Nightmare Fuel / Code Vein

I hear the Spoilers Are Off has been seen lately!

Considering the premise of the game, how can there not be moments when you feel terrified or dread what's to come...?

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In general

• The state of the world. Crapsack World doesn't even begin to cover what kind of world the survivors have to live in. Some kind of unnatural phenomenon called the Thorns of Judgement, quite literally in fact as giant thorn-looking spires can be seen dotting the landscape, not only brought forth massive destruction in its wake, but also brought with it horrific monsters. The only way to survive was for mankind to effectively abandon their own humanity by becoming vampiric-like creatures called "Revenants." What few natural humans are left either live in fear of being killed in this hellhole or have to live with the fact that they are now nothing more than walking bloodbags for the Revenants underneath Silva's control, due to how the Revenants themselves need to survive.
• The process in which a human becomes a Revenant. To put it simply, your doctor or surgeon shoves a parasite, known as the Biological Organ Regenerative Parasite (or BOR Parasite for short) into your heart. After that, you won't have to eat or drink to survive. And if you, say, get your head cut off or lose all your blood, you can just revive not long afterwards. On paper, this sounds fantastic...but Revenants have to feed on blood to stay sane, otherwise the hunger will drive them mad and turn them into a Lost — a Revenant who's BOR Parasite has merged with them down to the genetic level. Revenants die if the BOR Parasite, the source of their immortality, is destroyed. The quickest way to do that is to destroy the heart. The Lost? They've overcome that limitation and can't be killed. At best, the only thing you can do is drive them off or trap them.
• As it turns out, the world of Code Vein is much, much worse than what we're led to believe. Humanity is stuck inside a small area and have to choose between trying to survive the Lost and harsh environments by themselves, or choose to undergo protection by becoming living blood bags for the Revenants. And believe it or not, they may or may not have had it easy. Why? Because ''Aragami'' wander outside the Gaol of the Mist. That's right, those horrific monsters that can only be killed by God Arcs are just right outside the city, waiting for the Mist to come down. The humans and Revenants trapped inside the city have a better chance with the Lost since the Aragami can only be killed by God Eaters. Conventional weaponry and possible abilities of the Revenants themselves won't even scratch these monstrosities, something any fan of God Eater is painfully aware of.
  • This is actually somewhat reduced by the game proper. It turns out the Gen 1 Revenants were actually made to fight the Aragami. They successfully managed to push them all out of the city and the surrounding area which is why we never run in to any Aragami that had gotten trapped by the Mist with everything else, they'd all been driven away already by the time the Mist locked everything inside. Given this, it's likely that Revenants can kill Aragami. If that means they are the first God Eaters or some other reason remains to be seen.
    • This is further corroborated by the the three DLC, which allow you to take on primordial forms of high-end Aragami. While they're extremely hard to kill, you can kill them. That said, said primordial Aragami are far lell mobile than their God Eater counterparts, and considering how Mobile God Eaters are/have to be just to hunt them, it's likely that current Revenants have no reasonable way to take on the hordes beyond the mist.
• Imagine what it must be like to be a human in the game's world. They're surrounded by quasi-vampires, any of whom could go insane if they don't get enough blood or lose their mask and are exposed to the miasma. Even if the revenants are nice and polite now, all it takes is a death or two and suddenly they're no longer the person that kept them due to the inevitable memory loss; a few more deaths and they become a Lost or decide that they don't have to treat their humans well any more. Their only options are either living in a shelter where they are treated like livestock and regularly drained for their blood, or going on the run and living in fear of the Lost and revenants who want to make them their personal blood bank. Even if they escape both of these threats, they're still locked inside a small world where there's basically no way to survive.
  • The conditions of these shelters vary wildly from nice and pleasant to cruel and barbaric. The human girl that the protagonist meets in the ruined city was treated so terribly that she had no choice but to run, and threatens to commit suicide when she thinks she could be taken back or captured by another gang of revenants.

In game

• By the time the protagonist wakes up, the world has become even worse. A red mist now surrounds the city, effectively trapping everyone inside with not just rogue Revenants who will do what it takes to survive, including slave labor, but also the Lost. The worst part? The mist showed up after Q.U.E.E.N was killed, as the survivors were celebrating their victory. To make matters worse, every passing day, mistles and blood springs (one is meant to help purify the blood mist while the other creates Blood Beads) are drying up, meaning resources have become preciously scarce.
• The fate of the protagonist, had Io not shown up. They were apparently just minutes away from turning into a Lost right when they just woke up. This also brings up a rather scary implication. The protagonist had breathed in Q.U.E.E.N's mist (which can turn a Revenant into a Lost almost immediately hence the use of gas masks) during Operation Queenslayer and had to be given a Mercy Kill before they could become one. Obviously, the death didn't stick and they come back right afterwards. If being given a clean death doesn't stop you from becoming a Lost, what's to say there haven't been other Revenants who tried to kill themselves, trying to go for some kind of "reset," only to find that they're still in the process of becoming a monster?
  • This may not actually be the case. The protagonist unintentionally became the Successor of the Blood when they drank the Queen's, and Successors cannot be permanently killed unless their relic (in this case the Queen's blood) is removed. Hopefully this makes the protagonist's survival an isolated incident and means other revenants can still avoid becoming Lost with a Mercy Kill.
  • Also, the protagonist didn't come back right afterwards. It took them years to reform and wake up, losing most of their memories in the process. If not for Cruz managing to train them in a dream and Io finding them in time, the protagonist would have wandered around Vein completely unaware of what's what and still Frenzied sooner than later with no idea what was happening to them whatsoever.
• Oliver as a newly-transformed Lost. While the transformation happens offscreen, he's clearly changed. He makes twisted, raspy noises that can't possibly belong to a human and has some kind of twisted growth popping out from his head. And that's to say nothing of what he transforms into during the second half of the boss fight.
• Near the end of the game, after the party catches up to Mido, the man decides to show the party the reason why the Revenants and Queen were made. How does he do it? By dissipating the Gaol of the Mist that has kept the Revenants and humans locked in the city for so long. Normally, it'd be cause for celebration, and a few Revenants even decide to leave the city...only to be quickly slaughtered by a monster they've never seen before. The monster in question? Dyaus Pita.
• During Miguel's vestige after defeating the Gilded Hunter, you witness Juzo Mido's depravity first hand as he experiments on hapless patients like they are dolls that he can play with. The scariest part of this vestige however? When the final door materializes, if you look behind you at the sound of someone gasping, you will see Mido's gigantic yellow eye staring at you for a Jump Scare that just comes out of nowhere.
  • Not just at the end. At the very start of the memory, look up.
• Juzo Mido himself. At first he sounds like a cliche Mad Scientist that occasionally appears ominously in early Vestiges, though his involvement with Project Q.U.E.E.N. doesn't leave good vibes. Then around the Successor of the Claw, the man suddenly starts appearing twice the size he was before in what looks like evil overlord armor, turning any and everyone he can get his hands on into Lost and horrible experiments, and personally fucking over even his most trusted compatriots on a dime, sometimes For Science!, and other times For the Evulz. He not only screws over Jack and Eva, who he's supposed to be cooperating with, but outright turns Eva into a frenzied Successor because he felt like trying to speed up getting to Gregorio Silva faster. And his grand schemes and ambition? To further Revenant evolution by releasing the Gaol of the Mist so that Revenants can consume the rest of the world - and especially the Aragami.
  • Emily Su sacrificed herself to becoming a Successor at Mido's hands as her way of protecting Yakumo and her fellow orphans - and he went and experimented on the others anyway after turning her, including the children, with the implication being he transformed them into his greatest minions. Some of which he casually disposes of anyway. We also find out that he horribly experimented on Io's fellow Attendants, and likely killed a fair amount of them personally just to see how they tick. Out of any potential Revenant antagonism and evils of mankind, Mido is downright far and away the most evil bastard in the franchise.
• While some may consider the larger Lost to be scary, one must wonder about those spiky balls. On a closer examination, they are actually covered in gasmasks, and there might be faces underneath them.