Nightmare Fuel / A Hat in Time

Despite being advertised as a "Cute as heck" game, A Hat in Time also has plenty of "Scary as heck" moments.

---

• The Badge Seller; specifically, their intentionally glitchy movements. They explain that they've been forever changed by some of the places they've been to, which just prompts many unsettling questions.
• The Mafia Boss holds the honor of the only boss to die with an explosion. And it's very much a real one, as proven by the fact that the only parts left of him are his brain, eyes, mustache, and hat.
• There's an interesting Easter egg that happens when you spend more than 20 minutes in Hat Kid's room. Stay there long enough and some disturbing sounds play; it almost sounds like something wailing in agony. Is Hat Kid hiding something on her ship? The fact that if you check her closet she mentions that it has "plenty of room for skeletons" just makes it more sinister...
• Returning to Dead Bird Studio at night is a little ominous. After visiting the award ceremony and returning back to her ship, Hat Kid finds the door out of the Machine Room locked. The phone rings, and the caller is the losing director, using the creepy voice from "Murder on the Owl Express." They warn Hat Kid that the winner still has another timepiece that they intend to use for their own gain, forcing her to return to the studio. When she does, the level intro sting is replaced with a wavy and uncertain variant, as is the Dead Bird Studio theme. Thanks to the cold lighting and the whole setting looking like it was abandoned in a hurry, that atmosphere is earned.
  • The battle in Dead Bird Studio with either The Conductor or DJ Grooves can seem pretty humorous at first....until you realize this psychopathic movie director is gleefully willing to stab, crush and blow up a child just so word can't get out that he cheated.
• Subcon Forest:
  • The Snatcher. Most encounters with him make him seem like a Harmless Villain, but there's a few tense moments that stand out, such as the first encounter with him, beginning with an inescapable trap and tense music, or the sudden Jump Scare right before he negotiates one last contract after being defeated.
  "Please... *huff*... have mercy... please... HAVE A SEAT!"
  • The Fire Spirits require the sacrifice of people trapped in paintings in order to depart from the world. Judging by the expressions of the characters in the paintings, they are still conscious and very much aware of their situation.
    • Most of the paintings depict generic NPCs or enemies like express owls or mafia goons. But one of the paintings is that of the aformentioned Badge Seller, somehow, which just adds a lot more to his already mysterious past.
  • There are nooses that Hat Kid can grapple on to, which quickly lift her up and start talking about how long it's been since they've last felt a good neck.
  • Queen. Vanessa. It's bad enough that she's introduced in a startling moment and kills you the second she touches you, but when you're so much as in the same room as her, the room darkens and... man, OH MAN. You can see what we mean at 1:45-2:09, here. And when you manage to escape her, the music still sends chills up your spine and there's still an atmosphere that gives you the feeling that Vanessa might come into the room at any moment, and Hat Kid knows it since the whole time she has a worried look on her face, almost as if she's expecting Vanessa to barge through the doors any second. Even more unsettling are the notes you find scattered around her room (2:56-3:24); particularly, the one where she mentions being jealous that her "Prince" loved bacon more than her and banned it. Or how she wished she could keep him locked in the basement, and the one where she says her mother had "something of an accident".
    • Just the fact that Queen Vanessa's Manor is a genre shift into actual stealth horror that, while still adjusted for the game's tone and not hugely difficult, has no elements of parody. Absolutely nothing is there to lighten the tone of the level or its context, making the shift all the more frightening.
    • Even the title card for her chapter shows Hat Kid hiding in terror from her as she creeps closer!
    • Throughout the manor, Vanessa's eerie voice calls out through the halls, alternating between direct angry threats, taunting, laughter, and blatantly false grandmotherly coaxing that manages to be anything but silly. Even though her AI is in truth very simple and she doesn't follow Hat Kid without seeing her or a noise to tip her off, the audio does a very good job of making her feel on your trail at every moment.
      Queen Vanessa: It gets so lonely in here...I know you are listening!
    • There's a painting in the Play Room that certainly qualifies: It starts headless, then after using the first balloon, it gains a faceless head that looks suspiciously like Hat Kid's. Then it changes again to have a crudely- drawn creepy face in red.
    • If you hide in the closet in Queen Vanessa's bedroom, the player can see a Mafia guy on the other side, eyes closed and terrified for his life. When Queen Vanessa takes the key, we see the Mafia frozen dead on the ground. She found him.
    • If you're unfortunate enough to get caught by Queen Vanessa, you get the ''lovely'' scene of her freezing Hat Kid to death. What makes it even worse is that Hat Kid, clearly terrified, struggles uselessly against her captor, only for her movements to become more sluggish as she's slowly turned into ice, ready to be added to the queen's collection. There's even a small chance of Hat Kid to mutter out "Goodbye, cruel world" as she dies.
  • The headless statues that will wait until they're offscreen before coming to life and rushing towards you; they're very fast, completely invincible, and unlike their likely inspiration, looking directly at them won't make them stop coming at you. Fittingly, unless you spend some time free-roaming the woods, the first place you'll likely encounter these will be the front door of Vanessa's manor.
  • The story of Subcon, once you finish the Sleepy Subcon time rift. It used to be a happy town ruled by Vanessa, but one day she saw her fairy-tale romance prince holding hands with another woman. In reality, the woman was selling flowers and the prince was just handing her money to buy some for Vanessa. Heartbroken by this, Vanessa became completely blind to reason and rapidly morphed into a horrible monster, whose ambient magic turned the peaceful kingdom into a particularly vicious variant of The Lost Woods. Most of those masked spirits and the dwellers are implied to be children who were either killed or transformed, and the Snatcher is all but outright implied to be the prince who either died and became a ghost while shackled up in Vanessa's basement, or was transformed into that form while Vanessa's magic was wreaking havoc on the forest outside.
  • There is an area of the forest that looks like a fire is raging through it, and it has a creepy desolate feel to it, especially since the music changes there.
• The finale of Alpine Skyline is a chaotic nightmare, with the goats becoming Brainwashed and Crazy, lightning striking unrelentingly and destroying the level, and the purple plants attacking with overwhelming force.To make matters better, there is no indication that all hell is going to break loose, aside from some subtle Foreshadowing after collecting each of the time pieces, especially since you don't get booted back to the hub to see the progress bar for the finale fill up like the other levels, meaning that a player that has been rather determined to find them all will likely get blindsided.
• The pick up line for the Time Stop Yarn is this:
  "Death is inevitable, your time is valuable. It requires 32 Yarn to stitch!"
  • Lampshaded by Snatcher in Death Wish.
  "Who labeled this? I thought these hats were made for kids!"
• In the Nyakuza Metro DLC, the Empress is a Knight of Cerebus nearly on level with Queen Vanessa, herself. Unlike most of the antagonists you face off, who at least have a hammy or dark humor charm to them, the Empress lacks any benevolent or quirky qualities to her; she is cunning and utterly ruthless, both to her underlings and to Hat Kid. The most frightening moment may be a scene Hat Kid walks in on after finding a Time Piece. The Empress is confronting one of her Nyakuza underlings, accusing them of messing with her jewelry displays, and ruthlessly tosses the cat at the counter, popping it into health pons. The Empress then coldly warns Hat Kid not to let that be her. It's clean cartoon violence, but the Empress just murdered one of her gang members without a second thought, with no concern that Hat Kid witnessed it.
  • Her "boss battle" at the end isn't so much a battle as it is Hat Kid running for her life as the Empress chases her with a damn rocket launcher. And even after you "beat" her, she's still out there and outright tells Hat Kid in free roam mode that she has not seen the last of her. Soon as the police investigation of her jewelry store is finished and everything is calm again, the Empress tells Hat Kid she better flee the planet.
  • Even the cut scene leading up to this chase is intense, as Hat Kid has just stolen the Time Pieces from the backroom and left... only to run straight into a pissed off Empress. Merely a glare from her terrifies poor Hat Kid. She then, slowly and deliberately, demands the other cats in the Metro catch you, offering a reward of 1,000,000 dollars. And as you run away, you hear her psychotic laugh follow after you, showing she is no longer messing around.
  • The area changes for Rush Hour involves the entire metro's population turning into a crowd of masked Yakuza cats that attack you if you touch them, while the civilians also don masks upon seeing you and try to attack. Be it because the money reward was so high or she actually had everyone in the Metro on her payroll to begin with, literally everyone is your enemy.
  • After desperately running from the enraged crime lord and her endless swarm of minions, Hat Kid makes it to the Escape Tunnels, where there are a few perfectly ordinary metro cats sitting and reading newspapers. It looks like you're in the clear and you've found an elevator to escape... and then the elevator's doors open, and the Empress is already inside. Hat Kid freaks out and tries to back up, but the "ordinary cats" have put on Yakuza masks and are now blocking the only exit, forcing her to get in the elevator. Hat Kid only survives the elevator ride because 2 policecats coincidentally board the elevator, and if they hadn't done so, she would likely have "disappeared" like everyone else who got in the Empress' way.
  • Making this even worse is what happens if you try to hit the Empress in her store prior to this. She oneshots Hat Kid! Not even slowing down time will allow you to escape!
  • If you think about it, much like Queen Vanessa and Mustache Girl (if you decide to run away before the final boss fight with her), the Empress is one of the few characters to make Hat Kid utterly scared for her life.
• Fans have come up with some interesting mods for the game. Case in point, this mod called “Snatcher’s Candy Scavenger Hunt.”
• A subtler one, but still terrifying: if you look up at the trees in some parts of the Subcon Well there are quite a few of the Snatcher's Minions hanged. There are some such minions hanging closer to the ground, and in their case, it's easier to see them occasionally twitch. Is this a pastime for them, or are they having trouble leaving those nooses...?
• The Rumbi Factory purple time Rift found in Nyakuza Metro. Nothing Is Scarier is in full effect; there's no actual danger other than easily-avoided exploding Rumbis and the occasional bottomless pit, but the abandoned factory is pervaded by a dreadful sense of eeriness, much like the empty laboratories of the Portal series, as the player is left to wonder: "What happened here?". The damaged state of the building, the atmosphere, and the music make this level unsettling enough. There's also one particular floor of the Rift, where the colorful celebration of the approved greenlit Rumbi is juxtaposed with a nearby door that is chained shut and blocked off by crates, and it's never directly explained why. But if you take into account the exploding Rumbis...
• The R. King.
  • Hidden on Hat Kid's spaceship are several notes, only visible upon manipulating the camera using the camera badge in very select, inconspicuous locations. Each note is signed by the enigmatic R. King, assumed to mean Roach King, and gives a hint to the location of the next note. They seem to be mostly impish notions about him freeloading and leaving IOUs, but the second-to-last note in the chain invites you to his castle. The scavenger hunt concludes with two mysterious, final notes in the castle in the attic, and a solid gold duplicate of all the things the King had borrowed... And a "statue" of the king himself.
  "I had all the gold in the roach world, and yet I was unhappy.
  I learned that gold tarnishes and turns dull, but a mind filled with gold is safe from tarnish, and can hild limitless wealth.
  You have a heart of gold, Hat Kid
  I have evolved. Sorry we didn't get to meet
  - R. King
  • The question, then, is what did he mean when wrote that he "evolved"...?

---