trials make you kill nameless soldiers as well, which explode into smoke, dust or flames when killed. In the final trial after reaching the bunker, the player doesn't realize
*the dead aren't disappearing*, you're killing real soldiers on your path to Eli. These soldiers are fighting in self-defense against their only hope to stop Joseph, while you're thoughtlessly mowing them down.
- The King's Hot Springs Hotel in Faith's region is haunted. Hang out in the main building when you've cleared the area, and you'll hear whispers and other noises coming from nowhere, even without being under the effects of Bliss. Room 203's door appears to be slightly left ajar, although there is no way inside.
- It should be noted that Joseph Seed and his followers are similar to Zachary Comstock and his followers, who were frightening on their own with their fanaticism.
- Just to reiterate, the members of the Project at Eden's Gate are
*terrifyingly* devoted to Joseph Seed, willing to go at any lengths to see their goals accomplished. Not once do they hesitate. One piece of Nightmare Fuel comes on the first capture by John. While being transported to his compound, the cultist in the truck speaks of how one reaches Atonement. *...confession without pain isn't confession. You'll scream out your sin, then you'll wear it on your flesh before John peels it off of you. It's a beautiful thing.*
- Even after you kill the three Heralds and Joseph, the remaining cultists are still as dedicated to the cause. You can see it as them being so brainwashed they can't live for anything else, or they really think Joseph had ushered in The Collapse.
- The very creepy way that The Platter's "Only You" creeps in whenever Jacob is about to capture you for his sadistic tests. It starts off with you barely hearing it in the background, enough for you to think the song's not playing in-game, but then your vision begins to get fuzzy as you start to see lights floating in front of you, all while the song gradually gets louder. Then, you finally collapse on the ground and pass out. And it can happen at
*anytime* after you get enough reputation points in Jacob's region.
- If you have a fear of bees and wasps, play the "Vespiary" Prepper Stash at your own risk. You must traverse a dark grain elevator that is
*full* of hornet nests, and the building is so tight and cramped that you're frequently in very close quarters with them. Especially horrifying is one moment where the floor gives out from under you, and drops you right in front of a nest. Even though the hornets are surprisingly docile as long as you don't mess with the nests (which you'll have to, to get past some of them), and you can actually destroy them without being attacked if you use the Repair Torch, it's still unnerving as hell.
- You can join Larry in his alien adventure. Jump into the portal with him while it's opening up and you'll be taken to... somewhere. You don't get to see much, but through your orange tunnel vision, you can see what looks like some sort of alien spaceship, along with very disturbing inhuman sounds, before you're dropped back off into Hope County. Wherever Larry went, it couldn't have been good.
- Getting Sherri's whiskey caskets require you to swim into tight spots and risk drowning multiple times. If you have a fear of tight places and drowning, you're not gonna have a good time.
- Every
*Far Cry* game since *3* has featured snakes, and this one is no exception, with Hope County being home to rattlesnakes. Luckily, they're a little easier to avoid because of that telltale rattle, but at the same time, that makes them a little creepier, not helped by the fact that they blend in excellently with their surroundings. There are many moments where you hear the rattle, but don't see the snake, and are constantly on edge until you do find it, or simply leave.
- The Bright Warden Radon Spa, a location with a prepper stash in an old Radon mine full of hyper-concentrated Bliss fumes. It's dark, you can hear constant laughter, and you're expecting a fight around every corner, but all you find are a lot of unexplained bodies and some ghostly apparitions. Then you flip a power switch, and all the lights go out. You turn around and realize that the "bodies" you walked past on the way in are all waking up...
- Even scarier if you visit this location after killing Faith, as her shadowy silhouettes seem even more ghostly.
- In the Henbane River, if you go south of Sacred Skies Youth Camp, you can find the Administrator's Cabin. Walk around the area, you can hear a phone ringing in a boarded up cabin. If you break through said cabin, you will find an old rotary phone on the ground, ringing, despite it not being wired to any phone line. Pick it up and you will hear someone sobbing, just
*crying* before it cuts off. And there is zero explanation for this.
- In fact Henbane is littered with these. At one outpost you can find a recording of Faith giving a creepy monologue about how Rachel (her original name) had been replaced by Faith herself.
**Faith:** Rachel's so sad and alone. Once was lost; never found. She led a faithless life and it brought her low. Faith rose up in her, but Rachel stayed low down. Faith flies divineand Rachel...Rachel gropes around in the darkness. I left her there a long time ago.
- Another one, found at an old abandoned cemetery, Faith has this to say:
**Faith:** A baby is a sack of screaming, shitting, crying impulses with no personality, no thoughts, no understanding of the world beyond feelings. It has no soul. You have to give it one. The only soul we ever have, we receive from others. And it is only others who can take it away.
- Ever been to Prosperity? It's a ghost town in the middle of nowhere; but when you get there, all you see are mannequins all over the place masquerading as humans that once lived there; as far as the eye can see. It's rather unsettling to be there for a long time.
- The fact that the Heralds can send out hunting parties with Bliss bullets and arrows to catch you at any given moment to capture you. The fact that Bliss can be made into a projectile injectible is particularly frightening. It's a wonder that they haven't used such means for ultimate conflict resolution.
- But the scariest part, is that Bliss really exists in Real Life. Its called Scopolamine and is normally very safe and even essential medicine used to treat motion sickness, going so far to even be on the WHO Model List of Essential Medicines. However, the fact that the cult turned a once very beneficial medicine into a mind-corrupting drug is still terrifying.
- All four of the Seeds sincerely and honestly believe they're doing the right thing. In an odd way, they even seem to respect the Deputy.
- A rather subtle, almost unnoticeable one, but on the start menu of the game, as soon as you press start, you'll hear a weird, faint noise. If you listen to it closely, it sounds like a heavily distorted, yet still relatively quiet scream.
- Wanna know who is back in the
*Lost on Mars* and *Dead Living Zombies* DLC? Our hairy friends from *Far Cry 4*, the Yeti and a freaking Blood Dragon. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/FarCry5 |
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
**WARNING:** Spoilers are unmarked.
## From The Book
- The Lethifold sneaks up on unsuspecting victims and smothers them in their sleep. And
*digests them on the spot and leaves no evidence of their demise*. They also have a deceptive cunning to boot which, coupled with the fact that they can blend in with a fairly large range of things, means that they could be anywhere. And they can only be driven off by a Patronus, which is extremely difficult to summon. And even that might not help, because it habitually attacks the sleeping so it can smother and eat a victim before they could reach their wand. The footnote even points out that it's nigh-impossible to count just how many people were eaten by Lethifolds, with an easier number being people who *fake* Lethifold attacks for one reason or another. Hell, Lethifolds could be a Beethoven Was an Alien Spy explanation for real life disappearances from tropical locations that left no traces. And considering the habitat, imagine how many of these disappearances would have been a dark, tragic turn to a nice vacation. Still feel like taking that trip to Cuba?
- The Pogrebin, a Russian demon, will follow you, staying in your shadow. If you don't notice it doing this for a few hours, you'll start to get a sense of despair, and when it gets too much and you fall on your knees "to weep at the pointlessness of it all", it'll eat you. Luckily, it can be chased away by a wide variety of spells and even kicking, but its effects are still too similar to the Dementors (who, reading this book, sound like a lovechild of the Lethifold and the Pogrebin).
- The Nundu, which resembles a leopard, is said to be utterly silent, gigantic, and able to wipe out entire villages just by
*breathing* due to the diseases on its breath; it's so dangerous that the only successful kills have come from one *hundred* wizards working in concert. For comparison, that's ten times as many wizards as it takes to subdue the average *dragon*.
- Ashwinder eggs can burn down a building in minutes, and Ashwinders are only born when a magical fire is allowed to burn unsupervised for too long. So it's possible that, if you were a wizard and careless with fire, you wouldn't know you had Ashwinder eggs in the building until your house was in flames.
- Bundimun ooze a substance that can rot away at your house.
- Puffskeins are harmless balls covered in soft fur and beloved children's pets, but Ron mentions Fred and George used
*his* for Bludgers - beating it to death with their reinforced Beaters' bats.
- The Manticore, a Shout-Out to classical Greek Mythology. It has a man's head, a lion's body, and a scorpion's tail, and its sting causes instant death. If that wasn't enough, its skin is
*nigh-invulnerable to magic*. Not to mention it can speak intelligently and *croons* while it eats its prey. And Hagrid possibly *crossbred* one. note : Of course, it's a Rita Skeeter article, so take it with a grain of salt, but if anyone *would*—and, more importantly, *could*—crossbreed manticores with fire-crabs, it'd be Hagrid.
- The entry of the Chimera, another Shout-Out to the same, points out it has only been defeated once and even then the poor wizard who did it fell from his flying horse to his death.
- Then there's the Quintapeds. According to legend, they were once a family of wizards before they were transformed into monsters by a rival wizard family, who were in turn eaten by the beasts they created. Whether or not the legend is true, these carnivorous five-legged human-eating beasts rate five Xs, and are so dangerous the island they live on has been marked completely hazardous and enchanted so it can't be placed on maps. God help us all if those things are capable of breeding.
- The Hidebehind specifically has it in for humans, because it was born of an abused and trafficked Demiguise and a stowaway Ghoul.
- Small potatoes compared to the others, but the Fwooper is a small, colorful bird whose song, though pleasant at first, will slowly drive its listener to insanity. It's also never explained how or why the song does this. Fortunately, this can be avoided by placing a Silencing Charm on the bird, though the charm wears off after a while, requiring monthly reinforcement.
## From The Film
- The film opens with news of Gellert Grindelwald's terrorist attacks in Europe, with the modern parallels being very clear.
- Graves sentences Newt and Tina to death. The means of execution is a pool of silvery magical dissolvent. To make sure the convicted won't panic or fight back as they are plunged in it on a magically hovering seat, the hangwoman takes a happy part of their memories and drops it in the pool, which then works exactly like a pensieve to keep them hypnotized. The dissolvent itself can rise to surround and engulf the condemned at some point.
- What makes it worse are the attendants who are about to deliver a horrible slow fate to their prisoners yet seem genuinely cheerful about it. It's been theorized that Graves/Grindelwald had them under the Imperius Curse, which is little better.
- If Tina realistically sobbing and hyperventilating knowing she's about to die doesn't freak you out, the way that she suddenly turns calm and smiley as the hangwoman takes her memory
*will*. She almost looks like a child — not helped by the fact that the hangwoman talks to her like she *is* one.
- Also, note that there's seating installed above the preparation area; these kind of executions usually have spectators. This seems reminiscent of "dunking" or ordeal by water associated with the 16th and 17th century witchhunts where an accused witch was tied to a chair and if she sank was considered innocent but they drowned, while floating indicated witchcraft.
- The seating is for witnesses, for proof that the deed was done; this still occurs (in America, at least). It is not for gawkers—okay, well, it's not
*intended* for gawkers.
- Poor Newt has to watch Tina be enchanted and sent smiling to her doom, knowing full-well he's going to be next. Thank God Pickett was still in Newt's pocket!
- Obscurials. Young wizards and witches, no more than ten years old, who try to repress their magic. Deprived of a healthy outlet and without any teaching to control it, their magic twists and warps into its own parasitic entity known as an Obscurus. They're invisible, incorporeal, and
*much* more powerful than any child could hope to control, spending most of their time dormant and exploding outward if their host becomes too upset. These outbursts kill, maim, and destroy anything the Obscurus encounters, growing in power as its child host does. Eventually, as the child's power develops to the point where they would normally become capable of standard magic, the Obscurus becomes too strong and kills its host.
- The fact that the last official Obscurial was centuries ago, but Newt found one only a few months prior. How many others have slipped through over the years unnoticed? How many children lived in fear of themselves, hurting others and eventually dying as their parasite grew, for short painful years without a single wizard to even try to help them?
- Don't forget: Magical children of British Muggles get their Hogwarts acceptance letters at age eleven. By that time, any who suppress their magic intensely enough to become an Obscurial will have
*already died of it*.
- Happily and thankfully averted in Britain; as
*soon* as a child with magic in Britain is born, their name is *immediately* written down by a book in Hogwarts, so they can have an eye kept on them and the situation can be averted.
- Though given what Harry went through despite Dumbledore supposedly keeping an eye on him, I would bet there were some kids who didn't fare as well. Though as noted below, the Muggle-borns wouldn't know they were doing magic, so this would only apply to, say a half-blood who had a magic-hating parent.
- Even worse, who is perhaps the first wizard you think of who suffered lots of abuse during childhood and thus could have become an Obscurial? That's right,
*Harry Potter* himself. According to Word of God, the sole reason he didn't was that he wasn't told that he was a wizard until later on, meaning that he didn't learn to associate the abuse with his magic. So basically, The Hero was that close to being consumed by a rampaging demon growing from within himself, but wasn't because he was abused in just the right way.
- The transformation an Obscurial undergoes to unleash the Obscurus is made as unnatural and painful-looking as it could be, with writhing/seizing and a vague liquid effect before the force bursts out.
- While Harry may not have been an Obscurial, Arianna Dumbledore was, after she was attacked by the Muggle boys.
- The death of Henry Shaw, Jr. is particularly horrifying. Mid-speech, the lights in the hall go out, the room is torn apart, and Shaw is lifted and slammed down by the invisible Obscurus, before his campaign banner is sliced to pieces. At the end, the camera shows his body, which gives us a brief view of his dented head.
- Credence. Years of forced inner repression of magic and physical abuse from his adoptive mother made him grow to become the most powerful Obscurial Newt has ever seen. The effects of his attacks on no-majs are horrifying.
- Gellert Grindelwald disguised as Percival Graves already is quite a chilling character in his own right. He's a soft-spoken but clearly extremely powerful wizard with no qualms about extreme measures to carry out his goals, such as manipulating Credence in a manner disturbingly reminiscent of a sexual predator, talking about the potential "uses" for an Obscurus, or sentencing Newt and Tina to a summary execution without trial.
- Grindelwald's power and abilities
*without* the Elder Wand and holding back alone is already formidably dangerous, reminding us exactly why he was considered by Dumbledore himself to be very nearly on par with him. Grindelwald uses powerful magic with just his bare hands and no incantations at this point, can easily overpower Tina and Newt while clearly being bored and irritated that they're both getting in his way *and* also being unable to pose any actual threat to him, and when he decides to reveal more of what he is capable of, while clearly still not going all-out, he takes on and overwhelms an entire squadron of Aurors rapidly, and it's only due to Newt's surprise attack that he is defeated at all.
- After having subjected Newt to such a one-sided battle it's more of a Hopeless Boss Fight, with Newt barely able to block Graves spells and apparently only stuck defending without being able to even launch a single attack at all, Graves attempts to kill him by electrocuting him. The electrocution is neither quick nor painless, leaving Newt writhing in pain and struggling to just put up enough of a magical shield to protect himself as Graves refuses to let up.
- We also have to remember once more that
*Deathly Hallows* has been pointing us to the possibility that Voldemort being deemed more dangerous was because he was much more evil than Grindelwald, especially with Dumbledore admitting that in their primes, he was only ever a shade more skillful than Grindelwald and in terms of power with the Elder Wand Grindelwald rivaled him. Now that Grindelwald has arrived to demonstrate his power, from what we've already seen, even without the Elder Wand, he's already able to use magic and duel at a level above that of Voldemort, taking down an entire squad of Aurors while Voldemort only ever took on 3 accomplished wizards and witches simultaneously. When Grindelwald eventually escapes, life will get a lot harder for a lot of people.
- As ridiculous as it may look, there's something distinctly off-putting about Grindelwald's pale, color-less appearance and having one violet and one black eye.
- Grindelwald's plot: To manipulate an Obscurial into becoming a weapon for him. Had he succeeded, the previous generation's Voldemort would have had his own Eldritch Abomination to loose on his enemies or even just hapless bystanders caught in the crossfire. And at the end of the second movie, this is
*exactly what happens*!
- Which brings us to the last bit of horrifying information: Tom Marvolo Riddle/Lord Voldemort is not yet here in the world. The wizards and witches all likely think stopping Grindelwald will be it. They have no idea what's coming.
- The probable fate of the real Percival Graves is pretty horrifying to think of. Either he was killed by Grindelwald anything up to a year before the movie takes place, or he's still locked up somewhere, slowly dying of hunger and dehydration as he comes to the realization that he has outlived his usefulness. It's possible that a thorough search might find him, depending on where Grindelwald is operating out of in New York, but whether that will be before he's starved to death, and what sort of mental state he'll be in if he's ever found, is anyone's guess.
- Unless there was never a real Percival Graves and Grindelwald was always secretly inside the magic government of the entire United States.
- Honestly, that's kind of the worst thing. We have no idea what is happening regarding the real Percival Graves. Is he alive and captured? Alive and just away somewhere obscure on some wild goose chase? Non existent? A willing follower of Grindewald that let him take over his identity? Until the other movies comes out, we can only guess.
- Highly unlikely. His ancestor Gondulphus Graves was one of the first twelve Aurors of MACUSA, and there's no way Grindelwald was infiltrating MACUSA for enough years to work his way up through an entire career and become Head Auror. It was Polyjuice Potion, which requires there be an original.
- According to J. K. Rowling, no,
*it wasn't*. It was a *powerful transfiguration spell*, hence why *Revelio* worked on him; he *could* have been infiltrating MACUSA for decades, since the early 1900s.
- He could have been, yes. But he probably couldn't do that while orchestrating the reign of terror in Europe that is mentioned at the start of the film, at least, not without someone noticing that Graves had gone missing for weeks or months at a time.
- Perfect camouflage? Check. Lightning-fast venomous strike? Check. Capable of incapacitating one of the most powerful wizards on the planet in one move? Check. Eats its prey's living brains? Check. The Swooping Evil would be
*terrifying* if it weren't on Newt's side. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/FantasticBeastsAndWhereToFindThem |
Fantasia 2000 / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
-
*The Firebird Suite*.
- The embodiment of life and nature destroyed by a horrific firebird. Which comes in the form of a volcanic eruption.
- One of the most heart-stopping, jump-scaring, Eye Awaken moments
*ever*. The song already came prepackaged with its very own music sting, and the animators *ran with it.*
- The scene where the Nature Sprite scrambles up a tree to escape the Firebird. It really looks like she might escape... and then we see the Firebird slowly rise up from behind her...
- The look on the Firebird's face just before it engulfs the Nature Sprite is one rage and hate that no bird could ever match. If anything, that look more closely resembles the murderous gaze of a wasp.
- Look closely at the smoke that rises from the Firebird as it awakens. It forms the shape of dozens of howling and screaming
*skulls*.
- Not all of the faces in the smoke are skulls. Many of them are (simplified) screaming human faces, many of which are being
*engulfed and dragged away* by the skulls, which mostly show expressions of hate and malice. One even looks back in terror just before getting snared by a tendril of smoke.
- The Firebird, and especially the skulls, become more horrifying when you find out this section was based on the 1980 Eruption of Mount St Helens, a real-life natural disaster
*which killed 57 people.*
-
*Rhapsody in Blue*, when Rachel's parents look out their office windows and see their daughter running into busy traffic. The worst part is that the music gets dramatic as cars start stopping to avoid hitting Rachel. Thankfully, Rachels parents get to her in time to prevent her from being run over.
- The horde of bats that emerge from the ground and attack the butterflies in
*Symphony No. 5*. They tear a butterfly's wing and swarm it before chasing the smaller butterfly.
- It's hard not to feel afraid for the poor baby whale in
*Pines of Rome* when he gets trapped inside of the glacier. Those are some claustrophobic visuals...
- The Steadfast Tin Soldier in
*Piano Concerto No. 2* goes through a lot of nightmare fuel after he and his boat are tossed out the window by the Jack-in-a-Box. First, he runs into an army of rats in the sewer, then when he escapes them, he lands in a bay...and gets eaten by a fish. Thankfully, that same fish is caught and sold to the Soldier's owner. But then the Soldier has to deal with Jack again, who threatens him to toss him into the fireplace!
- One of the interstitials in the film features previously unseen material that never made it into Fantasia. One of the unseen pieces is of a Salvador Dali segment (taken from the then-unreleased
*Destino*), and the image provided is of two nightmarish, grinning faces on top of tortoises that slowly slide together to form a ballerina. The way the picture slowly floats into frame, coupled with a rather ominous musical cue in the background, makes that brief segment of the interstitial pretty disturbing. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Fantasia2000 |
Far Cry: New Dawn / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
And you thought cougars were bad before the nukes...
**Unmarked spoilers below.**
- The opening of the premiere trailer really hammers home the horror of what happened: a shot of a farmhouse being leveled by the blast, and the same house burning along with the world around it as animals flee in terror. Combined with shots of a burnt-down forest and footage of the Highwaymen, it's a chilling reminder that the world as you know it is over.
- The Twins, Mickey and Lou. They're the leaders of the Highwaymen, and they're as brutal as the job requires. Their first scene features Lou
*brutally beating a man's head in with her helmet*. And then there's her speech to the occupants of Prosperity: **Mickey:**
Listen here,
*rabbits*
! You need to understand somethin': the only currency left in this world is power
! We're gonna take everything from you, starting with your home! And if we can't take it...
**Lou:** Well *break* it.
- Turns into a brief comedic moment in the actual game where Lou drops the line in an attempt to intimidate the people of Prosperity... only for Mickey to take a moment of silence to roll her eyes at her sister's comment with a "
*I can't believe you just said that*" expression on her face.
- While Mickey's the calmer and more Faux Affably Evil of the two sisters, like Vaas and Pagan Min before her, it only serves to make the occasions she loses her temper and starts shouting furiously all the more terrifying.
- A brief moment in the cutscene when the Captain attends a dinner meeting with the Highwaymen chapter bosses, and Ethan Seed shows up to propose a Villain Team-Up with them. One of the bosses is openly skeptical of the supposed supernatural fruit that Mickey and Lou are interested in, and accuses them of "goin' soft in the head like your Dad". He laughs, Lou joins him in laughing, and then she smashes her plate and stabs him to death with one of the shards.
- The backing track is a discordant trap instrumental that sounds like a gospel song from hell.
- Demon Fishes, sharks, and crocodiles are back to make your swimming a little bit scarier.
- In the mission "Deep Dive", Selene tasks you with going into John Seed's partly flooded bunker to retrieve her lost field kit. You see it on a platform not far below you, so you jump down... and the platform gives way, dropping you into the drink below. You then need to explore the old bunker and flood it to escape. The whole time, Selene is giving comments and advice over your radio, and she mentions that there are probably crocodiles. Nonsense, you think. Selene's a bit of a Cloud Cuckoolander to begin with, and crocodiles are probably only in the expeditions. There can't be any in Hope County, can there? You'd be dead wrong.
- One of the expeditions you can take is to the destroyed shell of the Paladin with notes from Sam Fisher about his tracking of an "empty arrow,"
* : Possibly a reference to the U.S. military code word "Empty Quiver," which is meant to denote a lost or stolen nuclear weapon. which had been tracked to somewhere in Montana, and the Paladin's subsequent crash when the nuclear detonations of the Collapse knock it out of the sky. Even more notes reveal the destructive results of the global nuclear war, with large pieces of Europe, the U.S., China, and Russia obliterated and Korea, Palestine, and Israel literally just *erased from the map.* The last note from Sam indicates he is going to find passage east to locate his daughter in New York. Along with the implication that Fourth Echelon team was unable to stop the Collapse from happening because they were simply too late, it also seems to provide further evidence that the entire event *was* engineered by someone, possibly even Joseph himself...or at the very least, someone that Joseph *knew...*
- Monstrous Animals, which are unlike anything seen in previous entries in the series. They come in several varieties (including cougars (seen above), bison, boars and bears) and make their lesser counterparts look like kittens and puppies in comparison. Not only are they dangerous and aggressive, they can easily tank bullets, arrows and even heavy explosives unless the player can hit their small weak points. Luckily, they only appear in a few isolated spots on the map and are fairly easy to avoid, which is great because going after them without at least a couple tier 3 or 4 weapons is a good way to end up lunch.
- With the inclusion of the dagger, takedowns are now more brutal than ever thanks to the highly detailed sounds of stabbing into someone's neck or spine. I hope the people who didn't like the takedowns in Far Cry 5 involving entirely blunt weapons are happy.
- Your first meeting with Ethan Seed features him going into a disturbing rant about the Captain discovering Joseph's Bible, and that it should have been him. Which should serve as a perfectly creepy Establishing Character Moment.
- The Final Boss is pretty nightmarish. A gigantic shadowy monster with creepy red eyes, basically a recoloured version of a Yeti from
*Far Cry 4*. And just like the Yetis, this monster Was Once a Man mutated by a mysterious supernatural plant. Who was it? **Ethan Seed**.
- Also, that moment just before Ethan turns into a monster. After swallowing a bite of the forbidden apple, he gags and grunts violently, his veins go black, and for a brief moment, Ethan has to grab onto Joseph's neck to stabilize himself. Apart from the fact that he's clearly undergoing a Painful Transformation, given that Ethan was explosively arguing with his father right before he bit into the apple, you could be forgiven for thinking he's going to
*kill his father*. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/FarCryNewDawn |
Far Cry 6 / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
There's another bit in the follow up Yaran Story "Model Citizen". A woman named Chica Núñez says that the artist responsible, Rodrigo Lecoste, has been rounding up people from various towns to make his statues. She begs you to kill him and save her friends, who were among those taken. After you take him out, Chica reveals that she was actually Lecoste's **wife**, and that she actually ''loved'' the statues **and** watching him make them. She didn't want him killed because he kidnapped her friends, or because she had a change of heart, but because she found out he was planning to make **her** into one. It's clear by the end that she's still no less Axe-Crazy than her husband.
Chica: I enjoyed watching you work too, Dani. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/FarCry6 |
Fantastic Four / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
- The Puppet Master is a creepy enough villain to start with by his powers alone, but he's even more nightmarish when he was drawn by Jack Kirby. Kirby draws him looking like a sentient ventriloquist dummy, bearing a smile that makes The Joker look tame.
- He gets even worse during in his Darker and Edgier stints. When he decided to retire, he simply moved to Latin America and used his dolls to brainwash various women from around the world and superheroines into becoming sex slaves for the highest bidder. All for his amusement before he dies of old age.
- The Skrulls are, in essence, a race of reptilian super beings who can shapeshift and have Power Copying..and keen on using them to take over Earth.
- With his Super Science and Literal Magic, Doom has resources for policing, supervising and brainwashing his peons that make Oceania's Thought Police look like bumbling Clouseaus. At least some versions of Latveria are consequently
*very* dystopian, with *every citizen* living in perpetual fear, knowing that Big Brother Is Watching all they do. As with real totalitarian dictatorships like North Korea, it's often far from clear how much of Doom's all-pervasive personality cult is genuine admiration by the people of their leader and how much it is enforced through terror. Made doubly worse by the fact that some depictions of Doom are not Noble Demons, or even just generic evil overlords, but narcissistic psychopaths who seemingly *enjoy* abusing this surveillance and people control technology to torment their hapless subjects. In such stories, Doom will often subject his servants to violent verbal and physical abuse, suddenly change the rules on them or feed them to his wild robots on a whim. The most creepy versions basically subject the Latverians collectively to a sort of nationwide Romanticized Abuse — including literal rape of at least some of the women. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/FantasticFour |
Far Cry Primal / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
- Batari's death. After a long a difficult boss fight, Takkar holds her against the fire that her and the Izila worship. As a result, she
*slowly roasts to death* over the fire that her cult worshipped. And you are made to watch it all in gruesome detail. Granted, Batari deserves it, but still...
- The opening mission. After Takkar and his hunting party have successfully tracked down and killed a woolly mammoth, a saber-toothed cat appears out of nowhere and starts killing Takkar's friends one by one, shrugging off a spear to its ear and nearly murdering Takkar himself, not to mention
*actually* murdering his brother.
- Whenever your tamed beast is running towards you at night. Even though you know they're not running to attack you, it's still pretty jarring to see a gigantic cave bear with glowing eyes running at you.
- The page image is of Warchief Ull when he first attacks the Wenja village. This gigantic, thuggish tribe chieftain with a partially-burnt face shows up out of nowhere, attacks the villagers, and grabs Takkar himself in a two-handed Neck Lift when the hero impulsively attacks him, and rasps at him, "Softblood Wenja no stay. You leave.
*'Or you DIE!!!*" and then punches Takkar backwards several feat. Thankfully, you get revenge later, but Ull came *this close* to murdering Takkar on the spot.
- Takkar himself could be considered this. The Udam have been waging this war and winning for a long time, when this one Wenja softblood arrives. No big deal, just another hunk of flesh to eat. But then what happens? He reclaims the best and brightest of his tribe, and gives them a home to live in. You go there to offer your objections through the use of clubs and poison. Then he comes with beasts. The animals that can destroy an entire hunting party obey his commands. His weapons become more and more complex and polished and his tactics more and more intricate. Then he assaults your fort, then your homeland, alone and completely slaughters anyone he finds there. Though his own skill and tenacity, Takkar has single-handedly doomed whatever little hope your tribe had left. Taken even further if you clear the Outposts while remaining undetected. Do that consistently and Takkar has essentially become a force of nature. Your tribe in these outposts are all dying over the course of one afternoon... and you don't even know why.
- Bears have always been a staple of Far Cry. While the game does feature the traditional brown bear, it also has cave bears appear from time to time. These bears are much, MUCH larger than the brown bears and are big enough to take down a mammoth. What makes it even worse is when the bear comes in contact with other cavemen, often snatching them in its mouth and shaking them like rag dolls.
- Mammoths. While they do tend to be rather docile for the most part, when threatened or injured, they will come after the player. And by they,
*the entire herd*.
- The predatory fauna in general, especially at night. You've just led a group of Wenja to a small campsite as night creeps in. It's too dangerous to leave, and you may think you're safe. Then the wolves come. You can spend the rest of the night fighting off packs of wolves and they slowly and surely pick off everyone else.
- In one area of Oros, you can find a batch of glowing purple eggs next to the impaled skeleton of a Blood Dragon. Yes,
*those* Blood Dragons. Admittedly, the Dragon's a lot less scary since it's dead, but how did it get there in the first place? Who (or what) killed it? And how long have those eggs been incubating? Are there any more Blood Dragons somewhere in the Oros? These questions remain unanswered.
- You'd think that being a valley in prehistoric Central Europe, you wouldn't have to worry about crocodiles like you did in the last two Far Cry games. You'd be wrong. Like the Kyrati mugger crocodiles, they're not that common, but they
*are* there, and they're one of the rare creatures that Takkar can't tame, along with eagles.
- The Demon Fish from
*Far Cry 4* reappear, this time as "Bitefish". They patrol the waterways of Oros, and whereas harvesting crocodile skins is optional for Takkar, harvesting bitefish skins is a necessity for Urki's first mission. Which means Takkar will have to get in the water and swim around until a bitefish comes for him... or he can just get hold of a bow and snipe it from the land.
- A lot of Takkar's allies are pretty disturbing. Sayla is Hearing Voices of her dead loved ones, and is obsessed with cutting off Udam ears, to the point that she'll
*venture into the cave of the Bloodfang Tiger just to collect them from his victims*. Tensay frequently makes Takkar drink Squicky blood potions full of human parts, including eyeballs. And Wogah had one of his arms cut off and eaten by the Udam. And it wasn't a clean cut either: you can still see the bone sticking out of his upper arm.
- If you needed a reminder of the brutality of prehistoric brain surgery, at one point, Dah is having a violent "skull fire"-induced headache, and begs Takkar to let some air in to "cool skull". Takkar presses a bone dagger against the top of Dah's head and has to literally hammer it home, accompanied by sprays of blood and screams of pain from Dah. And then after his headache recedes, Dah laughs in an extremely creepy way and stands up to thank Takkar, ignoring all the fresh blood running down his face.
- We're first introduced to Batari and the Izila when Takkar finds Tensay tending to a screaming Wenja whose skin was horrifically burnt by Izila fire weapons, to the point where Tensay has to snap his neck to put him out of his misery. When Takkar reaches the outskirts of the Izila village, he sees Batari confronting two of her captives, an Udam and a Wenja. She draws a knife and cuts the Udam's balls off, mocking his screams of pain and ordering him to scream louder. The poor Udam most likely dies after that. This Establishing Character Moment solidly shows that Batari is a more threatening antagonist than Ull.
- The Stinger with Ull's older child where we learn that they, too, are a Beast Master. And how do we learn this? We see them taming a massive cave bear. This is disturbing for two reasons, the first, that
**they're a small girl alone with a massive cave bear**, and second, that their way of taming said bear is a lot fiercer than what Takkar does, shouting and growling a lot like that bear, in contrast to Takkar's soothing whispers. Granted, this more properly qualifies as an Awesome moment, but still, creepy. And then there's the Mood Whiplash of Ull's child giggling at the Smash to Black.
- The "Legend of the Mammoth" DLC features a creepy spirit rhinoceros that the titular mammoth has to track down and kill. In contrast to the normal rhinos that Takkar bumps into, this one is pure black with glowing red parts- including its eyes and horns- and has a habit of vanishing and reappearing whenever you hit it enough.
*Just what is this thing?!* | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/FarCryPrimal |
Fargo / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
## The film:
Carl Showalter's fate.
- The page picture: Carl's body being stuffed into a woodchipper.
- The scene where Marge goes after Grimsrud, a very big and utterly unscrupulous felon,
*alone and seven months pregnant*. She pulls it off masterfully, but has close calls with the terrain under her feet and the log he throws at her, narrowly missing. She manages to wound him in the leg with her pea-shooter-type revolver, and apprehends him off-screen, presumably before backup arrives. Now just recapitulate all that could have gone wrong but didn't, and Marge seems to be one lucky officer.
- Grimsrud in general. He goes from stoic, pancake-craving giant to Ax-Crazy in zero-point-two-five seconds. The biggest one is when he pursues the couple who saw Carl trying to move the body of the state trooper.
- The last scene with Jerry getting arrested while he futilely tries to escape. The sheer emotion and desperation is just simply excruciating (also could count as Tear Jerker).
## The series:<!—index—><!—/index—> | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Fargo |
Fan Works / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
**First Old Man:**
I saw a woman. Couldn't have been younger than ninety, probably a hundred, they live that damn long you know. She was holding a sword in her left hand, because she'd lost her right arm, and pretty much everything, shoulder to hip, sternum out by the time I saw her, looked like it had been blasted off by a raiton
, but I saw that old woman cut down no less than fifty trained ninja before some poor bastard finally cut off her head but... That old lady's body kept going, that headless body cut down five more men, before she fell and drove her sword into the heart of the man who beheaded her. One of my buddies set her on fire, just in case. I...I don't know if I was seeing things, but that blackened, headless corpse, it looked like it still tried to get up again. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/FanWorks |
Fantastic Mr. Fox / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
- Some people have found the characters to be a bit creepy. While the movie is warmly colored in Wes Anderson's signature autumnal palette, the Stop Motion animal puppets can be creepy because of how realistic they look, coming off looking like animated taxidermy. The creepy human characters, especially the main villains, don't help either.
- Bean is outright
*described* as "The scariest man currently alive,", and he lives up to the part. His berserking when he finds out Mr. Fox stole all his produce is *terrifying*.
- Also disturbing is the scene where he digs up the Foxs' home and finds proof that the animals are not only sentient but human-like in lifestyle, then after a beat
*persists* in giving orders to exterminate them all.
- Bean's wife is established early on having poor eyesight. Later on Kristofferson and Ash assume that it'll be ok when she enters the room, until it's revealed she's wearing glasses now, and with a big kitchen knife in hand she goes after the two horrified kits in an eerily silent but rapid way Bates-style.
- Rat. Or Fox and Rat's fight in the electrical storage.
- That CUSSING POSSUM and his Dead. Hollow. Bulls-eye. Eyes.◊
- The Rabid Dog's eyes turning red. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/FantasticMrFox |
Fargo: Season Three / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
The first scene of the season. A German officer in East Berlin in 1988 arrests an innocent man named Jakob Ungerleider for a murder committed by Yuri Gurka. Despite the fact that Jakob has the wrong name, is the wrong age, is the wrong nationality, and has a wife who's very much alive and can vouch that Jakob is not Yuri Gurka, the officer in charge doesn't care. The government has a record of Yuri living in the apartment that Jakob is now living in, and rather than admit that the government's records aren't up-to-date, the officer finds it more convenient to destroy the life of an innocent man rather than act on the truth. It also sets the stage perfectly for the third season's themes of how the systems of power people rely on can be fallible and corrupt.
We see every second of the air conditioner crushing Maurice. The only saving grace is that we see it from a distance.
The Principle of Restricted Choice
A Google search of Varga's name will only result in a download that will brick your computer, but not before it sends your picture to him so his henchmen will soon be arriving to deal with you. The whole thing is one hell of a Paranoia Fuel.
Varga making clear just how much power he has over Emmit by signaling for his henchmen to abruptly wheel in several dollies of Banker's boxes to the unoccupied wing of Emmit's office space. And while leaving, he nonchalantly admits to killing Irv:
V.M. Varga's creepy, understated visit with Emmit which makes it very clear just who's in charge.
The hole that the air conditioner left on Maurice's head is not a pretty sight to look at, even in the detached environment of a morgue.
The House of Special Purpose
Sy's penalty for talking to Winnie Lopez about his hit-and-run is that Varga rubs his penis inside Sy's World's Best Dad mug, then makes him drink some water from it at gunpoint. Sy manages to keep himself composed for a meeting with Ruby Goldfarb, but he completely loses it when he goes to talk to Emmit about the matter.
Varga's henchmen assaulting Nikki at the parking lot. It's off-screen but Sy's horrified expression and Nikki's screams of pain growing weaker until complete silence make it seem like they've brutally murdered her with Sy quickly driving off, with her only painfully getting back up at the last moment.
The Lord of No Mercy
The Law of Inevitability
The attempted murder of Nikki in her jail cell, while she's completely helpless handcuffed to the door and would have been doomed if Gloria hadn't finally gotten into the room.
Who Rules the Land of Denial?
The first 18 minutes of "Who Rules the Land of Denial?" are some of the bloodiest in the show's history. Highlights include:
||Paul Marrane|| establishing himself both as a case of Beware the Nice Ones and Creepy Good. When Yuri shows up at a bowling alley in search of Nikki and Wrench, ||Paul is sitting next to him.|| Without Yuri saying a word to him, he turns and tells Yuri that he has a message from the girlfriend Yuri murdered and the thousands of Jews killed by Cossacks in the pogroms. Yuri's expression shifts and he stares off into space. Suddenly there's a black-and-white shot of his girlfriend and hundreds of Jews standing behind her, looking at him in judgement. ||After the Time Skip, Yuri is said to have disappeared.||
Meanwhile, Varga nonchalantly poisons ||Sy|| by feeding him tea spiked with cyanide. The cyanide is on time release, not kicking in until Sy reaches the office, at which point he begins sweating, then vomits out his stomach contents, and collapses, rendered comatose.
Aporia
Just to illustrate how eager he is to stay on top, Varga does some damage control to keep Emmitt from ratting him out. He has Meemo go out and kill two random people with the last name "Stussy", recreating the M.O.s of Ennis's and Ray's murders to make those deaths look like the work of a very unusual serial killer. He even has a willing Fall Guy ready to go to prison as the fictional serial killer, all to nullify Emmitt's confession.
Gloria tries to press Emmitt on Varga's involvement. He hesitates, and we see the grinning mouth of Varga - filled with diseased teeth - superimposed over his head.
Somebody to Love
Emmitt's tiredness is explained by Varga as "the smaller animal going limp in jaws of the bigger". An image that is hauntingly similar to Varga's own haws closing around Emmitt an episode before...
The five year Time Skip that closes Emmit's story. He may have lost his company, but he's still rich, has only faced two years of probation for his involvement with Varga, his family has reconciled, and even Sy is awake from his coma, brain-damaged, but seemingly in good spirits. It appears that Emmit will finally have his happy ending, and he gets up from his Christmas Dinner with his loved ones to go to the kitchen... He's then casually shot in the back of the head with a silenced pistol by Mr. Wrench to avenge Nikki's death.
Possibly the final scene of the season, depending on how you interpret it. Varga's been captured and detained by Gloria who's now a member of Homeland Security. Gloria tells him that in a few minutes guards will walk through that door and take Varga to prison to pay for his crimes. Varga shakes her confidence by having a different theory. That in five minutes a man who Gloria can't argue with will walk through the door, tell Gloria to let Varga go, and Varga will disappear out into the world, to resume his reign of terror. The light over Varga's face darkens, leaving him completely in shadow as he sings quietly to himself, utterly confident that he'll escape justice. Gloria nervously watches the clock, and waits to see which of them is proven right. The audience never finds out. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/FargoSeasonThree |
Fargo: Season Two / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
- Ed grinding up Rye's body into mincemeat.
- Skip being Buried Alive while pleading for his life.
- When Dodd escapes from the Blumquists' captivity and tries to hang Ed, all the while giving him a lecture about his misogynistic beliefs. On a couple of his close-ups, you can
*really* see the Sanity Slippage on his face.
- Hanzee's single-minded and ruthlessly competent campaign of violence. In a span of about two episodes, he takes down the remaining Gerhardt family.
- Hanzee holding Constance hostage as she's talking to Peggy is intensely creepy. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/FargoSeasonTwo |
Farscape / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
**As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.**
- Natira's penchant for plucking out people's eyes.
First red. Now blue. Scorpius wants your brain. He said nothing about your eyes. Mmm, blue eyes. So soft. Very rare.
- Zhaan's nightmare in "Dream A Little Dream", in which Aeryn is killed when her Prowler is destroyed, and Crichton's space visor cracks and his head starts to pop...
- The temporary Nebari Mind-Cleansing procedure in "A Clockwork Nebari". One of the best (worst?) examples of Eye Scream
*ever*.
**Rygel:** I don't want my eyes sucked out!
- The scene in "That Old Black Magic" when Maldis, in order to get Crais fired up against Crichton again, conjures up a vision of Crais' late brother, Tauvo, before re-enacting his death. As in, he shows Tauvo exploding into flame and his flesh melting, in
*graphic* detail.
- For such a hilarious episode, "Crackers Don't Matter" can get downright
*disturbing* as the crew get more and more unhinged. John's Attempted Rape of Chiana would be unspeakably creepy if it were a villain doing it, let alone the Nominal Hero.
- The fate of Aeryn's former friend, Henta, in "Into the Lion's Den Part 2: Wolf in Sheep's Clothing". She confronts Aeryn as the Command Carrier explodes around them, intending to kill her. Before she can, she is burned alive in a sudden explosion... and is alive long enough to actually reach out to Aeryn, even after all the skin has been seared from her body. Ouch.
- Towards the end of "Nerve", Chiana is confronted at gunpoint by Commander Javio. How does she get out of the situation? Burn him alive! Following this there are a couple of lovely close-ups of his charred corpse, mouth open in a silent scream... it's safe to say
*Farscape* seems to like depicting people burning alive.
- "Eat Me" has Kaarvok, a cannibalistic mad scientist, who clones people solely for consumption. Best summed up by these two lines:
"They cut your arms... and when they grow back, they hack 'em off again? Why the hell would they do that?"
"Because, because, because THEY'RE
*EATING* MEEEEEEE!"
- Moya being infested by a mass of creepers, and Pilot waking up to realize that they've wormed their way up
*through* his body and out of his mouth.
- The failed Pilot/Sebacean hybrid that NamTar has chained to the wall of his lab, still alive and still screaming.
- Aeryn slowly mutating into a Pilot over the course of that episode.
- NamTar and his crippled assistant.
- Diseased Plokavian judges melting all over the place while sentencing Moya's crew to death.
- Captain Jenek frying a test subject's unborn child alive with Heat Projection. The whole thing is revealed to be faked at the end of the episode, but the scene is still deeply disturbing.
- Scorpius as a child.◊ There is a very good reason why we never see under his suit as an adult.
- "Won't Get Fooled Again":
- Crichton's mother begging him to stay with her is bad enough, but then she starts appearing in the last stages of her cancer.
- Late in the episode, DK starts bleeding from every orifice, all the while blaming Crichton.
- The ending, where, after Crichton resolves to get the neural chip out of him ASAP, Harvey alters John's memories to remove his knowledge of Harvey's existence. The episode's last lines say it all:
-
*Scratch 'n' Sniff*, features villain of the week Fe'Tor, who sells a powerful aphrodisiac named freslin, which is made primarily from the pheromones and secretions of sentient beings. To this end, he kidnaps young women, including Chiana and Jool, and milks them. After milking Chiana, he attempts to sell her to the highest bidder, and attempts to milk Jool to death. "Disturbing" is putting it mildly.
- The scene in "Home on the Remains" where Chiana defeats the episode's villain by shooting a pustule on the wall of the giant alien corpse they're inside, spraying his hand with Hollywood Acid. We are treated to a
*horrific* close-up of the skin sloughing off his hand and melting down to the bone in a bloody mess. This scene alone resulted in the episode being the only one to be rated 18 in the UK.
- When Criton finally uses the wormhole weapon, demonstrating what they are and what they do. It simply creates a black hole. An ever-expanding black hole that constantly doubles in size, density, and gravitational pull. Based on how it is described, it has no upper limit to how big it will get, and could conceivably grow large enough to encompass the entire galaxy, if not the entire universe, if not stopped. This was the genie that everyone else was wanting to let out of the bottle, and had anyone gotten ahold of it, they'd have likely used it without fully understanding the consequences. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Farscape |
Fan Works / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
**First Old Man:**
I saw a woman. Couldn't have been younger than ninety, probably a hundred, they live that damn long you know. She was holding a sword in her left hand, because she'd lost her right arm, and pretty much everything, shoulder to hip, sternum out by the time I saw her, looked like it had been blasted off by a raiton
, but I saw that old woman cut down no less than fifty trained ninja before some poor bastard finally cut off her head but... That old lady's body kept going, that headless body cut down five more men, before she fell and drove her sword into the heart of the man who beheaded her. One of my buddies set her on fire, just in case. I...I don't know if I was seeing things, but that blackened, headless corpse, it looked like it still tried to get up again. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Fanfiction |
Fatal Frame / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
Head here for the general
*Fatal Frame* Nightmare Fuel page.
- Right at the cover of the American release:
*Based On A True Story*! Well, not really, but the mansion in the game is based off of an actual mansion in Japan that is supposed to be haunted.
- The very concept of the Rope Shrine Maiden and her duty. She is tied down to a stone altar by her wrist, ankles and neck; then the priests begin to savagely tear her apart by pushing the huge wooden devices around the central slab. Lastly, they take the ropes stained with her blood to ensure a continued seal on the Hell Gate in the mansion's deep, cavernous underbelly.
- The audio tapes found are unsettling, despite the lacking voice acting, simply because the robotic-sounding voices are so off.
- Tomoe Hirasaka's tapes do have a saving grace, however. Because she has a sixth sense and could already see ghosts, listening to her tapes carefully reveals their disembodied voices talking in the background. The first one asks her to "save us"... And later, Tapes 2 through 4 are all either cursing her or saying she's already doomed.
- What happened to the people who headed to Himuro Mansion: all ended up suffering horrible and gruesome deaths. And this includes the people who were in Himuro Mansion prior to the Calamity.
- During the Final Night, Miku can revisit the Abyss area and take a Hidden Ghost photo, which is labeled "Kirie's Love". From the previous flashbacks in the game, we learn that the unnamed man the Big Bad once loved looks like Miku's brother Mafuyu. Basically, the player gets to see the face of Miku's brother
*with blood dripping from his mouth and a vacant dead expression on his face*.
- Several of the ghosts encountered throughout the Mansion:
- Broken Neck Woman, who haunts the mansion by floating backwards. Her head flops over and is constantly staring at you upside-down.
- Long Arms, because of his freakishly long arms. He inhabits the mansion by shambling around in a crouched position and only lifts himself up for an attack. Then there are his victims...
- Crawling Girl. She was pulled under the tatami in the Doll Room by Long Arms, who strangled her beneath the house. She now haunts the Doll Room, crawling on the floor and paralyzing the player with her scream.
- Girl In The Well. Long Arms' second victim was pulled into the large stone well in the garden and drowned. Half of her body is horribly disfigured and bloody from being dragged across stone.
- Boy Hiding. Long Arms pulled him into the grandfather clock and strangled him.
- The Blind Demon, or simply "Blinded". A sacrificial maiden that had the Blinding Mask put upon her. Said mask has
*spikes* in the eyes that were forced through hers. She now roams the mansion screaming "My eyes! My eyes!" and bleeding from the sockets.
- Lord Himuro. He's a sadistic samurai donning the Hannya Mask, who was driven insane by the Calamity and proceeded to slaughter and behead everyone in the manor, house guests and staff alike, before finally committing suicide out of guilt. And fighting him is just as horrifying, with his soulless eyes; the eery Hannya mask on his face; the four monks he sends after you and his way of attacking: unlike most ghosts, he doesn't try to grab you. He'll just cut you into ribbons with his katana. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/FatalFrameI |
Fantastic Planet / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
Aliens learn that Humans are people too. The hard way.
**Moments pages are Spoilers Off. You Have Been Warned.**
- The opening sequence, with a terrified human mother carrying her baby and running for her life, as a large blue hand keeps blocking her path, pushing her, picking her up and putting her back down in a different place, and putting rocks and other obstacles in her way. Ultimately the woman dies; whether from injuries or fright is unclear. Its only then that the viewer learns the identity of her tormenter: three Draag children that were simply amusing themselves by playing with the woman, in the same way a human child might play with an insect or a mouse. Not to mention how indifferent the children are to the woman's death, all one of them can do is remark it's a shame they can't play with her anymore.
- The numerous scenes of humans being treated like pests by the Draags and as prey by some of the native wildlife. These include:
- The gigantic Om-Eater making a meal out of a den of humans, using its long tongue and proboscis to sweep them up like ants. It flies on bat-like wings, has a mouth like a broken tree stump and has a
*hellish cry.*
- De-Omisating the park, where the Draags release poison gas pellets all over the area to eradicate a wild human population to keep their numbers manageable. The humans are shown choking and dying on the gas in their dens. The Draags carrying out the task stalk slowly through the park with an almost robotic coldness. Like it's just another job.
- Meanwhile "domesticated" humans in gas masks that show only their sad eyes are being led around on leashes looking for their wild counterparts, adding yet another flavor of tragic horror to the whole affair. The horror of being forced to take part in the genocide of one's own race is palpable in their eyes.
- The hero - an Om educated by Draag teaching devices - tries to warn the feral Om tribe that captured him about standing too close to an Om trap, being able to read its label. The Om laughing at him bangs his spear on the trap repeatedly until it
*absorbs* him and sinks into the ground.
- There's this creature who sits in some form of natural cage, and apparently what it does is lure small flying creatures onto its tentacles and stab them to death. It's not feeding on them. It's just a sadistic little beast. That snickers to itself all the time.
- While escaping from the Draags' extermination of the park, Ter's tribe flees to a sidewalk where two Draags look down and remark about how, while domestic Oms are nice, feral Oms are disgusting pests. And they promptly decide to stomp them out like ants. The Oms, however, use their grappling hooks to pull one of them down and stab him to death while he struggles. The Draag's friend is so aghast by this that he ends up running away - presumably to report what he just saw.
- After a Draag is murdered by Ter's tribe in a coordinated attack, the leaders of Ygam are understandably scared shitless. Not only do they report the death of one of their own, but the discovery of Om dens where stolen supplies were organized by their contents -
*without being opened.* Instead of showing empathy for a race that has been proven to read their language and organize complex strategies, the Draags double down on their extermination efforts with new technologies, a moratorium on domestic Om breeding and increased de-omisation frequency.
- These technologies come in the form of drones. Namely those with death rays, those that are little more than sticky spheres that roll up and crush their victims, and vacuums that suck Oms onto
*razor sharp spikes.*
- The Oms' rockets land on the Fantastic Planet, discovering giant headless statues that waltz when Draag meditation spheres plant themselves on their necks. The Oms vaporize them out of panic and quickly learn that all of Draag civilization is
*powered by these things.* The mental shock from their destruction leaves countless Draags wandering their cities in excruciating pain as even their technology relies on these statues to function. Eventually, the Draags have no choice but to admit they were in the wrong and build a second moon reserved just for Oms: *Terra.* | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/FantasticPlanet |
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