Nightmare Fuel / Dishonored 2

• Some of Emily's powers are... disquieting, to say the least. One might say that her skillset is a dark take to her role as a ruler:
  • Mesmerize involves her summoning a Void spirit to enthrall her targets — to the point they won't notice or even remember you walking by them. One mook murmurs: "I feel so empty right now", in a monotone stupor, which begs the question; what exactly do they see and what is it doing to their minds?
  • Domino allows Emily to link the fates of several of her targets in a rather terrifying example of predestination. So whatever happens to one of them happens to all of them. Such as being stabbed in the mouth, as shown in the E3 2016 trailer. This can happen without any of the other targets realising anything is wrong.
  • Shadow Walk turns Emily into an intangible smoke monster. It's not exactly clear what it looks like, but what we do know is that it seems to stalk on all fours at great speed, can squeeze through tight spaces, and is strong enough to dangle victims from their ankles and impale them with its hands. Or for that matter, tear their heads right off. Then there's the fact that anyone who does spot it running toward them invariably react with utter terror. Those who have their pockets picked by the phantom complain of a chill down their spine from the contact.
  • Bloodfly Swarm, an upgrade to Shadow Kill, turns the people she kills into bloodflies. And this is one of her passive powers.
• The 2016 E3 Gameplay Trailer finally gives a third-person look of how pant-shittingly terrifying going up against Corvo can be. In short, the Lord Protector is facing off against three guards with swords drawn, less than a foot away from him. Before we can blink, Corvo dispatches them all simultaneously. Sure, killing three guards at once quickly became old hat in the first game. But actually seeing it, and so quickly that it's over before the viewer can register what just happened? Brr...
• Remember Delilah? The Big Bad of the Daud DLC from the first game? She has managed to escape her And I Must Scream fate as prisoner of the Void, and even now she still has her eyes on the throne, going far as to rename herself "Delilah Kaldwin" and attempt more direct methods in getting rid of Emily. Be afraid. Be very afraid.
  • She also pulls Corvo's sword out of her side, looking none the worse for wear, and is even able to remove Corvo's Outsider's Mark. She's not only come back from the Void, she's more powerful than ever.
• Dishonored 2 brings back the horrific nonlethal solutions. For Kirin Jindosh, he can be hooked up to his own invention to destroy his mental capacities. At first, it seems he merely lost his memories, but the way he talks after the act implies that there is much more. Further along the road thanks to mentions and a newspaper article, it becomes clear that it actually turned him into an Empty Shell who can't even navigate rooms on his own and barely recalls his own name.
  • Luca Abele's can be this along with some Paranoia Fuel. Imagine that you're minding your own business, when suddenly someone knocks you out from behind. You then wake up in your chambers, with your body double accusing you of being him and gone insane from the act. You scream that you're the real one, but nobody believes you, seeing you as a lunatic that should be sent to a mental institution.
• Meeting the Crown Killer. While investigating the Addermire Institution, you are led to believe that Doctor Hypatia's assistant Vasco was the Crown Killer. But when you finally meet Vasco, you find him badly wounded and bandaged. Vasco reveals that Hypatia is the real Crown Killer because of a Psycho Serum. Suddenly, the previously mild-mannered doctor bursts through the wall and grabs Vasco while gloating about how she is going to consume his flesh. The only reason you survive this encounter is because Hypatia cannot see you under the debris from the wall.
  • There's also an audiograph to be found that indicates that the Crown Killer wants to do things to Vasco's (hopefully) corpse. Graphically sexual things. With his bones.
• The clockwork soldiers are as disturbing as they can be lethal. Their appearance, complete with tapering skull-like heads, search-lights, and massive blades for arms, is unsettling enough. You will also be notified of when one is around by its rhythmic, mechanical footsteps and their constantly repeated objective messages, which are spoken in Jindosh's voice.
• Luca's Palace is disturbing in a non-supernatural way. Karnaca is starving and succumbing to bloodfly infestations, and the nobles here are partying so hard that there have already been several casualties from that night's party. Servants tortured to death in party games, aristocrats slumped over in their chairs dead from alcohol poisoning, women lured into rooms and knifed in the back by their rivals. Everyone is too busy partying to do something morbid like deal with the bodies, so they eat and drink and gamble just feet away from corpses. The worst part? This is what it looks like on a low chaos run.
• The Grand Conservatory gives you a bit of an understanding about why pre-enlightenment era society (parts of which Dunwall's culture was based upon) was terrified of witches. For people who didn't play the DLC for the previous game, this is their first introduction to said witches. First there's the lore, which mentions that they can control you through nothing more than your discarded hair and nail clippings, that they seduce and kill countless victims for potion and spell ingredients, and they can curse people without them being any the wiser until they die. And in combat, they display all sorts of Body Horror as their bodies reconfigure themselves to handle spells without the Outsider's Mark (such as all their blood and veins turning deep green as their eyes bulge out of their sockets, or turning bright red and appearing to boil, ink leaking out of every orifice as the color drains from them, and so on).
  • Let's not forget the Oraculum that Breanna and Jindosh created to tap into the Oracular Order's predictions and influence them. It uses bones from six of the Order's members to touch the minds of living Oracles. If you turn it on, you can hear prophecies of the future; one of them is the failure of the Overseer's march against Delilah.
• A Crack in the Slab. The mansion trapped in a nested time crunch that, according to the Outsider, has partly merged it with the Void. It's purely unnerving and creepy, and that is before we see the ritual that brought Delilah back from the Void.
  • The ritual performed three years ago was so fundamentally wrong that Emily/Corvo's Void powers, already considered by most of the setting to be unholy spells that mock all that is sane and good, cease to function at all. Whatever Delilah's inner circle did to make it happen was worse than anything the Outsider would have done.
  • There are whisperings throughout the halls, the rooms are filled with Hounds and Bloodflies, and the backing track is a disquieting combination of a ticking clock and a beating heart. This comes to a head if you head into the ritual room, where you see Delilah get resurrected and then deposit her soul into a deeply creepy Soul Jar. And then, despite being three years into the past, she sees you and points directly at you, following your movements.
    • Additionally, trying to peek into the room while in the ruined mansion shows nothing but pitch black.
  • At the end of the ritual,when you're leaving the manor, suddenly the world turns vertical and you fall down the corridor into the Void. You fall towards an island, but before you end up falling past it, The Outsider grabs you, one-handed and tosses you on to solid ground.
• The Outsider's appearances and more active role in the game. First off, remember the first game and the time you woke up, stepped outside, and found yourself in the Void? This time, there's more, even an occasion where Delilah visits to show she's aspiring to usurp the Outsider and become a new god. Any time you sleep between missions, you can't be sure what or who you'll wake up to. And second, the mere fact that the Outsider is actively helping you against Delilah and is basically giving you his blessing to take her down is pretty neat, but it’s also a sign that Delilah's threat has gone past the Outsider's Godzilla Threshold. Which, considering the Outsider's nature, is pretty fucking high. In the last game, the Outsider gave both Corvo and Daud his mark and talked to them once in a while, but he never directly helped them apart from that and he was basically an impartial neutral spectator watching the story unfold for his own reasons and amusement. It also helps that the main antagonists of the last game, The Lord Regent and Admiral Havelock, weren’t as dangerous or ambitious as Delilah, so the stakes weren’t as high. However, in this game, The Outsider actually decides to help you and takes an active role in helping you stop Delilah, because he knows that he made a big mistake in giving her his mark and that his “game” has gone too far. If an eldritch entity who operates on Blue-and-Orange Morality like The Outsider is willing to break his neutrality stance to actively involve himself in the plot, then that alone should tell you how high the stakes are in this story and how dangerous Delilah is. Because it’s not just the Empire Of The Isles that’s at stake like in the first game. This time, it’s the entire world that’s at stake and The Outsider knows it.
  The Outsider: Delilah’s playing the long game. She took all the abuse the world could deal out, and now she has a crown. But I'll let you in on a secret; she's got her eyes set on a much greater prize.
• The start of the final mission. You return to Dunwall to find the streets in ruins and almost abandoned. The place is littered with corpses: both of Overseers who just failed to overthrow Delilah and countless civilians and watchmen hanging on the makeshift gallows. The tram system is in flames. When the propaganda speaker comes on, you just hear a witch sing a creepy lullaby. It's very unsettling and tells you exactly what Delilah's rule involves.
  • And further into the level, as you approach Dunwall Tower, you can go into a little greenhouse where the witches are preparing ingredients for Delilah's paints. They chant as they do so, describing exactly what ingredients they're taking. The nicer ones are animal entrails and toxic venom. Then they get creative.
    • It gets worse: if you start taking out the chanting witches, their chant will change to correctly represent the number of hands still working on the mixture. Somehow, they know you're there and what you're doing, but don't do anything unless they detect you through sight or sound. Why?
  • And then you enter the building proper. Bodies. Everywhere. It's unbelievably gruesome. The High Overseer has been crucified on the stairs in the main lobby, surrounded by the corpses of other overseers hung from the chandeliers. The seats of the dining hall table are occupied by the corpses of nobles, clearly poisoned over dinner, alongside witches mocking noble etiquette as they continue to eat. This entire section is also a Nostalgia Level, which makes the all-encompassing Scenery Gorn especially poignant for anyone who remembers exploring Dunwall Tower's interior during the first game.
• Nest Keepers make Weepers look like they had it easy. Being repeatedly stung by bloodflies, they shamble around protecting bloodfly nests, attacking anyone who gets close and "disturbs" the wasps. They're constantly muttering to the bugs and sometimes emit a strange bubbling sound (which is the bloodfly larvae moving around in their bodies). Basically a human version of what certain wasps do to spiders and caterpillars.
• The Howlers aren't called Howlers for no reason; when sneaking around their encampments, you will occasionally be treated to them screaming up at the sky like crazed animals. The fact that the voices are clearly human while also sounding animalistic is very disturbing.
  • Although the Howlers viewed themselves as a group who wanted to protect the working folks, they are still a gang who spent their time murdering and stealing in Karnaca. You can find a letter from them to an NPC telling the tale of a previous man who decided he'd refuse to pay the Howlers. Said man was invited to go fishing and had a wonderful time, catching lots of fish. He was informed upon returning that the bait they'd used was chopped-up pieces of his mother. At least Slackjaw was occasionally merciful.
• High Chaos playthroughs give Emily and Corvo harsher, more cynical lines of dialogue. It's much more notable with Emily — the more Chaos you have, the more nightmarishly evil and petty she becomes, while Corvo is more restrained, yet callous.
  Emily: Perhaps we need an eighth Stricture. Defy your empress and be burned alive.
• Let's talk about Bloodflies themselves. They're parasitic wasp-mosquito... things that have all the worst qualities of both, and then some. Like wasps, they make horrible buzzing sounds and build giant nests, sting, are extremely aggressive, and attack in swarms. And like mosquitos, they suck your blood and transmit an illness. They're also the size of small birds, glow a hellish red, and will infest corpses in order to make more of themselves. The game actively encourages you to Kill It with Fire. The rats in Dishonored were bad enough, but they were imported from the Pandyssian Continent with the plague; the bloodflies are native to Serkonos.
  • In addition, it is heavily implied (mainly by the Nest Keepers' immunity to them) that their venom is what gives the sting to stinging bolts; guards affected by these say that they burn, and their explicit in-game effect is that the stinging bolts blind and cause forgetfulness. These things are essentially Dishonored having an answer to tarantula hawk wasps.
  • Bloodfly nests themselves are this trope. Bloodflies nest in dead bodies, and their nests consist of grey patches of... stuff... that spreads over the floors and walls next to the nest like some kind of rash or infection. The matter itself looks like twisted, burned flesh. The actual nest consists of large glowing, blood-red objects that almost resemble honeycomb. The objects are very flammable, but if you slash them with your sword or shoot them, they come apart in a flood of what looks like blood.
  • And knowing all this, seeing how many places are infested with bloodflies is horrifying. Every level has at least one infested building or area that is blocked off, poorly, right next to areas where people are going about their normal lives. It's like everyone is living next to the beginnings of a Zombie Apocalypse, and some of them aren't even aware of it. One lore entry specifically says that what Corvo/Emily encounters of them is the worst their infestation has been in years, along with a mention that Duke Abele's greedy exploitation of Karnaca's wealth included taking funding away from crews who used smoke-flashing to disrupt the bloodflies, but now anyone desperate enough to try and locate the valuable blood amber substance (what seems to be hardened crust on the inside of a nest) has to do so by hand.
  • Speaking of blood amber, practically everything - the name, how it looks, the fact that it's found in the nests of bloodflies, which are basically mosquitoes on steroids - heavily implies if not outright confirms that the main ingredient of blood amber is human blood. And what do the people of Karnaca use blood amber for? They make things like jewelry and decorative statuettes out of it. Lack of Empathy doesn't even begin to describe it.
  • And the worst part about the bloodflies is that there's an explanation for why they haven't been exterminated into extinction that actually makes sense: bloodflies metamorphose several times throughout their life cycle, and one of their forms is a pollinator that is vital to Serkonan agriculture. If the bloodflies were exterminated, Serkonos would experience massive crop failures that would lead to wide-spread famine.
• In various locations around the game (most notably at the Royal Conservatory), you can find paintings that aren't collectible, and are essentially just set dressing or concept art inserted into the game. However, there's an entire series of paintings called Legends of Serkonos, each depicting a myth of the island. These include The Knocker at the Window, a ghostly being in a long, flowing dress; The King of Moths, an ethereal being with moth-like wings; The Great Tree People, giant beings that live among the massive trees on Serkonos; and The Beast from the Sea. There's no in-game explanation for any of these, but considering how much magic is present in the world of Dishonored, any one of these (if not all of them) could be true.
• At the Recuperation chamber in Addermire Institute, near where you find Hypatia's assistant Vasco, an audiograph machine sits with a recording made by Grim Alex, the alter ego of Hypatia where the Crown Killer describes just what they plan to do to the corpse of their friend when they finally get around to killing him. It's... disturbing, to say the least.
• The droning sound that happens when heralding a storm of silver dust to roll through the Dust District during the mission of the same name.
• When you kill/knock out the Howlers' leader Paolo for the second time during the Dust District mission, Corvo/Emily picks up the black magic charm that gave the gangster his arcane ability to survive assassination at least once a day: a rotted, severed hand. But that's not the worst part. Mere moments after picking it up, the hand comes to life, crawling around and up the player character's arm like a demented spider before they rip it away and stomp it on the ground. Behold, the Outsider-marked hand of Vera Moray, aka Granny Rags from Dishonored 1.
• In the second mission, you can find an outpost of the Abbey of the Everyman, which has strung-up corpses of accused heretics hanging all around it. In front of the outpost is a pair of overseers sermonizing to the people, with one of them loudly and proudly explaining how a young girl asked questions to him about the Outsider and his shrines, at which point the Overseer had her interrogated and executed.