THEY MADE IT LOOK LIKE AN ACCIDENT.
Nightmare Fuel in Assassin's Creed II.
- Subject Sixteen's Sanity Slippage commentary at a few points in the Glyph puzzles. It ends with him declaring that he's unable to deal with all the pain he's lived through via the Animus — "I feel the guillotine cut my throat, the bullet hit my chest, the water fill my lungs..."
- " The wolves are out hunting. Where, oh where, has Jaaack gooone? "
- "With Jack deep underground, it was easy."
- "In the beginning-ng-ng... Genesis. Genesis-s-s-s."
- Also his comment of "[the woman] cries as I fuck her". It's small, but in that moment it hits that, instead of the noble Assassins like Altaïr, Ezio and Connor, Desmond could have relived a monster's memory...
- The last recording implies that Lucy was forced to watch him kill himself. It might explain why she goes over and beyond to keep Desmond sane and alive.
"Ah, the moon...I can see the stars. My mind is gone. Lucy, I can't wait any longer. I'm ready to go." - Speaking of the Glyph puzzles, they manage to have boatloads of nightmare fuel by themselves. Let’s elaborate on some honorable mentions, shall we? The Templars have a longer reach than you know, and fingers in every pie. Not even the truth is safe from them.
- Pictured above, "Hat Trick" — another "find the Apple" puzzle, except the "you're getting closer" is the sound of a heartbeat picking up speed. When you find it, it changes to a "patient is flatlining" beep. And the reason for that? All the people involved in that puzzle were murdered by the Templars to obtain the Pieces of Eden they possessed, as Subject 16 points out before the puzzle starts. The subjects in the puzzle? Harry Houdini (punched in the stomach and died of appendicitis), Ghandi (shot in the chest) and John F. Kennedy (shot in the chest and head).
"Three thefts, hidden by the murders. People only see what they're trained to see, what the Organization wants them to see..."- At one point in the "Martyrs" puzzle (immediately preceding the aforementioned example), you have to drag a flame across the screen to a portrait of Joan of Arc. The moment you do so, you are greeted by the words "THEY BURNED JOAN ALIVE. THEY TOOK IT." captioning a painting of Joan being burned at the stake, all accompanied by a horrifying scream.
- Topsy the elephant, especially since this was something Thomas Edison actually did to ruin Nikola Tesla.
- Which itself is a road full of nightmare fuel. The oldest motion picture known to exist is from 1888. It's inventor, Louis Le Prince, disappeared from a moving train two years later, as well as his luggage. He had been trying for years to file patents for the motion picture, which were being blocked via the money of Thomas Edison. And then Edison got even richer off of the motion picture once his main competition disappeared under mysterious, unsolvable circumstances. That's hardly the only mysterious or openly evil case from Edison, by the way. He also paid kids for their pets to electrocute with Tesla's invention to try to ruin him. Kids would also sell him neighbors' pets.
- The Henry Ford letter in "Titans of Industry" is truly sickening in its implications.
H. has it, so I assume the war will begin as soon as he can take over. We'll let him have his fun (Lord knows, that kind of purge will be good for Europe)...- The worst part is, this is actually less evil than the actual man. In real life, he wasn’t just apathetically supportive and using Hitler, he was one of Hitler’s biggest fans.
- A couple of the videos Shaun makes for Ezio's targets:
- Francesco de' Pazzi's ends with a shot of Giovanni Auditore after he's been hanged. Nightmare Face at its best.
- Vieri's isn't much better, as it ends with him serving a rival and his family a meal "to die for." Talk about a sore loser!
- The one for Marco Barbarigo and Dante Moro tells us about the attempt on Dante's life, which is unsettling enough. But it's accompanied by a closeup of a bloody, half-dead Dante with a dagger just buried into the side of his head. However, Dante survived, became brain damaged and wound up becoming Marco's personal bodyguard. What was the reason Marco put a hit on Dante? He wanted his wife Carlotta for himself. And after the failed assassination attempt, he tricks Dante into annulling the marriage, and he takes Carlotta while making Dante stand guard.
- The ending of Carlo Grimaldi's database. Ignazio Contarini, one of the Council of Ten, had a daughter who wanted to run away to Milan with a servant boy she fell in love with and Carlo gave them safe passage via a boat. Except when they arrived at the boat, her father was there waiting for them — with Carlo by his side. Carlo was given high recommendations by Ignazio, his daughter was recaptured and the servant boy was killed and his body was dumped in the water. So much for true love.
- Silvio Barbarigo's mentions how his uncle apparently "died in bed" — and we see an image of two smiling courtesans approaching him with knives, while Silvio watches from the doorway. You can hear them giggle just before it ends.
- Rodrigo Borgia's heavily implies that he raped his illegitimate daughter Lucrezia and ends with him standing among the corpses of those he killed (with Giovanni, Frederico and Petruccio's corpses hanging from the ceiling), grinning like a madman as crows are heard croaking ominously in the distance.
- Minerva's warning about the First Disaster — especially after you've played Revelations.
- It really can't be overstated how freaky this was when Assassin's Creed 1 and 2 were the only games in the series. Assassin's Creed 1 only vaguely hinted that someone or something unbelievably more advanced than us created the Apple of Eden. Then after 2 did a fantastic job of really dialing up the creep factor of the whole situation and introducing a second Piece of Eden, we descend into the Vault, Ezio even comments on the strangeness of the architecture. We then meet Minerva for the very first time. Ezio's original thought is that she's a goddess, she merely laughs and corrects him saying they only came before. For the next 15 minutes, Minerva stares directly at the audience while telling us about the Truth of the world and the impending disaster. She's not speaking to Ezio, she's speaking past him to us or rather Desmond. Which is unbelievably scary because the idea that a character in the Animus simulation is somehow aware that he is watching has never come up before.
- The Poison Blade. Its victims begin feeling uneasy at first, but before long they start thrashing on the ground and begging for help. No wonder Altaïr called poison a coward's tool!
- Savonarola's execution in the Bonfire of the Vanities DLC. Sure, he kind of had it coming, considering what an asshole he was, but it is still really painful to watch and listen to. He is bound to a stake and a fire is started directly underneath his feet. Even Ezio thinks it is too gruesome a death for anyone to suffer and puts him out of his misery with a quick, albeit brutal, neck-stab. And for extra discomfort, if you fail to do this, you get to listen to Savonarola's frightened prayer turning into agonized screaming as he is cooked. Nice job there.
- In the final Assassin's Tomb, you have to free run to hit a series of switches across a large underground lagoon... a lagoon that happens to house a very large and irritable giant squid that takes a swing at Ezio in a cutscene. Sure, nothing actually happens if you fall in the water, but just try and stop yourself from cringing when you do.
- One of the easter eggs involves looking into murky water for at least forty seconds. Upon doing this, a massive octopus-like creature swims by, glowing orange eyes fixing on you for a second. Try it again, and it attacks you with a tentacle, just barely missing its mark.
- Although they're practically part of the background, there is something particularly chilling in the outfits of the Plague Doctors,
◊ who are, of course, Truth In Video Games. They remain intimidating until you come within earshot and start hearing them dispense their quaint Renaissance era medical advice."I have fresh-caught leeches today." - The "acquittal" of Giovanni, Federico and Petruccio Auditore... because it's one thing to see already-dead hanging corpses in a video game, it's a completely whole 'nother to witness the execution without a discretion shot, except for Petruccio, and if you watch Francesco de' Pazzi's video, it ends with a close-up of the slain Giovanni's face, the noose still around his neck.
- We see them again in Rodrigo Borgia's video, hanging from the ceiling while Rodrigo is standing among the corpses of all those he killed, a grin on his face as crows are croaking in the distance.
- Ezio slowly pushing his hidden blade into Checco Orsi's throat. It makes what Altaïr did to Majd Addin look friendly by comparison.
