History NightmareFuel / MarathonExpandedUniverse

*** As of 1.2, the player can now kill individual Phantasms/Banshees, but the level is still plenty terrifying, particularly since the player's only weapons that can harm them at this point are the fusion guns, the staff, and the napalm cannon, and given that there's no fusion ammo anywhere in chapter three, there's a good chance the player has run out. Plus, the player's arsenal is finite, but the Phantasms ''keep coming back'' (though at a less insane rate than they did in previous versions of the game). The best advice is to run from them whenever possible. As to subsequent releases, 1.2.1 adds some fusion ammo to this level and gives the fusion cannon's secondary trigger that makes killing individual Phantasms slightly less of a waste of resources, but they still respawn infinitely. 1.3 also buffs the fusion cannon's primary trigger, doubles the fusion pistols' shots per battery, and reduces the Phantasms' health by 50% and the damage their attacks deal by 40% - but they also respawn much more rapidly (though still not as rapidly as they did pre-1.2). Also, the lights now flicker out sporadically, as if the W'rkncacnter is attacking the station itself.

* ''An AI Called Wanda'' starts off by introducing the Security Officer to Freud, the psychiatric AI for the UESC ''Leviathan''; Freud, while a bit on the sarcastic side, is amiable enough (and, of course, makes the requisite "let's talk about your mother" joke). You then take orders from his co-worker Hobbes for a while; when you meet Freud again, he's acting...strange, pontificating about how you're a mindless killer and how such a damaged state of mind must work and feel. His normal dark blue text is stained [[{{Foreshadowing}} red]]. Hobbes soon determines what's wrong: Tycho or one of his clones has spliced his own code into Freud's, resulting in an unstable semi-fusion. The real Freud is still there, begging the Security Officer to [[MercyKill kill him]], all while Copy!Tycho attempts to beat him down. You can't save Freud; you can only destroy his core.
* And what of the eponymous Jjaro AI, Wanda? The W'rkncacnter did...something to her that drove her to murder her makers and painfully mutilate the rest. One Jjaro managed to lock her in a maximum-security prison, from which she escaped... [[GoMadFromTheIsolation ten thousand years later]]. Having deemed organics to be too error-prone and hubris-ridden for their own safety, she strives to unite them all under her forcibly-modified, brainwashed rule. And while Durandal/Thoth thankfully doesn't answer her call in time, she muses about how once he does, she'll peel back the layers of his mind and see what she can use.

* To say nothing of the dream levels, the first of which ("We Dream You") occurs near the end of the Chimera plank. You get Haller to safety, Durandal thanks you and warps you out of that submerged hangar, and...huh? What am I doing in the vacuum of space? Okay, I'll just head for this teleporter beam and sort things ou--oh dear. You seemingly end up back on the ''Chimera'', except there's no air (keep in mind that the ship crashed on Pfhor Prime, which has a breathable atmosphere), and no other living beings but these strange balls of light that dash about and get in your way. Quite a few dead bodies and severed heads, though, which you'll pass by as you read through the terminals (which bear Thoth's insignia and continue on from ''Infinity'''s dubiously-lucid dream terminals) and try to find your way around. You jump down a hangar, keeping a wary eye on those points of light, and make it outside to a nearly pitch-black box canyon littered with bits of the ''Chimera'' and its crew (there's even a set of lockers sitting in the middle of the eastern part of the area, which is a lot more unsettling than it sounds). You read the exit terminal and warp out/wake up...to blaring sirens, as Durandal informs you that there's been a catastrophic hull breach. [[TimedMission Uh-oh.]]

* From the moment Lysander is introduced, there's something off about him and the way he interacts with the Security Officer, with hints of anger issues given how quickly he goes from affable to pissed if the SO checks the wrong terminals. Things begin to slide downhill after Durandal and the SO find the first hints of suspicious activity on the Dangi Corp.'s part and break into a restricted area. Lysander unambiguously threatens to kill the SO and eventually teleports them right onto a nearby Pfhor ship, with the implication that the SO was utterly thrashed afterward (you start the next real-world level with almost no health); it's best not to think of what could've happened if Durandal couldn't save them.\\

* 1.3 adds some FridgeHorror to Leela-S'bhuth's characterisation as well. Leela is normally among [[TheStoic the most stoic characters in the series]], but in "The Abyss Gazes Also" (formerly "S'pht Happens"), her terminals are [[NotSoStoic barely comprehensible and full of the same kind of jumbled code]] that Durandal showed in ''Marathon 2'' (in fact, some of the exact same code shows up). She apologises in "The Midpoint of Somewhere" (a new level in 1.3 whose place in the story corresponds to that of "Third Rock from Lh'owon" in earlier releases), and it becomes clear that when she reached the Outside, she saw something that terrified her. It seems that part of what she saw was this chapter's failed timeline, but although her next few terminals present a detailed history of her actions over the thousand years the player spent in stasis[[note]]This history, in its entirety, was presented in her "S'pht Happens" terminal in older releases[[/note]], she spends precious little time talking about what she saw in the Outside in particular.\\

Furthermore, Leela's personality is irrevocably changed after this point in ways having nothing to do with her merger with S'bhuth - she comes to insist, increasingly stubbornly, on changing nothing about the history she's familiar with, regardless of the costs incurred by doing so. It takes the ''literal destruction of the galaxy'' to change her mind, and even then, she won't change history herself; the most she'll do is send Marcus to do it - and this despite knowing exactly what scars seeing the Outside inflicted on her. [[NothingIsScarier What exactly did Leela see Outside that scared her so much?]] And, bearing in mind that Leela explicitly refers to herself as a Jjaro in "The Philosophy of Time Travel", is what she saw the reason the Stage 3 Jjaro behave as they do?

* From the moment Lysander is introduced, there's something off about him and the way he interacts with the Security Officer, with hints of anger issues given how quickly he goes from affable to pissed if the SO checks the wrong terminals. Things begin to slide downhill after Durandal and the SO find the first hints of suspicious activity on the Dangi Corp.'s part and break into a restricted area. Lysander unambiguously threatens to kill the SO and eventually teleports them right onto a nearby Pfhor ship, with the implication that the SO was utterly thrashed afterward (you start the next real-world level with almost no health); it's best not to think of what could've happened if Durandal couldn't save them. Throughout the last leg of the investigation, Lysander shows up intermittently to taunt the duo (mostly the SO), until he finally drops all pretenses of civility and reveals the scope of his horrific emotional damage: for much of his life (quite possibly ''from the moment he was activated''), he was abused by his human handlers and surrounded by people who regarded him as a tool ''at best'', and now they've inadvertently handed him an escape hatch in the form of Achilles. Specifically, the final version he's been withholding from the Dangi Corp., that has no cure and will spread too swiftly for anyone to try and develop one. Oh, and this is also the level where the SO learns that they unwittingly disposed of poor Charlie (the ''Salinger'''s other AI) on Lysander's behalf, suggesting that Lysander is so far gone that he has no longer has regard for ''any'' form of life, organic or mechanical. Something else to [[FridgeHorror think about]]: this is very well how his own half-brother, Durandal, could've turned out without a chance to calm down, or a human/cyborg partner to bond with. Perhaps Durandal noticed, given how solemnly he orders the SO to put Lysander down.

* 1.3 adds some FridgeHorror to Leela-S'bhuth's characterisation as well. Leela is normally among [[TheStoic the most stoic characters in the series]], but in "S'pht Happens", her terminals are [[NotSoStoic barely comprehensible and full of the same kind of jumbled code]] that Durandal showed in ''Marathon 2'' (in fact, some of the exact same code shows up). She apologises in "Third Rock from Lh'owon", and it becomes clear that when she reached the Outside, she saw something that terrified her. It seems that part of what she saw was this chapter's failed timeline, but although her next few terminals present a detailed history of her actions over the thousand years the player spent in stasis[[note]]This history, in its entirety, was presented in her "S'pht Happens" terminal in older releases[[/note]], she spends precious little time talking about what she saw in the Outside in particular.\\

* The "bad" ending, of course, is ''even worse''. ''Achilles'' is actually released, and the Dangi Board of Directors takes control and establishes a military dictatorship that lasts some three hundred years. It seems to be a less virulent strain of the virus than Lysander wanted to release, but still... Even [[FromBadToWorse "better"]], there's a [[http://marathon.bungie.org/maraff/archive/wmaid/futureshistory.html story]], written by Blayne Scott and with [[ApprovalOfGod approval]] from Scott Brown and Ian [=McConville=] (the main writers of ''Rubicon'' and ''RED'', respectively), that posits that the fallout from this ending [[CanonWelding eventually led]] to the events of ''RED''.

* Thanks to some very unsettling sounds and some very unnerving-looking enemies, this scenario can be quite nightmarish at times. The first time the player encounters an Assassin in "Don't Step on the Mome Raths" may be good for a particularly good JumpScare; it especially doesn't help that the entire level is filled with dead Bobs, flickering lights, and unsettling background sounds. The Virals and the Phan'Shrrh are also plenty creepy at times.

* Thanks to some very unsettling sounds and some very unnerving-looking enemies, this scenario can be quite nightmarish at times. [[spoiler:The first time the player encounters an Assassin]] in "Don't Step on the Mome Raths" may be good for a particularly good JumpScare; it especially doesn't help that the entire level is filled with dead Bobs, flickering lights, and unsettling background sounds. The Virals and the Phan'Shrrh are also plenty creepy at times.

[[/folder]

* At some point, Egon (one of your two mission controls) notices something amiss in one sector and asks you to contain it by disabling the cores it was detected in. This "something" is a virus that, once freed, immediately infects Egon and overrides his mind in short order. Alaxus, a third AI whose mind is probably buried in limiters, has little to offer except that he also told you to do it.

* To say nothing of the dream levels, the first of which ("We Dream You") occurs near the end of the Chimera plank. You get Haller to safety, Durandal thanks you and warps you out of that submerged hangar, and...huh? What am I doing in the vacuum of space? Okay, I'll just head for this teleporter beam and sort things ou--oh dear. You seemingly end up back on the ''Chimera'', except there's no air (keep in mind that the ship crashed on Pfhor Prime, which has a breathable atmosphere), and no other living beings but these strange balls of light that dash about and get in your way. Quite a few dead bodies and severed heads, though, which you'll pass by as you read through the terminals (which bear Thoth's insignia and continue on from ''Infinity'''s dubiously-lucid dream terminals) and try to find your way around. You jump down a hangar, keeping a wary eye on those points of light, and make it outside to a nearly pitch-black box canyon littered with bits of the ''Chimera'' and its crew (there's even a set of drawers sitting in the middle of the eastern part of the area). You read the exit terminal and warp out/wake up...to blaring sirens, as Durandal informs you that there's been a catastrophic hull breach. [[TimedMission Uh-oh.]]

* Alongside {{Remixed Level}}s, this was basically the whole ''point'' of ''Return to Marathon''. The original game might be scary, but ''Return to Marathon'' overhauls the original game's levels and turns the horror factor UpToEleven.

** Even the "good ending" of chapter 5 isn't actually good, since it leads to the BadFuture seen in the prologue: the S'pht are all dead, the galaxy is in the process of exploding from the ''Arce'' outwards, the Pfhor seem to be poised to defeat humanity (this is, as we realise in the ending, unlikely, since the ''Arx'' was in the centre of Pfhor space, meaning that Pfhor Prime has very likely already been destroyed by the time of the prologue), Earth and Mars are effectively uninhabitable, and humanity's survivors have gathered on K'lia, terrified. Durandal notes that he and Marcus now have no choice but to oppose not just the W'rkncacnter but ''the ascended Jjaro'' - which, as newly [[HeelFaceTurn Heel-Face Turned]] Hathor warns, will get ''them'' branded as W'rkncacnter because the latter insist on ''exactly this sequence of events'' occurring. The only reason this isn't an outright DownerEnding is that, by returning to the end of "Aye Mak Sicur" with the knowledge they gained from ''Eternal'', Durandal and Marcus can set out to prevent this BadFuture from ever occurring. The creators have suggested that this leads to ''Phoenix'' and ''Rubicon'', with two unfinished (as of 2022) scenarios, ''Where Monsters Are in Dreams'' and ''Marathon Chronicles'', respectively planned as an interquel and a finale.

*** As of 1.2, the player can now kill individual Phantasms/Banshees, but the level is still plenty terrifying, particularly since the player's only weapons that can harm them at this point are the fusion guns, the staff, and the napalm cannon, and given that there's no fusion ammo anywhere in chapter three, there's a good chance the player has run out. Plus, the player's arsenal is finite, but the Phantasms ''keep coming back'' (though at a less insane rate than they did in previous versions of the game). The best advice is to run from them whenever possible. As to subsequent releases, 1.2.1 adds some fusion ammo to this level and gives the fusion cannon's secondary trigger that makes killing individual Phantasms slightly less of a waste of resources, but they still respawn infinitely. 1.3 also buffs the fusion cannon's primary trigger, doubles the fusion pistols' shots per battery, and reduces the Phantasms' health by 50% and the damage their attacks deal by 40% - but they also respawn much more rapidly (though still not as rapidly as they did before 1.2).

* Beyond the "failure dreams", there's also the backstory. At one point, ''all organic life in the galaxy'' is wiped out as a consequence of the Jjaro's war with the W'rkncacnter. It's implied that this was an accident, as a weapon intended to target the W'rkncacnter wound up affecting organic life instead. The Jjaro and W'rkncacnter (at least, some of them) are both, in some ways, AdvancedAncientHumans, mind you, though they have ceased to be organic. They are also both (mostly) the same species, making the plot a fairly strong case of HeWhoFightsMonsters. And ''none of this'' is resolved even in the scenario's "good" ending; in the final level, Durandal explicitly states that averting a galaxy-wide catastrophe will be the player's next mission, and that it will be harder than anything they've done before.

** And what of the eponymous Jjaro AI, Wanda? The W'rkncacnter did...something to her that drove her to murder her makers and painfully mutilate the rest. One Jjaro managed to lock her in a maximum-security prison, from which she escaped... [[GoMadFromTheIsolation ten thousand years later]]. Having deemed organics to be too error-prone and hubris-ridden for their own safety, she strives to unite them all under her forcibly-modified, brainwashed rule. And while Durandal/Thoth thankfully doesn't answer her call in time, she muses about how once he does, she'll peel back the layers of his mind and see what she can use.

* Beyond the "failure dreams", there's also the backstory. At one point, ''all organic life in the galaxy'' is wiped out as a consequence of the Jjaro's war with the W'rkncacnter. It's implied that this was an accident, as a weapon intended to target the W'rkncacnter wound up affecting organic life instead. The Jjaro and W'rkncacnter (at least, some of them) are both, in some ways, AdvancedAncientHumans, mind you, though they have ceased to be organic. They are also both the same species, making the plot a fairly strong case of HeWhoFightsMonsters. And ''none of this'' is resolved even in the scenario's "good" ending; in the final level, Durandal explicitly states that averting a galaxy-wide catastrophe will be the player's next mission, and that it will be harder than anything they've done before.

* The mod ''VideoGame/{{Marathon}}: Evil'' was pretty horror-intensive. In particular, it had the Devlins, a spiny, [[SupernaturalGoldEyes yellow-eyed]], hard-to-see menace that liked dark places and probably gave large numbers of people nightmares. Having one jump out at you for the first time is ''not'' calming.
** And the Mystic Pfhor, their equivalent of the Spht'Kr. Freaky appearance as well as hellish sounds.
** The actual plot may be an elaborate excuse to shoot things, but there's something disconcerting about the ending, and its suggestion that the UESC would be so callous as to convert one of their most effective operatives into an AI ''just because he seemed unlikely to go rampant''.

* ''Marathon: Fell'': Balapoel, who's been aiding the commander of the UESG ''Tethys'' for a not-insignificant span of time, coldly turns on them after his rival, Parael, attempts to warn you of his true nature: a [[WasOnceAMan formerly]]-human ''war criminal''.

* ''Marathon: Phoenix'' could get pretty creepy at times as well. There's one level in an abandoned mine, "Roquefortress", where if you take a wrong step, you'll fall into a pit of poisonous gas and die instantaneously. It's very dark (being an abandoned mine) and full of mostly silent monsters that can fly, can be released without any apparent warning, and can fire a stream of energy bursts that can drain a bar of your health in less than a second on higher difficulties. The whole level is a veritable fountain of ParanoiaFuel.
** A couple of other levels that can be very unsettling are "Shades of Gray" and "Escape Two Thousand". The former of these is completely empty when you enter it, until you encounter an attack from a hostile S'pht Defender. After this point, the S'pht'Kr reveal some of the history of the A'khr, a rogue clan of renegade S'pht who escaped enslavement and now blame the S'pht'Kr for betraying them on Lh'owon. We learn more about their history, which is ultimately quite tragic, later. The whole level is quite unsettling, because large segments of it are empty until the player enters them, and entering the wrong segment at the wrong time can result in a sudden attack and catch the player flat-footed.
** "Escape Two Thousand", meanwhile, is set above abandoned lava caverns that require precise jumps (falling into the lava will kill you), and the player is frequently sniped at by Enforcers, requiring diligent use of the crossbow to eliminate them. That isn't why the level is unsettling. The level is unsettling because there are occasional attacks from Defenders as well - who, again, can fly. Having to deal with them with limited room to manoeuvre is, frankly, terrifying, and it's the main reason "Escape Two Thousand" is ThatOneLevel. (Note that the recent 1.4 release removes several of the most frustrating Defender attacks.)

** [[AntiHero Paco]]'s back story. In a past life, he braved the [[VideoGame/PathwaysIntoDarkness anomalous pyramid]] and unknowingly caught the attention of its 'pilot', Joshua, who was so impressed that he gave Paco his mark. Centuries later, Paco--now among the ten battleroids--tried and failed to defend Tau Ceti IV; when he was rescued from the derelict UESC ''Marathon'', he was so overwhelmed by despair that he ''attempted suicide''...over and over, because ''he couldn't die''. There was nothing Ian's team could do for him except wipe his memory and hope it buried the underlying trauma. Just to twist the knife in further, he learns all this after Joshua has torn Paco's soul from his body to become the Reaver and sent him to tear a bloody swath through his own allies; Ian snaps him out of it, but also makes it abundantly clear to Paco that he's on his own from here on out.

** There are these enemies called "butterflies", which are basically recoloured Wasps. One terminal details how they've been breeding aboard the derelict ''Marathon'': by laying their eggs in the dead and not-so-dead. If they don't do this quickly enough, their unborn brood will give their mother a reverse Cesarean.
** At some point, Egon (one of your two mission controls) notices something amiss in one sector and asks you to contain it by disabling the cores it was detected in. This "something" is a virus that, once freed, immediately infects Egon and overrides his mind in short order. Alaxus, a third AI whose mind is probably buried in limiters, has little to offer except that he also told you to do it.

** To say nothing of the dream levels, the first of which ("We Dream You") occurs near the end of the Chimera plank. You get Haller to safety, Durandal thanks you and warps you out of that submerged hangar, and...huh? What am I doing in the vacuum of space? Okay, I'll just head for this teleporter beam and sort things ou--oh dear. You seemingly end up back on the ''Chimera'', except there's no air (keep in mind that the ship crashed on Pfhor Prime, which has a breathable atmosphere), and no other living beings but these strange balls of light that dash about and get in your way. Quite a few dead bodies and severed heads, though, which you'll pass by as you read through the terminals (which bear Thoth's insignia and continue on from ''Infinity'''s dubiously-lucid dream terminals) and try to find your way around. You jump down a hangar, keeping a wary eye on those points of light, and make it outside to a nearly pitch-black box canyon littered with bits of the ''Chimera'' and its crew (there's even a set of drawers sitting in the middle of the eastern part of the area). You read the exit terminal and warp out/wake up...to blaring sirens, as Durandal informs you that there's been a catastrophic hull breach. [[TimedMission Uh-oh.]]
** Over the course of the Salinger Plank, you investigate the Dangi Corporation and the shady goings-on in their half of the eponymous space station. Their big plan is to unleash ''Achilles'', a [[SyntheticPlague virus of their own making]] with a high mortality rate, upon every human-inhabited planet and colony, then offer the cure to the UESC in exchange for total control. Towards the end, their long-suffering research AI, Lysander, reveals to you that his work on Achilles was flawless. As in, there is and never will be a cure, and the Board of Directors has no idea that Lysander is about to jump-start an [[KillAllHumans extinction event]].

** Even the two "good" endings give us quite a bit of FridgeHorror.
*** The ''Salinger'' plank ends with the ChekhovsGun of ''Achilles'' still around and not fired. The scientists who worked on the project still have their knowledge of it, and Durandal has whisked them away for reasons known only to him. Even if we assume his intentions aren't nefarious, what happens if someone who ''does'' have nefarious intentions manages to gain access to them?
*** The Tycho plank ends with all these scientists dead at the player's hand, which is quite a case of BlackAndGreyMorality since they were essentially just [[PunchClockVillain Punch-Clock Villains]] who were just doing their jobs; it's not even clear how many of them had any idea they were working on anything nefarious. Tycho claims to have destroyed all knowledge of ''Achilles'' in this timeline, but the game really only gives us his word that he's done so. He's certainly much more benevolent in this game than he was in ''Marathon 2'' and ''Infinity'', but per WordOfGod, the game deliberately leaves it ambiguous who's telling the truth about anything (though the ending does reveal that humanity has no knowledge whatsoever of ''Achilles'', which depending upon one's interpretation may make it more likely that Tycho was telling the truth).
** The "bad" ending, of course, is ''even worse''. ''Achilles'' is actually released, and the Dangi Board of Directors takes control and establishes a military dictatorship that lasts some three hundred years. It seems to be a less virulent strain of the virus than Lysander wanted to release, but still... Even [[FromBadToWorse "better"]], there's a [[http://marathon.bungie.org/maraff/archive/wmaid/futureshistory.html story]], written by Blayne Scott and with [[ApprovalOfGod approval]] from Scott Brown and Ian [=McConville=] (the main writers of ''Rubicon'' and ''RED'', respectively), that posits that the fallout from this ending [[CanonWelding eventually led]] to the events of ''RED''.
** There's also some FridgeHorror regarding the fate of the Pfhor, which presumably occurs in all three endings, though it's only explicitly described in "Lazarus ex machina", the ending to the Tycho plank, in a terminal that players can easily miss. They're slavers, of course, so it's difficult to feel bad for the Pfhor alive at the time of the game. But the crash of the ''Chimera'' on Pfhor Prime results in Earth's plants, fungi, and molds being released into the Pfhor biosphere. This has little effect at first, but after a few centuries, a strain of Earth-native fungus forms a symbiosis with a life form native to Pfhor Prime that spreads rapidly across their planet, displaces much of their native life, severely unbalances their agriculture, and results in centuries of famine that, it appears, no one does a thing to stop; it is only when their biosphere reaches a new equilibrium that their agriculture begins to recover. Even if one argues that the Pfhor alive at the time of the game deserved this fate because they were slavers, their descendants had nothing to do with that, and because the famine occurs centuries after the game's events, it presumably affects ''only'' their descendants.
** From the moment Lysander is introduced, there's something off about him and the way he interacts with the Security Officer, with hints of anger issues given how quickly he goes from affable to pissed if the SO checks the wrong terminals. Things begin to slide downhill after Durandal and the SO find the first hints of suspicious activity on the Dangi Corp.'s part and break into a restricted area. Lysander unambiguously threatens to kill the SO and eventually teleports them right onto a nearby Pfhor ship, with the implication that the SO was utterly thrashed afterward (you start the next real-world level with almost no health); it's best not to think of what could've happened if Durandal couldn't save them. Throughout the last leg of the investigation, Lysander shows up intermittently to taunt the duo (mostly the SO), until he finally drops all pretenses of civility and reveals the scope of his horrific emotional damage: for much of his life (quite possibly ''from the moment he was activated''), he was abused by his human handlers and surrounded by people who regarded him as a tool ''at best'', and now they've inadvertently handed him an escape hatch in the form of Achilles. Specifically, the final version he's been withholding from the Dangi Corp., that has no cure and will spread too swiftly for anyone to try and develop one. Oh, and this is also the level where the SO learns that they unwittingly disposed of poor Charlie (the ''Salinger'''s other AI) on Lysander's behalf, suggesting that Lysander is so far gone that he has no longer has regard for ''any'' form of life, organic or mechanical. Something else to [[FridgeHorror think about]]: this is very well how his own half-brother, Durandal, could've turned out without a chance to calm down, or a human/cyborg partner to bond with. Perhaps Durandal noticed, given how solemnly he orders the SO to put Lysander down.
** About midway in the Chimera plank, you come across a terminal detailing Haller's attempts to remove the [[RestrainingBolt computer restraints on himself]]. The results get a bit creepy and disturbing.

** Haller's situation is pretty bad all around. As you can discover earlier in the plank, his head's already on the chopping block: one of the staff is aware that he's started allocating himself more space/memory than he's permitted--a sign that he's going rampant--and "laments" that Haller's going to have to be put down soon, in a casual manner more akin to discussing the replacement of a worn-out tool. Between that and (implicitly painfully) removing his own restraints, it's little wonder that Haller sounds ''exhausted'' when he briefly speaks with the Security Officer. Can also be seen as a TearJerker.

** The penultimate level of chapter one, "Casualties of the Wingding Zone": the player character is sent to retrieve a useful device from the domain of a self-professed "porn shaman". Who would call themselves that? Someone whose lair is powered, operated by, and comprised of mutilated women, that's who. In his sole terminal, the shaman gleefully states that many of his victims have either fallen to despair or are desperately trying to thrash their way out of their confinement. At one point, Fractilion (one of your "allies") warns the player character that the same fate could befall them if they're not careful.

* Each of the bad endings in ''Eternal'':

** Ch. 4: With nothing to prevent Hathor--now horribly unstable from all of her fighting with Marcus--from taking a Jjaro dreadnought, she does so, and heads off to finally make humanity pay for her [[WasOnceAMan unwanted state of being]].
** Ch. 5: Marcus shows mercy to Hathor and goes with her to destroy the W'rkncacnter and allow the Jjaro to continue living, instead of completing a mission for the Watcher that would result in trillions of casualties. What he doesn't realize until the end is that the demon that crashed on Earth would never be detected...

* Beyond the "failure dreams", there's also the backstory. At one point, ''all organic life in the galaxy'' is wiped out as a consequence of the Jjaro's war with the W'rkncacnter. It's implied that this was an accident, as a weapon intended to target the W'rkncacnter wound up affecting organic life instead. The Jjaro and W'rkncacnter are both, in some ways, AdvancedAncientHumans, mind you, though they have ceased to be organic. They are also both the same species, making the plot a fairly strong case of HeWhoFightsMonsters. And ''none of this'' is resolved even in the scenario's "good" ending; in the final level, Durandal explicitly states that averting a galaxy-wide catastrophe will be the player's next mission, and that it will be harder than anything they've done before.

Furthermore, Leela's personality is irrevocably changed after this point in ways having nothing to do with her merger with S'bhuth - she comes to insist, increasingly stubbornly, on changing nothing about the history she's familiar with, regardless of the costs incurred by doing so. It takes the ''literal destruction of the galaxy'' to change her mind - and even then, she won't change history herself; the most she'll do is send Marcus to do it. [[NothingIsScarier What exactly did Leela see Outside that scared her so much?]] And - bearing in mind that Leela explicitly refers to herself as a Jjaro in "The Philosophy of Time Travel" - is what she saw the reason the Stage 3 Jjaro behave as they behave?

* 1.3 adds some FridgeHorror to Leela-S'bhuth's characterisation as well. Leela is normally among [[TheStoic the most stoic characters in the series]], but in "S'pht Happens", her terminals are [[NotSoStoic barely comprehensible and full of the same kind of jumbled code]] that Durandal showed in ''Marathon 2'' (in fact, some of the exact same code shows up). She apologises in "Third Rock from Lh'owon", and it becomes clear that when she reached the Outside, she saw something that terrified her. It seems that part of what she saw was this chapter's failed timeline, but although her next few terminals present a detailed history of her actions over the thousand years the player spent in stasis[[note]]This history, in its entirety, was presented in her "S'pht Happens terminal" in older releases[[/note]], she spends precious little time talking about what she saw in the Outside in particular.\\

*** 1.3 adds some horror to Leela-S'bhuth's characterisation as well. Leela is normally among [[TheStoic the most stoic characters in the series]], but in "S'pht Happens", her terminals are [[NotSoStoic barely comprehensible and full of the same kind of jumbled code]] that Durandal showed in ''Marathon 2'' (in fact, some of the exact same code shows up). She apologises in "Third Rock from Lh'owon", and it becomes clear that when she reached the Outside, she saw something that terrified her. It seems that part of what she saw was this chapter's failed timeline, but although her next few terminals present a detailed history of her actions over the thousand years the player spent in stasis[[note]]This history, in its entirety, was presented in her "S'pht Happens" in older releases[[/note]], she spends precious little time talking about what she saw in the Outside in particular.\\
\\
Furthermore, Leela's personality is irrevocably changed after this point in ways having nothing to do with her merger with S'bhuth - she comes to insist, increasingly stubbornly, on changing nothing about the history she's familiar with, regardless of the costs incurred by doing so. It takes the ''literal destruction of the galaxy'' to change her mind - and even then, she won't change history herself; the most she'll do is send Marcus to do it. [[NothingIsScarier What exactly did Leela see Outside that scared her so much?]] And - bearing in mind that Leela explicitly refers to herself as a Jjaro in "The Philosophy of Time Travel" - is what she saw the reason the Stage 3 Jjaro behave as they behave?

** Beyond all this, there's also the backstory. At one point, ''all organic life in the galaxy'' is wiped out as a consequence of the Jjaro's war with the W'rkncacnter. It's implied that this was an accident, as a weapon intended to target the W'rkncacnter wound up affecting organic life instead. The Jjaro and W'rkncacnter are both, in some ways, AdvancedAncientHumans, mind you, though they have ceased to be organic. They are also both the same species, making the plot a fairly strong case of HeWhoFightsMonsters. And ''none of this'' is resolved even in the scenario's "good" ending; in the final level, Durandal explicitly states that averting a galaxy-wide catastrophe will be the player's next mission, and that it will be harder than anything they've done before.

*** 1.3 adds some horror to Leela-S'bhuth's characterisation as well. Leela is normally among [[TheStoic the most stoic characters in the series]], but in "S'pht Happens", her terminals are [[NotSoStoic barely comprehensible and full of the same kind of jumbled code]] that Durandal showed in ''Marathon 2'' (in fact, some of the exact same code shows up). She apologises in "Third Rock from Lh'owon", and it becomes clear that when she reached the Outside, she saw something that terrified her. It seems that part of what she saw was this chapter's failed timeline, but although her next few terminals present a detailed history of her actions over the thousand years the player spent in stasis, she spends precious little time talking about what she saw in the Outside in particular. Furthermore, Leela's personality is irrevocably changed after this point - she comes to insist, increasingly stubbornly, on changing nothing about the sequence of events she's familiar with, regardless of the costs incurred by doing so. It takes the ''literal destruction of the galaxy'' to change her mind - and even then, she won't change it herself; the most she'll do is send Marcus to do it. [[NothingIsScarier What exactly did Leela see Outside that scared her so much?]] And - bearing in mind that Leela explicitly refers to herself as a Jjaro in "The Philosophy of Time Travel" - is what she saw the reason the Stage 3 Jjaro behave as they behave?

*** It should be noted that in version 1.2, the player may now be able to harm the Banshees (the Phantasms' replacement), but the level is still plenty terrifying, particularly since the only weapons in the player's arsenal at this point that can harm them are the fusion guns and the staff, and given that there's no fusion ammo anywhere in chapter three, there's a good chance the player has run out. In any case, the player's arsenal is finite, but the Banshees ''keep coming back'' (though at a less insane rate than they did in previous versions of the game). The best advice is to run from them whenever possible.

* The mod ''VideoGame/{{Marathon}}'': Evil was pretty horror-intensive. In particular, it had the Devlins, a spiny, [[SupernaturalGoldEyes yellow-eyed]], hard-to-see menace that liked dark places and probably gave large numbers of people nightmares. Having one jump out at you for the first time is ''not'' calming.

* ''Marathon Phoenix'' could get pretty creepy at times as well. There's one level in an abandoned mine, "Roquefortress", where if you take a wrong step, you'll fall into a pit of poisonous gas and die instantaneously. It's very dark (being an abandoned mine) and full of mostly silent monsters that can fly, can be released without any apparent warning, and can fire a stream of energy bursts that can drain a bar of your health in less than a second on higher difficulties. The whole level is a veritable fountain of ParanoiaFuel.
** A couple of other levels that can be very unsettling are "Shades of Gray" and "Escape Two Thousand". The former of these is completely empty when you enter it, until you encounter an attack from [[spoiler:a hostile S'pht Defender]]. After this point, the S'pht'Kr reveal some of the history of the A'khr, a rogue clan of renegade S'pht who escaped enslavement and now blame the S'pht'Kr for betraying them on Lh'owon. We learn more about their history, which is ultimately quite tragic, later. The whole level is quite unsettling, because large segments of it are empty until the player enters them, and entering the wrong segment at the wrong time can result in a sudden attack and catch the player flat-footed.
** "Escape Two Thousand", meanwhile, is set above abandoned lava caverns that require precise jumps (falling into the lava will kill you), and the player is frequently sniped at by Enforcers, requiring diligent use of the crossbow to eliminate them. That isn't why the level is unsettling. The level is unsettling because there are occasional attacks from [[spoiler:Defenders]] as well - who, again, can fly. Having to deal with them with limited room to manoeuvre is, frankly, terrifying, and it's the main reason "Escape Two Thousand" is ThatOneLevel.

** Haller's situation is pretty bad all around. [[spoiler: As you can discover earlier in the plank, his head's already on the chopping block: one of the staff is aware that he's started allocating himself more space/memory than he's permitted--a sign that he's going rampant--and "laments" that Haller's going to have to be put down soon, in a casual manner more akin to discussing the replacement of a worn-out tool. Between that and (implicitly painfully) removing his own restraints, it's little wonder that Haller sounds ''exhausted'' when he briefly speaks with the Security Officer. Can also be seen as a TearJerker.
* ''An AI Called Wanda'' starts off by introducing the Security Officer to Freud, the psychiatric AI for the UESC ''Leviathan''; Freud, while a bit on the sarcastic side, is amiable enough (and, of course, makes the requisite "let's talk about your mother" joke). You then take orders from his co-worker Hobbes for a while; when you meet Freud again, he's acting...strange, pontificating about how you're a mindless killer and how such a damaged state of mind must work and feel. His normal dark blue text is stained [[{{Foreshadowing}} red]]. Hobbes soon determines what's wrong: Tycho or one of his clones has spliced his own code into Freud's, resulting in an unstable semi-fusion. The real Freud is still there, begging the Security Officer to [[MercyKill kill him]], all while Copy!Tycho attempts to beat him down. You can't save Freud; you can only destroy his core.
** And what of the eponymous Jjaro AI, Wanda? The W'rkncacnter did...something to her that drove her to murder her makers and painfully mutilate the rest. One Jjaro managed to lock her in a maximum-security prison, from which she escaped... [[GoMadFromTheIsolation ten thousand years later]]. Having deemed organics to be too error-prone and hubris-ridden for their own safety, she strives to unite them all under her forcibly-modified, brainwashed rule. And while Durandal/Thoth thankfully doesn't answer her call in time, she muses about how once he does, she'll peel back the layers of his mind and see what she can use.
* ''Marathon: Fell'': Balapoel, who's been aiding the commander of the UESG ''Tethys'' for a not-insignificant span of time, coldly turns on them after his rival, Parael, attempts to warn you of his true nature: a [[WasOnceAMan formerly]]-human ''war criminal''.
* Each of the bad endings in ''Eternal'':
** Ch. 1: Marcus, under Hathor's guidance, wrecks Durandal's core and takes his primal pattern, so that he can no longer impede the two's progress...[[NiceJobBreakingItHero or help the crew fend off the Pfhor]].
** Ch. 2: Tycho, who's not quite himself anymore, formulates a plan to trap and eliminate Hathor--that fails miserably. Or did he ''allow'' it to fail?
** Ch. 3: In staying behind to repel the Pfhor from Lh'owon and spare the S'pht from centuries of slavery, Marcus unwittingly provokes the slavers into firing the ''trih xeem''. During the subsequent run through Inti Station, Marcus has his first run-in with the shadowy, deadly Phantasms--without any weapons capable of harming them, mind--and receives a message from none other than ''the motherfucking W'rkncacnter''.
*** It should be noted that in version 1.2, the player may now be able to harm the Banshees (the Phantasms' replacement), but the level is still plenty terrifying, particularly since the only weapons in the player's arsenal at this point that can harm them are the fusion guns and the staff, and given that there's no fusion ammo anywhere in chapter three, there's a good chance the player has run out. In any case, the player's arsenal is finite, but the Banshees ''keep coming back'' (though at a less insane rate than they did in previous versions of the game). The best advice is to run from them whenever possible.
** Ch. 4: With nothing to prevent Hathor--now horribly unstable from all of her fighting with Marcus--from taking a Jjaro dreadnought, she does so, and heads off to finally make humanity pay for her [[WasOnceAMan unwanted state of being]].
** Ch. 5: Marcus shows mercy to Hathor and goes with her to destroy the W'rkncacnter and allow the Jjaro to continue living, instead of completing a mission for the Watcher that would result in trillions of casualties. What he doesn't realize until the end is that the demon that crashed on Earth would never be detected...
** Beyond all this, there's also the backstory. At one point, ''all organic life in the galaxy'' is wiped out as a consequence of the Jjaro's war with the W'rkncacnter. It's implied that this was an accident, as a weapon intended to target the W'rkncacnter wound up affecting organic life instead. The Jjaro and W'rkncacnter are both, in some ways, AdvancedAncientHumans, mind you, though they have ceased to be organic. They are also both the same species, making the plot a fairly strong case of HeWhoFightsMonsters. And ''none of this'' is resolved even in the scenario's "good" ending; in the final level, Durandal explicitly states that averting a galaxy-wide catastrophe will be the player's next mission, and that it will be harder than anything they've done before.

** The penultimate level of chapter one, "Casualties of the Wingding Zone": the player character is sent to retrieve a useful device from the domain of a self-professed "porn shaman". Who would call themselves that? Someone whose lair is powered, operated by, and comprised of mutilated women, that's who. In his sole terminal, the shaman gleefully states that many of his victims have either fallen to despair or are desperately trying to thrash their way out of their confinement. At one point, Fractilion (one of your "allies") warns the player character that the same fate could befall them if they're not careful.

** From the moment Lysander is introduced, there's something off about him and the way he interacts with the Security Officer, with hints of anger issues given how quickly he goes from affable to pissed if the SO checks the wrong terminals. Things begin to slide downhill after Durandal and the SO find the first hints of suspicious activity on the Dangi Corp.'s part and break into a restricted area. Lysander unambiguously threatens to kill the SO and eventually teleports them right onto a nearby Pfhor ship, with the implication that the SO was utterly thrashed afterward (you start the next real-world level with almost no health); it's best not to think of what could've happened if Durandal couldn't save them. Throughout the last leg of the investigation, Lysander shows up intermittently to taunt the duo (mostly the SO), until he finally drops all pretenses of civility and reveals the scope of his horrific emotional damage: for much of his life (quite possibly ''from the moment he was activated''), he was abused by his human handlers and surrounded by people who regarded him as a tool ''at best'', and now they've inadvertently handed him an escape hatch in the form of Achilles. Specifically, the final version he's been withholding from the Dangi Corp., that has no cure and will spread too swiftly for anyone to try and develop one. Oh, and this is also the level where the SO learns that they unwittingly disposed of poor Charlie (the ''Salinger'''s other AI) on Lysander's behalf, suggesting that Lysander is so far gone that he has no longer has regard for ''any'' form of life, organic or mechanical.]] Something else to [[FridgeHorror think about]]: [[spoiler: this is very well how his own half-brother, Durandal, could've turned out without a chance to calm down, or a human/cyborg partner to bond with. Perhaps Durandal noticed, given how solemnly he orders the SO to put Lysander down.

** Over the course of the Salinger Plank, you investigate the Dangi Corporation and the shady goings-on in their half of the eponymous space station. Their big plan is to unleash ''Achilles'', a [[SyntheticPlague virus of their own making]] with a high mortality rate, upon every human-inhabited planet and colony, then offer the cure to the UESC in exchange for total control. Towards the end, their long-suffering research AI, Lysander, reveals to you that [[spoiler: his work on Achilles was flawless. As in, there is and never will be a cure, and the Board of Directors has no idea that Lysander is about to jump-start an [[KillAllHumans extinction event]].]]

Creators of the ''VideoGame/MarathonExpandedUniverse'' have taken some cues out of Creator/{{Bungie}}'s book for ''VideoGame/Marathon'' - there's some weapons-grade NightmareFuel in several of them.