Shin Megami Tensei/Nightmare Fuel

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Anybody order a mascot character?!

General

• While all of these vague references to other games is really cool, it has a horrifying implication that all of these games take place in a loosely-connected multiverse where any of these apocalyptic scenarios are possible. Even Catherine has an obscure reference to earlier SMT games, so while it lacks any apocalyptic themes, it still has particularly evil and meddlesome examples of All Myths Are True.
• The implication, asserted in Shin Megami Tensei Imagine, that demonic contracts offer virtual absolute control over the demon, to the degree the machine summoning them can be used to literally use them as People Puppets. Couple Humans Are the Real Monsters with this gem. Whaddya get?
• In a standard fusion, the involved demons get merged into a single larger one, and it's implied the result has parts of each's accumulated experience/bits of each's souls. How large could the mass of memories/souls of a top-tier demon could be?
• On a more meta example, and with some Fridge Horror for good measure: the fact most of the top-tier angels (Metatron, Sandalphon, Melchizedek, Ophanim, and most likely others) are portrayed as robots. Think about it for a sec.

Demons in General

• Some of the demons of the series are downright terrifying.
• Pisaca. Sweet dreams! It Got Worse in Strange Journey; the Compendium description for them says that they crawl into people's mouths. And these things are about 7 feet tall. And other Compendiums imply they become Puppeteer Parasites.
  • The gameplay is not safe from this. They have an attack that inflicts "Bomb" status, in which the victim—which can be anyone from one of your demons to you—becomes Made of Explodium. One hit with your guard down and you explode violently, dealing your HP in damage to the rest of your team. Easily the most terrifying status ailment besides Stone.
  • Another Pisaca artwork, even more deformed and horrible, for your viewing pleasure.
• Legion, a mass of fleshy heads welded together.
• Arioch. Cu Chulainn from the Final Fantasy games has nothing on this.
• Tiamat. There's so many things wrong with this picture. Her makeover for Strange Journey is just as bad.
• Belberith. What happens when you blend 4 demons together? This.
• Kraken. Because we all so love octopi.
• Bael. Is it any wonder it was the prototype for Belberith above?
  • Case in point. Frogs really aren't meant to be that size.
• Mara. To start with, it was pretty disgusting and horrific. And then they went and made him/her even more horrific. And as the main page points out - Mara is a demon of temptations. Which means that deep down, we all have the potential to be as ugly as that thing.
• Mishaguji. Same as Mara - ugly to start with, made even worse in the redesign. Doesn't help it looks like a goddamn parasite to start with.
• Many, many monsters of the first games were essentially an animal body with a human head. It only made it worse that these looked like rejects cast into the Uncanny Valley.
• Abaddon. See that gaping mouth? It's capable of swallowing cities.
• Tzitzimitl, where did your eyes go?. And that belly she's caressing so lovingly? She's not pregnant with the cosmos within her robe—that's a distended stomach, bulging with the stars she has EATEN, snatched from the sky with her million arms.
• Strange Journey even throws lovable Mascot Mook Jack Frost in here. How? By revealing it's an abominable snowman who changed his form in order to more efficiently freeze prey.
• Beelzebub. A fly. Nothing but a fly. Oh, yes, that. A fly the size of a tank made out of hundreds of thousands of smaller flies. And in Devil Survivor, his minions can inflict the "Egg" status on you and your allies. What does it do? It turns its target into an incubator for more flies, which hatch after a few turns, resulting in more enemies. And the host taking severe damage.
• Cherubs. Angels are supposed to be nice, aren't they? HA! Tell that to yourself when this thing comes after you ^{[dead link]}.Have a gander and make your own choice, folks!
• In most games that Dominion appears in, it takes the form of a blue-haired angel with a scale and a book. In Strange Journey, however, it became this abomination.
• Oh God, just Cthulhu's design. Penises do not belong on tongues.
• Old Ones. Sigh... No need to explain this one, is there...
• Even though he only appears in a single game, and only as a boss, Satanael deserves mention. He bursts out of your friend's body, and forces you to fight him. Not good enough? He didn't quite make it out.
• Alice. Die For Me! is bad enough, but when you learn her story... which is also a Tear Jerker all on its own... well. Let's just put this in spoilers... The Hare of Inaba explains it rather well in Strange Journey: Alice was a normal, happy girl who at once point came to the attention of some demons who immediately got smitten with her. So what did the demons do? Something to help Alice, of course! They gave her a portion of their magic. Alice died soon after, driven to insanity by the power she had been granted. And the power revived her. Sorta. What rose from Alice's grave was a true demon, formed by the massive magical power Alice had been granted, and gifted with her innocent mindset... Now, what could go wrong with a girl who desperately wants a friend, but who tends to liberally throw around deadly instant-death magic and cannot understand the very concept of death itself, or what is she, or what is she doing? She also likes to summon wave after wave of undead, to ensure you never leave her...
  • In the aforementioned mission with the Hare of Inaba, Alice eventually catches up to you and the Hare, and then skins the Hare, boils him alive, and eats him. If you let her.
  • Atlus seems bent into making her the worst possible monster possible. As of Devil Survivor 2, she's now a monstruous Vampiric Drainer.
• Satan, the Accuser. A Knight Templar Eldritch Abomination whose Signature Moves are called God's Breath, Vanity and Futility? Really, what's not to fear?
• The Gnome got pretty unsettling in Strange Journey too.

Shin Megami Tensei 1 and 2

• While much more minor and kind of primitive compared to most of the examples here, one boss of Shin Megami Tensei 2 seems to fall squarely under this. At one point you have to get through a shroud of annoying smog to get to Betelgeuse, the boss of the factory area. You are given no information about what Betelgeuse is beforehand, so when you manage to stumble blindly through the fog, find a small out-of-the-way room, enter it, and get immediately confronted with the near indescribable terror that is THIS. What makes it worse is that he constantly chatters his fanged jaw in a two-frame animation, but otherwise is completely non-animated, his horrible eyes staring UNBLINKINGLY INTO YOUR SOUL.
• Discovering the truth about Arcadia. And then realizing that this was just an experimental model, and they intended as the final product to have EVERYONE hooked up to this.
  • That part is terrible, yes. But worse than that? Not even the Archangel Gabriel, otherwise the Only Sane Man on the angels' side, bothers to think what is going to happen with those unfortunates in Arcadia after Gimmel's death, either left to realize just what they've been doing all the time or just rot in the VR chambers, when the Megiddo Arc fires...
  • Although the greenish-blue YHVH isn't the real YHVH, it's just a facsimile given form and power out of the other three archangels' desire to have their plan for the Thousand Year Kingdom succeed. They're essentially serving a puppet they made, and they don't even know it.
  • All three Avatars of God are terrifying in their own way, even worse than the Fake YHVH fought in the Cathedral. Sabaoth, Shaddai and Elohim are all absolutely insane Knight Templars intent on firing the Megiddo Arc.
• If you're a devout Christian, you REALLY do not want to play some of the titles, as they paint Christianity in a VERY bad light - let's just say the local Knights Templar, the Messians, embody the worst aspects of Christian religion, such as the Inquisition and the Old Testament's divine punishments. In many games, unless you're following the Law path, you are forced to fight and crush several high-ranking angels, making yourself an enemy of God, and in Shin Megami Tensei II, you actually fight God regardless of your alignment. (Granted, he's meant to be a representation of gods in general, but that he's named YHVH in-game does not help.) How bad is he? Aside from being this huge yellow-skinned... head... THING, he threatens you with a biblical Fate Worse Than Death and makes freaky animations every time you damage him. YHVH nuked Japan just because not absolutely everyone was worshipping him. Or the fact everyone was so horrified at his acts even Satan and the Archangel Gabriel not only give you permission to have a swing at Him, but are even desperate enough to offer to join in in the Law Path?

"Not even thousand deaths would be fitting punishment for thy sins! I shall smite thee, and in hell I shall torture thee over and over! After an aeon, I shall reincarnate thee, and thy lives shall be those of endless torment, thy bodies tortured in life and thy souls in death!] The same shall come to thy children, and thy children's children, throughout all eternity until the end of time! Feel the wrath of my divine lightning, and plummet into the bowels of hell, burning in its unending flames!"

• • And finally, when you fight him, certain emulators will freak out and cause the dialogue box to vibrate during the battle. Granted, it's unintentional, but God dicking with the game interface doesn't seem like something he wouldn't do.
• Shin Megami Tensei I decides to punch you in the face early on by having you fight a demon who ate your mother and disguised itself as her.
• Shin Megami Tensei I also has a small Town with a Dark Secret, Roppongi. Said place is oddly safe amidst the destruction of Tokyo. Inside, there are these two cheerful fellas and their beautiful adopted daughter... Alice. The two guys are Belial and Nebiros, and the citizens of Roppongi are all dead, because they killed them so they could bind their spirits to Earth so they would never leave Alice.
• So you're soft-resetting Shin Megami Tensei I and, by great misfortune, the game loads into a screen with this horrible buzzing noise and nothing onscreen but a repeated single phrase: "TURN IT OFF RIGHT NOW!"

Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne

• Humanity dies in a flash of light as the Conception begins. And you can only watch.
• When the Young Boy transforms you into a demon against your will by dropping a wriggling leech-like creature into your eye, which then burrows straight into your brain. And this is all done from a first-person perspective. Watch it here.
• The lyrics to the normal boss theme. They sound like gibberish... but then you listen closer and hear voices chanting, "Almighty God! Can you hear us?!?" Just how bad is God in this setting? The demons are praying to Him for help. You are on your own. The song is actually about God, who's tired of humans praying for his help. He tell us to shut up and let him sleep. "In the name of God! Almighty God! Can you hear us?!?" More of Jerkass God than God Is Evil... wait, he "sacrificed the Son of Man" in hope that we will stop bugging him...
• The Manikins, while more or less friendly and personable individuals, usually twitch-spasm every other second.
  • Good lord, Gozu's summoner. The first time you enter Gozu-Tennoh's chamber, you're confronted with THIS horrible thing.
• Sakahagi, who happens to wear a bandolier made of Manikin faces that he killed and skinned himself, and also goes through those periodic twitchy palpitations that most Manikins do.
• Yuko possessed by Aradia. While Aradia's words give her the impression of a cryptic but supportive personality, Yuko's body twitches like a Manikin in overdrive and teleports like mad. It's more or less the picture of insanity, especially since Yuko's face is hidden from view by a near-formless "mask".
• Isamu after his awakening in the Amala Network. Not only does he have the same "disembodied empty faces" motif that Sakahagi has, Isamu's extra faces are not clothing. They're growing out of his body.
  • Also when the second phase of your fight against Noah has a giant, creepy version of Isamu's head sticking out of a giant fetus's body.
• Chiaki after gaining Gozu-Tennoh's power. Actually a bit less creepy than Isamu in body, but her right arm being some roiling, seemingly boneless-at-times thing would be enough to give anyone nightmares... of course, her crushing a Manikin's face and tossing him away like a rag doll add a lot to it too.
  • The angels. Fighting three of the top seraphs is bad. Seeing the ground troopers respond with such joy to Chiaki's sadism? Frankly horrific.
• Before the Nightmare System fires and after escaping the Mantra HQ, go back up to the arena where you fought Thor. You'll see a pair of Pretas and a Manikin, who explains that whoever loses to the guards are eaten alive by the Pretas.
• Chiaki when invading Mifunashiro. When you get to her, she's surrounded by dozens of Manikin corpses. Then, she cracks a Manikin's skull. One-handed. This music is what plays during the scene
• Kabukicho Prison. One side's sunny and the only notable thing are the many empty rooms. The another side is chock-full of Manikins being tortured and drained of their Life Energy. Brutally. Routinely. Normally.
• Learning the identity of the Merchant and the Killer in the Fourth Kalpa, and a lot of very hard truths about the Manikins' origins.
• The Diet Building. The place looks ominous enough already... and then the bizarre architecture and the illusions start kicking in...
• The Labyrinth of Amala's doorways open with a disgusting, organic sound. See the implications?
• The Reveal as to the true identity and fate of Hijiri. He's actually Aleph from Shin Megami Tensei II, in a particularly cruel form of Groundhog Day Loop. Live juuuust enough to see the world die, suffer in the Vortex World, die, be reborn in another world as the Conception begins. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. Ad infinitum.
• Thinking too much about the Conception, God, Lucifer, Humanity and the demons' natures can lead to some pretty horrific conclusions. God keeps hitting the Reset Button over and over and over until he gets a world without free will; no one left to oppose Him. Lucifer wants to turn the whole of Creation into an endless mass of Chaos, countless Death Worlds in which Social Darwinism is the norm. And Humanity's the one in the middle...

Digital Devil Saga

• In both games, you learn new abilities by eating your enemies for atma points. The second game reveals the real world is in ruins, stuck under a sun that always shines black, and the sunlight turns anyone not infected with the demon virus to stone!
• The consequences of the Demon Virus. Endless hunger. Mindless rage. Losing yourself. And that's if you're lucky. When you gain extra atma points if you use Hunt skills to finish your enemies. Rather than killing them and then devouring them, you eat them alive. Once infected, you can never stop eating, or you risk the demon inside just going berserk, overruling whatever higher brain functions you may still have in working order beyond the maddening hunger, and wantonly attacking anything. In rare cases, the demon virus will go so far with you, it will literally overwrite everything in there. And then, there's nothing left in there, but a demon. Problem is, if the virus has gone this far, it's likely it's a strong demon with ideas and intelligence of its own, and it's gonna go find food and shelter - AKA your friends, family and home...
• Everything about the Meat Factories in the second game. To wit, Madame Cuvier's "plan" for the salvation of Humanity goes like this: "Anyone who wants to follow me, we'll transform into Tuners. Anyone who disagrees with me, we'll transform into dinner."
• Jenna Angel on the other hand, just wants to turn everyone into Tuners, and plunge the world into a slaughterfest.

Raidou Kuzunoha

• Raidou Kuzunoha vs. the Soulless Army has what is, arguably, the single most horrific Wham! Line in the entire series, which makes you realize the villain... well, he was trying to stop the Apocalypse. And since said line is meaningless to Raidou, he's going to stop the plan...

Voice in Akarana Corridor: The Ambassador has launched the ICBMs!

• The Hiruko are monstrous parasites born by the unnatural alteration of humans who experience crippling fear or hate, and just sooo love bursting out of their hosts. Eventually, you find a large radio tower responsible for their creation. In the normal world, there is nothing particularly strange about the tower. In the Dark World? The Tower is coated with immense blobs of Hiruko.
• Raidou Kuzunoha VS King Abaddon has its fair share of creepy things in general, but what really gets to some people is the White Rider's horse, which is covered in eyes. (By Body Horror standards that's really pretty tame, but eyes appearing where they shouldn't causes a strong reaction in a lot of people, not unlike the infamous Lotusboob photoshop. And if you don't know what that is, good for you.)
  • Once the Apolloyon descend upon the Capital, just about everything gets much, much worse.

Strange Journey

• When we cut open his head, a gray fluid came out and he stopped moving. Our conclusion is that humans need something called a 'brain.' But we changed him into a form where he'll never get angry. What a good thing we demons did!
• The laboratories of Jack's Squad. When you hear the dying demons telling you what the resident scientists did, with you turning off their life support, and when you see what they were planning to do to Jimenez and Bugaboo will you be raging to return the favor to Jack. Which makes it doubly awesome when you do get to rip him a new one.
• The Tower of Mitra, too. Seeing your former comrades stuck by hooks to stone slabs and the results of the "experiment" with Norris... No wonder Zelenin wasn't quite well after that.
• Zelenin's Song. And what Mastema wants to do with it.
  • Seeing Zelenin blast those demons to raw, senseless data. And the screams. Jimenez's What the Hell, Hero? lecture afterwards is richly deserved.
• Any path that isn't Neutral. Law? The Earth's population is converted into a mass of worshippers with absolutely no humanity left. Chaos? Earth dissolves into barbaric anarchy. And yet in either ending, the last shot you see is your Demonica telling you your mission is complete... yet you'll probably be thinking otherwise. Thank goodness I'm going for the Neutral ending!
  • The crewmen in either Law or Chaos. In either path, their minds have been utterly damaged by mindless devotion to "the Lord" or the demonic bloodlust. And it's made very, very obvious it's not something you can fix... because it is exactly what you wanted.
• The Delphinus Parasite. It induces mindless hate and murderous impulses. Why not kill it? It has absolutely no physical vectors. Eventually, it becomes resistant to the single weapon that hurts it.
• One of the parasites communicates with Zelenin...and gloats about how her crewmates on the Elve not only looked down upon her for being a woman in male-dominated company, but had sexually depraved thoughts about her.
• The various sectors represent humanity's sins in ways that can make you feel...funny, to put it nicely. That the endbosses of each sector calls out humanity for being bastards doesn't help.
  • Sector Antlia starts as a massive battlefield, lined with burning buildings and random planes passing in carpet bombing runs. Barbed wire is everywhere, and then you hear Morax praising Humanity's prowess as killers, saying how he's gonna mimic their style...
  • Sector Carina. Laugh at the whole "shopping mall in a dimensional rift in Antarctica" thing if you must; it's a Player Punching commentary on humanity's desire to excessively spend and consume. The demon at the entrance puts it best: "Please enjoy our products until the Earth runs out of resources!" Then we have Horkos, who plans to eat anything and everything, even everything on Earth, and calls out mankind for even being more material-hungry than he is.
  • Sector Grus. Psychological Torment Zone, created by a mistress of Mind Rape. Invisible walls, fading walls, several dimensions, Demonic Spiders galore, and a random mishmash of the first four sectors, which most likely evoke the worst parts of the Schwartzwelt Expedition. Mother Maya's lair is worse- it's an impossible mess of worlds struggling in a vortex of illusions, generating the madness that is Sector Grus.
• The Game Over screen. With nothing left to stop it, the Schwarzwelt absorbs the entire Earth, leaving just a sphere of darkness.

Devil Survivor

• At one point in Devil Survivor, you are allowed to do one of three things with Haru after she runs off on her own, after she hints strongly that she plans to commit suicide. At a specific time during the day, you can choose to ignore her and let her commit suicide, talk to her and calm her down, or...talk her into it, and affirm that she is indeed worthless, her despair is her own fault, and her situation is impossible, and it's hopeless, and everyone is going to die. If you choose the last option, she will show gratitude to you, and then run off to incite the SDF into shooting her dead so she no longer is in pain. Which they do. The next day, your COMP will tell you, as part of its news, that a young girl not carrying identification attacked SDF soldiers, who were forced to shoot her until she was dead. While you never see Haru die, you do see the despair in her face right before she accepts suicide as the only solution, and, to really bring it home, her gratitude for you giving the solution she needs to ending her impossible guilt and sadness is genuine. Have fun trying to console the already-hysterical Yuzu after that, because she will never let you forget it.
• The Escape/Yuzu ending. Yuzu is so broken down by everything you've gone through that she begs you to Screw Destiny and break through the lockdown, despite knowing the consequences. "There's no way they would go that far, right?" During the escape attempt, you're pitted against all the defenders while desperately trying to stop what's coming. And when you make it out... you discover the world outside's no better. Congratulations, you just personally ushered in a Crapsack World! To top it off, formerly stoic Honda is so completely broken that he thanks you for creating this new world, sporting a Slasher Smile the whole time.
  • Thanks be to the cartoony graphics, you'd be fooled into thinking this game dilutes most of it own horror. Not really. You get to watch many people getting murdered, parts of the city start resembling Fire and Brimstone Hell, and the monsters that started off cute gradually start getting more and more nightmarish in appearance. Also, add in the fact you have a literal Death Clock hanging over the heads of EVERYONE that most have to fight unspeakable horrors to prolong for brief stretches of time, AND the facts that the Japanese government is planning to microwave the entire city population into melted goo just to stop a demon invasion, the demons want to extend their dominion to the entire planet, and the angels want to do the same. All the above said, this is one terrifying game, and the worst part of all... is that this game somehow got past the ratings board with a Teen rating!
• Devil Survivor 2 easily trumps Devil Survivor in sheer horror, mostly because as you play the game, more and more of the world keeps getting swallowed into NOTHINGNESS!. This even extends to the map on the intermission screen, where you get the hellish image of more and more of Japan (implied to be the only place that had anything protecting it in the first place) is just GONE, as if it never existed.
• Speaking of Devil Survivor 2, it also somehow got past the ratings board with a Teen rating even though it has even MORE onscreen deaths than its predecessor. One of the first scenes you see in the game is an earthquake that causes a train accident. You get to see all the crushed, bloody corpses scattered around. This includes a full-screen picture (not sprites like the corpses from the train but fully drawn art) of the main character dead and bleeding from a head injury.
• The Septentriones easily prove themselves to be malicious monsters. How? Dubhe, the first one, appears at the Hills building and explodes. The curious people surrounding it are reduced to ashes.
• Devil Survivor 2 deserves some kind of reward for making one of the Neutral endings Nightmare Fuel.This particular ending, the "Kill Polaris" one, involves killing Polaris, obviously. But there are several problems with this. All the damage that was done by the Septentriones? Never fixed. All the world that was consumed by the void? Never restored. All that's left is Tokyo and a endless sea. A sea that is probably neither drinkable nor has anything to eat in it. Humanity will simply die a slow death from malnutrition. And where there is starvation and poverty, there's usually violence to go with it. And while there are no Jerkass supernatural beings to screw with humanity, there are no benevolent ones either to help humanity. (Yes, there are good supernatural beings in Shin Megami Tensei). The only hope there is that the next guy in line for Heaven's Throne, Eli, will show up and fix things. This, however, is extremely unlikely. Good night, everyone!

Catherine

• It's only been a few months since Catherine has been announced, but it's quickly making its way onto this page from trailers alone. Then again, what do you expect from a game that has nightmares as its main motif?
  • People are dying in their sleep, and all of the victims are young men (one trailer shows the image of a man who lies in his bed as a dessicated, shriveled husk, his face locked in an expression of pure agony). Oh, and that Manic Pixie Dream Girl Vincent/the player meets at the bar? She's really a demon, sent to judge Vincent's worth. Choose to pursue a relationship with her, and you forsake your humanity and become a demon yourself.
• Every boss in the game counts in one way or another. Makes sense as they are Vincent's fears and insecurities given physical form.
• The first boss is Katherine's hands, the "Fist of Grudge", (only enormous, deformed, and holding a GIANT FORK with which to skewer Vincent with). Said hands will change Normal Blocks to Heavy Blocks (which Vincent has a harder time moving) with its strikes, all the while hearing a demonic voice screaming "TAKE RESPONSIBILITY!!" and "YOU WON'T GET AWAY FROM ME!"
• Any time Katherine and Catherine nearly find out about each other. The suspense is unbearable.
• When Katherine Stabs Catherine in the stomach. The sheer horror in her eyes, and her screams... and all that blood... yikes! It was All Just a Dream, but still.
• Late in the game, Vincent confronts Boss about the Nightmares, giving him a good sock to the face. Boss' shades fall off, revealing that he has creepy red eyes. Almost nonchalantly Boss reveals himself as some kind of godlike creature called Dumuzid.
• Consider that the plot is kicked off when Catherine RAPES VINCENT, roofie-ing him or using supernatural abilities to that effect and having sex with him regardless of whether he wants to or not... and continues to do it for several days, with Vincent helpless to stop it! Below the thin skin of fanservice and sex comedy is a skin-crawling horror story about a victim of rape by something that isn't even human! and his futile-seeming struggle to escape it. On the bright side, the Katherine ending becomes an Earn Your Happy Ending, even as the Catherine ending becomes a Rape Is Love Downer Ending where Vincent is quite literally dehumanized by accepting sexual abuse.
• As you progress in the game, you'll notice that some of the Sheep-men have gone insane, becoming larger, wielding giant axes and have red (most likely bloodstained) wool. They are the men who have lost their lives in the Nightmare World, existing only to maim and kill other Sheep...including you/Vincent.

Persona

• The first real dungeon in the original Persona can be a surprise, considering the music. Well, just think of a theme that says "Welcome to Hell" better than this.
• The final boss from Revelations Persona, Pandora. Her boss intro speaks for itself.
• Remember Apathy Syndrome? Its Older Than They Think. The bad ending for the Snow Queen quest has the "Night Queen" (aka Nyx) freeze everyone, for the same reasons of it's what humanity wants. And...the final cutscene...just...the final cutscene...

Persona 2

• Both Jokers. Innocent Sin's Joker sports a cruel smile that makes your skin crawl, and it's especially unsettling that this Joker is really an emotionally and mentally tortured Jun Kurosu, who is in turn being controlled by the real Man Behind the Man, who has taken the form of Jun's dead father. And Eternal Punishment's serial-killer JOKER wears a bloody paper bag over his head with drawn-on features (including a hole where another eye should be) and a huge wicked smile that is Nightmare Fuel all by itself.
• Nyarlathotep as Jun's Persona. Y'know, the fella gets extra fear points for a reason: we made him. Every single tiny act of evil you've ever experienced or acted upon... it just makes him bigger. We made him. And he lives inside of us. Funny thing... didja know he was the one who arranged the events of Persona, too? Just to give us a chance to destroy all of reality? A mass of unrepentant madness and evil, hating everything and everyone... is it any wonder he wants it all to die? And even funnier... didja know he wins?
• Great Father Nyarlathotep. All of the party's fathers fused by Nyarlathotep's tentacles into a single entity.
• The Moon Howler ^{[dead link]}.And the Crawling Chaos form is worse. An entity of pure fear, hate and despair and a Living Shadow... with hundreds of screaming faces?
• Eternal Punishment's JOKER-possessed victims aren't exactly a walk in the park either. They end up with a white-face with no features except for that wide, creepy smile, and speak in a sing-song high-pitch voice. Add to the fact if they cast Old Maid, your own party will temporarily turned Joker and kill everyone if you're not careful.
  • Let's not forget how Jun's dad was said to have died in Innocent Sin: crushed to death in the gears of a clock tower. Or when he appears before the party - crucified alongside Jun's mother (as Queen Aquarius) - before one of the final boss battles. One starts to think that Jun's entire life has been one Nightmare Fuel moment after another.
• Eternal Punishment had a scene in which the Manager ends up melting into a puddle of concentrated black hatred goo.
• Hell, the very idea your life could completely change because of a careless rumor. Picture that for a moment.
• And of course the Joker's curse. To stand in place, devoid of dreams or hope, as everyone you cared for forgets you even existed at all.
• Tatsuya Sudou's life. His father is a Complete Monster and decided to hide the poor guy away in a failing sanitarium, though he clearly needed medical attention, and tried to actively kill him! It's suggested that his father's men followed him to the Aviation Museum (part of the reason the blimp blew up instead of just crashing). Not to mention, his moments of clarity are far more frightening than his psychotic rage.
• The slow degeneration of Dark Joker in Eternal Punishment deserves mention. First seen here ^{[dead link]}. and from there on... it goes to this ^{[dead link]}, to this ^{[dead link]}, and finally this ^{[dead link]}. Villainous Breakdown rarely is so literal.
• Tatsuzou Sudou, father of the above-mentioned Tatsuya, got a certain underling to join him by promising him immortality. Y'know what he didn't promise him? Immortality as a human.
• Hey! The Spear of Longinus is real! All myths are true! Even the part of what happens when it cuts you!
• There is a legend explained during Eternal Punishment-the story of Kiyotada Sumaru, the tyrant ruling over the area of Sumaru City in the Period of Warring States. He was so bad, his servant Tatsunoshin Suou, and Suou's retainer Junnosuke Kuroda and his lover Maihime Amano, teamed up and killed him, but not before Sumaru managed to gore Amano with a spear, leaving Suou broken as he told Kuroda to burn down Sumaru Castle. Interesting story, huh? After scattering the rumors of the spirits, you find the mummies in the ruins of Sumaru Castle and gain the ability to summon them as Personae. The problem? It's very heavily implied the history is entirely false... and you've altered history by scattering the rumors.

Persona 4

• The first example in the game has to be your first visit to the world inside the TV. Amid the ominous music, you find an empty room filled with posters of a woman with her face torn out, splotches of blood on the walls which the Persona series seems to love so much, and then the ol' chair-and-noose arrangement. This is nothing compared to some of the things that happen later in the game, but it makes a striking change from the everyday rural life (minus a murder) up till now.
  • And then Yosuke unzips his pants and tries to pee in a corner...
• Shadow Yosuke is your first exposure to the reality of what exactly a shadow is: It's a manifestation of all of your worst flaws and suppressed dark thoughts, and if you deny it, it will kill you. Youtube commenter MrHyuponia puts it very well:

MrHyuponia: Take a moment, and think of who you are. Who you TRULY are. How scared are you of your own self, your own darkest wants or flaws? Would you be able to do it? Can you overcome what you despise most in yourself? I wonder what our own Shadows would look like. It's a truly frightening thought.

• Hey, what about Shadow Rise? A GIANT multicolour girl tangling herself around a dance pole ^{[dead link]}. With a satellite dish for a face. Her attacks involve her screeching "FEAST YOUR EYES!" or moaning. Just... disturbing. Not that any of the Shadows aren't disturbing. Shadow Rise also makes squishing noises during the fight? And while we're at it, her portrait of all things is just a tad too creepy.
• Shadow Teddie. Nnnggghhaargh. Pictured above, Shadow Teddie is a giant perversion of your favorite pun-spewing teddy bear, with eerily glowing eyes and two giant holes in his face, revealing that there's nothing beneath the monster's husk. Also, he talks with this intimidating voice, going on about how futile your quest for the truth is. Chie sumed him up the best.

Chie: "Was that creepy thing really inside our Teddie?"

• • Oh, there most certainly is something inside of the husk. Something with gigantic pulsing, misshapen neon blue eyes that shifts with uncomfortable dis-synchronization against the egg-like suit that it's wearing. Something horrible and wrong coated in black emptiness that just barely spares you from having to look at the truth of it.
  • It's mere existence in it's combative form made it almost impossible to defeat. How? It's inside is a black hole.
• Not that this was unexpected from the bastard that kidnapped and nearly killed Nanako, but you will cry during your bossfight with Kunino-Sangiri. It's like a cross between a Muppet and a giant animated fetus. With gears coming out of its head. And bulging, yellow, pupiless eyes. And a really grating, hopeless, alien-sounding electronic battle theme. And when you get it's HP low enough, it goes limp and slacks its jaw like some sort of bug-eyed corpse. For bonus fun, you can find him at the very top of Heaven. Somewhere, Yunalesca is seething with envy.
• Fighting Namatame's wussy Shadow was nothing compared to getting to him. There is nothing more unnerving than the presence of The Heartless in the one place they should not be. Some of the other boss Shadows were much more scary, seeing as they are Anthropomorphic Personifications of real mental issues. When fighting any one of them, just think about what it takes to spawn that.
• Possibly the creepiest part of the game is actually sitting down and thinking about what kind of mind would create Mitsuo's dungeon. Everything's a game! Hurting people just lowers their HP and entertains you! And, of course, you're playing a game just like the one in his mind a couple generations down the line, and grew up on games exactly like the ones that make up his id. THANK YOU ATLUS sob. The dialogue in between floors is also really creepy - one is just a single, long "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA".
  • Shadow Mitsuo, while we're at it. It transforms into a floating aborted fetus that speaks in a very creepy, empty-sounding voice. Then there's the matter of his line before starting the battle proper...

I am a Shadow. Come...I'll end your emptiness.

• When the last month of Persona 4 begins, Inaba becomes shrouded in fog. Most residents (and likely the player) will think "oh, this is just the typical post-rain fog." But It Gets Worse. The fog does NOT stop this time (as indicated by nonstop cloudy days on the weather forecast), it progressively gets thicker, and the new town "music" isn't really music so much as some very ominous and quiet sounds. Various people start falling ill, students start to talk about some pretty outrageous things like a "healing club" and the idea of being turned into a monster (and talking about it like it's nothing), and class gets progressively more on edge. Moreover, if you fail to finish this month's dungeon on time, instead of just one person getting killed, it's heavily implied that the Shadows from the TV world come into the real world, bringing about The End of the World as We Know It.
• Good lord Izanami. For the very final boss of the game, she is a very horrific existence. The first phase isn't so bad, until the Orb of Sight that's been happily sitting in your pocket reveals its true form: a giant red skeleton whose screams rival a banshee and makes a disgusting noise everytime it even casts a skill. To make matters worse, if you thought Nyx's Night Queen from Persona 3 was bad, Izanami takes it up to eleven, using a skill that inflicts your party with a random status ailment (unless you void it) and then slaughtering any unfortunate member unlucky enough to be inflicted. The icing on the Lovecraftian Cake is the penultimate attack - A Thousand Curses. First off, it looks like a mass of hands coming out of a blood-red abyss ready to drag its victim down to hell; then your comrades sacrifice themselves one by one until there's no one left to protect you. Uh oh.
  • Izanami actually evokes her origin in Shinto myth. As in, she looks like the charred skeleton she was reduced to after giving birth to Kagutsuchi, God of Fire. And the endless vortex of death? Guess what she rules over...