Nightmare Fuel / Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth - Hacker's Memory

• The "Cheat Strategy" case starts off normal enough, with Hudie being tasked with looking into how a class of over 40 students could all be cheating despite excessive screening measures. It turns out one student gained access to a banned tool for accessing EDEN called "Mole", basically a pair of contacts and exceptionally small ear pieces. The reason behind the ban is that some error in the design allows Hackers to hijack people's bodies if they're using it. So this student distributes Mole across the class and they collectively bully a single student into controlling all 40 of them and doing their tests for them while they slack off inside EDEN. What they fail to consider is "What else can this student do to them while they're under his control?"
  • The bullied student snaps under the pressure and has the entire class riot, stab the teacher to death with knives, march up to the top of the school, and jump to their deaths one by one, twisting the knife even further by broadcasting this massacre to them in their hidden room within EDEN, gloating about how they'll no longer be able to leave as there's no longer a body to return to, much like the "Living Doll, Dead Person" case of the first Cyber Sleuth, and that once he deletes the room it'll take their minds with it. The only bright side to this is that that broadcast turned out to be faked by the Hudie team, basing it on information pulled from the bullied student's digital form's memory of this elaborate plan, and that the room and his control over the students were cut off so they were all actually just comatose in the classroom. The whole situation was just used to teach the class a lesson on not mistreating each other, but had Hudie not been the ones tasked with this case things would have played out exactly the same, just without it all being a simulation.
  • The presentation of these acts makes it all the worse. Just a static shot of some knocked over desks as the students describe losing control of themselves, followed by a smash to black and a splatter of blood. Then a series of screenshots. A staircase, a rooftop, a railing, and then... Nothing. The first student makes one blood splatter appear. The next ten make more. And the ones after that entirely cover the screen. All of this, punctuated by the bullied student's disturbingly serene speech as he makes them jump. The blood being bright pink in the international versions somehow makes it worse.
• Remember how Eaters in the last game typically just slapped their victims to "eat" them? Well, this time your first encounter has one slam down on its victim with audible crunching noises while he screams for life. Another victim visibly reaches out to get help, but their hand is dragged right back into the mass of the Eater, like the Eater refuses to let even a single drop of data get away.
  • Eaters in general are more terrifying in Hacker's Memory. They're vastly more aggressive, actively moving about and pursuing people rather than just floating around like they did in Cyber Sleuth. And as an addition, near the end of the game comes the terrifying revelation that they can speak.
• Arcadiamon makes its debut by mind-controlling Ryuji during his Heroic BSoD and then eating a multitude of Digimon and hackers' data to grow more powerful, and each Digivolution is more monstrous than the last. Even after Chitose and Keisuke break Ryuji from its control, Arcadiamon wastes no time in absorbing its former thrall, and by the time it reaches its Ultra form, it completely dwarfs the Rainbow Bridge.
  • Arcadiamon Ultimate makes its first appearance by destroying the Hudie cafe and killing almost everybody inside. The cutscene showing this doesn't even show Arcadiamon begin to Digivolve, it just lets you watch the side of the building explode.
• Rie, as usual. The first time you ever meet her in game, she laughs and giggles about Yuuko for a moment... Before asking, flat-out, if you're just wearing a Yuuko avatar. She knows that you're not Yuuko. But she lets it go anyway, because it's fun. It's very terrifying to realize just how much of Yuuko's life she's keeping tabs on.
  • Her actions during the Under Zero raid now become vastly more terrifying. Where in Cyber Sleuth the raid left no casualties among the main team, Hudie loses Chitose almost immediately, and Ryuji is thrown so out of it that he's as good as gone anyway. In addition, it's implied that a big chunk of the hackers who made it to Under Zero were hit by Eden Syndrome. And for Rie, it was nothing more than a movie to laugh at.
  • During an attempt to get some information on her, Rie just shows up and immediately turns into Crusadermon. In Cyber Sleuth, it was her last resort to stop you from halting her plans. Here, it's literally because she's got time to kill and you happen to be a mild roadbump.
• The dimensional collapse shows K, within minutes, begin using a Skullsatamon to carry out terrorist attacks on the public, destroying buildings and people just because they were there.
• Remember the ghost girl from the Scramble Pentagram case in the first game? This game reveals she's an actual ghost and she wants more people to know about how freeing death is compared to being alive, because Aiba and the Inoden team opened the gates to the afterlife. Even after she's defeated and seemingly talked out of leaving the door to the other world open when reminded of how people prayed for her spirit, she scares the player one last time by warning them about something behind them.
  Ghost Girl: Just die. Die and be with me. Death is happiness. Kyahahahaha!
• Just as you beat Arcadiamon for good, and everything seems like it'll go down fine... The Eater Bits decide that now is a good time to go rogue and eat Erika. The result? This horrifying blob covered in Eater eyes, with Erika's lifeless body just hanging from the bottom like a stray hair. It is unnerving to look at, and is named Eater Legion.
  • Then there's the Memory Leak attack Eater Legion has, which shows Erika's body squirming in the process.
• The depiction of the car crash that robbed Erika and Ryuji of their parents. It's full of pastel colours and cutesy music as Erika's mother brushes her hair, and they say goodbye to Ryuji on his way to school, and then the screen hard cuts to Erika falling through a storm of debris from the crash. And just to add to the effect, there's a constant background loop of Erika whispering for her brother to come help her. Oh, and just as one last thing, the animation implies she actually went to the Digital World... But the reason she never got her partner like the Cyber Sleuth gang did is because her Tanemon and Koromon were murdered by something, most likely Eaters.
  • The accident caused Erika's illness that is slowly killing her, and it's hammered in throughout the game that whatever's happening to her, Kamishiro's revolutionary treatment can never actually cure her and is, in fact, just delaying the inevitable.
• As grim and sobering the sight of the Eater-infected Digital World and Yggdrasil was, it somehow is not as bad as the sheer carnage of Eater EDEN. This is what happens when there is no one to hold back the Eaters' all-consuming hunger. The entirety of EDEN has been shattered beyond repair and is completely corrupted, down to the Pure Breed and Humanoid forms being the only enemies encountered in the area. It is easily the most apocalyptic-looking locale in the game and a testament to just how corroding the Eaters can be with no limits.

---