Nightmare Fuel / Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward

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Legacy/A Realm Reborn - Heavensward - Stormblood - Shadowbringers

• The Dusk Vigil, the first dungeon you unlock in Heavensward is full of this. Like the Stone Vigil in ARR, it's a ruined Ishgardian fortress. Unlike the Stone Vigil, it wasn't ruined by dragons, but by the sudden freezing cold and snow brought on by Dalamud's fall. A series of journal pages left by one of the sentries chronicles how the vigil fell: The commander of the fortress, Ser Yuhelmeric, refused to let himself or his men leave their post. Then sections of the fortress collapsed due to the weight of the snow, with the journal writer noting that they are running out of supplies to treat those wounded in the collapse. The trapped and freezing sentries eventually conspiring to mutiny against Yuhelmeric, some of which were the commander's most trusted officers. Yuhelmeric cuts them all down with his axe, then when asked about food, the commander ominously states that Halone the Fury has blessed them with a bounty of fresh meat. The final entry is the writer falling to despair about never seeing his family again, then noting he shouldn't see his family again after what he's done to survive up to this point.
  • To compound on this. You are initially sent there on a quest by Ser Yuhelmeric's father to retrieve a family heirloom. Gifted to his son on the day of his marriage, the heirloom was stolen by Inquisitors when they falsely accused his wife of heresy, with the father hinting what their true motivations for taking her into their custody were. However by the time he proved her innocence, they had "interogated" her for days and left her a shadow of her former self. To rub salt into the wound, the lost heirloom itself appeared on a statue the inquisition comissioned for the Dusk Vigil but the family couldnt prove anything. This is indicated as the true reason Ser Yuhelmeric refused to abandon the Dusk Vigil and the extremes he went to do so. The warrior of light's journal notes that they will be leaving out the details of Ser Yuhelmeric's actions when returning the heirloom to his father.
• You got to see it in Coerthas already, but actually being in the crown center of Ishgard strongly pushes forth just how screwed up its traditionalist society is. They praise and worship Halone in the same breath that they'll execute "heretics" in her name, even entire families of strong nobility can be completely demolished within a short period of time should even one be branded a traitor, and any naysayers are either quietly quelled behind the scenes or outright dragged away to be imprisoned and likely killed in broad daylight. The Machinist quest line outright demonstrates the commonfolk are silently oppressed, and the newfound firearms from the Skysteel Manufactory are attacked to prevent any possible shift of power under the guise of being dishonorable compared to swords and bows. The sheer paranoia over the war with Dragonkind not only has the populace in perpetual fear when they aren't utterly devout to the war's cause, but is exploited by those in power to kidnap innocent women with false charges or kill off any competition or threats to one's own status.
  • For an idea of how bleak this is for a nation state, when the Warrior of Light and a steadfast ally in Aymeric manage to overcome Thordan's Corrupt Church, it's not met with joyous celebration, but a knife in Aymeric's gut and internal sabotage to the new peace efforts by those who can't even begin to comprehend a world where their traditions (and power) they had been raised within are no longer in place. And even after you finally brought an end to the war once and for all, nearly every side and Job quest you might have left over in the nation continues prior to these events occurring to highlight the Ishgardian's fanaticism, racist genocidal hatred for dragons and their allies, and so, so many people having lost practically their entire livelihoods to either dragon attacks or Ishgard throwing them to the kiln over the slightest accusation.
  • As the Dark Knight questline shows, some of the more corrupt Temple Knights are not above kidnapping young women in broad daylight under false charges and taking them to be "interrogated" - and often after these corrupt knights are finished with the poor girls, they are killed by being literally thrown off the side of the city. Its no wonder that this is the start of your brutal path as a Dark Knight, with the quest ending with the Warrior of Light and Fray storming into the offices of the corrupt guards, beating them almost to death, and warning that anyone who tries this again will die.
• While it's satisfying to destroy King Thordan and his Heavensward in the final battle, it's Thordan's What the Hell Are You? moment with the Warrior of Light that gets creepy as they're framed in black and white like they're an unholy monster. Even more so if the WoL is a white mage, or happens to have glowing gear or eyes.
• The Dark Knight quests. Despite having survived many ordeals (which may have included the Calamity itself, a war with the Garlean Empire, the beast tribes constantly summoning primals, and even the betrayal in Ul'dah by the Monetarist and Crystal Braves, the player character/Warrior of Light has remained stoic through it all. Then, one day, they come across a fallen knight in black armor and find a Soul Stone. Nothing at all unusual to them as the WoL at this point; Heck, the skills and transfers of abilities to them will probably be useful, right? Well, this soul stone reacts much more differently than the others before and, after blacking out, the WoL finds the fallen knight is somehow alive and well, and knows them by name. You, in character, don't question this. Matter of fact, you almost get a sense of familiarity from this "Fray". At first, there's nothing too unseemly, but as you delve further and further into your new Dark Knight powers, people start noting you've changed a bit, and are acting differently now. Then the Wham Episode hits, and Fray reveals they are you, or rather, the persona of your psyche that has suffered pain, loss, anger, betrayal, fear...some of which are from people whose lives you've saved. You aren't the invincible, unflappable hero you think you are and you, the WoL, can fall into darkness just as easily as anyone else can.
  • And then there's the completely insane noblewoman that replaces Fray as the questline's Big Bad.
    • At the very end of the questline, Ystride, said noblewoman, gives you, Riella, and Sidurgu a chillingly demented Motive Rant/"The Reason You Suck" Speech. She madly claims that Riella's death is "the will of the Fury" before laughing maniacally. And finally, just to cement how truly far past the Moral Event Horizon she is, her last act before Sidurgu finishes her off is to give a deranged Slasher Smile.
• The cutscene you get if you fail to defeat Bismarck before he wrecks the island you're fighting him on. You get a special cutscene where your character is in pain and unable to keep fighting, and they look towards the other direction to see Bismarck flying towards them, mouth wide open. As the screen fades to black, the last things you hear are ground breaking followed by a swallowing sound. This is, so far, the only cutscene in the game where it actually shows your character die.
• Azys Lla, full stop. It's essentially the Allagan version of Big MT, and is where they conducted the research behind almost all of the horrific, mechanical or gene-spliced monstrosities you've faced to date. The fact that the various interfacing nodes are entirely cavalier about what went on there (and that one of the areas is a museum, meaning this place was a tourist attraction before Allag's fall) demonstrates just how far gone the Allagans were, culturally, by the end.
  • The nodes also demonstrate that the Allagan would randomly conscript citizens for dangerous tasks, with the worst example being a node that recruits test subjects for the city's "compliance systems". The node expresses disappointment that the robots failed to kill you.
  • Worst of all, this place is also the Can for The Warring Triad, and the aftermath of Thordan's actions weakened the seal. Cue the Warring Triad questline, as the Scions seek to prevent another Calamity.
• The Vault Conspiracy in 3.1. As it turns out, Ystride was far from the only dangerously unstable member of Ishgard's clergy. The absolutely insane lengths the Vault Priest and Ser Seninough go to in a desperate attempt to deny the truth of the Dragonsong War and to undermine Aymeric's reforms are downright chilling.
  • The demented Slasher Smile The leader of the conspiracy makes when he tries to throw an innocent girl to her death. All while madly claiming that her death will be your fault for your "heresy". Hilda mentions if you speak to her after completing 3.1, that despite whatever methods the Inquisition use on him, the Priest refuses to confess and tell who the other conspirators are. And that apparently he still has that deranged smile on his face to this day.
• Calcabrina is the final boss of the Antitower dungeon introduced in 3.2. The boss that gave many players nightmares as a still sprite with creepy music is now fully animated in high definition (with remixed creepy music). Have fun.
• Nidhogg in Estinien's body. He arrives with large eyes growing out of his right forearm and left shoulder surrounded by grotesque black flesh and sprays Vidofnir's blood over the symbol of peace the Ishgardians had just unveiled.
  • The sheer brutality of his attack on Vidofnir, and the message its meant to send. Nidhogg has fallen so far that he no longer cares if you're Ishgardian or Dravanian. If you try to come between him and his revenge, he will stop at nothing to utterly destroy you.
• The boss of the Fist of the Son in Alexander, Ratfinx Twinkledinx. In spite of his hilarious name, he manages to be terrifying, as he is a mad scientist Goblin who performs his experiments on other goblins. The floor of his arena has a large number of discarded Goblin gas-masks strewn about, and Goblins never remove their masks. Midway through the fight, you find out what happened to his test subjects when you are attacked by a grotesque chimera beast that appears to be formed from many goblins fused together. Suffice to say, even the Illuminati are probably happy when you kill Ratfinx.
• 3.4 has Arbert, the Warrior of Darkness, reveal why he is so desperate to kill the Warrior of Light. Arbert and his companions came from another world (known as The First since there's thirteen similar worlds) and said world is being destroyed by a flood of light. Like the Warrior of Light, Arbert and his party were just normal people looking for some jobs and they eventually became the slayers of the dark and heroes to everyone. They fought the evils back until they ceased to exist, which meant that light was now completely unstoppable and is now consuming their world. Unlike the Void, which is the result of The Thirteenth world being consumed by total darkness, a world of pure light is a white void where nothing can exist. That's right, the void created by the darkness, while twisted, still has some form of life while the void created by light has nothing. To even travel to the world where the Warrior of Light resides in, Arbert and his friends had to die in order to transcend with the power of Echo and he did the deed himself so no one else would have to. It's no wonder he is desperate to fix what went wrong; if The First is completely consumed by light, then Arbert would have lost everything and failed.
• 3.5 reveals the true face hidden behind the Gryffin's mask: to the surprise of nobody, it turns out to be Ilberd, more deranged than ever. Blinded by his hatred, he devised a plan to sacrifice his fellow Ala-Mhigo refugees and channel their anger thanks to Nidhogg's eyes inside of him, in order to become a Primal even more powerful than Bahamut. Holding both eyes in his hands, Ilberd voluntarily falls to his death with an unsettling smile on his face. The next scene completely averts the Disney Villain Death trope, as we see the impact leading to Ilberd's death (with a gruesome sound and the screen flashing red, no less), and we have a monstrous shot of the piles of bodies of everyone who died for his twisted ideal (with dark, gloomy lighting and lifeless expressions, suiting people who got slaughtered). Just when you may think he failed his objective, as he is dead, alongside everyone else, the eyes react, and they gather the energy and seething hatred of everyone who died nearby to form and give birth to a new Primal. This is scary on a whole new level, as Primals so far always needed followers and crystals to allow themselves to exist: this one is able to sustain himself on lingering pure hatred alone. And just to ramp things up further, an echoy version of Answers (the same song played during the Calamity and the fight against Bahamut Prime) plays in the background.
• A raid at Baelsar's Wall goes wrong once the spiderlike Magitek armors come in impaling one of the soldiers right through the abdomen with one of its legs. Painful doesn't describe it well enough.
  • The whole event really, once Ilberd's plans go into motion. The Warrior of Light is powerless to stop the Crystal Braves remnants from activating Magitek to kill the Ala Mhigo forces, which we get to see from the ground perspective as they're brutally slaughtered. One woman ends up encircled by several at once, and gets blown up and smashed over and over with the machines obscuring the carnage. By the end of it all, the player gets to see literal hills of corpses, stiff and bent in unnatural or horrified ways from the mass murder. And to top it all off, Ilberd then pulls off his Thanatos Gambit by jumping to his death with Nidhogg's eye, resulting in a brief Jump Scare right before the collision and getting to see his bloodied heap of a corpse shortly afterwards. It's easily the darkest scene in the game up to this point.
• Teleportation seems like such a trivial thing that you don't think about it too much, but when something does go wrong, it can be extremely chilling to see what happens and you get to see two people suffer from it. Y'shtola and Thancred during the bloody banquet in 2.5 escaped by using Flow, a spell that is too dangerous to use and works like an unstable Teleport/Return. Y'shtola could not find a way to an aetheryte, so her body was drifting in the aetherial sea and was slowly being dissolved by it. The only way for her to escape was from the aid of the White Mages in Gridania and if they had acted any later, she would have been completely consumed by the aether and died. Even though she escaped, she lost the ability to see naturally and has to rely on using her own body's aether to see, even though it is slowly killing her. Thancred manages to escape on his own, but he winds up in the Dravanian Forelands completely naked and exposed to the wildlife. While he managed to get help and fend for himself, his time spent in the aetherial sea robbed him of his magic to the point that even basic spells like Teleport and Return no longer work.