Despite the weird appearance of the game, the warning that Baldi's Basics is indeed a horror game before the title screen is there for a perfectly good reason.
All spoilers will be unmarked, per wiki policy. You Have Been Warned.
The Original Game:
- Getting a question wrong causes the cheery music to creepily cut off as Baldi's once benevolent look slowly turns into an angry Death Glare. It's incredibly jarring.
- Even when Baldi is out of sight and you can't hear his ruler slapping anymore, you're struck with paranoia that he will suddenly pop in from behind a corner or the ruler sound will slowly Fade In again much faster than last time it was heard. This especially occurs when you're trying to get the secret ending.
- Playtime's design. She's a Base-Breaking Character at best, but her distorted voice, stiff movements and inability to look like she's walking make her less than likely to be a playmate. Also, HER EYES... or lack of them. It's hard to tell because they were scribbled on, but the cruddy scribbles can be even more impossible to look at.
- "Congratulations! You found all seven notebooks! Now all you need to do is GET OUT WHILE YOU STILL CAN!!!! Ha ha haaaa..."
- ...Which is then proceeded by the whole map turning red and a loud, droning noise plays constantly as you clamor for the exit.
- The horrible noise that Arts & Crafters makes when it attacks you. It starts off as an otherworldly "VWOOSH" sound before devolving into ear-piercing static.
(Caution: Loud) - 1st Prize can be useful, but his dialogue can be interpreted as very rapey. At the very least, he has a very creepy fixation with the player, wanting to constantly hug them, be their friend, even asks the player to marry him. His rare idle quote "I have been programmed to desire your image" hints at this also. It doesn't help that the text to speech program used to provide this creepy tone, Dr. Sbaitso, had also been previously used for SCP-079.
- While Gotta Sweep can be useful depending on the circumstances, hearing him randomly shout out his lines (while having no idea who its from) for the first time might startle you. But if that's not bad enough, then there's a good chance that he'll OUT OF NOWHERE sweep you right along with Baldi (chances are this might cause you to lose). Also the fact that he's nothing but a broom, no cartoon face, no nothing. Another thing to add is that when you walk up to him while he's standing still in the end of a hallway, there's a good chance that if you touch him, he'll immediately sweep you and won't let go until he goes back to his closet.
- The secret ending to the game, gotten when you intentionally fail all 21 questions and somehow manage to escape. Imagine this: You're in second grade, and you get a note after school to go to your teacher's office to recieve some tips. You walk down the hall, knowing he'll be mad at you. But when you see Baldi in the office, he's not at his desk. He's lying on the floor, distorted and stretched. In his place, you instead see a classmate of yours with his arms outstretched and a dead-eyed stare. His name is Null. He refers to life as a "game", tells you not to tell anyone about it, and then he tells you to destroy the game.Null: Oh jeepers, you found me. Good job, I'm glad you found me, because I have something kind of important to say. *beep* It's about th-the game... Don't, *beep* Uh, Eh. Don't *beep* Don't, just, *laughter* this is... This is probably looking pretty ridiculous. *beep* Don't tell anyone about this game. You wanna... don't - don't bring attention to yourself. Destroy it, destroy the game. Destroy the game. Before it's too late. *beep* What i'm saying is... is get out of this, while you still can- *beep* Just, don't... don't know that you probably know I'm not saying that I'm trapped inside the game, no that would be ridiculous. No I'm... *beep* I can't... this is... I'm not... the game was... kind of... *beep* I got really corrupted. Yeah, I... *beep* I don't know what to say. Just... Just trust me. We gonna... *beep* *This isn't... This seems... I me-I mean it seems...ohh. *beep* They'd know I... They intentionally... that's... I guess... I can't- They can't tell you, and some... stuff is classified. I can't say it. *beep* I wish I could say more. I can't talk normally. I-it's corrupted. There's... *beep*.. Yeah... *beep* Just... close the program. Destroy it. Never come back. *long beep*
- When he's mad Baldi's face just becomes pressed down and distorted rather than a look of anger. It's very weird once you get a closer look at it.
- The principal is a Punch-Clock Villain who can occasionally be a Helpful Mook, but his warped appearance and monotone voice are still quite unnerving.
The Field Trip Demo:
- Just the entire concept alone is this, compared to the school, where it was at least bright and it was often easy to see where you were going. Here, its often difficult to find sticks in the darkness and dense trees, which can induce panic, especially if the fire is low.
- It's a Bully's entire gimmick in the demo is Paranoia Fuel. He is disguised as a tree, and slowly moves and follows you around, and with the exception of when he takes your sticks, he is completely silent while doing so. Plus, due to how dark it is, you're never truly sure if a tree just moved a little, or if it was always there.
- Arts and Crafters is equally disturbing, despite the fact that you need to actively go out of your way to find them. Doubly so if you didn't listen to the NO signs around the edges of the forest, up until VWHOOOSH.
- A minor one, but when you walk past a NO sign the sky just goes completely black for some reason. This plus Arts and Crafters coming for you after this happens is creepy to say the least.
Baldi's Basics Birthday Bash:
- When you die, there's a chance that the item on the screen will suddenly be zoomed in on, become red, and start emitting loud static noises before the game crashes.
- After you manage to beat the game, all the characters surprise you, and Baldi tells you to blow out the candle on the giant cake. Once you blow it out, the whole school suddenly goes dark and all the characters start floating and become unresponsive. It's both confusing and unnerving once you see it, but it's only the beginning.
- You can still move your character and if you move to the far right or left you'll find two openings to dimly lit hallways. In one of which you'll find this thing. It's rather unnerving, to say the last.
- As you walk down the hallways, you can be caught off guard by the sudden sound of Baldi rapidly smacking his ruler.
- The whole place has just gone insane. With desks placed in places that aren't placed conventionally, lockers all over the place, and can even be stretched out and compressed between desks and chairs in rooms.
- There is a black part of the wall in one hallway with colored text on it. If you read the red text only, it reads "YOU WILL NEVER LEAVE".
- When you walk into a classroom you are quickly greeted with the sight of colored Baldies with glitched text floating near them. They don't kill you though, all they do is glide around and look at you.
- When you do a You Can Think Pad in this ending, you hear Baldi repeating something over and over again. It's hard to make out what he's saying but he is saying "One" both forwards and in reverse. If the pad gets a wrong answer, Baldi's comment of "You need to collect two notebooks before you can use these doors" that is spoken when the player has less than two notebooks when interacting with the yellow doors plays in a distorted manner, with a heavily distorted "99 seconds", spoken by Principal of the Thing as the longest possible detention he can give, playing in the background of that.
- The "normal" ending to the Birthday Bash: One of the glitched rooms leads to a room called the "Ballon room". In which the player has to enter the correct count of colored Baldies. After you do that, a wall opens leading to a room with chairs in a circle and a chalkboard saying "Wow, you are very smart!" after which you start hearing static blaring and beeping then you see a red glitched cluster of Baldi's angry facecome out of the wall, multiplying as the static grows louder, the cluster aggresively following you around. At random, some of the walls will show a distorted picture of Baldi. Finally, after some time, a huge number of these "balloons" pour out of nowhere and surround you, promptly being met with this image (in which is an edited version of the "Thank you" image from the Kickstarter page of the game) right after that.
First Public Demo/Kickstarter-Exclusive Demo:
- As of the Kickstarter-Exclusive demo, attempts to open an illegitimately-acquired version of the game will greet players with this unsettling image of a blue-shirted Baldi standing in a dark classroom with an expression of horror on his face while a rather eerie tune plays.Something isn't adding up!
- One of the random events is Baldi slapping his ruler too hard and causing it to break, but he'll still come after you. If trying to avoid him with the ruler was nerve-wracking enough, try avoiding him without being able to tell where he is at all. The only fortunate thing about him breaking his ruler is that he actually needs the full ruler in order to end your game, and therefore he cannot end it as long as the ruler is broken.
- The Library. In the library, there is no sound whatsoever, and the layout of it can be so labyrinthine that it's easy to get lost in it looking for the way out while in stone-dead silence. Furthermore, the library also mutes Baldi's ruler, so you won't be able to know for sure if Baldi heard you go into the library and followed you in there until you end up running straight into him. (Thankfully the usual jump-scare noise is muted as well.)
- In the Public Demo only, every character except for Baldi disappears once three of the exits have been activated, and he slowly but surely speeds up as he continues the chase after you, until he's way faster than you. This is especially nerve-wracking due to being so close to beating the demo, and if he catches you, you'll have to start from the beginning.
- 1.2 gives us Mrs. Pomp, a Humanoid Abomination who hops at the player's face like a maniac without a warning to politely tell them to come to their class within a specific time limit. If you fail to arrive in time to her class, and then try to leave the room, she suddenly appears by the door with an absolutely furious expression and shouts at the top of her lungs whilst jumping around the room in a fit of rage. You can't leave the room until she calms down, and you'd best pray that Baldi is far away from you during her tantrum.Mrs. Pomp: WHHHYYY WEREN'T YOU AT MY CLAAAAASSSSS?!
- What makes her especially nerve-wracking is that, if the timer runs out, you'd expect something bad to happen while you're wandering the school halls... except nothing actually happens. If you have the gall to come to her classroom late and brace for the worst, once again no one's there but you... save for the sound of a stomping heel rapidly approaching the door behind you, but not actually entering. At this point, you've likely gotten over your paranoia and felt confident that there's no consequence to disobeying Mrs. Pomp, so you open the door on the way out... and find yourself face-to-face with a pissed-off teacher waiting at the other side.
- Even worse is that if you go into any other classroom besides hers, she'll straight up come for you and bring you to her class!
- Then there's Beans, a kid who likes to spit wads of gum at you. He doesn't kill you, and is more of an annoyance who can slow you down greatly if he hits you with gum (and he can even help you if he gums up Baldi); but if you don't know that yet, then he's likely to give you a pants-shittingly scary first impression by virtue of being a Gonky monstrosity with rapid, twitching movements right out of Silent Hill, especially if he's sprinting at you.
Plus
- The deformed head that could be found during the Gainax Ending in Birthday Bash turns out to belong to a character called "The Test". Should you run across them in a hallway, their head will slowly begin to rise off their body and fly at you while a droning noise begins to play. If you don't get out of their line of sight fast enough, all lights in the school will go out, forcing you to have to play in almost complete darkness. This arguably turns the game into even more of a Survival Horror game than it even was before, as now there is almost no telling where anybody, especially Baldi, is.
- What further enhances its horror factor is what happens when other characters are nearby when you are staring at him. When the Test is droning and gradually moving, as long as you stare at it, all other characters (even Baldi) stop moving. The Test outright freezing other characters in place may be a testament to how fearsome it really is.
Classic Remastered
- The loading screen easter egg. It can catch unexpecting players off guard since it's a Jump Scare.
- Party Mode's normal ending, whilst a bit different to the original, is still quite unnerving. Once you access the relevant classroom, you see one of the red Baldloons show up, and when it makes contact with a wall, said wall outright vanishes with a glitchy sound. Right before things finally end, the Baldloons can be seen flying everywhere, glitching out all of the schoolhouse. It's stopped once the classic A Winner Is You screen appears, though that's salvaged with candle flames swarming the screen, as well as the scared Baldi you likely saw when exploring outside the boundaries, before the mode reaches its conclusion.
- An alternate ending in Party Modenote has you find Null again, and instead of the jokey, meandering deadpan tone he had in the previous versions, he's screaming and yelling at the player, now begging them to turn off the game.Null: Look what you've done. LOOK WH- [glitching] YOU'VE DONE! I told you! I TOLD YOU TO S- [glitching] To stop playing this game AND NOW LOOK! [unintelligible screaming] [glitches] [more unintelligible screaming] -IT'S ALL COMING DOWN!!! [glitches] [coughing] WOAAAAAH!!! YOU GOTTA GET OUT- [glitches] GOTTA JUST NEVER TOUCH THIS GAME AGAIN!!! NOOOOOO!!! [glitches, and then a Drone of Dread]
- The Brutal Bonus Level preys on the concept of Nothing Is Scarier, with Null pursuing the player in the same manner as Baldi, but without making a sound. In addition, all the questions are solved for you, instead showing messages from him used to try and make the player quit. He can even break through windows to cut off the player's movements, which makes him a frightening foe when he gets serious.
- Getting caught by him isn't any better. While it doesn't cause a sudden buzzing, you're forced to look right at him as the textures of the area around you start to glitch out and tear apart at the seams, meaning Null is literally tearing the world around you apart. The sound that plays after he catches you just makes it much more frightening to see. Oh, and he crashes the game once he's done with you, just for good measure.
- Along the way, he'll occasionally say different taunts as he scours the schoolhouse to catch you, such as saying that there's nowhere you could hide to mocking you if you don't have any items and are out of stamina. However, there's the odd chance his voice will have an echo to it as he gives the player a chance to quit the game before he gets them.
- Once three exits have been triggered, he'll suddenly run away from your position, which even further invokes Nothing Is Scarier, considering, at this point, there's no guarantee he won't attack you out of nowhere.note However, that's when he suddenly beats you to the final exit and blocks you off from your only way out! At this point, Null gives one last desperate speech, demanding that you obey him and close and delete the game like he has asked you to do.
- Then there's the surprise boss fight against him. While it can generally count as a Moment of Awesome, there might be times during the last few phases where he could be literally mere centimeters away from you. It's a wonder that it's possible to shake him off at all.
- And then after he's finally beaten, he's left unable to fight any further, feeling infuriated at the player and trying to tell them that Baldi's Basics is no game (at least, in his eyes) and scolds them for believing otherwise. As he does this, however, he suddenly starts shaking and glitching out, screaming in pain and letting out a Big "NO!" before he's rendered Ret-Gone from the game permanently (even if you reset the game's data). Whatever you may think of him, it's not hard to see how dark that is, and how painful it might be for NULL to experience.
- And if you try to quit NULL Style before you've defeated Null for good? The moment you try, he'll immediately catch the player and subject them to the Sensory Abuse before closing the game on them.
- Oh, and when you get that rare "crash" screen when losing to Baldi after beating Null? It suddenly glitches out and reveals more about Null, his last sighting in our world being by a lake. Then, we see his face and arms for the first time as they distort into nothing and he screams as he's subjected to being trapped in Baldi's Basics. And this screen only appears a single time after Null's downfall, making the experience more unsettling.
- The music doesn't help at all.
- Classic Remastered tweaks Baldi's "Get out while you still can!" to reveal it isn't spoken by Baldi at all. Null actually disrupts Baldi's speech to add this quote, showing that his influence is felt even earlier than before. In fact, once Null is defeated and erased, what Baldi actually says is revealed: "Find a way out before I catch you!".
- The way the building turns red in this version has been redone. An energetic remix of the music playing when the player starts a run of the game starts playing when you get the seventh notebook. Then once the first exit is reached, the building gradually turns red the longer the player takes to escape, rather than instantly turning red, the walls start showing faint shades of red, which eventually solidify into a full red. And instead of a loud, droning noise playing, the music gradually slows down to a crawl as this takes place. The more exits the player hits, the slower the music becomes and the more red the building turns, with the characters even appearing red in the lighting, and a different type of droning noise eventually does start playing.
- One of the random events is morphed into a fun setting you can unlock, Lights Out. Now you'll be having to move around in the dark to find the notebooks, with some light shining out in front of you, and hope you don't bump into any surprises.
