Nightmare Fuel / Fate/Grand Order

Per wiki policy, Spoilers Off applies here and all spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned.

Well, looks like Dr. Roman is about to give some good— OH MY GOODNESS!!!!

Surprisingly for a Mobile Phone Game (but not for a Fate work....) Fate/Grand Order has some incredibly dark parts.

Unmarked spoilers below.

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Chapter 1 - Observer on Timeless Temple

General

• First off: The world is freaking gone. Chaldea is the only place and time where any living beings remain. Anything outside of it has been burned to a crisp.
  • Actually, let's correct that: it's not just everywhere, it's everywhen, since the past has also been incinerated. Can you imagine that? The entirety of Mankind dead, a literally uncountable number of people, since the very dawn of history, dead.
• The Demon Pillars. Each of them looks like a giant black mass covered in eyes, and every time they attack, they make a horrific screech that appropriately seem to come straight from hell. And then Solomon, their master, is a creepy sorcerer with a horrific grin and the Voice of the Legion, who summons forth a multitude of them to fight you.
• According to Clock Tower 2015, Lev Lainur prevented the incineration of humanity by committing suicide before the demon god pillar could overwrite his personality and take over his body. He failed to do this in FGO, so who we're dealing with isn't even Lev anymore, it's the demon pillar using his body as a meatpuppet.

"Singularity 7: Absolute Demonic Front, Babylonia"

Babylonia is arguably the darkest of the singularities, and for good reason. What initially seems to be just a rather simple plot about defeating the Goddess Alliance soon spirals wildly out of control once Tiamat arrives on the scene. When this happens, all chance of a "good ending" goes right out the window, and you are locked in a pitched battle for survival against a genuine Eldritch Abomination for the rest of the singularity, desperately trying every possible avenue of victory in a hope of saving someone, let alone an entire city.

• The beginning of Babylonia, Mash's dream of Dr. Roman who's trying to sympathize with what's left of the human race. He preaches that life has no meaning and that humanity should stop struggling and live the rest of its life in peace. Mash mistakenly believes it's the real Roman at first, but he soon begins laughing with a horrific smile on his face provided with a picture above.
• The Lahmu in Babylonia take nightmare fuel demons to another level. Their enormous, sideways, humanoid mouths; the lack of eyes, the constant twitching while they wait for you to attack, and the disturbing ways some of their bodies contort... Not to mention the fact that they come in endless droves, and some of them are actually citizens of Uruk forcibly transformed into demons, some implied to be people you have met, who seem to still have human awareness and remember who you are.
  • The progress of the Chaos Tide the further you advance into the story. By the time you managed to dunk Tiamat into the underworld, the entire map which is around the size of Iraq is a giant ocean of dark purple. Pretty much everyone that isn't you, Mash, Merlin, King Hassan and Ishtar is dead. Gilgamesh died Taking the Bullet for you from one of Tiamat's lasers and had to use his corpse as a catalyst to bring himself back as a Servant.
• Tiamat herself is incredibly terrifying. Not only is she borderline immortal, but her view of all of humanity as her "children" is highly disturbing since she can't understand us like we can't understand her. We're essentially aliens to her, and though we can't understand her speech, it's likely that she finds us just as disturbing as we find her.
• The way Tiamat and the Lahmu turn on Kingu deserves mention. While the party is fighting Lahmu who were forcing Eridu's survivors to fight each other to the death for their amusement, Kingu interrupts the fight and chastises the Lahmu for wasting valuable time on pointless cruelty. The Lahmu slowly begin to laugh at him, claiming that they are simply emulating the "old" humanity and claiming to find suffering and death "fun". Kingu's incredulous outrage is suddenly interrupted, when the Lahmu suddenly brutally attack him and forcibly tear the Grail from his body. The Lahmu laugh at Kingu's shock and agony, gleefully revealing that Tiamat never truly cared for him or saw him as her child and that his sole purpose to her was facilitating her resurrection, and now that that's done, he no longer has any use to them, and proceed to gleefully hunt him through Eridu's jungle like a wild animal. Were it not for Lahmu!Siduri's sacrifice to save him, Kingu would have died there, betrayed by the "mother" he gave everything to serve.

Chapter 1. 5 - Epic of Remnant

"Singularity Subspecies : Deep Sea Cyberbrain Paradise SE.RA.PH."

• The SERAPH Chapter where the horrific experiments done by Chaldea to develop their technology is shown and where it was turned into a hell for the people there by Kiara.
  • Even worse in the manga where we see flashbacks of the people as they lose their minds and go into anarchy. The faces shown and the sheer horrifying actions that they do of their own will with glee is haunting.

"Pseudo-Singularity III: The Stage of Carnage, Shimousa"

• The premise of Shimousa is utter horror due to the enemy Servants. They're not actually Servants at all, but rather the actual historical figures resurrected by Ashiya Doman and transformed into utterly deranged Omnicidal Maniac zombies who butcher countless innocents in horrifically bloody and violent ways. At one point, you end up fighting one of the enemy Servants on top of a literal mountain of freshly-butchered, mutilated corpses. To highlight just how utterly inhuman the zombified Servants are, their battle dialogue is completely replaced with feral, barely coherent roars and screaming, and instead of the simple fade into golden dust, their death animations are much more visceral.
  • One of the most horrifying aspects is that, with the exception of Amakusa and Doman, all of the enemy Servants are completely aware of themselves, but are utterly powerless to fight back against Doman's corruption that compels them to rampage. At various points, they will desperately beg you to kill them while crying Tears of Blood.
    • Speaking of Amakusa, his portrayal in Shimosa also deserves mention. He's not actually the "true" Amakusa that's a summonable Servant, but rather an alternate version of him that, after learning that the Shimabara uprising is doomed to fail in all realities, due to being under a Quantum Timelock, as well as the fact that history idolizes the Tokugawa as heroes, while he and his followers are demonized as terrorists and criminals who deserved to die, fell into madness and decided that if history has declared him a bloodthirsty murderer, then that is exactly what he will be. To punctuate just how fallen he is, Shimosa Amakusa is no longer a Ruler, but an Avenger, with all of the murderous hatred and insanity the class entails.
  • The manga adaptation of the Singularity shows at the front the massacres of the Seven Swordmasters. Against the first Swordmaster alone, Hozoin slaughters a small village - men, women, children, and elderly are cut to small pieces as they run or cower in terror. Ritsuka tries to save them, but Musashi stops her because she's not strong enough from the disorienting unnatural rayshift, so they just hide inside a pile of hay hearing the villagers' dying scream around them. When Musashi finally fights Hozoin, she cuts his head off and it rolls to Ritsuka's feet, but his body is still fighting and he proceeds to regenerate his own head, one layer of flesh at a time.
    • The game isn't quite as graphic — but Hozoin notices movement in the haystack, knows the group is hiding there, and leaves them there to listen helplessly while he kills the villagers.
    • Raikou's depiction in the manga isn't much better. While every other Swordsmaster shows a deranged Ax-Crazy personality while in combat, when Raikou is fighting Musashi, her expression is lifeless.
  • An elderly couple stumbles upon Archer of Inferno on the way back to their home after a village meeting. Danzo is all but sure that the homicidal Archer of Inferno would just slaughter them on the spot due to her Curse of Annihilation... but she just politely sends them on their way after greeting them, even telling them to be careful along the way, surprising Danzo enough to believe that the curse may not be working properly with Inferno. All seems strangely calm and good... until Inferno reconfirms with Danzo that the village the old folks had just come from is nearby and is populated by a big number of people, by which Inferno then declares, with a smile on her face, that she will indiscriminately burn every living thing in it right down to the last man, woman, and child... proceeding to do so immediately after. By the time she was done, Inferno had so thoroughly razed the village down to the ground that not a single inhabitant barring the fortunate elderly couple from earlier survived the slaughter. Danzo later monologues that Inferno continued her rampage on many other villages after that with an army of black ghosts by her side spreading fire and death everywhere, a nightmarish scene literally straight from hell.
  • Shuten captures the protagonist and starts to Cold-Blooded Torture them by sticking her hand into their guts. All the while making chit-chat and odd comments giving it the aspect of a rape scene.

"Pseudo-Singularity IV: Heretical Salem"

• In contrast to the visceral Bloody Horror of Shimousa, the horror of Salem is considerably more psychological due to how human it is. There's no ulterior motive, no dark plan (at least until Raum appears). The entire conflict of the Pseudo-Singularity is a chillingly realistic tale of a humble hamlet descending into absolute anarchy and chaos purely due to the paranoia, intolerance and fanaticism of its denizens.
• According to Raum itself, the Lovecraftian entities that would empower the Foreigners didn't originally exist in the universe of F:GO, but because the Demon Pillar was past caring at that point, so he wandered realities and found the link to them thanks to "the dreams of a madman" (alluded to be Lovecraft himself). As a result, he found a reality where they were real and... they started their attentions on the FGO world. Congratulations! Eldritch horrors from beyond reality now have their eyes on the setting.
• And the horror doesn't even stop once Raum is dead! Despite the Demon Pillar's demise, Abigail's already crossed the Despair Event Horizon and succumbs to the Outer God inside of her, which proceeds to state it's going to bring "salvation" through endless suffering and punishment to every living being on the planet.

Chapter 2 - Cosmos in the Lostbelt

"Lostbelt No.1: Permafrost Empire, Anastasia"

• In the first Lostbelt, we are given a flashback of Anastasia's last moments in her life, it shows that she was conscious even after she was burned and buried. During this time, she was able to make a contract with Viy, which she utilized to make sure that none of the soldiers who killed her would never have a moment of peace. Cue a blood-coloured "I Am Watching" message appearing in the background, followed up with the screen being filled with word "Watching" and eyes.
  Death is too good for you. No, you're going to live in fear for the rest of you lives. I, Viy, will always be watching you.
  I will forever pass judgement on your sins. I will forever see to your punishment. I will always, always be watching… until the day you die.
  Always, always, always!!!

"Lostbelt No.3: The Synchronized Intellect Nation, SIN"

• At first, seeing Koyanskaya locked away in a cell, stripped of her powers, may give one a bit of satisfaction considering how much trouble she's caused you. But then Qin Shi Huang, the Lostbelt 3 king, summons mechanical dolls... and orders them to drill non-lethal holes in her body until she can be sealed away. You are rewarded with reading Koyanskaya screaming in agony and the slight of blood. What really makes this scene extra horrifying is the sound of a loud, screeching drill in the background while this is all happening.

"Lostbelt No.4: Saṃsāra of Genesis and Terminus, Yugakshetra"

• The very premise of God Arjuna's interpretation of the Yuga Cycle seen throughout the Fourth Lostbelt makes it not out of place in the Cosmic Horror Story genre were it not for Chaldea's intervention. Even then, Chaldea have to live through them for a good while.
  • The first seven days is essentially a paradise, barring the occasional plague or Kali, but in exchange, for the last three days, buildings start to fall apart, the soil becomes arid and Kalis begin swarming and attacking the villages, all while the human population retreats into their homes, desperately praying towards Arjuna for their survival.
  • What's worse is that there seems to be a mental effect of the Cycle on the Humans, during the seven days of peace, they're generous and kind, but by the time of the three last days, most of them become more cold and selfish even towards people that they showed kindness towards even just a day previously.
  • But that's not the worst of it, by the end of the three days, God Arjuna destroys the entire Lostbelt, breaks everyone down into data, and removes all that he regards as "Evil". Anything he considers to be flawed — for example a dog whose leg was broken meaning it can no longer run, thus in his eyes no longer having any worth — will be regarded as "Evil", disregarding any emotional attachment its owner has to it. It gets worse, anything he removes in this way is forgotten by the other inhabitants, even if they were extremely close to the removed entity and worse, the removal leaves logical holes in people's memories, so if a parent was removed, their child would at least know that they should have a mother, but not understand why they don't.

"Lostbelt No.5: Ancident Ocean of the Dreadnought Gods, Atlantis"

• During the intro to Lostbelt 5 Atlantis, we are introduced to Subject E. An alien lifeform that crash landed onto Earth, specifically in Area 51. The nightmare fuel isn't from the subject itself - but rather the sheer hell it went through. At first, the Air Force preserved Subject E as it was critically injured and close to dying. But over time, as the narrator says, "...it didn't take long for the surgical procedures meant to resuscitate the subject to morph into brutally exploitative experiments." Some of these wonderful "procedures" ranged from trying to burn/melt/freeze Subject E to stirring its intestines around and cutting off parts of its body. All while the Subject E was still living and conscious. The narrator wasn't kidding when they said all of the information about Subject E could be summarized by the word "gruesome."
  • At some point the researchers realize that, throughout all of this, Subject E was transmitting a constant signal aka a cry for help. Their rationale and response? Keep torturing Subject E in the hopes that even more subjects can be captured!

"Lostbelt No.5: Interstellar Mountainous City, Olympus"

• The reveal that Konyanskaya - the devious troll causing mischief & mayhem across multiple Lostbelts - is one of the Seven Beasts. Though we don't see her full form, her unnaturally long mouth with rows of teeth and multiple eyes all over her body are enough to paint a terrifying picture. Not to mention that those eyes, mouth, and teeth are blood red.
• Chaos. To put it simply, it cracks open reality, and all we can see of its true form is a giant eye before it effortlessly destroys Ares and requires the Grand Lancer to sacrifice himself to get us close and Musashi becoming Deader than Dead just to seal it away.

"Lostbelt No.6: Fae Round Table Domain, Avalon le Fae"

• It's mentioned that Beryl's Lostbelt became so twisted that he ultimately tricked the inhabitants into cutting down the Tree of Emptiness...except something is keeping it sustained. Even worse, after clearing Olympus, the button for Lostbelt 6 is visibly glitched until the completion of 5.5. Whatever is going on there, it's clearly bad.
• The Alien God wasn't able to awaken properly due to Wodime messing with the Tree of Emptiness intended to serve as a vessel, so a stronger Saint Graph is required. The problem, of course, is that no Saint Graph from Earth would be enough... which is why Rasputin intends to pay a visit to the Ultimate One slumbering in the South American Lostbelt. Or in other words, the single most powerful entity in the Solar System in terms of raw might - The Ultimate One of the Oort Cloud: ORT.
• Lostbelt 6 introduces new Camelot servants who are darker and more terrifying than their Camelot counterparts when they reach their 3rd ascension. The most notable servants are Fairy Knight Tristan, who looks like another Elizabeth Bathory clone, and Fairy Knight Gawain, who's a genderbent version of Gawain. Reaching their 3rd ascension will change their appearances into darker and more nightmarish states similar to Atalante's Alter form. Their Noble Phantasms are terrifying enough to make Emiya Alter proud. They are also not actually genderbent Servants, but fairies who embedded with the saint graphs of the original knights they were based on.
  • Then there is Fairy Knight Tristan reaching her third stage, which causes her to suffer Sanity Slippage. The arrogant Alpha Bitch with a murderous nature is replaced with a somber, very disturbing and just as bloodthirsty personality who seems to be suffering and switches between wanting to kill everyone and wanting them to actually love her. The worst part is that she seems fully aware of it, hoping to just have enough willpower to do things like giving her Master a birthday gift on time.
  • Her backstory actually explains why she's like that and it makes it even worse. She was once a kind hearted fairy who just wanted to help everyone, yet the other fairies would just use her before throwing her away with her limbs ripped off and leaving her to die alone in a ditch. One cycle Morgan found her and Tristan thanked her for everything she was trying to do. Morgan met her in a couple of more cycles and eventually adopted her. Unfortunately, Morgan discovered that Tristan would no longer be able to reincarnate so she taught her cruelty so she would no longer be used and thrown away by others. Her third ascension is her returning to the kind hearted fairy she used to be because of everyone's kindness in Chaldea, yet because of all the trauma she went through, she is also filled with complete hate towards everyone else.
• On a general level, the Sixth Lostbelt is an Crapsaccharine World par excellence.
  • Out of context, it seems like the most innocent looking of the lot, and resembles a generic fantasy setting more than something out of the Nasuverse, with dwarves, elves, beastmen, and faeries walking around in the modern-day as if nothing was out of the ordinary. Oh? Where are the humans, you ask? Simple, they're the food supply for the other races. The protagonist and Tristan wander into a village after losing their memories (thanks to getting lost in a cursed forest) and the villagers happily offer them a meal and shelter...Only for one of them to give the game away because he's salivating so hard at the thought of "wild game" that he tries to dismember them on the spot. Nobody else except for an outcast fairy sees anything remotely wrong with this.
  • Then there is the reason why the Difference Depth is EX... Mainly because the world was already destroyed before human civilization was fully established. This is a world where Sefar succeeded in destroying the world before she self destructed. The "British Isle"? It's actually the corpses of Albion and the Celtic god Cernunnos that housed the last of the Fae and humans on it. In fact, when Beryl first came to the Lostbelt, it was already barren with no life except for the Tree of Emptiness because the Fairies destroyed themselves and the humans with their constant wars. The only reason the Lostbelt even exists in its current state is because Beryl summoned Morgan le Fay, who subverted her Master's will and Rayshifted her memories back in time to Lostbelt Morgan in an attempt to save this dead Britain, but her efforts were futile because the faeries would inevitably betray Morgan and go back to killing each other. It's telling how nightmarish this Lostbelt is, when Morgan forcing the whole island under her despotic rule is an improvement.
  • Morgan herself. Her PHH version was already a genius magus on par with the current Grand Caster Merlin. Her Lostbelt version is so peerless that even the Chaldean, the spitting image of Solomon who was the greatest magus to ever live, outright praises her works, which include Time Travel, reconstructing a Divine Construct, and turning her Lostbelt into a world independent of the Tree of Emptiness. Everyone who knows this woman's name absolutely dreads the thought of facing her, and they're completely right to. When the time finally comes to raid her castle, Chaldea has fought an uphill battle throughout the whole Lostbelt and has a shot at handily defeating Morgan's army... only for her to come out and prove she never needed the army: after the already-hellish boss fight with her, it turns out she was Actually a Doombot and ten other Morgan clones have completely flattened the army Chaldea is running with, and then three of them do the same with Chaldea itself. No ambiguity, 11th-Hour Superpower, no Deus ex Machina, no Big Damn Heroes — Morgan defeated Chaldea completely and utterly. The only reason they weren't finished off was because she was stabbed in the back at that exact moment.
  • Then there's the backstab in question, which is equally horrific from Morgan's side. Aurora tricks Woodwose, Morgan's right hand man, into thinking that she has betrayed him, causing an uprising of the fae against her. Then Spriggan forces Morgan to surrender by revealing he has her daughter, Baobhan Sith/Fae Knight Tristan hostage, which leaves her open to an absolutely horrific and brutal beating from the fae. Poor Morgan can only weakly beg to return to her throne as she's savagely beaten to death. And Baobhan Sith herself? She wasn't a hostage, she was already nearly dead; the traitors were carrying her rotting, barely alive body and made her watch them kill her adoptive mother before throwing her into The Great Pit like trash, so Morgan let herself be killed for nothing.
    • Want to know what's worse? This isn't even the first or the worst time the fairies have brutally backstabbed Morgan. As noted above, her past(s) as Aesc the Savior are the story of her many failures to save Britain because of the fairies' treachery, each of them on the same general level of cruelty, and this was when she was being nice to them. The worst example is when Aesc had nearly succeeded in unifying all of Faerie Britain under one king, only for the fairies to fatally poison him and his Round Table on his coronation day. Morgan's nosedive into tyranny wasn't even her fault, the fae are just completely horrible pieces of garbage that can't stand being told what to do, even when that lack of direction means they'll drive themselves to extinction.
• Act 3 of Avalon Le Fae as a whole, ALL HELL HAS BROKEN LOOSE!
  • The eventual fates of the Three Fae knights: Two lose their humanoid forms and become the dreaded Calamities meant to destroy Fairy Britain while the final one is thrown into the bottomless pit, absorbed by the corpse of Cernunnos and inadvertently waking it from its slumber.
  • The narration of the apocalypse in Chapter 26 is chillingly described, after the Storm Border manages to barely escape Cernunnos' curses:
    "And so, the Chaldeans' ship barely managed to escape from central Britain. Barghest, now transfromed into an enormous Calamity of the Beast, continued wreaking havoc in other cities. Having crawled out from the pit, Cernunnos continued exuding seemingly endless curses.
    
    The faerie villages that dotted Britain's forests burned to the ground, which itself began to crack and fall apart under the strain. Two hours have passed since the Storm Border first set out with the goal of saving Britain. They couldn't save anything.
    
    The residents of Norwich came to blows over who would escape on the two ocean liners, eventually devolving into murderous mobs of faeries and humans. In a barbershop on Main Street, a kind young human man comforted a faerie woman who had succumbed to panic.
    
    The residents of Oxford, who had moved there with the hope of becoming the next privileged class, were destroyed when there were unable to fend off a mors attack. Without the Fang clan there to protect them, they were utterly powerless.
    
    Although Salisbury managed to defend itself by keeping its gates closed, it was coming to an even more gruesome end than any of the other cities.
    
    Londinium continued to burn in silence. The few remaining Round Table Army soldiers welcomed the faeries who fled there, and did their best to fight off the mors. Though in truth, the Round Table Army soldiers were already badly injured and no longer able to fight...So the faeries who sought refuge there summoned up the last of their courage and defended the soldiers for as long as they were able.
    
    The residents of Gloucester disappeared relatively painlessly, one at a time. A young girl who had been freed from the western ranch some time before made the journey back to Gloucester after a series of trials and tribulations. She braved her way through the flames to rescue her former master- a failure of a faerie who had been helpless without her. After a tearful reunion, the girl and faerie joined hands, before being swallowed up by fissure in the ground."

  • An even grimmer end is described in Section 30 once the planet's collapse begins, as the Insect of the Abyss starts sucking EVERYTHING into its great maw, a conceptual Bottomless Pit that is essentially a black hole:
    "The Isle of Britain was collapsing. All the buildings the faeries had built in imitation of human civilization...all the corpses, from those heaped up in ages past to those freshly killed by the calamities...The insect sucked more of them into the air with every passing second...and swallowed them whole. The northern lands dissipated like snow. The southern lands drifted away like ash. Those few who somehow managed to survive all joined hands and fell into the void. It was though everything in Faerie Britain had been no more than a single night's dream."
  • The Manchester Fae causing the death of their human servants and neighbors, a village protected by Fairy Knight Gawain, who is one of the FEW good Fae to exist and fight against her evil nature as the Calamity of the Beast, Barghest. After a long day of dealing with uprisings and the death of her ruler, Morgan, she returns to her village...only to find her fellow Fae gleefully murdering and eating the humans, with them citing that they were only following Gawain's example of how she eats her lovers, wondering if they would enjoy committing the same acts, not bothering to empathize that Gawain never wanted such a thing in the first place. This pushes her to the brink, since these were Faeries she was hoping Chaldea could take over to Proper Human History, and she loses herself to her inner demon, her last rational thought process voicing out a new desire: take as many of the Fae to the grave as she can before she is taken down by Chaldea.
    • The nightmare only gets worse when its implied that this isn't the first time the Manchester Fae have committed such actions; killing and tearing apart humans in secret to "replicate" what Fairy Gawain does to her lovers behind closed doors in her own house. They just decided to throw caution to the winds and murder them in the open, now that the Lostbelt is falling apart. They voice out loud that they were hoping to "clean up the mess" before Gawain got home since she would nag at them otherwise, demonstrating a complete lack of remorse for their actions. They then go on to say that they're hoping Gawain takes them to Pan Human History, intending to have fun with the humans there...
    • Let this image of the Manchester Fae slaughtering the humans chill you to the bone. Their insane smiles add to the horror.
      Manchester Fae: "It's so much fun killing humans! The first scream is heavenly whilst the ones afterwards are dull. You can pull the limbs, twist the innards, flail their skin and they are still alive! This is so much fun! Let's kill them all! We don't need old toys anyways, as we'll be getting new ones outside with Lord Barghest!"
  • Cernunnos is probably one giant horror show that is the icing of the Fae Lostbelt. Originally sent to punish the Six Fae for their laziness and their causing humanity's downfall, he instead showed them mercy and kindness by not only sparing them punishment but also by letting them live on his body. When Cernunnos revealed that he simply couldn't make new land, in addition to his priestess telling the Fae to repent for their sins, what did the Fae do to repay their kindness? They poisoned him, causing his death, and then went on to rip apart his human priestess into pieces. They used Cernunnos' corpse to build the rest of Fae Britain and turned the pieces of the human priestess into templates for their version of humanity. All while smiling and patting themselves on the back. This is the reason why there are Six Calamities, they represent the original sin of the six original Fae who betrayed Cernunnos.
    • One of the calamities is revealed to be Cernunnos himself, except it's not Cernunnos but his moving corpse powered by centuries of accumulating curses. What's worse is that you can see his mouth and eyes, except they're blood red and he looks like he's sleeping. Cernunnos is only moving because of how awful the Fae of the Lostbelt were, their accumulation of curses causing him to be twisted into what is essentially a zombie.
    • Oh, and that Priestess who got ripped to pieces? Well, the Fae ripped her apart for two reasons. One is that they were tired of her telling them to repent for their laziness. The other is that they needed some way to make new humans to sustain themselves and to work as livestock for them. Emphasis on "ripped her apart", as they didn't kill her. No, they used their magic to make sure she would still remain alive even when cut into pieces, and those pieces are from where humans are born from in the Lostbelt! And I Must Scream doesn't begin to explain her situation!
    • Here is the story told by Merlin. In-game, the tale is told normally until it reaches the twist. The game then adopts a creepy atmosphere with unsettling music and a red filter, all while showing images of the Six Fairies with huge smiles on their faces. By the end of it, the Protagonist and party are left standing in horror at the actual truth of the land's origins:
      It became ocean at the end. There was ocean at the beginning.
      After the shooting star passed ^note  Sefar invades and wipes out the planet, with no Excalibur to stop its rampage , the land all ran into rivers.
      Long, long ago...as far back as time can go...
      Six faeries went outside to find the world had become an ocean.
      "This is awful," they thought. "How terrible our world has become."
      Then, a large shadow rose from the ocean. It belonged to a giant, fluffy creature.
      On its shoulder stood one of the animals that the faeries believed was gone.
      The six faeries and the god soon became friends.
      It wasn't easy living in the ocean; there was nowhere to go and nothing to do. But the god made things better for the six faeries by sheltering them from the waves.
      "The ocean without waves is nice, but we still miss having land!"
      So the six fairies offered the god their joy.
      And they offered the god their wish.
      Then they offered the god himself.
      And so, the faeries' wish was granted. Then, after the rejoicing ended...

      ...they tricked the god into drinking poisoned wine, and he died.

      And so, the faeries acquired the god's body.
      They made the body into land on which they could live.
      They were grateful, too, to be able to make use of the crying, screaming animal the dead god left behind.
      She was their only human, but one simply wasn't enough.
      So, being very careful not to kill her, they cut her into pieces. They cast a spell on her to make sure she wouldn't die no matter what they did, and used every last piece of her.
      Thus did the Isle of Britain come into being. Thus did the great mistake begin.

      May the first six faeries find salvation.
      May the first six faeries be cursed for all time.

  • After the defeat of the Lostbelt King Morgan, Oberon finally revealed his true nature to the players: He destroyed Fae Britain? Before you cheer that he just destroyed that land of shit... he just declared that he found a way to Proper Human History and will do the same destruction to it. At that point, you're horrified not because the Lostbelt is in utter shambles... but because it can happen to your human history if you don't stop Oberon.
    • It doesn't help that the battle intro's, the class card morphing into Pretender class in a darker fashion and the music tones are pretty disturbing.
    • His entire appearence went from friendly fairy into a dark prince with insect parts from his body and limbs. And if that wasn't creepy enough, his cape is made of butterfly wings... but it might as well be dead fairy wings, considering his mindset.
    • And of course lets not forget his second body, the "Insect of the Abyss". A gigantic, hollow, translucent wormlike dragon that devours the entirety of Britain. Its ability to devour anything is described as being like "water draining down a plughole", with space itself falling towards its maw, making it impossible to escape its hunger forever. And just when you think it couldn't get any worse, there's the fate that awaits anyone who gets eaten by it: falling through the infinite abyss inside its body for all eternity.
    • The kicker of this? It's not his Vortigern side that initially desired the destruction of Proper Human History since his job ends when Faerie Britain is gone, but his Oberon persona that grew hateful of how the Lostbelts were tossed aside like trash for the benefit of Proper Human History. So if at this point you have been cheering for the end of this lostbelt, keep in mind that Oberon-Vortigern feels that same way about destroying our history.
  • There's a flashback in Chapter 30 where we see how Oberon was summoned into the British Lostbelt. The first time we see it, he's sleeping soundly in the sunlight◊ as the insect fairies marvel over him. So how is this Nightmare Fuel? When the same flashback is visited later, his body is incredibly sickly and thin, with pale skin and a visible ribcage◊. He couldn't even close his eyes and for several months, was unable to do nothing but lie down and stare at the numerous insects crawling around him while constantly having thoughts of hatred until the insect fairies (unknowingly) stabilized his Saint Graph. Definitely not for entomophobics. And to add to this train of thought, these scenes were BOTH drawn by his character designer, who has entomophobia herself. Talk about facing your fears.
• This chapter reveals what exactly happened back in Chaldea when Beryl was part of Team A. He broke into Mash’s treatment room and BROKE HER FINGERS, out of a truly SICKENING desire to see her emote, and has harbored an extremely twisted infatuation with her ever since. His last words are a fucked up declaration of his disturbing love for her, and no one can blame her for being repulsed.
• As continuation of above, Beryl showed himself to be one of the most horrific and twisted characters in the Nasuverse, not just because of his antics and backstabbing but because his character is eerily accurate on how actual serial killers and sexual offenders think and behave.
• On a similar note, Aurora herself provides her own dose of Realism-Induced Horror by showcasing how utterly delusional and sociopathic narcissists like her can be when they can get away from the consequences of their actions all the time.
• Luckily, you can now summon the Fairy Knights! Unfortunately due to how the FATE system's Ascension system works by bringing the Servant closer to the apex of their prime, this results in their third and fourth Ascensions being based just before their horrible deaths. Barghest's Fourth Ascension line has her screaming for someone to kill her before she loses control, Baobhan's above-mentioned Sanity Slippage and being unable to feel anything due to her having her limbs torn off of her and being thrown into Cernunnos' pit cursing the fairies, and Melusine as close as she can be to her original form as Albion. The only solace is that Barghest gets a line update upon completing the Lostbelt, upon which she vows to defy her fate and reaffirms her loyalty to you, and Melusine remains fully in control while proclaiming she is Devoted to You.

"Lostbelt No.7: Golden Sea of Trees, Nahui Mictlān"

• The preview has Nemo telling the members of Chaldea that they will be performing a belly landing on the empty ground and tells everyone to brace themself. Whatever knocked the Storm Border from the sky, the captain has to use all of his remaining mana just to keep everyone alive.
  • The scene is accompanied by an animation of an intense thunderstorm, followed by a view of the storm from the torn open walls of the Border's hallway.
• The first thing we see when we enter the Lostbelt: volcanoes, thunderstorms, and hellish destruction as far as the eye can see. With the revelation that this is the theorized super-continent Pangaea, this is the entire world caught up in an apocalyptic maelstrom. There is nothing on this surface capable of supporting life. Fortunately, the actual Lostbelt turns out to be underground.
• After years of hype and some extra foreshadowing in Grand Order, it's finally happened: we've come face-to-face with ORT.
  • While this encounter is heavily implied to be some manner of vision or time-space meddling from Tezcatlipoca, it does absolutely nothing to diminish the impact of fighting what Kinoko Nasu described as the Nasuverse's "unbeatable secret boss that humanity could not hope to defeat alone". Finally seeing it in the "flesh" doesn't do this alien machine-lifeform justice. It's easily as big as Cernunnos; one of its legs could cleave a modern city in half. Just by its arrival, the landscape — and the arena used for its fight — is reduced to a burning wasteland where rubble floats upwards, not as bad as the hellscape that is the Lostbelt's surface, but damned close. And Tez confirms that this scene will play out in only 10 days.
  • The fight itself. "Hopeless" doesn't even begin to describe it, and it does a pretty good job of impressing this on the player. 1 million HP out of the gate doesn't seem like anything out of the ordinary compared to what we've faced so far, but what's this little cluster icon under ORT's HP bar? Deplete the 1 million HP, and you'll see that it's a new icon for a Break Bar that obscures another nine — this thing has ten break bars, and the one you just broke fills ORT's HP up to 10 million.^note For the record, getting through the 10 million has been done, only for ORT's next bar to be 100 million. Even U-Olga Marie, who you thought was going to be the ultimate enemy of the story that can create black holes on a whim, takes a swing at ORT to no avail.
  • Every battle in the game has a "Recommended level", the minimal level that developers think your Servants should be at to tackle the enemy. The hardest bosses have this level at 90+ or 90++. This is the only battle outside of Challenge Quests to have an recommended level simply state "EX".
  • When ORT defeats a Servant, it does something special to them: it converts them into green crystal that it then consumes (though Mash retreats). For now we have no idea why, but your Servants don't even get to say their defeat lines before being absorbed into ORT. Now try imagining being there as your Servant (especially your favourite) meets a horrific Fate Worse than Death, especially if you're going in blind. Can you hear them screaming for you?
  • ORT is only Lv.1. This might seem funny at a glance, until you realize that most of the victories Chaldea has had against godlike and/or eldritch entities involved finding a way to weaken them... but again, ORT is Lv.1. It can't be any weaker and it's still treating the memetically-godslaying Chaldea like little more than an annoying fly to be swatted.
  • The music. It perfectly encapsulates the despair and folly of facing this outer-dimensional monster.
  • And the worst part of all? It's later revealed that ORT ate the Tree of Emptiness for use as a power source, which means it is the Cosmic Keystone now. If Chaldea still means to finish its mission of destroying the Lostbelts, the confrontation with ORT is inevitable.
• And then there's the actual fight with ORT. Though it might be more accurate to call it a large scale war, because that's what it took to stand a ghost of a chance, and ORT loves showering us with Hope Spots.
  • The first round with ORT doesn't seem as bad as before. Armed with the knowledge that it can be weaker at Lv.1 because its core is missing, what we first meet is a Sleep-Mode Size ORT (that still towers over us) with three average health bars... and then we learn that it doesn't need its core to assume its full form. All we did was piss it off.
  • The now-active ORT starts generating its Crystal Valley, essentially turning Lostbelt 7 into its own world, with a twist because of the Tree of Emptiness it ate: it starts converting all the real trees around it into other Trees of Emptiness. And it will do this everywhere it goes because it's essentially bringing its own Lostbelt with it. Enough of the Trees growing to maturity means more Lostbelts, if not tearing the whole planet apart in a space-time cataclysm. ORT could essentially end the world by walking.
  • The true fight with ORT consists of us chasing it down to stop it from reclaiming its core so it doesn't become the horrifically HP-inflated thing Tezcatlipoca shows us. It still manages to be HP-inflated regardless, retaining its Cluster Break Bar with each bar being 1 Million HP. And it would be more accurate to say it is chasing us in the fight scene, trampling forward through all of Nahui Mictlān without stopping even as it kicks our asses as we desperately try to slow it down.
  • And when we finally deplete that last Break Bar? It doesn't die, it transforms. The thing that's been destroying Nahui Mictlān and us just by walking over it was only in its first form.
  • DATA LOST is real. The gimmick of the fight is that ORT does indeed consume all the Servants it defeats, and those Servants stay gone until you either get ORT to its very last HP bar, or you reset the whole encounter.
  • And when you finally do defeat it? You still didn't defeat it. After its original body is destroyed to the last cell, it suddenly reappears on the deck of the Storm Border in a gold-plated humanoid form. It used the data from the Servants it consumed to figure out how Heroic Spirit Summoning works, hacked itself onto the Throne of Heroes, then pulled a Gilgamesh and summoned itself just in case you beat it. And it's not just as any ordinary Foreigner Servant, but a Grand Foreigner, something that shouldn't even exist on multiple levels. ORT just took the established rules of the setting and bent them like flimsy tin.
  • The above bears repeating: ORT took the thing that's been carrying Chaldea through their journey and not only turned it against them, it did it better. This is why it's been stated by multiple sources throughout the Nasuverse that ORT is not something humanity alone can overcome. With its Cannibalism Superpower, ORT can weaponize the very Human Order itself against the Human Order, complete with all the stubbornness and trickery the people, their Gods, and whatever else born of Earth has ever come up with. The only reason Camazotz once beat this monster is because by the time of the battle, humanity rendered themselves extinct to empower Camazotz with immortality when ORT had no answer for it, and in the end the most their sacrifice accomplished was to merely incapacitate the thing.
  • Look at your player character's face as the battle goes on. You'd think Fujimaru had a monopoly on sheer stubborn tenacity by this point after everything they've faced, but the more terrifying and unstoppable ORT proves to be, the more visibly exhausted and desperate Fujimaru gets. This is someone who recently reaffirmed their Heroic Willpower while in the most hope-crushing Lostbelt to ever exist, and has the Count of Monte Cristo performing maintenance in their mind besides, and they still can't fight off the terror that ORT brings to the table. They're finally learning what it's like to be on the wrong end of The Determinator.
    Fujimaru: "—We've encountered many threats up to this point, however... THAT is a genuine monster."
  • Something else to consider that makes all of this more unsettling? ORT seems to be gunning for YOU during the fight - in addition to the Protagonist's portrait changing, the way the raid is framed makes it look as if ORT is walking toward you, and its awakening causes the chapter select option to change from "Golden Sea of Trees Travelogue Nahui Mictlan" to "Underground Sea of Trees Xibalba". Even the game itself is not immune to ORT's power.
• Daybit's backstory is itself rather disturbing. The Destructive Teleportation accident that made Daybit who he is now leans into the fact that he is practically not the original person anymore, that the original 10-year old boy is now someone else... forever existing and still alive along with his father as burn shadows on the floor of their lab until the heat death of the universe. Worse, only Daybit himself was reconstituted. There's no new version of his father, and since all memory and records of them were wiped before this incident, unlike his son, he's effectively been Ret-Gone-d other than his shadow containing his consciousness.

Chapter 2. 5 - Operation: Ordeal Call

"Ordeal Call 1: Inner World of the Imaginary Number Compass, Paper Moon"

• After years of being foreshadowed as one of Passionlip's components, Durga finally makes an appearance in the story, along with her Person of Mass Destruction Alter ego of Kali. When her master awakens this aspect of her, she immediately goes rogue and performs her infamous Dance of Destruction to bring ruin to the world within Paper Moon.
• This chapter also introduces us to Bluebeard. NOT Caster Gilles, the REAL Bluebeard. And if anything, he’s MORE unhinged than Caster Gilles! Gilles is ultimately a broken man who SNAPPED after seeing someone he cared for dearly murdered in cruel fashion. Bluebeard doesn’t even KNOW who Jeanne d’Arc is, and he doesn’t care. He doesn’t NEED a tragic push to commit monstrous deeds. He butchers helpless women Because. He. Can.
  • Then we get introduced to his Master: an AI copy of Zolgen Makiri, AKA Zouken Matou. Being manifested in his youthful, handsome form instead of the shriveled old man form does nothing to detract from what a despicable bastard he is. He lets Caster massacre many of the Rani A.I.s to steal their Raniment to empower himself, then after his first defeat he just gets WORSE. He returns in all his wrinkled infamy, steals Rider, and uses the latter’s charm ability to compel the Rani A.I.s into becoming Living Bombs.

General

• The OVA gives us the glorious image of Olga Marie being thrown into Chaldeas, screaming and begging for someone to save her with tears in her eyes.
• Unlimited Lost Works, the Noble Phantasm of EMIYA (Alter). It's basically Unlimited Blade Works combined with the Origin Bullet. The result is the enemy getting ripped apart from the inside by swords.
• Frankenstein's Interludes. Fate/Apocrypha showed Victor Frankenstein wasn't a particularly good father to Fran, but here it's shown he has no qualms about slaughtering entire towns to begin his experiments anew. Fran's new little sister, Eve, is slavishly devoted to their father and doesn't hesitate to brutally murder everyone he points at her. Still, not even she deserved to be used by her father as a new body, especially since she's advanced enough to realize what Victor's doing and vainly tries to resist as his consciousness overwrites hers.
• Summer BB, despite being fused with what is generally agreed to be the most evil, sadistic entity in the entire Cthulhu Mythos, doesn't really act any way different from usual aside from a slight obsession with pigs, which might make you wonder if this isn't another case of "Character Alignment in Fate makes no sense"... until you read the description in her Max Level Craft Essence, in which the Protagonist is trapped in the moon by BB, rendered completely insane from looking at Nyarlathotep's true form, all while humanity has been completely annihilated by the Alien God. The clock shows it is 11:59, forever.
• Most Valentine Scenes tend to be either heartwarming, funny, or heartwarmingly funny, but Summer BB's scene is like it came from H. P. Lovecraft himself. Basically, the protagonist is trapped into a Lotus-Eater Machine in the form of a Luluhawa Island chocolate, a product of her powers granted by Nyarlatothep, causing you to forget everything and basically go insane due to BB being now an Eldritch Abomination. The last thing you hear before going completely insane is her laugh.
• Nagao Kagetora never stops smiling. Ever. While it's stated that she's generally a cheerful and energetic lady who remains upbeat even during battle, some of her smiles can be downright psychotic.
• Salome is just a Stripperiffic Bronze Servant who just happens to carry a skull that she used as her lover and mystical weapon and conversing with a creepily seductive voice. And she doesn't mind taking your head either for her fetish since that's what she does to her lovers. She's basically a really creepy Yandere that might give other famous Yanderes in the Chaldea crew like Kiyohime a run for their money. Also, if you're wondering whose head that was? John the Baptist's, the guy that baptized Jesus Christ (and is considered a Saint/Prophet by Christians and Muslims). Seeing her toy around with a revered man's skull is pretty unnerving.
  • Her Bond CE is very disturbing because, aside from John the Baptist's skull, the other skulls that she carries around belong to her former masters who had summoned her before. And her way of expressing her love to her masters is to chop their heads off and have them around. And yes, she's even interested in your head too!
• Tristan's Interlude. It starts off innocent enough, a story of Tristan lamenting his inability to know what love is as it appears to then shift to the master and him in his dreams like many other Interludes. It's anything but. In truth, Tristan has been kidnapped by someone pretending to be the master (heavily implied to be Morgan), who then proceeds to torture Tristan with the things he did in Camelot, changing into the other Knights and people of the singularity as he can only scream for them to shut up. Soon, he's Laughing Mad and thoroughly convinced he's nothing more than a monster. When the master, Lancelot, Gawain, and Bedivere go to try and retrieve him, he's so far gone he tells them to Then Let Me Be Evil and threatens to kill the Master! It takes a version of Lancer Altria appearing to finally stop him.
• If you think that Riyo's April Fools Art wouldn't head towards this territory, Yang Guifei's eyes will make you think otherwise. It's supposed to be a parody of her flaming eyes in her Noble Phantasm but these simple pencilled-in scribbles that don't fully cover her eyes give the very unnerving effect of having two sets of eyes staring back at the player.
• At the end of the up until now completely silly Summer 2018 event, just as the party is about to break the time loop, BB drops the act completely and darkly declares that she is not letting Guda leave. She proceeds to go on an absolutely unhinged rant about how much work she put into Luluwaii and how all of it was to spare Guda from a painful fate (the Lostbelts), and if they're going to spurn her genuine desire to help them, then she'll just force her to stay. She then reveals that the Divine entity bound to her isn't Pele, but Nyarlathotep, and engages you in a final battle amidst a pitch-black, distorted void where the only light is the pale green glow of the BB Channel TVs.
  • This also paints a rather disturbing picture of the Lostbelt arc and what it holds, as whatever Guda goes through by the end of the arc is so horrific that BB, a proudly self-proclaimed Card-Carrying Villain, was desperate to save them from it by any means necessary.
• Summer Kiara is just as, if not even more terrifying than Summer BB. When you summon her, she hijacks the Moon Cancer class card, causing it to spark purple and mutate the card's artwork from BB to Kiara herself. This is notably one of two unique summoning animation in the game, making it much more jarring and startling.
• The Summer Camp 2020 event starts off on an incredibly terrifying note. It starts out with a swirling black void, then suddenly jumps to static while a very unnerving distorted voice can be heard in the background, then it jumps to a screen that talks about over 125,000 experiments, and eventually a Madness Mantra, and then, a very creepy mask pops up, all while the static continues to drone in the background. Yeesh.
  • The full thing is even worse! There's even more creepy images that pop up, what with the ruined room, a screen full of twisted hands and eerie shadows, the distorted voice droning on in the background, and the mysterious shadowy figure (later revealed to be Xu Fu) that pops up. Illya and Murasaki are very visibly scared shitless after seeing the creepy tape, and can you blame them?! Not helping afterwards is that you're immediately attacked by evil spirits. Oh, and by the way, you can't skip this scene, unless you skipped the cutscene beforehand.
  • Once again, the main plot of the event is revealed to have been orchestrated by a Servant with ties to an Elder God desperately trying to convince the Protagonist to give up their quest to destroy the Lostbelts. Just what the hell is waiting for Ritsuka at the end of their journey...?
  • The Elder God-possessed Servant in question is Abigail (Summer), and it serves as an effective reminder of how scary the original Foreigner is when she's got her game on. This adorable little Puritan girl is still a Lovecraftian horror in her own right, and the nature of the event's Singularity treats her as such — as in, you can't defeat a Lovecraftian horror. And she uses her invulnerability and her power over dreams liberally, only hemmed in by her affection for the Protagonist and her turf war with the event's other antagonist (a former Beast!). Worst of all, she not only has a serious chip on her shoulder for Servants, but unlike her maddened stint in Salem she actually has valid reasons to want your Servants dead that they can't even properly refute (reasons that almost turned out prophetic in Lostbelt 7, as the Protagonist was almost killed by mana drain from summoning too many Servants). The threat she poses is unnaturally extreme for a Summer event, and the Protagonist calming her down and reaffirming their trust is the only reason the story didn't end right there.
• Despite his Joke Character nature, Nobukatsu's Noble Phantasm animation is extremely disturbing. He calmly and firmly raises his arms, either tells everyone to die, screams his sister's name or laughs crazily, and then he violently disintegrates. This is the only time Nobukatsu's Devoted to You relationship with Nobunaga is played for anything but laughs, and it demonstrates the sheer depths of his devotion quite effectively and paints his self sacrifice in a dark light.
• Van Gogh is by far, the most terrifying (and also the most heartbreaking) of the playable Foreigners released so far. From the moment you meet her, she's already very mentally unstable, alternating between solemn sadness, painful depression, and unhinged fits of laughter without warning. And as she ascends, she just gets worse. Her Third Ascension in particular is easily the most inhuman-looking Ascension even among the other Lovecraftian-aligned Foreigners, with an overall appearance that just feels very wrong.
• In the Ooku Event, it starts out with all of your Servants and Chaldea personnel being oddly absent, save for yourself, Mash, Sion, and Kiara. You don't meet any of them as you continue through the place, and you see that Goredolf has been brainwashed. And yet when you finish the first floor, you learn what exactly happened to all the personnel: they've become part of the foundation of Ooku. All the walls, floors and pillars are made from Chaldea's workforce and Servants! Which also gives the uncomfortable impression that all of Ooku is a Womb Level atop of that.
  • The sheer scope of Kama's plan when they're finally revealed. Her entire plan revolved around luring the player into the Ooku and corrupting them with her "love", and she comes pretty damn close to doing it. Her Xanatos Gambit pretty much ensured that she'd win no matter what actions they took. Had it not been for overlooking one specific detail, she would have won flat out. Until Morgan came along, Kama was the closest any antagonist has come to defeating Chaldea.
• When the Katsushika duo goes into their third ascension, Ou'i in particular gains a dress that looks more like a wearable alien, her lotus flower hair ornaments turn into these strange Eldritch Abomination pods with single eyes, and her father Hokusai (who takes the form of an octopus-like creature) docks with her and takes control of her body.
• Sen No Rikyu's third Ascension is chock full of this. For starters, it turns out said ascension is Komahime, a concubine sent for Toyotomi Hidetsugu who was killed despite not ever having met him. She certainly looks the part of a Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl, and her attacks consist of choking her foes, playing her biwa which bloodies them, firing lasers from said hands fingertips and flicking them like it's nothing. And when she uses her Noble Phantasm, pay close attention to her sprite's neck: she's bleeding profusely from it and uses the blood to set the stage for the rest of her attack which sometimes gives her Tears of Blood. Fortunately she's a very sweet person, but her animations and story makes her fighting style very nightmarish.
• With the reveal that O.R.T is not from Mercury, but the Oort Cloud, comes some frightening conclusions. First, there are more Types than previously thought. And two, what/who is the real Type Mercury, and more importantly, where is it?
• Sodom's Beast/Draco's summon animation actually puts Summer Kiara's unique summon animation to shame: she doesn't just hijack the summoning card, she hijacks the entire summoning area, shutting down all the power. Then, red power erupts from the summoning circle before a brand new BEAST SUMMONING CARD appears. What makes this even more frightening is that the Summoning System was created to oppose Beasts, so the fact that it shuts down before Draco arrives at Chaldea just shows how much power she has. First-timers are going to remember this one for a long time.
• The companion manga From Lostbelt features a chapter titled A Stray Sheep’s Gravestone. A good portion of this story focuses on Beryl, and it’s here where we actually SEE the infamous incident where Beryl broke into Mash’s room, strutting in slowly just long enough for the reader to DREAD what’s about to happen, then snaps the poor girl’s finger.

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