Nightmare Fuel / Crash Bandicoot (1996)

Big Cortex is watching you.

• The music composed by Josh Mancell have some very, very creepy pieces, that lend certain levels a perfect Nightmare Fuel atmosphere.
• Though nowhere near as unsettling as its successors, the Game Over screen includes the game over logo itself falling down while accompanied with a loud crashing sound. When all seems quiet, a crashing sound even louder than the last plays after that and then shows Cortex gaining up on Crash from the side of the screen. It might induce this to those who are jumpy.
• The first boulder chase level might induce this, especially if you had no idea beforehand over what to do.
• Ripper Roo, out of all of Cortex's mutated animals you face, by implication of the fact that the crazy mutant kangaroo is in a Straitjacket, is considered far too crazy by Cortex of all people to be unrestrained.
• The dark ruins levels, "Temple Ruins" and "Jaws of Darkness"; specifically its music. It starts very little to ascend and tells you of the dangers inside; bats, underground snakes, rising fires, etc.
• The outdoor sunset ruins levels, Lost Ruins and Sunset Vista. Mothersbaugh and Mancell do it again with those howls and growls in the music. Even with the music aside, the bats from the dark ruins are there too but there are some jumping lizards that try to anticipate your movements to kill Crash.
• The misty bridge levels, "Road To Nowhere" and "The High Road", induce a lot of Nothing Is Scarier. You can't see anything, the bridges' logs are either breakable or slippery, allowing you to fall into the spiky chasm below and there's INVINCIBLE hogs running around and disappearing into the mist that can kill you with a single touch. Also, the crude DANGER sign at the start of Road To Nowhere.
• The Pinstripe factory levels. Their master is a mad gunman gangster.
  • His goons. In Cortex Power, there are thinner goons that suddenly appear a few feet from Crash and somehow emerge from... the ground. They have no feet, they float and shoot at you. Then there are his larger goons from Toxic Waste with their Evil Laugh that throw barrels at you with said toxic waste. Some barrels even bounce and you catch them in a very unexpected way.
  • The "Generator Room" is particularly unsettling. The level is extremely dark, with black smoke billowing up from below and Dr. Neo Cortex staring at you through various monitors scattered around the area (as seen in the page image), accompanied by this music. There's a reason why this level type was only used once in the whole game.
    • The song that accompanies the stage has a Pre-Console mix ^note (these are the versions of the song before they were compressed to fit inside the PS1) uploaded by Josh Mancell himself on his SoundCloud and the developers actually toned down its creepiness a lot for the song we've got in-game. We really mean a lot since... well, listen for yourself.
• Slippery Climb. Aside from its That One Level fame, it's a rainy dark castle with spikes that have mysterious prisoners trying to catch you with their claws and have glowing eyes. Whatever those prisoners are, they don't seem to feel anything when you "cut" their claws. The music does no good too.
  • In addition, Stormy Ascent is an even harder version of Slippery Climb; so much in fact it didn't even get used in the original game!
  • Just like with "Generator Room", it too has a Pre-Console mix uploaded on Josh Mancell's SoundCloud account. It definitely has a far darker vibe than the version that's in the game.
  • The Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy remake of the level portrays these prisoners as creepy old men. This raises some questions. Cortex and Brio are definitely known for taking animals from the wild and mutating them into servants, but why exactly does Cortex have humans imprisoned inside his castle?
• The Lab. With those yellow blobs that go straight into you and the Cortex scientists attempting to electrocute you, the place is ripe full of horrors for Crash and the music really fits with the mad scientist and final stage theme.
• The two Blackout Basement levels are seemingly taken straight out of a medieval dungeon (with loads of guillotines and stuff), on top of, well, being dark and eerily quiet. Not to mention that as Aku Aku is your source of light, getting hit means that you're left fumbling in the dark. And then there are the rats, with their beady red eyes glowing in the dark as they scurry your way.
• Dr. Neo Cortex's theme is the darkest one in the Naughty Dog trilogy, and possibly the entire series. Just listening to it shows you Cortex's intentions of pure evil and world domination as well as to get rid of that meddling Bandicoot once and for all.