Nightmare Fuel / Doom³

Being a Darker and Edgier reboot of one of the darkest first-person shooters out there, Doom³ has a whole lot of creepiness for players as they venture through a derelict Martian space station being overrun by zombies, demons, and other monstrosities as Hell literally breaks loose.

Unmarked story and character spoilers ahead!

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Original game

• Dr. Malcolm Betruger, the Big Bad of the game. When you see him the first time, you immediately get this feeling that there is something... odd with him, just by seeing his inhumanly pale skin, the permanent sneer on his lips, and his glassy and fish-like eyes that yet seems to burn with fierce hatred toward everything and everyone around him. His raspy and aging voice filled with venomous contempt only reinforces that feeling, and generally, you get this foreboding sense that he'll be behind much of the troubles you'll face. At first, you may think he'll be just the generic Mad Scientist doing unethical experiments For Science!, but no. Turns out he's even worse than that: he's a Satanist who has made a Deal with the Devil, and with that deal he has become a near omnipotently Humanoid Abomination who always knows where you are or what you're doing, watching you like a falcon watching a mouse from the sky, and that's what you feel like when he sends waves of demons at you while he taunts and laughs at you seemingly from the walls. Also, it's never made clear if it's Betruger the mortal human being himself or if it's the Devil himself possessing Betruger that's the acting force since the game strongly hints at both ways, and that reinforce the nightmare fuel factor around him... except that The Lost Mission implies that Betruger made a deal with the Hell: he was promised power in exchange for letting demons take over the world. So, it's the former.
• Your first teleportation. You get to see some sort of a demonic tornado, and you are apparently traveling down that tornado as you can see some sort of black hole in front of you, while bloodcurdling screams are accompanying you.
  • Depending on your interpretation and a few of the game's sights, the "tornado" can look like the inside of a gigantic vein.
• The loading screen always shows the information of what section of the UAC Mars Base you're on. Hell, on the other hand, simply shows a close-up of a demonic skull◊.
• After Hell invades, go to the bathroom in the first part of the game and look in the mirror. A Jump Scare follows: your face momentarily turns withered demonic and the camera zooms in on it while the entire scene gets bathed in blood-red light and flames sprout from the background. Then an Imp shows up.
  • The Xbox version moved this one to Delta Labs 3, after you think the game is done pulling shit like that. Not a pleasant surprise for people who think they've finally gotten a handle on the game.
• Zombies come in various types. Some of them are burning. Some other zombies have no jaws. Others, torn up stomachs. Some, no faces. And some zombies have no heads. Yet all of them are equally tenacious in their pursuit of you. This also implies that humans don't even need to be alive in order to be possessed.
  • The speed of zombies also varies. Some of them, like fat zombies, simply shamble towards you to kill you with whatever they are holding in hand or even with their own hands. Others, however, are running in your direction and can be a real deal in cramped spaces.
  • One type of zombie carries a chainsaw. He also runs pretty fast and just sticks the chainsaw into you, draining your health. Thank God they are only encountered twice through the entire game.
• Z-Secs, former human marines and security guards. Unlike the clearly mindless shambling civilian zombies, they act like living humans: they run around, take cover, suppress you with automatic fire, and communicate over radio. Encountering them for the first time is certainly a shock when you expect just another kind of shambler. Special mention goes to the shotgunners: their eyes have burst and left sheer dark sockets behind, yet they can still see you. The pistol variant actually does have them◊, albeit they're completely white and appear just creepy as the rest of the zombies.
  • Every encounter with them is preceded by radio chatter in...something.
  • Commandoes. They look like extremely muscular (in a tumor-laden, horrifically mutated fashion) "humans" in combat pants, a Stahlhelm-style helmet, and combat boots, towering over you. Some have horrific tentacle mutations for their right arm; others use both intact arms to heft a chaingun. It gets worse when they start taunting you, telling you things like "I WILL EAT YOUR SOUL!" or "YOU WILL NOT ESCAPE!" in a horrible layered voice. It's worse because they can definitely bring the pain like they promise, being one of the game's most dangerous enemies and nearly always fought in groups; after you get back from Hell, they're the only type of former human around.
    • In the beginning of the Monorail level, you get to see a cutscene of Dr. Betruger transforming an unknown marine into a Commando. The camera may hide the process, but the shadow of the newborn Commando speaks for itself. You may even see a tentacle bursting out of the soldier's arm! And Betruger is doing it by himself with somewhat new hellish powers given to him, with no other demon around to do the process. What the hell has he become? And if his own words are to believe, being transformed into a Commando is a Fate Worse than Death.
    • Unlike the other zombies, they burn away upon death. The implication here is that they're mutated into demons. And what happens after they die? Are they Dragged Off to Hell?
• The Pinky Demon. Where do we begin?
  • Gone are the standard two-legged yellow-eyed demons who tried to Zerg Rush you at worst. This monstrosity looks like a bull-like demonic molerat with mechanical back legs and a toothy maw at the front, with no eyes. The roars it makes are horrifying and make the ground shake beneath the player. Its attacks also hurt like hell and constantly screw with your field of vision by jerking it from side to side with each successful hit.
    • For extra horror regarding its appearance, Word of God says that Pinkies are born with a layer of skin covering their faces, which they have to chew through to survive. Their legs are also mechanical because their original legs were torn off and eaten by other demons.
  • Their introduction deserves special mention. You are in a room with the control panel and you decide to use it. Then, without any warning, a monster with mechanical legs jumps down the ledge, lets out a terrifying roar, and then attempts to smash the door into the room you are in. You can see all this through a window, yet that does not help at all. Even worse, you can actually hear the roars and the demon's attempts to tear the door down. At first, you concentrate on the doorway, hoping that you will manage to put it down. However, the Pinky soon gives up and you think it's gone away... until it comes back and smashes through the window to your room, shattering it completely. All of this is accompanied by a piece of tense music that ramps up, which really sets up the mood.
• The Cherubs: Babies with wings and lower bodies of insects, often traveling in swarms and making creepy baby sounds while spotting glowing white eyes. They are even worse in the novelization, where their heads split open at one point to reveal endless rows of teeth which they use to maul a secondary character to death.
  • In the game, at some points they laugh as a baby, but severely distorted or they say in the same distorted tone the word "momma!".
  • The fact that they are hellish and morbid parodies of human babies and the cherubs themsleves in their common representations (baby-like creatures with wings) with their emotionally disturbing appeareance, their sounds and the fact that they appears commonly in darker places, is enough to be considered by mosts of fans as the most terrifying enemies in the franchise.
• The Trites are flesh-colored spiders the size of sofa cushions with an upside-down human head for a body, with eight black eyes to make extra sure you don't get any sleep after you see them the first time around. The tic-tic-tic of their legs skittering around is unsettling until they show up with a raspy roar. And thanks to their size, it's unpredictable where they'll show up from: one Jump Scare late in the game involves a touch-screen computer and a nice dark compartment behind it for a Trite to hide in. Even worse, the Trites can make themselves explode upon contact, dealing severe damage to you. In short, keeping distance from these things is a must.
• The introduction of the Lost Souls. Before you fight them, you hear a woman crying. When you see her, she weakly tells you to help her and she turns around. You get a nice close-up of her skin greying and withering and the way she shakes and screams before the Lost Soul erupts straight out of her head.
• Near the start of the game there's a segment where you're crawling through an air duct, when all of the sudden a ghostly voice whispers "Help me!", and it sounds like it's right next to you. If you happened to be wearing headphones the first time you played that part you probably didn't sleep with the lights off for a while.
• Upon traveling through the first indoors part of the "Communications Transfer" level, you come across a landing leading to a door drenched in blood, with dark red streaks across it. There's blood everywhere around it, and you constantly hear a metallic banging noise, with the lighting turning blood red with each one. Sounds like bad news, but there's a juicy suit of armor right in front of it! When you get close enough to open the door, a demonic face bursts through the fleshy wall behind the door, shoves you back, and growls hideously, before receding back into the folds of the flesh, as the door closes permanently. And when it closes, you're treated to a lovely little quote:
  "Metus, dolor, mors ac formidonis."
  • If you don't know what that means, it's Latin for "fear, pain, death, and terror". Precisely what the demons have been unleashing on Mars City.
  • When you get to leave that area through a vent, there's a skeleton on a corner. When you get close, suddenly it's shoved across your view to the other side, while a deep voice laughs mockingly at you (and how you probably sprayed the wall with bullets when startled).
  • You get to hear the chant again while riding a train in Monorail... made worse by the fact the train does not stop and just keeps coming until the screen cuts to black, you crash into the debris ahead and the marine's yell of pain is heard. You know, the same one he lets out when he is low on health. Ouch.
• What might be a huge shock to players is that using your PDA doesn't pause the game, it pauses you. You could be checking your e-mails and all of the sudden hear rapidly approaching footsteps or loud gunshots in your room. Oh, Crap!.
  • This no longer happens in the Xbox version of the game, effectively turning the PDA into a pause screen, which reduces the stress of using the PDA... somewhat.
• "Death will not be your end. Your soul will burn in Hell forever." (shudder)
• Early on, at the start of in "Alpha Labs Sector 2", when stuff is still getting nastier, you turn a corner to see a corpse being pulled up a vent by what sounds like an Imp. A shower of body parts comes down from the vent, one by one, like whatever's shredding the body is doing it merely for its wicked amusement.
  • In the same room, a corpse floats up off the ground when you get close and flies away past a doorway, taken by some unholy force. Aside from the force's glow and the skylights, the room goes completely dark. You never find that corpse when you go past the door yourself.
  • On that note, the UAC announcer starts malfunctioning, and the informing messages become a garbled mess.
• Speaking of Alpha Labs, in Sector 4 you are faced with a choice of either freeing the trapped scientist or kill him through the mechanism. If you let him out, you will get access to a stash of supplies, as well as a bonus PDA. If you kill him however, you will only hear his dying scream as he is reduced to a bloody skeleton (fortunately, obscured by the machine itself). But this is not the scariest part. If you approach his remains and interact with them, his skeleton will stand up and glare at you. Though most of suspense fades away once you realize you can still kill him (again), just like any other NPC.
• Much later, you have to traverse a nasty Imp-infested area, with the only ambient light being the glow of the stasis tanks that move on rails. That's right, the light is running away from you. It's up to you to keep it up.
• The ENTIRE second half of "Mars City Underground".
  • Once you find Dr. Ishii, he starts muttering that the Devil is real and his "cage" had been built. And then shit hits the fan for the entire planet.
  • There are also some camera screens where you can clearly see how the apocalypse begins elsewhere. One camera even shows an unknown marine (who is most likely freaked out by that point) with a machinegun moving through the halls of the base... and then a headless zombie rises behind him and seemingly moves to attack. What happens next is left to our imagination. There is also a horrifying scene of a security guard being turned into a Z-Sec, which was present as early as in the Alpha version of the game. And if you turn away from the screens, you will find out that Dr. Ishii has been zombified and is now trying to kill you.
  • There is also a console that you may use to try and send a transmission. If you use it, the system fails and the screen switches to a human getting his neck broken by a Z-Sec from behind, who then snarls at the screen. Which means at the Marine. Which means at you.
  • During that level, you will also hear screams and gunfire over the radio, showing how much situation has descended into chaos. Even the demons being killed is little better since more of them will come in and overwhelm the humans. Special mention goes to the poor sap whose sound of struggle imply that he is being dragged away by a Pinky demon before dying horribly. Playing through the level the first time can make it worse as you might have no idea just what creatures are capable of roaring and screeching like this.
  • Another radio mentions a group of marines being cornered in Alpha Labs, and later on you come across the corpses who may very well belong to these people... right before Maggots appear in person and attack.
  • Also, on that level, you obtain a pistol before the demonic invasion takes place. Which means you are completely free to kill almost every single human you come across. You do not get any punishment after that. Even worse, almost every human character you come across in Mars City Underground ends up either dead or zombified anyways. Even the odds of those who don't are still not good... especially with the opening scroll of Resurrection of Evil stating that only the protagonist survived the incident.
• The Maggots are pretty easy to deal with, but their introduction cutscene is terrifying. In "Alpha Labs Sector 1", you enter a room covered with demonic slimy growths, the same from the unholy mess that was Betruger's office in the previous level. And then you see a naked body of a human crucified on a ceiling, with his stomach is torn open. Don't worry though, after some seconds, this guy regains his senses and starts screaming in terror before seemingly expiring, which attracts the Maggots to the player's location.
  • The worst thing? It's heavily implied that not only did the Maggots horribly maim this man, but they also left him as bait.
• The Hell Knight surely took a couple of levels in scary here: rather than looking like a goat on two legs, one is turned into a large muscular abomination with bloodied maw and what appears to be empty eye sockets in place for eyes. Though he does have eyes, near his mouth, this does not make things better. Just look at the game cover to see him in all his glory. No wonder Id Software themselves used a similar design for their own Hell Knight while making Doom (2016) and its sequel.
  • And to cap it off, the sounds the Hell Knight makes are outright animalistic, with the ground shaking each time he makes a step.
• The Mancubus is no slouch either, having undergone some truly drastic changes. Being a large fat slob with elephant-like feet, tendrils sprouting from his face and eerie green eyes, the thing lets out deep, ominous growls and shoots fireballs which hurt like hell and can deflect your projectiles. He is also tough as hell, requiring a lot of firepower to bring down. Did we mention that the first time, you have to face three of them at once?
• "Delta Labs Sector 4". Everything about it. Walls painted with blood? Check. Chainsaw zombies? Check. Human skeletons? Check. Blood writings on some walls and panels? Check. Having to deal with two Hell Knights in a cramped portal area? Check, check, check! Though one of the chainsaw zombies may be Nightmare Retardant, because he has a party hat on his head, which downplays the horror a bit.
  • And after you kill the two Hell Knights (don't worry, you will meet them a lot afterwards), Betruger doesn't seem to be upset. The teleporter has begun working, and you get warped to Hell. And while the teleportation process is itself scary, it is now accompanied by Betruger's evil laugh. Eeesh... And then you get there and find out all your weapons are gone. Including your handheld flashlight.^note Not a problem in BFG edition since you still retain the armor-mounted flashlight
• Simon Garlick's PDA. Not only do you find it in Hell, which is a terrifying place in its own right, but the audio logs certainly amp the creepiness factor up. Simon gets separated from the main group, is constantly stalked and taunted by demons, finds his teammates torn apart before suffering the same fate himself, with the last audio log being cut mid-sentence, with enough implications of what happened afterwards. Considering that the expedition took place several months before the invasion, it's obvious Simon never made it back to Mars anyway.
• Demon Betruger at the end of the game. Good God. Being transformed into a monster is itself unpleasant, but then your head AND your neck are the tongue of the aforementioned demon, this is just plain terrifying.
• As you descend down from the Excavation Site to reach the final battle with the Cyberdemon, you'll see several disemboweled bodies crucified on inverted crosses. That's already horrific enough, but then when you reach the bottom you come upon another, very severely mutilated body strung up in a cage that's missing its head, limbs, guts and much of its skin... and it's somehow still writhing in apparent agony.
• One particular section of the game shines not because it's got something to scare the player, but rather the total lack of it. When you reach the first level of Delta Labs, the place in the complex where the monster attacks are coming from... there's nothing. No combat whatsoever. All the while the announcer repeatedly jabbers about emergency power only, Betruger messes with you, several unexplainable noises accompany you through the darkened and empty hallways, and you hear and see demons on the move around you. The atmosphere is stifling and tension runs pretty high... but absolutely nothing attacks. It all only comes back to normal after you go through a surprisingly lengthy jaunt to recover a Data Linker and make it back to the control room to place it back. It ends up being low-key one of the scariest and most memorable sections of the game.
  • Right before the demons attack, you get to hear the transmission from Sergeant Kelly; it looks and sounds very off. Not only do Kelly's eyes appear to be glazed over, but he speaks in a rather cryptic tone rather than the usual military mannerism, showing that there's something wrong with him. Not helping matters is the radio silence that had occured for a while between Communications and Delta Labs 1, along with the fact that if the player refused to send the distress signal in the communications facility, Kelly's angry response got abruptly cut off halfway through, implying that something happened to him during such a time gap. Sarge's message tells you to meet him at the Service Tunnel 1, but when you reach it, he's not there... but a trio of Cacodemons is. You don't even find out what happened to him until later, and whatever did happen to Kelly turned out to be not pretty at all.
• In the same vein as the Delta Labs moment above, the equally low-key "they took my baby" moment in the Alpha Labs. You've just fought an onslaught of Trites, backed up by a squad of Z-Secs and a few imps, and everything is quiet. You breathe a sigh of relief, but then hear a female whisper "come here" and a series of wet 'plops'. There are bloody footprints on the floor that weren't there before, and they lead to an open door. Ooookay. You follow them to the door, which opens into an empty hallway, and the voice whispers "follow me", and more footprints pop up. The pattern goes on until you reach a locked door, whereupon she says the line, the screen turns red, your turning speed goes down the gutter like someone's holding you, and you hear babies crying... followed by an incredibly malicious laughter that should never come out of a child's mouth. There's one silver lining, though: when the scare lets up, a wall panel has opened, presenting you with armor, medkits, and Plasma Gun ammo.
• In one section of "Alpha Labs 1" and early on in "Delta Labs 2", the Marine experiences what seems like a partial hell shift, where flames pop up, the light turns all red, and symbols and muck cover the walls. Unlike the bathroom scare mentioned above, there are no loud noises or dramatic camera zooms. What there is is a lot of scared and pained-sounding voices whispering and moaning, with a single one shrieking in the "background". Are those the trapped souls of the UAC staff killed in the invasion? Is that what awaits you if you die in there?
• Near the end of "Alpha Labs 2" you discover a surviving scientist and have to escort him. The problem? The lights in that section went out, leaving the scientist's small lamp the only source of light (with the exception of your flashlight), which sometimes falters. As you move through the dark halls, you expect demons to come out and lash out on you... and they do, naturally; you will mostly encounter imps... and a single maggot, who does not use the fireballs to attack, and thus can be difficult to detect in the dark. If the scientist dies, you are left completely alone in the darkness against the demons and you can get lost if you try to get out on your own. And worst of all? At the end of the section, the scientist gets killed no matter what during an imp ambush just as you are about to reach the ladder.
• Numerous PDA's reveal that things on Mars were bad even before the demonic invasion occured.
  • An audio log from the Mars City doctor notes that one crazy patient left several marks on his body with a scalpel and then cut his tongue in half. No wonder said doctor is seen prepared to board a departing shuttle when you arrive on Mars.
  • Another PDA notes how one guy at EnPro blew his head off with a plasmagun due to suddenly going insane.
  • The Delta Labs doctor's PDA has another log where the teleportation experiments had been going very wrong with people either going missing or returning completely insane. Even the seemingly toughest soldier in the crew was reduced to a mumbling drooling vegetable after the trip. Even worse? Betruger was sending the volunteers through the portal for the sake of his obsession with Hell.
  • A security bot went haywire and almost gunned a technician down, only stopped by lack of ammunition loaded into it.
  • In the "Lost Mission" expansion a female technician went insane and killed two people before being killed herself. And all UAC did was try and cover the whole thing up.

Resurrection of Evil

• The Bruiser, one of the new demons introduced in the expansion. It has a TV screen attached to its face, showing live-action video of human teeth and gums for extra intimidation effect. Not only that, but this monster also has the ability to shoot volleys of fireballs towards you (similar to the Mancubus' ranged attack, but much faster), that can easily mow you down if you're not careful.
  • At least you encounter those monstrosities like you encounter other demons. It was planned that they serve as Jump Scare where fake interactable screens would turn to the Bruiser, until they abandon the idea for being too much work.
• The Vulgar. Imagine a Xenomorph-like monster who can throw green fireballs, crawl across the walls and ambush you just like Imps. And you will encounter a lot of these during the whole game.
  • After they die, Vulgars dissolve away like other demons do... but the ashes are different, and so is the color of the pentagram they appear from: it's a sickly cyan color. What depths of hell did those creatures come from?
  • On the fourth level you come across a human who is locked behind the bulletproof glass. The guy tells you that the door out of that room is jammed... and then you get to witness a Vulgar suddenly appearing and biting into the poor chap's neck before hopping away. And no, you can't save that guy.
• In the third level, you come across a surviving scientist who is trying to warn you to stay away from him. Then you found out why - he is shaking and zombie groans come out in mixture between the speeches. Eventually, the guy is completely taken over by the zombification and tries to kill you. Made worse by how it is not the way zombification happened in the main game, meaning Hell has found new ways of possessing humans.
• The PDA's now have audio logs made by the ordinary UAC workers after the invasion hit, and these are not pretty to say the least. This is a grim reminder of how most base personnel ended up dead, without knowledge of what exactly happened, and worst of all, this time it's all your fault for touching the Artifact in the first place.
  • Marcus Tanner's audio log has him frantically relay the tragic experience of his expedition, mentioning the team lead being pinned down by an unknown creature before breaking down accusing UAC of covering the past incident up and then being killed by an unseen and inaudible thing. Even worse, near his PDA is another human survivor who shares the same point of view with him.
  • Seth Killian's audio log also has him try and make it to Mars City for an evac after the literal hell has broken loose, only to get attacked by something that sounds like a Maggot (or worse, a Hell Knight) and scream frantically as he is gruesomely murdered.
  • The "Lost Mission" expansion (which takes place at the same time as Doom 3) also has Bernice Tooley's PDA, which has two audio logs. The first one has her complain about being harassed by co-workers (a realistic problem on its own), but the second log has her killed by an Imp right as she screams in terror. The fact that her bodyparts are found being eaten by a male zombie afterwards just raises more horrific implications.
• Delta Labs Unknown, the penultimate level of the expansion, is made of this. Imagine several locations you visited in the original game being damaged even more than before, with most if not all systems and computer consoles either down completely or sparking errors, and horrifically warped by the Hell's presence. This is exactly what this level is made of - the player has to travel through some parts of Delta Labs and, for some reason, the Mars City Administration. The main quirk is that there is a creepy reddish-orange fog that pops up from time to time, painting the rooms with a sinister shade of color and showing skeletons lying around. And it does not pop up when the player enters a specific area or does something - it affects the whole level (the BFG Edition, for some reason, removes the corruption entirely). Add such things as having to constantly deal with monsters hounding you at every turn and you will get a solid and scary level to blaze through.
  • When in Delta Labs 2b section, take a look at the ceiling of the room you spawn in. There will be a hole surrounded by flesh, giving a good look at the hellish sky above you. Another one can be seen in a small hole of the same exact room to the right, again with a mass of flesh around it. That's right - you are not even on Mars anymore.
  • Another scary thing is how little of the original Doom 3 locations has changed over the time. The bent railing and the door the Pinky tried to break down during the first encounter in Mars City Administration? Are still there, horribly damaged. The destroyed bridge connecting the Delta Labs facilities 3 and 4? Still down and burning.
• The final battle's outcome. When the Engineer damages the Maledict enough, he fires a rocket, but the demon dodges, swoops down at the platform and proceeds to bite into the marine and slam him down on the ground. When the latter regains his senses, Betruger starts demanding that he gives the artifact, and suffice to say, he should've been careful with what he said. The Engineer proceeds to shove the thing down the Maledict's throat, and we get to see the demon disintegrate while a cyan light pours out of his throat, right until Betruger is reduced to a skull. And there's the ending, where it's implied that the Engineer has died from the wounds and he and McNeil are now in a better place.

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