Nightmare Face / Video Games

Your worst Nightmare has a face, kid, and it's out to bite off yours!

• 46 Okunen Monogatari: The Shinka Ron (4.6 Billion Year Story: The Theory of Evolution) is a Japanese-only precursor to the cult favorite E.V.O.: Search for Eden. Your enemy is no less than Lucifer himself, who operates under the guise of a naked vampire Marilyn Monroe (really). Lucifer represents the the flip side of Gaia, the green/blued-haired Earth goddess who appears in both games. Anyhoo, Lucifer turns up in person after you foil her plans too many times, fought first in her flayed human form with a leering skull, and then as a winged spider-alien.
• The Grunt and the Brute from Amnesia: The Dark Descent. The Brute pretty much doesn't even have a face, though you can find an eye and some teeth in there...◊ And the Grunt isn't much better. He doesn't really have a jaw, it's just a flappy bit of skin. Well, that's an understatement...◊
• In Banjo-Kazooie, the first thing players are treated to when swimming towards the end of an underwater tunnel in Clanker’s Cavern, is the face of the eponymous Clanker. With Clanker being a gigantic shark-like creature with bulging eyes and an enormous, sharp-toothed, smiling mouth, it’s safe to say that this greeting has traumatized more than one player throughout the years. Thankfully, Clanker’s face doesn't match his personality, and once you get past the horror, it’s shown that the guy actually is one of the sweetest and friendliest characters in the game.
• Once he got upgraded into Big Bad status for Batman: Arkham Knight, the Scarecrow got a new face (after being mangled by Killer Croc in the first game) to go with his new voice and look, which includes pale white eyes and missing lips and most of his nose. In fact, it's actually believed that Scarecrow's new look is part of the reason that Arkham Knight was giving an M Rating.
• In the fourth chapter of Bendy and the Ink Machine, Bertrum Piedmont is revealed to be a gigantic, bloated, deformed head who leaks ink from his eyes and mouth, and has veins all over.
• Essentially, every single splicer in the BioShock series seems to have a gruesome, mutated face, sometimes hidden by a New Year's party mask, their mutation either thanks to their rigorous splicing or Dr. Steinman's attempts to fix the effects of said splicing, and it certainly didn't help that Steinman had his own ideas of beauty...
• There are a few of these in the BlazBlue series. Izanami has one that is basically bone white with no eyes and a creepy smile.◊
  • Nine has a disturbing facial expression too, with a◊ Slasher Smile and an ominous glowing eye.
  • And we can't forget good ol' Terumi◊, can we?
• Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter's Ryu and Bosch. Ryu for getting stabbed and beginning his transformation into Odjn, some sort of a super powered beast. Bosch, the one who stabs him, does it with a complete cold look without any emotion. And later when we realize he's not quite dead, he has more or less turned insane. Character designs really helps boosting the fear.
• Buckshot Roulette: Not that the dealer's face is all that pleasant to begin with due to its rows of sharp teeth and lack of eyes in its sockets, but after the first time it's shot, its face becomes warped and mangled-looking for the rest of the game. It returns back to normal if you lose and come back to play again, suggesting it has a Healing Factor.
• In Captain Morgane and the Golden Turtle, the deliberately-mysterious stranger on Crab Island claims this part of the reason not to show his face.
  Morgane: Don't tell me. You've been known to scare children?
  Stranger: I've been known to scare wolves.
• In the AWE expansion of Control, the "Wake Photograph" is one of these, an off-center, over-exposed, soft-focus photo of whatever is disguised as Alan Wake and tormenting his wife shrieking at the camera.
• In Corpse Party, many of the evil spirits sport these. At times, the victims' reaction faces can veer into this, too, particularly in the manga.
• Cry of Fear tends to have a lot of these, which suits the Monstrous Humanoid enemies. Of particular note are the Tallers (who have a black void for their face and mouth) and the Fasters (who have bleeding eyes and a circular, bleeding hole for a mouth).
• The Necromorphs from Dead Space. This is not surprising considering they are the remains of violently slaughtered corpses, reanimated and deformed by an alien virus. The concept art is little better (perhaps even worse since every little horrible detail is layed bare for all unlucky viewers to see). Don't look at it if you don't have a strong stomach.
• Dead Space 2 throws their face literally into yours, with the opening showing someone within kissing distance of Isaac turning into one of those face-exploder-type slashers, while still alive.
• In the Darkstalkers games, Pyron's face is mostly drawn very inconsistantly, between having his face switch back and forth between having and not having a mouth, and on occasion a face without a nose but with a sinister smile. One thing that is consistant is the face he makes during his winpose, where he turns into a large energy beam which gives him wide demonic eyes, a nasal area that resembles that of a skeletal skull, pronounced cheeks, and sharp vampire-like fangs, all while making an Evil Laugh. It can come across as a Jump Scare to anyone playing one of the games for the first time.
• Venom Myotismon suffers from this on Digimon Digital Card Battle after being possessed by A. Most notably, an eye pops out of its Domino Mask. Funny thing is, his mask conceals his eyes behind a yellow film, so the eye popped out through the film. Lest the kids sleep tonight.
• Dota 2 has quite a lot of examples with the Dire heroes being the biggest offenders... Let's see, here's Bane◊ and Faceless Void◊ guilty of the Eyeless Face trope, but Lifestealer◊ and Doom Bringer◊ are not pleasant sights either, and while we're at it, Undying◊ is pretty scary as well. But the crowner Nightmare Face definitely goes to Night Stalker◊.
• The sprites for Abobo in the NES Double Dragon games give him one of these. They're clearly based on the same character's arcade sprites, but the head is enlarged and the contrast in shading almost makes him look like he's made of rock. In addition, his handlebar mustache looks enough like a severely distorted mouth that some have mistakenly confused it for one.
• Giygas from EarthBound (1994) doesn't have one of these — he is one of these.
• Occurs in all the Endless Nightmare series of games. If you're killed by a zombie or monster, the game will lovingly throw in a close-up of the creature's sneering, disfigured face filling up the entire screen and you can only watch as the monster finish you off. Then the screen goes black (and the game asks if you'd like to load your last save]].
• In Eversion, the smiling block faces you see at the start of the game become less and less happy as you evert into deeper worlds. In World X-5, they have blank, terrified expressions with empty eye sockets. In X-6, they're disfigured, as if they're melting.
• In Fatal Frame: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse, the final stage of the Getsuyuu Syndrome is Blooming, which doesn't directly affect the victim's face itself but somehow makes it appear horrifically blurred and distorted. Oh, and the people who die of this syndrome become ghosts, and anyone who just looks at the face will suffer the same fate.
• Fire Emblem Fates:
  • Hans's face during a cutscene after chapter 13 of the Conquest path as he slaughters innocent civilians also doubles as a Slasher Smile.
  • Oboro is often accused of making such a terrorizing face whenever something remotely similar to what happened to her in her childhood is within sight: Nohrians in general are always the primary reason, though there are a few times other stuff makes her pull it out such as whenever her critical hit cut-in occurs...which will be often if you made her learn Rend Heaven.
• Final Fantasy:
  • The Psycho Heads from (SNES) Final Fantasy V. They are floating heads with the faces ripped off, with long, pink tongues sticking out. (shudders).
  • The ending of Final Fantasy VIII shows the main character, Squall, with no face.
• Five Nights at Freddy's has a lot of these faces.
  • A black-eyed Bonnie staring at you (inches away from the camera), and Freddy's black-eyed face when he catches you on later nights.
  • Old Chica◊ in the sequel.
  • Toy Chica likes to invoke this by removing her beak and eyes, giving her the appearance of a black-eyed yellow M&M with a Slasher Smile. It's more disturbing than it sounds.
• In Granblue Fantasy, Sachy is a mysterious war beast who always accompanies Melleau, and it wears that mask for a reason. Nemone (Melleau's sister) tried to take a peek under it once and ended up comatose for three days.
• Uzaza from Gyossait is a giant leering face with a permanent Slasher Smile and covered in red wires/tentacles. The game also have two mysterious horrifying faces that very briefly flash by you.
• Harvest Festival 64: All of the villagers gain one on the day of the Harvest festival, with their eyes becoming pitch-black voids with white pinpricks for pupils and their mouths twisting into disturbing grins. The player character gets one too as the game glitches out, which, combined with their white fur, makes them look like a skeleton.
• Lady Tsepish from King's Quest VII: The Princeless Bride, whose face is apparently so horrifying that it'll instantly kill Valanice/Rosella if they look upon her.
• Left 4 Dead has the Boomer, the Smoker, the Tank, the Spitter, the Jockey, and the Charger. Boomer's face is coated in bile-filled pustles. Smoker's face is laden with tumors and, in the sequel, extra tongues. The Tank is missing his lower jaw. The Spitter has her neck elongated, and most of her lips burned off. Jockey's face is twisted into that of a constant manic glee, with his lips torn off. And the Charger's face looks like someone took a hammer to it multiple times.
  • "Most of her lips burned off" is something of an understatement◊.
  • Compared to the other Special Infected, the Hunter seems almost normal... until you get a good look at its face and see that its eyes have been torn out.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • Twilight Princess:
    • One of the bosses (Blizzeta) has her head flip around backwards to show a face with big red eyes and lots of teeth.
    • Zant unmasked◊.
    • And then there's Midna's infamous Slasher Smile.
  • In Ocarina of Time, the only thing that distinguishes Phantom Ganon from the real Ganondorf is his demonic, skull-like face (after ripping off his "real" Ganondorf face, no less).
  • Majora's Mask:
    • The Happy Mask Salesman's face becomes this when he gets angry. The frightening expressions◊ on some of the masks he carries don't help much either.
    • The face that appears when you put on the Deku, Goron, and Zora masks. It's the face of Link going through a very painful transformation.
    • The Moon has a horrifying face with glowing orange eyes and a Slasher Smile. It's even more disturbing that it's descending towards the capital town.
• The Colonel in Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty gains one once the player is taken onto Arsenal Gear near the end of the game and he starts calling them at odd times to deliver complete gibberish - seemingly at random, he will shift from his normal Codec mugshot to one in which the flesh on his face is almost completely transparent, showing just his skull.
• The End from Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, whenever he pushes his eyes out of their sockets.
• Mega Man 11: When he Turns Red, Block Man summons a giant stone golem which he attaches himself to as the head, which somehow turns Block Man (who has a normal robot body) into a skeletal monstrosity.
• The appropriately-titled Nightmare from Metroid Fusion. At first it just looks like a robot, but then the robot's faceplate starts leaking green tears... and then the mask comes off to reveal a slimy green mug with six eyes... and then it starts melting...!
• Jan Pharris has a horribly deformed face in Morpheus, which scared away his entire family for years. It was caused by his doctor, John Mahlerbe, administering herbal medicines he didn't understand, while Jan was a boy. Later on, Jan had designed a machine, the Neurographicon, that could heal terminal illnesses, and attempted to use it to heal both his face and his stepsister's polio, but it only lasted for a few minutes during their dance together at the masked ball
• Mortal Kombat:
  • In Mortal Kombat 3, Kabal has this as one of his Fatalities; namely, he takes off his mask, reveals his ugly mug then turns and screams at his opponent, terrifying them so much that their soul actually leaves their body and runs for the hills!
  • The Tarkatans (Baraka's species) are all about this trope, with More Teeth than the Osmond Family being the most noticable thing about them. A particularly noteworthy example is Mileena, who (being a clone of Kitana) manages to combine this with a beautiful body for an unnerving contrast. Her victory pose in Mortal Kombat 9 has her horrifying face on full display as she leaps towards the camera.
• Unused enemies in Mother 3 feature this: creatures with no eyes and a wide open mouth which, simillarly to Giygas, act as a background. These have been flying around YouTube for a while.
• Mr. Hopp's Playhouse: Getting caught will treat you to a flashing screen with Mr. Hopp's lovely mug.
• Nuclear Throne: The "Scarier Face" mutation, the art of which shows a menacing-looking version of Crystal with demonic horns. In-game, its effect is lowering enemy health, implying that your face strikes so much fear in the hearts of your enemies that it weakens them.
• With the game being a Five Nights at Freddy's fan game, One Night at Flumpty's can be expected to have Jump Scare deaths. While Flumpty himself sports one in his jumpscare, Birthday Boy Blam takes it one step further. When near you, he sports a nasty Slasher Smile and his jumpscare, well, hope you don't suffer from trypophobia◊.
• In the Director's Cut of Organ Trail, inspecting tombstones carries a small chance of a zombified head bursting up instead of a hand.
• Pilgrim (RPG Maker): In the card game, if you lose to Master Alice, she charges at you with a bloodshot left eye and sharp-toothed, wide Slasher Smile.
• Pokémon:
  • The move Scary Face, which is pretty much what it says on the tin: a scary glare that affects the opponent's speed. You actually see a cartoon scary face on the screen when it's used.
  • Mean Look, which keeps a Pokémon from fleeing.
  • Creepy Cute Mimikyu dresses like a Bedsheet Ghost because its real face is supposedly so horrifying viewers immediately die from shock.
• Psych 2021: The killer's face is pulled back in an unnaturally huge smile, and his eye sockets look empty.
• Aran Ryan from Punch-Out!! Wii gets some really unnerving close up facial expressions showcasing his insanity. Bald Bull and Mr. Sandman could also qualify.
• The enemies in Rule of Rose are this. FUCK.◊
• Robin Blackwood's face at the end of Scratches, to the point that Micheal Arthate had actual nightmares of it for weeks. It's implied that Robin had these deformities due to the Thalidomide his mother was taking while pregnant, and long-term exposure to some unfriendly feral cats.
• Seraphic Blue has its Big Bad Er, her very last CG gives us this. It is so terrifying.
• Even knowing Shin Megami Tensei's reputation as a franchise that doesn't shy away from creepy demons and events, there is still an off-putting example of this trope in Shin Megami Tensei IV when Issachar becomes a demon and flashes an evil grin with completely blood-red eyes.
• Shesha in Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse pulls a 2-hit combo on the player: In the Neutral routes, first you see a surprisingly realistic image of Shesha disguised as Flynn, but with green skin and a face very reminiscent of The Joker; that it just suddenly shows up without warning makes for a hell of a Jump Scare. Then, when the image disappears, you see the dialogue portrait of the same◊, with simplified features but now with a Slasher Smile.
• Silent Hill:
  • The final boss of Silent Hill 3. It's just so wrong on a subconscious level, because the skin has a strange netlike pattern to it. Also, it never opens its eyes.
  • That one room in Silent Hill 4's the hospital world... The giant Eileen head with the demented expression.
  • The nurses. Great bodies, horrifying faces. In Silent Hill 2 and Homecoming, they hardly even have faces.
  • The Aristocrat◊ from Silent Hill: Downpour. You meet him for only a few seconds at the end of the terrifying train ride at Devil's Pit Mine, but he will most likely remain etched into your mind's eye for quite some time: a disembodied piece of flesh draped on the cave walls, wearing High-Class Glass. Fancy.
• All the Shibito and Yamibito monsters from Siren 1 and Siren 2. Hideous mutations, Tears of Blood, ax craziness, Slasher Smiles, implacability, invulnerability, Shining powers, insane laughter and general creepiness are not good combinations AT ALL! Doesn't help that images of real human faces were captured from eight different angles and superimposed onto the character models.
• One of the Superbabies from Sluggish Morss: A Delicate Time in History appears as one. The face is a horrifying amalgamation of a human face, dentures or jaws, and metal. It also speaks in a comparatively shrill voice.
• This◊ is from Splatterhouse 3. If you fail to save Jennifer in time, then be prepared to see one that is truly worthy of being one of the most nightmarish faces that ever existed, on a FREAKING Sega Genesis.
• What about the extremely low-poly face of Andross in the original Star Fox (later brought back as an Assist trophy in Super Smash Bros. Brawl)?
• Darth Marr from Star Wars: The Old Republic has in-universe rumors claim that his face is this, due to extensive Dark Side corruption. Supposedly, he once executed a Moff for failure by removing his mask. After seeing his face, the Moff wrote a letter of resignation and committed suicide. Ultimately those are either just rumors, or Gameplay and Story Segregation - while he is a companion in Knights of the Fallen Empire, it is possible to use the item preview to get a peak at his face, and it's just that of an old black man with no deformities whatsoever.
• M. Bison does this during his ending in Super Street Fighter II. He overlooks a burning city with Glowing Eyes of Doom with a Slasher Smile full of Phlegmings. The look on his face is slightly different depending on whether you're playing the SNES or Sega version, but still equally creepy.
• Suikoden II has Luca Blight, who sports a very huge Slasher Smile on his face in the opening cinematic.
• Super Mario Bros.:
  • Phanto of Super Mario Bros. 2, in contrast to its portrayal in Doki Doki Panic which just looks like an expressionless mask, has a sinister expression here (and also has it in Super Mario Maker 2).
  • During the final boss battle at the end of Super Mario World, after taking a certain amount of damage, Bowser will actually temporarily fly away in his Koopa Clown Car and towards the camera very fast, and we get to see a closeup of the Clown Car's face!
• There's a reason why Terraria's Face Monster is named that way. Doesn't help that it's found in one of the creepiest biomes in the game.
• In Touhou Labyrinth, Alice's boss sprite is apparently a reference to a very obscure game. For the rest of us who don't know about that (and is challenging her for the first time), her face can be quite startling to look at.
• Twisted Wonderland: Lilia is said to be capable of pulling this coupled with a truly terrifying dance on Halloween night. The Groovy artworks for his, Malleus's and Silver's Halloween cards are basically them pulling nightmare faces: Lilia's eyes bulge out as he bares his fangs and tongue, Malleus grins menacingly with stark glowing eyes while breathing fire, and Silver roars while throwing flames at the camera.
• Darkest Dungeon: Partly played straight, and partly implied with the Leper. There are only two times he takes his mask off: When he's failed a Resolve test and gone insane (his face is framed heavily in shadow so one cannot see many details, but it's enough to notice he has no actual nose), and as a Camping action to reduce his own stress (he finds the air in his face almost intoxicating), which will stress out everyone else from the sight. The latter is odd, since the animation for the Camping screen has him holding his mask in his hand by default.
• Undertale:
  • Flowey does this a lot. In fact, he does this right after he tries to kill you for the first time.
  • When Sans is being serious, the Glowing Eyelights of Undeath in his eye sockets disappear, most infamously when he tells you that he would've killed you if not for his promise to Toriel, and on a No Mercy run when he acknowledges that you're going to fight his brother soon.
  • The Fallen Child if you choose the "wrong" options to their questions at the very end of a No Mercy run.
• Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines: Play as a Nosferatu, and you'll get all the benefits of having a monstrous face— being a walking masquerade violation, humans screaming and running away from you, the inability to seduce blood dolls because of how ugly you are, and giving an old lady a heart attack. The player has to stick to alleyways and sewers to avoid all of this, but luckily enough, most plot-relevant human NPCs will still give you the time of day after the initial shock.
• Spoiled Rotten from Wario Land 4, once Wario gets her down to her last few hit points. YEESH.◊
• The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt expansion, Blood and Wine, features Regis, a kind and cultured gentleman who also happens to be the epitome of a Friendly Neighborhood Vampire. When his bloodlust is triggered or his life threatened, he takes on quite a different appearance◊, loosely inspired by Count Orlok, which comes off as extra shocking, because the game makes it amply clear beforehand that he doesn't have a violent or malicious bone in his body.
• In Wolfenstein: The New Order, major villain Frau Engel gets a big chunk of the left side of her face ripped out by a commandeered Nazi warmech. When she confronts BJ shortly afterwards, the results are not pretty in the slightest. By Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, her face has mostly healed, but she still bears some gnarly scars from the incident which make her face still quite hideous to look at.

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