Things in games that creeped you the fuck out -

[JamesFargo]

1) The post-credits scene to Spawn (SNES). I never watched the cartoon, so I don't know if Malebolgia was voiced. For the game, he is heard 'laughing' in several voices at once.

2) Speaking of childhood trauma: When you beat a chapter in Pac-Man The New Adventures, you get cutscenes of the "Ghost Witch", who is apparently Helen from Team Fortress. She fries the Ghosts with force lightning, followed by this rictus smile (bottom left). This comes totally out of left field.

 

[RinguPingu745]

Those sea snakes in Majora's Mask down in Pinnacle Rock that come out of holes underwater and grab you if you aren't careful. There is nothing worse than deep water in video games, especially when there are monsters inside the water. What started this phobia for me was the sewer boss from Star Wars Shadows Of The Empire on the N64 when I was very young. Fuck the sewers, man. Made me afraid of underwater monsters for life.

 

[Broseph]

Silent Hill 4 was a mixed bag for me but I still remember this one part near the end when you go into a room and you see a GIANT disfigured Eileen head staring at you and that's all it does, but it was very random and unnerving.

It's been over 15 years since I played that game and I still think back to how fucking weird that part was, even for Silent Hill, straight up Junji Ito type shit.

 

[JamesFargo]

SH4 is redeemed by its hauntings.

Richard walking normally is a lovely touch. He's not being dragged around against his will. He has an innate need to kill.

 

[TFT-A9]

Clive Barker's Undying, and the Scrye spell. It's actually pretty damn awesome for a horror game to do things like give you subtle (or unsubtle at times) audio cues to use Scrye to see creepy shit, most of which is plot-relevant.

 

[Some Badger]

A little laughable, but what unnerves me to this day is the mysterious radio signal at the Ruins of Alph in OG Pokemon Crystal. The 8-bit soundfont makes my hair stand on end. When putting it on to catch new forms of Unown as a kid, I'd mute my GBA. Didn't help that I would often play at night before bed either.

 

[Ford4.7]

Someone's probably going to give me shit here but there's an offroad truck sim called Snowrunner (great game btw) that is unintentionally one of the creepiest games I've ever played.

One of the worst ones I had was on a a Russian map in game, that's got an irradiated zone you pass thru. There's what's left of a town there. Was driving thru, in the deep of night, pitch-black out. I get to the center of town and somehow flip the truck on its side, lights go to dim mode and most of their projection is buried in the mud.

Eyes. Dozens of pairs of yellow eyes start peering out of the remains of this town. Dead silent as well because I had the music off. I noped the hell out of that one.

Also see: literally everything about subnautica

 

[TFT-A9]

Someone's probably going to give me shit here but there's an offroad truck sim called Snowrunner (great game btw) that is unintentionally one of the creepiest games I've ever played.

One of the worst ones I had was on a a Russian map in game, that's got an irradiated zone you pass thru. There's what's left of a town there. Was driving thru, in the deep of night, pitch-black out. I get to the center of town and somehow flip the truck on its side, lights go to dim mode and most of their projection is buried in the mud.

Eyes. Dozens of pairs of yellow eyes start peering out of the remains of this town. Dead silent as well because I had the music off. I noped the hell out of that one.

Also see: literally everything about subnautica

That's fucking great. Like, that kind of "surprise, motherfucker" is actually legit cool as horror goes.

 

[Staffy]

SH4 is redeemed by its hauntings.

Once you reach the point where your health does not regenerate SH4 turns out the creep factor by a ton. The areas you venture onto get even worse and has the visceral charm anyone knows and love with SH games.

 

[AmpleApricots]

"Weird Dreams" for the Amiga. A ball-bustingly hard Jump 'n Run about a guy being on an operating table having a Nightmare while he's put under. And if you die in the dream, you die on the operating table. Bizarre game with bizarre visuals for the time. Something I only found out years later is that the game actually came with a short story that sort of explained the entire setting, which frankly, made it less creepy. For screenmodes useful for a game, the original Chipset Amiga had a limited color palette of 32 colors selected out of a 12-bit palette (4096 selectable colors in total) which led to the subdued, more dampened colors used in most games, while consoles and 256 color VGA were much more bright and colorful.

 

[OvercookedBacon]

The sound of antlions' wings when they chase you in Garry's Mod. I'm sure it's much worse in actual HL2.

 

[Toolbox]

The sound of antlions' wings when they chase you in Garry's Mod. I'm sure it's much worse in actual HL2.

In this same vein, hearing headcrab screams in Half Life Alyx brought back my childhood fear of them in half life. God damn there's just something about those abominations actually flying towards your face instead of a screen.

 

[ShitlordroltihS]

Skyrim dungeons used to scare me when I explored them late at night. I would always put on music to make it less creepy.

 

[JamesFargo]

When Colonel Campbell started glitching out in Arsenal. The music didn't help either.

View attachment 2192699

"Raiden, are you receiving?

ＷΞ＇ＲΞ ＳＴＩＬＬ ＨΞＲΞ."

 

[Big Ruski]

Cloud getting gaslighted to death when he goes back to his hometown in Disk 1 is easily one the best and scariest moments in the entire game.

Another would be after you break out of Shinra's jailcell and the halls are littered with corpses and a blood trail that leads to the top of the building. The music is so creepy and its also used for the battle theme as well.

 

[JamesFargo]

Cloud getting gaslighted when he goes back to his hometown

Nineties paranoia at its finest. They're all Shinra employees!

I always hated going down that spiral staircase to the mansion basement. You are practically descending into someone's psychosis.

Breath of Fire II did something similar when you return home at the beginning. You're the priest's son, but the villagers insist he doesn't exist and call you a liar. The mood ring turns crimson, which is about as bad as it gets (barring an encounter with one of the demon characters which turns it black).

 

[elzaw]

I was replaying Silent Hill 4 just recently, and while I was looking through the window I saw a white spot falling from above. I thought it was a ball or a plastic bag, but turns out it was this.

 

[CobraPlissken]

The sequence in Resident Evil Village's Beneviento Manor between getting out of the well and going back to the elevator. I'm not creeped out by dolls or mannequins, so I thought the Beneviento Manor was going to be the easiest part of the game to go through. Well, it is easy gameplay-wise (you just have to solve a bunch of puzzles in a relatively small and very quiet space), but after you find the key inside the well and you're climbing the ladder back to do whatever else you had to do, this happens:

Spoiler: Spoilers for RE: Village

It is still easy to deal with it if you do it objectively and yes, it's an horror game, but that's something you'd see in P.T., not Resident Evil. And even though it shouldn't be unexpected if you were paying attention to the themes in that section so far (the protagonist and his wife finding out they were expecting their first child and their fear during the pregnancy of having a horribly mutated baby due to their exposure to a bioweapon in RE7 ) and to the fact the mannequin representing your wife was replaced by a bloody mess and a huge umbilical cord going through the exact path to your next task, but... still very creepy and unnerving.

 

[Articles and Nudes]

I knew a second encounter like that was coming, and I spent a good five minutes staring into the darkness waiting for it to happen. I'm so glad I went into that sequence blind; it's rare for horror media to trigger an actual fight or flight response, ha.

 

[R.A.E.L.]

Not surprised at all to see that moment from RE Village mentioned. It’s gained a lot of attention for a reason.

Spoiler

I already knew the fetus was coming because I’d spoiled it for myself, but that didn’t stop me from doing an instant 180 and sprinting away when the damn thing first appeared from the darkness. Its design is just so unnerving, and the part where you hear it coming while you have to wait for the elevator is painstakingly and adrenaline-rushingly brilliant. I honestly don’t think I could tell you the last time something in a video game creeped me out as much as the fetus did. Major kudos to whoever designed it, seriously.