Nightmare Fuel / Drowned God

• The absolutely oppressive atmosphere that permeates every area of the game. Between the chilling ambient music, the dinginess of each realm, and how the number of characters who are actually friendly towards the player can be counted on one hand while the rest are either hostile, ambivalent, or don’t seem to acknowledge their presence, makes for a disquieting experience.

• Both Kether and Malchut are masks who utilize the Hollow-Face illusion, which makes them creepy right off the bat, but as you collect more relics it becomes clear how much they’re both willing to lie in order to manipulate you, no matter how much they accuse each other of doing so. They mention how they have been observing your activities, meaning that even when you think you’re alone, you’re actually being watched.

• At one point in Binah, the realm centered around Arthurian Legend, you have to summon a boat by getting a strange metal torso with deer antlers to emit a horrific screech that echoes throughout the empty landscape, and the track that goes along with it called "The Shore" is almost as eerie to listen to with its blaring synths.

• Also in Binah, when you meet Morgana Le Fay, she’s somehow become a giant pale husk with draconian wings who’s been connected to anachronistic machinery, her hands in stocks. When you first get a glimpse of her, she’s slumped over, and whenever she moves while talking to you, she twitches violently as if she’s fighting against her imprisonment.

• The Man in Black who stalks you throughout the game. The first time you see him in the room with the Round Table, he’s at a distance and almost blends into the background, but two of the next times you meet him make for some surprisingly effective jumpscares: the first is within the USS Scorpio submarine when you open one of the doors only to find him standing there briefly before the door shuts again, and the next is the ending of Chokmah, where after you talk to the man-pig you turn around and he suddenly attacks you, forcing you back to the Bequest Globe. What makes these jumpscares notable is that most of the rest of the game has the characters remain static until you interact with them yourself, but The Man In Black actively pursues you.

• The other jumpscare in the game not related to the Man In Black is also very effective, and this one is optional. If you go all the way to the back of the Hacker's trailer in Chokmah, then turn around, a Grey will suddenly appear making an extremely creepy echoing clicking sound, and for several seconds it will step closer towards you until it disappears.

• Meeting Horus in the giant water tank in Chesed, portrayed as a grotesque alien fetus with Vader Breath. He insists he was not the one who betrayed Osiris, but even if he’s telling the truth then he does not help his case at all with a voice that drips with menace. Listening to the extracted audio files better demonstrates how sinister he sounds:
  Horus: Here, she put me, a prisoner of the water. I am just a child, the last of my kind. The Moon, insane in her anger and jealousy, kills our Emperor. She steals all the secrets. She sends the killers, Night Axe and The Flayed one. The Firebird spits, the Sun falls. "Isis," he cries. Beacons are built, in the hope of rescue. We look to the stars to take us home. I am Horus, keeper of the secret. I am Alpha and Omega, beginning and end. Release me, and I will give you the path to the Drowned God. The Sun waits for you there, where the last gave their blood. Choose, Alpha and Omega, life or death.

• The inside of the USS Scorpio, a submarine that in this game is tied to the supposed Philadelphia Experiment, is bathed in a red light and not only has the aforementioned jumpscare with the Man In Black, but also has you finding the corpse of what might have been the captain fused with the metal of the ship and frozen solid along with the files detailing what happened to the rest of the crewmembers.

• The carnival in Din is just as creepy as you might expect one in this game to be, with Aleister Crowley being portrayed as a jack-in-the-box whose face switches between real photographs of himself to twisted clownish nightmare faces while he raves about being the Wickedest Man in the World. Also in the carnival are a pair of giant twin statues made of stone with glowing yellow eyes. Meeting Carl Jung in the area is a small relief from the creepiness since he’s one of the more friendly characters in the game.

• Baphomet’s character design is one of the more unnerving ones of the bunch for the number of unanswered questions it raises: Is he a severed head being kept alive by the machinery? Or is he a purely synthetic creation? If he is a severed head, what happened to him to make him this way? Who knows?

• Going down into the dungeon to get the pieces of the Philosopher’s Stone has you encounter what might be animatronic versions of The Count of St. Germain and the Man in the Iron Mask who are both imprisoned within a coffin. As the voiceovers explain their stories, they come to life and their movements are oddly smooth compared to the jankiness of every other CG character. While the Count accepts his fate with solemn dignity, the Man in the Iron Mask thrashes around and can be heard struggling against his confinement.

• Each of the three endings are deeply unsettling in their own ways and run on Fridge Horror like there's no tomorrow, and unfortunately, it's unclear if these were only meant to be visions of what might happen depending on whose side you choose or if you actually ruined the world for good:
  • The Kether Ending: You peer out a window to see lights monitoring what looks like a mixture between an apartment complex and prison cells, all the while loud banging, maniacal laughter, and terrifying screams can be heard in the background; then, the Man in Black and the cameras all turn to face you.
  • The Malchut Ending, which is much shorter and more ambiguous but still has unsettling implications: At the end of a medieval-looking dungeon there's a room full of futuristic pods, and the Man in Black peeks out to stare at you. It's likely these pods are either designed for keeping humans in some virtual reality permanently and/or they're holding them in for genetic experimentation in the vein of the manimals.
  • The Legion Ending: The Greys who you have heard about and bumped into occasionally appear before you in a giant crowd, and the way they speak to you in a calm manner and reassure you that they'll come again some other time is incongruous with their actions that have been alluded to throughout the game about abducting humans for their own purposes.