While most scary games have no trouble admitting that they belong in the horror genre, that’s not true of every game with horror elements. Some games reel you in for a harmless little fun and then wham! You’re seeing zombies, ghosts, or straight-up getting abducted by aliens.
I’m thinking that our readers would perhaps like to learn of seemingly harmless games that contain some extremely scary moments.
Psychonauts’ Orphanage memories
Psychonauts is completely harmless if you stick to the main quest. If you try to dig deeper into the story, however, you will come across a very dark reveal.
We can learn about the burning orphanage, a not-so-neat little secret that tells us the backstory of one of our teachers in the game. We learn in pretty grim detail that Milla used to work at an orphanage until a fire killed all of the kids. That’s pretty bleak already, but it gets even worse. After the reveal, players have to hear the cries of dark specters who cry out Milla’s name and ask why she allowed them to die.
Meeting the final boss from Earthbound
Earthbound is a very very cute RPG right until the final boss. For the final confrontation, it takes a detour to the land of extreme horrors. You know what I’m talking about.
I’ve previously talked about the boss battle against Giygas, and it’s a rather well-known encounter, so let’s talk about its equally horrifying origin this time around.
When he was very young, Earthbound creator Shigesato Itoi went to see a movie in a theater but decided to leave earlier to sneak into a different screening. This time he’d entered a theater playing a film intended for mature audiences, Kenpei to Barabara Shibijin. He witnessed a violent murder scene which he mistook for a scene of sexual assault. The imagery had such an impact on Itoi that he’d later use it as inspiration to make the eeriest final boss encounter of all time.
Meeting the final boss from Ecco the Dolphin
And if Nintendo has the most out-of-nowhere eeriest and most horrifying, Sega has the most surprisingly downright spooky final boss of all time.
Even though we spend the entirety of Ecco The Dolphin mostly just bopping jellyfish and similar stuff to open sea doors — typical dolphin stuff, I believe — the game’s final boss is a whole other thing.
The final battle takes us to the depths to fight a monstrosity that looks like a somehow even scarier version of the Xenomorph queen from the Alien series. Imagine coming face to face with that when you’re just a kid.
Want to know what’s even weirder? Whereas the developers of Earthbound provided an explanation for their final boss, we don’t know why Sega decided to end Ecco like this.
Fable 2’s Winter Lodge
Fable 2 features some mature themes, but most of the darkness in the series usually comes from evil player decisions. The game’s not-so-cozy winter lodge, however, is pretty vile on its own.
From afar, the winter lodge looks like a cozy place you’d like to relax and drink some hot cocoa at, but, once you enter, it shows its true colors. The place is actually dark, in shambles, and filled with skeletons. There’s even a jumpscare sound effect accompanying the transition — spooky stuff.
The Karazhan Crypt in World Of Warcraft
World of Warcraft has a very family-friendly aesthetic, but it hides some unrelenting darkness in one of its dungeons.
I’m talking about the Karazhan Crypt. This is a place that was meant to be off-limits, but one that players managed to glitch into anyway. Inside, they found various piles of human bones and upside-down corpses. That’s quite a lot for World Of Warcraft, and that’s probably why it never saw the light of day.
The Debug room in Final Fantasy VII
The good news is that the main campaign of FFVII doesn’t hide any dark secret that you’re not aware of. Still, the game’s actual disc data does. You can glitch into the game’s debug room and find a lot of weird stuff. The weirdest of them all is a version of Aerith who’ll make screeching sounds and say that you’re in hell.
That’s especially dark since we know Aerith must know what the afterlife is like.
Dark Link’s Nightmare in Twilight Princess
Remember when people complained that Wind Waker looked too cutesy? That was over twenty years ago. That’s scary, yeah, but that’s not the scary point that brought me here.
What I mean to say is that well, it seems like, the artists behind Wind Waker’s follow-up, Twilight Princess, probably channeled all of their criticism-fueled angst into this cutscene in Twilight Princess. Like, what is this? Is Link having a nightmare powered by Dark Link and directed by David Lynch?
