Creepy things in video games that truly scared you as a kid

Inspired by https://old.reddit.com/r/creepygaming/ and https://old.reddit.com/r/creepygaming/comments/11wjk29/creepy_game_over_screensdeaths/ Never thought I would do this before. What's your personal stories about your creepy experiences in video games that truly scared you as a child (or maybe even now)? Because game over screens are NSFL-ish content and I have been traumatized by a few, please: -spoiler any screenshots you wish to upload onto your reply -paste YouTube and other URLs in the message body; don't embed them when posting Some games (such as Total Distortion) don't qualify because they are just funny.

The Neverhood (1996) My dad had this game on his computer and I played it when I was a kid. The weirdly whimsical music and the creepy claymation monsters that would chase you around always freaked me out. It's mostly a point and click but there are a lot of animated cutscenes where you feel helpless to do anything. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIsgRgmT9MA

This was recent and not THAT scary, but my encounter with Odin in Valheim. In the game, he can be sometimes spotted watching the player as a shadowy figure. It's a easter egg of sorts, so people (myself included) dont usually find out about it until he actually appears to you. He doesn't actually do anything and disappears when you get close or try to shot him, but scary still. There's also a Cube Escape game that gave me a nightmare when I was younger. It was that one where a shadow dude comes out of the lake and murders you when you do a certain puzzle incorrectly.

>>7638 >Cube Escape game where a shadow dude comes out of the lake and murders you when you do a certain puzzle incorrectly https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7Oj4HqIS0E The Lake has two endings. If you had played Seasons, there's a code to open the safe in the Autumn memory and that can be used to open the green box in The Lake to get a diamond and destroy the Corrupted Soul (shadow human thing). If you obtained diamond out of the blue box, interacting with the Corrupted Soul just takes you to the credits, with little interpretation of events. Either that, or you may be possibly talking about the final act in Case 23, where you have to do a puzzle fast before Mr. Deer's Corrupted Soul gets to you. If he does, you have to repeat the chapter. Here's a video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApT6hAKhVPg

I had been traumatized by elements from a couple of Nintendo 64 games when I was a kid. First, some things with Super Mario 64: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHhOjFiIDCE To top it off, its game over screen was the last straw, a highly cursed warped Red Screen of Death. The second is Banjo-Kazooie's game over cutscene (strangely, The Cutting Room Floor had discovered the cutscene had "Intro - Grunties Lair 4 - Game Over" as an unused internal room name): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5p114wlMlq8 https://ew.com/gaming/2017/10/11/banjo-kazooie-save-quit-cutscene/ I had been sick by everything this cutscene had to offer whenever I used the save/exit function in the game's menu and turning off the console is better than seeing how twisted the ending was. The trauma highly escalated within me when fan art of Banjo-Kazooie's game over cutscene surfaced on the internet. Not only that, it also made me really angry to the point I couldn't take it anymore. Here's a prime example - https://www.deviantart.com/teddybear-93/art/Game-Over-600564059 was the most sickening fan art that traumatised me for years to the point I set a permaban/IP block vendetta against this user, among others. Ugh... that's just it from me, so please feel free to make a hot chocolate. Just don't click the DA link, for the love of God, because it's disturbing and it could haunt your whole life forever.

Some parts of Eternal Darkness (WW2 Hospital portion with the chest bursters) were unsettling. The Re-deads in Zelda OoT. The only things that really got me were unkillable things. Regenerators in Dead Space and the Regenerators in Resident Evil 4. The lobotomy portion of Fallout 3's Point Lookout was I suppose traumatizing. More like the cherry on top of a pile of other things. My health was failing, including the brain, constant pain every day, autonomic dysfunction, heat intolerance, brain fog, loud tinnitus, visual snow, extreme brainfog, can't eat or sleep, dreams, other things. Then my avatar, the extension of psychophysical proxy to be in the world of Fallout 3, gets lobotomized. The most nauseating and unsettling death and rebirth / new dawn ritual I had experienced to date, and I rejected it on a deep level, including having to leave the brain chunk behind. The part that holds you back. It was reflecting me to me. The world is always reacting to me, reflecting me to me. It's a diffuse kaleidoscopic hall of mirrors. The failure of my health was obvious by 2011. The last two games I played were Alice: Madness Returns and Deus Ex: HR. They were released the same year, their names both begin with A, they have the same phenotype, and are actually two aspects of the same person. They are a single mind, splintered apart. Adam, associated with Icarus and the sun, the masculine, the external, represents maiming and adaptation (death and rebirth) through the physical body. The ego-ideal. Alice represents the maiming of the mind, she is the the internal, the unconscious, the moon. She is the Anima-ideal. Alice goes to the inner world, and through, Alice conquers. This the fantasy, the pinnacle of the Anima's role and power within the individual. I didn't think in terms of trauma at the time and though it;s obvious they were my reflection in retrospect, at the time I just experienced it all as things were happening. And I had to create something that could make use of anything, continue through anything, with almost nothing. And so I did.

Simple and effective. Imagine requiring an essay to post an image on a forum designed around images.

>>7640 What's the image from? I don't see any text. >>7643 I've seen images of SkiFree, but this video is great too: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=51C2DwAkDCU (The animation is by Lumpy Touch, by the way)

>>7644 It's shown for a few frames in EoE, after Shinji screams and it shows Lilith rising above the Earth.

Wish I remembered what it was from; it was a flash game, something to do with skateboarding. I was still very young, enough to be quite worried about my mother walking in the room and seeing me playing something non-educational. The death was just a stickman - type guy having his head pop off, with a squelshing sound - quite easily; then a fountain of blood going straight up, with the sound of it hitting the ground, and the body falling. That traumatized me for years, lol. had to avoid the game every time I went on that site. graphic stuff never really bothered me after that, I guess just being introduced to the concept of violence had my imagination going wild with every morbid possibility. memento mori!

OP here, continuing on the trend of "traumatized by creepy/disturbing elements from games when I was young", with https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_IKTHUb9j0 Super Mario Sunshine continued the 'warped music trend' with how creepy the 'Too Bad!' text was every time you died, leading up to its respective game over screen. I wished that the games after Super Mario Sunshine never had the 'Too Bad!' text, especially Super Mario 3D Land. Glad it stopped after Super Mario Odyssey, though! For comparison's sake: • Super Mario World's death and game over screen music are kooky and then, relaxing music •Super Mario Sunshine's music, on the other hand? NOT OKAY. >>7644 What does EoE mean?

>>7647 The End of Evangelion.

Here's another reddit thread I just found: https://old.reddit.com/r/creepygaming/comments/vnrh0y/disturbing_game_over_screens/

I saw death montage videos off of these games: • Waxworks • Brain Dead 13 • FAITH: The Unholy Trinity Waxworks is infamous for its death screens (critics agree!), had anybody here played this and or the others? I hate to see that this thread's inactive, though...

Dead Space scared me when I realise the monsters were human. Brrrr... I still get chills.

The Fatal Frame series were good at it. Haunting Ground too, I don't even think I managed to finish it, had enough of being stressed by all those freaks chasing me down around the mansion.

>>7641 >Banjo Kazooie Wait, what? You mean the cutscene with the hot witch? Are you crazy, what could be scary about that? I always watch it so I can look at hot Gruntie. Granted, I didn't play this as a kid, but I'm having trouble figuring out what could be disturbing about that scene. Is it the sister becoming ugly and mutated? When I saw you picked Banjo Kazooie I thought you were going to mention the giant trash shark in the sewer level

>>7734 >I'm having trouble figuring out what could be disturbing about that scene? Everything except Mumbo appearing out of nowhere. >inb4 gruntilda is transformed into a tortoise or something because facebook >giant trash shark in the sewer level Despite his frightening appearance, Clanker's a metallic whale/shark mech that's friendly. Sure, it's unsettling for some, but others (like me) just shrug it off and say that Clanker's a good NPC. Here's some stuff I've found on TV Tropes: - If you keep dying in F-22 Interceptor enough times, you're met with a screen that shows a monitor with a giant skull on it, and a flatlining EKG, but restarting a mission can go on for ages until you find it. - Produce has this: "Toshio's plan is set into motion when both Gilbert and Sayaka - with Tina tagging along for the ride - enter the apartment in search for their missing friend. Now, in command of a menagerie of twisted monsters alike, it falls upon you to, against their psychic powers and the incoming break of dawn, lure the students to the top floor and fulfill your end of the bargain." - Another one, a platformer remembered mostly by it's unique gory and weird imagery: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/SoftAndCuddly

>>7636 I shat myself when i saw this fellow in ocarina of time back when i was a child. Redeads are scary too, but they appear so much all throughout the game that one gets used to them. With dead hand, the thing that was the most scary to me, was to think how much time did the creature had passed on the underground, and how many victims it had killed, alongside its looks of course. Just how the fuarrrk did deadhand came to be, what is it? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UsHtXKaAeQI

>>7792 Speaking of Zelda-esque games, there's Fiend Folio: Reheated, a community-made expansion mod for TBoI: Repentance that adds more than 500 new monsters, bosses and more. When V2.6 was released, a couple of new bosses were added in Fiend Folio: Reheated. One of these is Cacophobia, exclusive to the Scarred Womb floor, consisting of a doll-like figure wrapped in rags, and many eyes. Anybody seen how disturbing it is? Wiki link: https://fiendfolio.wiki.gg/wiki/Cacophobia Video: https://piped.video/watch?v=nmZCVlGqnPY Sleepers are just terrifying ghosts that, once disturbed, screech and slowly float after you while covering the entire screen in a pitch-black static effect, leaving only two circles of visibility around you and itself, making it a very scary experience. These spectres are only found in Depths and Mausoleum. (Image is of its smaller, neutral form) Wiki link: https://fiendfolio.wiki.gg/wiki/Sleeper Interestingly, Sleepers appeared in this game before the mod came out: https://minichibis.itch.io/ghost-hunt-64x And here's the mod in question: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2851063440

this fuarrrking room. soykaf terrified me as a kid

>>7889 Mine too, but in Twilight Princess the ReDeads are super cool. I've played both Felix the Cat NES and the Genesis Bootleg version of the game; the latter of which had the Unmasked Felix screen being hugely scary for most players. Not for me, though. Here's Vinesauce Joel reacting to it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZEaJT-lw5c And here's the image: https://dozign2kill.wordpress.com/2011/03/29/felix-the-cat-unmasked/

>>7890 i can definitely see how that could be scary when it comes out of nowhere like that. if i were a kid seeing that and playing it on a console i would think i was about to die irl

When I played advanced wars 2 on the DS, the characters were discussing a virus of some kind when a picture took up the entire screen. I have looked for it since and not found what I believe I saw so unsure if it was an Easter egg or just my imagination but at the time I was sure the picture was of a blonde corpse with a rose bush growing out of a cavity where their face should have been. I stared at it for a few minutes and thought about it for a long time after, but didn't see it on subsequent playthroughs or from googling, though I have seen a much tamer version of the image that I definitely did not see the first time. Does anyone else have a memory of this?

not creepy at all but; when i was a kid i used to get unbelievably stressed out when i had to place plants in PVZ: garden warfare. i'd start crying and soykaf. it was super weird haha

When I was very young I would play FireRed by emulator and just use wallhacks to walk around the world but I must have inadvertently downloaded a modified copy of the rom because when I got to Lavender Tower the Channeler trainers' sprite (picrel is the original) had massive amounts of blood spurting from her body and that coupled with her already shocked face made a pretty strong impression on me when it popped up in battle

>>8045 What romhack of FireRed/LeafGreen was this? I watched Pokèmon romhacks based off of creepypastas and were interesting back in the day. I played Lost Silver and it was great, keeping in the vein of 4chan /x/ stories with the sprites, routes and Unown messages (like the original games). >>7958 Speaking of Easter Eggs, I watched a video that I downloaded off of YouTube in 2011, where somebody was playing CoD: Black Ops and found a hidden cutscene in the Zombies map, Ascension - only for them to be warped in the junkyard section of the map with the power enabled, skipping a few rounds altogether. They didn't want to play the Zombies mode ever again after they died and the final scores were displayed. All of this was saved on a very old hard drive I had before it broke, and even if it did I have got one HECK of a memory! Did anyone here have other creepy experiences? Glad if you stopped by and shared it with me :)

Heya all, haven't been here for a while. Had anybody checked out https://old.reddit.com/r/creepygaming ATM? Another thing was I watched some of the Ben Drowned videos in 2012 (strangely, the creepypasta had turned into an ARG), however if you don't know, it was an infamous 4ch /x/ creepypasta of TLoZ: Majora's Mask that's worth the read. This link has all this and more: https://jadusable.withinhubris.com/ Another thing that sprang to my mind was the Cleverbot AI. According to the September 8th, 2010 entry in TheTruth.rtf (part of the first chapter) Jadusable invited BEN into his computer. Interestingly, typing questions to Cleverbot would come out with generic responses, but in this case, BEN "hijacked" Cleverbot to 'talk' to Jadusable. I'm mind blown by all this realisation, but nonetheless the story went viral; with viewers praising the original story's mysterious and frightening nature. If anyone here has other creepy experiences to talk about, please feel free to share it with me as always.

Outlast 2. Never played it, only saw it via gameplay back when Let's Plays were still relevant, but I find myself really creeped out by the visuals and the concept of religion and the phantom pregnancy stuff. Shit spooked my teenage self.

If anyone here has other creepy experiences to talk about, please feel free to share it with me as always. Sorry for inactivity.

Wasn't a kid anymore, but I was still fairly young. I was a dumb little soykaf playing FNV on a PS3 of all things, and the lighting in either my room or the game was off, which made playing through Dead Money a spooky experience in general. But speaking to God for the first time was the real kicker. I was already on edge throughout the entire time, but when I went over to talk to him, the screen was almost too dark to see anything. All I could make out was the vague outline of SOMETHING in the darkness, a pair of hate-filled eyes floating in the void, and the voice didn't help matters. I think it's the most intimidating interaction I have ever had with any NPC in a video game.

>>7636 The game that creeped me otu the most was the original F.E.A.R. It came out around 2000s, when internet was at peak jump-scare mode. Any youtube video could have had a jump-scare in it. When I innitaly got F.E.A.R, I had soykaf ton of fun with the gameplay mechanics, I was a huge Max Payne fan so all the slow-mo mechanics made me hooked. But another aspect of the game is also quit ea bit of jumpscare and some horror elements the player is forced into. These were utter torture for me as a kid, I remember going inch by inch, knowing that jumpscares are in this game, really impacted my time with the game.

>>8401 There's plenty of those if you look at https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/FirstEncounterAssaultRecon but it covers F.E.A.R's series as a whole. When I was playing the second(?) level of Doom 64 I was trapped in a room with regular demon enemies. When they killed me (in a pit in that room?), I paused the game, but unpausing it a few times caused the same dying scream as the Doom Guy sank down bit by bit. It was downright horrifying than watching the whole death play out with that blood chilling transition. That game, which I got from a friend, had a 15+ certificate stamp on its label! Thank you so much for sharing your experiences with me, I'd like to see more of 'em!

>>7641 There were a lot of things that scared me about Banjo as a kid. The whole game kinda feels like those creepy mk ultra videos for children that were popping up on youtube years ago. I was terrified grunting would be in my closet as a kid too.

>>8604 Ugh... this again? What specifics are you thinking about, exactly? >>7889 I had a nightmare regarding the ReDead enemies invading my primary school playground, and (it's either me or Link) getting strangled to death by these things when I touched the green smoke around the entrance to my school. It's very similar, yes.

Resident Evil 4 regenerators. Dead Space regenerators. Re-deads (my father dubbed them "lurkers in the dark", which made it creepier).

The syringe man from The Suffering on PS2 creeped me out so much I kept thinking I saw him in the corner of my eye when I would walk through dark areas alone.

>>8606 >d you sure don't like tall disproportionately shaped boiz lol

>>8606 >lurkers in the dark You're actually on point with this, really like how somebody came up with the name! >>8613 I've researched this on TV Tropes, and those things you were referring to are actually called Mainliners. Taken from the site: "A personification of the Lethal Injection, the Mainliner is a small, froglike creature with stunted limbs and a back that has been embedded with dozens of syringes. In sharp contrast to the apparently painless nature of the execution, it's in constant pain from the chemicals rushing through its bloodstream, and can be heard screaming and moaning in agony whenever it appears. In spite of their apparent weaknesses, Mainliners are still dangerous, because their syringes are still filled with lethal fluids, and can be thrown with lethal precision; furthermore, they can teleport across Carnate Island via bodies of still liquids - blood, stagnant water, anything not disturbed by motion - and ambush their prey in large numbers." Thank you so much for sharing your experiences with me - I'd like to see more of these, so let me know any good ones!

https://uboachan.net/sugg/res/4268.html#q4311 Somebody mentioned this: >"It's normal for a child to cry after a game over. We're talking about 5 or 6-year-olds. I cried the first time I got a game over in Digimon World 2003, when I was 5. I cried the second time, too. The third time, I didn't." Thankfully, they've mentioned my OP question and I'm glad I've popped this here! Digimon World 2003 isn't something I've mentioned before, so it's likely that I may well be adding a YouTube link for this in the future! However, if any people would like to share their experiences, then let me know!

>>7636 This thing from Quake 4 scared the fuarrrk out of me as a child

>>8778 Very interesting machine-thingy... that isn't something I've mentioned before... again! I like how this thread is getting a bit more elaborate - from you guys showing off little snippets to braver people who had what an experience! Thank you very much for sharing your experiences with me - I'd like to see more of these, so let me know any good ones!

Many things scared me as a child. > Juggernauts from Marathon 2 > Spht Compilers from Marathon 2 > The second boss of MDK > The PsyCrow from Earthworm Jim > The ReDeads of course, from Zelda OoT

i really, really, did not enjoy finding out about the "hell valley sky trees" in mario galaxy

>>7636 Ao oni. Also I had a tetris-type game on my button samsung phone which had some creepy music

i was truly scared of her robot voice, until i grow up and played the games again. and now she is my favorite fictional character. and i think we can put our differences behind us.

>>8789 Yay! That's also one of the best characters because her voice clips in Portal 1 sounds like a YouTube Poop for me, haha! Keep it up, guys!

The giant flying spinning corpse in .hack//Infection that appears in a few maps. It was so out of nowhere and there's nothing else quite like it.

>>7636 that flash game where you try to navigate your mouse through a tiny tunnel or some other flash videogame with a screamer maybe a game which requires shooting a cat, e.b. Sift Heads 0

I can't explain it, but for some reason this game made me uncomfortable, I would stay up all night playing it sometimes, it fascinated me and scared me at the same time lol

Silent Hill f monsters are creepy and loud. Yuck. I hate it.

>>8777 FYI: The original source was recently deleted due to personal problems elsewhere. >>8795 Let me guess - Scary Maze Game? That scared me when I was a teenager in 2012, and I ever played it once!

>>7636 Sonic the Hedgehog actually DROWNING if you stay in the water for too long without air... that damn BGM that played...

>>8907 It's actually interesting because the Sonic.exe games have that "song in the key of panic" kind of thing with Tails, as seen in this video by SunFIRE showing off SONIC 2011: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krFCAyjusA4 There was a really tiny ARG puzzle (with SunFIRE and a couple of other YouTube users) that kicked off the game's release as well. Sorry if this thread hasn't been active as of late, but I'll keep in touch.

I'm bumping this so that there is no issue as things are falling out of place (still need to find that DW2003 thingy tho!)

I mean, this is my personal favourite thread here, I'm not letting it go until it's full

>be me, 10yrs old >terrified of nightmare, also can't beat it >die for the 43rd time >ask my brother to beat it for me >he beats it in record time in front of me >he immediately turns off the gba w/out saving >i beat it 44th try One of my greatest life lessons

>>9131 This whole game terrified me as a kid but still played it over and over.

>>9131 I never got up to that point in Metroid Fusion, but something I found out was after visiting Sector 5 and getting the Ice Missiles, the huge gravity manipulator's shadow can be seen ominously strafing the sector in the background. >>9132 Maybe you got a little braver each time you played the game? Just thinking this through. Thanks for the replies, if you have anything on-topic, I'll be happy to reply

Bumping as usual. If you have anything on-topic, I'll be happy to reply!

>>7636 getting lost in a minecraft world, an unimaginably large and complex space that vastly exceeded my comprehension, fully contained in the computer; a universe in a can. I lost my soykaf.

>>7636 I was playing the Majora's Mask remake when it just came out. It was my second zelda, after A Link between Worlds, and despite being brighter than the original it still had a fair share of dark and creepy moments. What really startled me was my first encounter with the Redead in the canyon area. I didn't see it until it screamed and my volume was really loud. I'll never forget how my heat jumped hearing that scream and seeing that tall corpse slowly walk towards my frozen character. Ever since that however, I can appreciate scary sound design of video game enemies. For example, I prefer the tortured howls of Daggerfall skeletons over the gnarling from those in Skyrim!

I was playing Maniac Mansion on the NES and at one point in the game the power goes out, and 1 second later lighting struck near by and the power went out in my house. I was so scared that I threw the game away

>>9240 Thanks, I appreciate that too! >>8777 Alrighty, I've promised that I would find a YouTube link for the Digimon World 2003 death screen thing that somebody mentioned a few months back. Turns out there's only one video I could find: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XVGDkPa4I8 Again, this was not a game I've mentioned before on this thread, and I'm chuffed by what moments you people spoke of within this whole thread, including that person. On an unrelated note, here's some music to chill out to!

>>9307 Damn, it wouldn't accept my music being used. Here's an online copy: https://downloads.khinsider.com/game-soundtracks/album/mario-kart-world-gamerip-2025/2-13.%2520Character%2520Select%2520%2528Mario%2520Kart%252064%2529.mp3

I remember one time I was playing Minecraft with my sister on xbox360. We had no gold (or live) subscription, so we couldn't play with other guys. We usually played creative mode and built houses because I was too scared and stupid to play survival. And we created a lot of worlds to build houses and good around in. But there was one particular world I still clearly remember and it was just so weird. First of all, there was nothing but sand, somehow. Maybe not fully, but certainly more than half of the world was desert biome, which was concerning me a bit, but we got used to it quickly. Then we started building houses in an usual child manner (you know, full of diamond/gold blocks to show off), and of course the house had to have chests full of stuff and foods and lots of paintings. Once we finished building house, we've decided to open up a map and fully explore the world. Minecraft maps on Xbox360 shows off all players on the map with a marker, so given the fact that there was only me and my sister, there had to be 2 markers. But we saw the third, either yellow or red marker (can't clearly remember this particular detail), alongside ours white and green. And it was in the center of the house. We've researched all around the house and couldn't find even the smallest clue on who could've been that. And there was no message of someone joining the world. The only thing reminding of its presence was a map marker. I still don't know what that was. Could've been just a bug, but I still to this day think about this moment.

>>9316 if it was a lime green marker then it was an item frame with a map in it

>>9317 Your comment made me want to check it. Also given that I just rode to the countryside house for a couple of days, which has my old xbox360, coincidentally. Anyways, I tried to look up that world where all that happened, but couldn't find it. Probably deleted it out of caution. And the map thingy I also checked - either I'm stupid or there's no lime marker. While checking out old worlds, I noticed that they're a bit corrupted. And some of those corruptions were quite funny and neat Oh, I also just remembered - that third marker was red (ooo, ominous)

>>9318 apparently it's only a thing in java edition. no clue what else it could be honestly, sorry. I would suggest banner but apparently that's also only a java thing. please report back if you find out!

Not all of these are traditionally creepy, but the Baby Sheegoths in Metroid Prime 1 and the Ghosts from that Harry Potter 2 game spooked me enough when I was younger to stop me completing both games until I was much older. These faceless fuarrrkers from Jumping Flash also spooked me.

>>9330 I forgot about Metroid Prime. I used to be so afraid of the jelzaps. When you were underwater, it as so murky that you could just barely see the silhouette before they sucked you in. The beetles used to scare me too. A jumpscare everytime they burst out of the ground.

>>9331 I remember Jelzaps and how they screwed with your visor, but they weren't the worst for me. These fuarrrkers fuarrrked with your visor in a similar but much more annoying fashion. Ingsmashers always spooked me for some reason since they seemed like walking minibosses to my child brain, but I was an all around pussy when it came to games and got road blocked several times in the first two prime games due to getting spooked.