Nightmare Fuel / Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers

Final Fantasy XIV Main Page
Legacy/A Realm Reborn - Heavensward - Stormblood - Shadowbringers

• The reveal trailer shows the Warrior of Light looking extremely haggard and just... tired as he staggers through a wasteland all alone. His Echo shows him flashbacks of the Calamity that kickstarted a A Realm Reborn as well as their experiences (previous trailers) in Heavensward and Stormblood, behaving more like PTSD than anything else. A nearby gremlin mocks the Warrior of Light, saying there's nothing left to fight or live for. When Kiribu, the warrior statue from the hard mode version of the Lost City of Amdapor, descends from the sky, the gremlin joyously proclaims that the Warrior of Light has met his end and that he is a nobody. Kiribu's opening attack breaks the Warrior of Light's bow as he goes flying backwards before he swaps to Warrior. Every move he makes, Kiribu easily counters and breaks the Warrior of Light's weapon. From Warrior, to Dragoon, to Monk, and to Samurai, everything the Warrior of Light tries, Kiribu just No Sells it. Just when she has him under her heel and is about to finish him off, the Warrior of Light switches to Dark Knight, unleashing a huge shockwave that vaporizes Kiribu. We then see the Warrior of Light shrouded in a completely dark aura as the voiceover narration states that the Warrior of Light must become the Warrior of Darkness. For the Warrior of Light to switch sides heavily implies that Arbert's warning about light flooding the world is coming to fruition. And the fact that the Warrior of Light couldn't even defend himself unless he became a Warrior of Darkness along with the narration stating that this catastrophe is even worse than Bahamut leveling half of Eorzea scream one thing: The world of Final Fantasy XIV has reached its Darkest Hour.
• The Sin Eaters. Embodiments of Pure Light that seek to kill and consume the ether of the living or convert them into more as they Flood the World with Light. These angelic, humanoid, beastial, and eldritch horrors of pure white not only have Resurrective Immortality, ensuring they can eventually win through sheer attrition as their numbers increase and their enemies suffer Deader than Dead, they have even come to dominate part of The First society and live in luxury as they bring about the world's end.
• According to Solus in the E3 Launch Trailer, Hydaelyn, the Mother Crystal herself isn't a goddess, but an Elder Primal. Everything we've done, every action and every sacrifice to aid Her is protecting this world, was to aid a Primal. Even Minfillia sacrificed herself for Her and we were doing it for the very type of creature we were sworn to slay.
• Very early in the story, you get to witness someone transforming into a Sin Eater, and it is not pleasant at all. Tesleen, the kind caretaker who was close friends with Alisaie, gets impaled through the heart by a Forgiven Dissonance, as she tries to save an infected child. First she screams in horrific pain as the terrible light ravages her body, making some seriously wrong faces in the process, then she starts puking out light aether as it starts leaking out from her eyes and later covering her entire body... and then she transforms into that... THING in the page image above. Even worse, she still manages to get some last words in, asking Alisaie to forgive her before she flies off, leaving poor Alisaie in tears. The entire sequence manages to be utterly heartbreaking, awfully nauseating, and ABSOLUTELY TERRIFYING all at once, and wouldn't look out of place in Parasite Eve or Resident Evil. The infected child only adds to the eeriness of the entire scene, as he's so far gone that he does nothing but stare, straight-faced and unresponsive as Tesleen horrifically mutates right in front of him. It hammers in a point early on about the First: Light Is Not Good.
  • It gets worse when you reach your first dungeon on the First; Tesleen is the dungeon's second boss. By that time, she's so far gone, that putting her down is a Mercy Kill. But then the Fridge Horror sets in: sin eaters are generally made by a sin eater killing a person to transform them into one. This dungeon is full of them. Ergo, Tesleen must have killed some innocent people and transformed them into sin eaters, helpless to stop herself as the abomination that she's become. It's both sad and horrifying to think that this sweet woman was made into such a monster through no fault of her own.
  • The first dungeon has a whole bunch of more subtle horror floating around. A sizable number of other Sin Eater conversions are seen, ranging from wildlife to a livestock field to much of the populace of a city market. This underlines how dangerous these monsters can become, as even a single Eater can turn a 'recruitment drive' into an army.
  • There are also a lot of corpses. Which is odd, at first, since Sin Eater conversion leaves feathers, rather than a body, and even weak Sin Eaters love to gorge on the flesh of the living. But when faced with those options, being Driven to Suicide so at least you end up Dying as Yourself seems like the best option.
• The fact that Sin Eaters were once creatures and people is scary enough. Alisaie explains that once someone is exposed to the excess Light, their aetheric balance completely breaks down and they undergo a transformation, one which there's no going back from. What makes it worse is if a Sin Eater plants their seed insides someone (usually by wounding them) they are screwed since now it's only a matter of time before they turn. Once that happens, the person is sent away to a remote location where they can do minimal damage when they transform. The victims are then placed under care by caretakers where they are given their favorite food mixed with a poison that kills them so that they can die with a happy memory and not turn into a Sin Eater. Symptoms of someone becoming a Sin Eater include becoming listless and their skin turning hard like plaster.
• When you finally meet up with Urianger, he tells you of a vision he saw on his way to the First and the details are terrifying. The Empire unleashed Black Rose on all of Eorzea, killing countless people with the gas so potent that not a single soul was spared. Not even children. All nations collapsed and society as a whole devolved into nothing more than mindless tribe-like states where might rules all and law no longer exists. To make matters worse, Urianger shows that the Black Rose even claimed the lives of the Scions. Not even the Warrior of Light themselves were spared from the Black Rose. If the Warrior of Light had continued on the path they were on before being pulled to the First, the 8th Umbral Calamity would have became a reality.
  • Made worse by the fact that Urianger lied. It wasn't a vision that he had. It was a future that the Crystal Exarch lived through and conveyed to him.
  • It gets even worse when the Tales from the Shadows sidestory "A World Forsaken" elaborates on the fallout of Black Rose: It didn't just affect our nations, even Garlemald was part of the collateral damage, as their ceruleum and magitek ceased to function. They took down their opposition, but the price they paid made them worse off than before.
• The rejoining of shards to the Source was always a bad thing, but you were never told about how bad it truly is until the Crystal Exarch explains it to you; each shard is attuned to a different element. Over time, that element builds up in aetherial energies. One untimely event is all that it takes to break the barrier that stands in between the shard and the Source. Once the barrier is broken, all of the shard's aether is transferred to the source, causing a major disaster. The element attuned to the shard magnifies the disaster so much that it becomes a Calamity on the Source (for example, a Calamity based on the element of earth could shatter and rearrange continents aka the fall of the Allagan Empire). In turn, the shard is then "rejoined" with the Source and is erased from existence. Countless lives, civilizations, histories, and societies are all erased with a rejoining and there's been seven so far.
  • Combined with the above Black Rose disaster, and Emet-Selch having mentioned in the Garlean capitol that it’s Light-aspected, it doesn’t take long to realize that if the Garleans had deployed the stuff, the result wouldn’t have been just desolation of half the Source, but also Norvrandt obliterated and absorbed into the Source in an Ardor of Light.
• The Flood of Light on the first is a terrifying thing to see. When you meet up with Alisaie, you can see a massive wall of what looks like crystallized light with building structures caught up in the wave. Alisaie points out that when the balance was tipped too heavily towards Light, Light itself began to swell within the land until it burst and created the Flood of Light. She also points out that beyond the cracks of the halted Light are lands that are filled with nothing but a white void. The primordial light behind the frozen Flood is so strong that life simply cannot exist. When you get the world map of the First, you see the continents in the middle are surrounded by a white circle. Said circle represents the Flood itself and it was rushing in from all directions. If it wasn't for the intervention of the Oracle of Light, the entire world would have been consumed by Light.
• When you and Alphinaud first reach Vauthry at the top of Eulmore, you find Kai-Shirr, clutching his arm, covered in blood near a knife. Considering that the game had used Bloodless Carnage before, or Blood from the Mouth at worst, the image of much more blood is jarring. The context makes it even worse: Vauthry told Kai-Shirr to throw himself from Eulmore as punshiment. When Kai-Shirr begged to do anything else, Vauthry allowed him to live, in exchange for cutting off part of his own flesh to do it. This shows that Vauthry is The Sociopath, while providing some truly unnerving imagery to cement it.
• The Lightwardens, some of the highest-ranking of the Sin Eaters, are not only extremely powerful, but are also truly insidious. They maintain the pall of light that blankets the First in sickly light. They call and command smaller Sin Eaters. If one of them is struck down, their essence flows into the nearest available container of aether (which is most likely the poor soul who killed it) and reshapes it into the Lightwarden's true form. They are a Square Enix take on a light-based Archdemon from the Dragon Age series!
• As the Warrior gathers Titania's regalia to meet the king, their quest for Titania's crown has the rug nearly pulled from under them when the Fuath decide they want them to stay. Forever. A sudden tidal wave engulfs them, and all suddenly went black. They would have been unceremoniously killed if it weren't for the Kojin Blessing negating the attempted drowning, and serves as a warning that the fae are far from harmless pranksters.
• Titania's first appearance. They make their presence known by invading the minds of every single living being in Il Mheg, angrily raving about how bored they are and demanding that someone come "play" with them, complete with an oppressive atmosphere and a Jump Scare. Considering that they also happen to be a Lightwarden, it's more than a little off-putting to see what is essentially a giant Sin Eater show sentience and emotion. By piecing together conversations you can have with the fae NPCs around Il Mheg after this event, it can be put together that this has not been the first time this has happened and that the fae can only resist their call for so long. If we had not come along, all the fae tribes would have eventually one day succumbed to their call and become sin eaters with fae powers enmass, swarming over the remnants of the First.
• The Eulmoran army has cornered the Scions, when suddenly the light vanishes, revealing the long lost stars. A new Titania has been crowned, the Night has returned, and the Fairies now come out to play. As silly as the pixies playing with the Eulmoran army like toys looks, it also shows the nightmarish implications of messing with The Fair Folk. One minute you're standing there, and the next moment, you're a leafman. You find an inexplicable puddle on the ground? The Fuath have claimed their next victim, pulling you in to drown. The fact they have the power to snuff you out instantly one way or another goes to show how scary they can be despite their cute, playful, if not mischievous demeanor.
  • Doing the quests in Ill Mheg (including the beast tribe quests) explains that the fairies are born from the aether of dead children and the Fuath from those that drowned. There are many fae folk, and with all the horror going on in Novrandt...
  • Fairies are responsible for managing the dreams of children to be pleasant. The story quest for Rak'tika has the fairies upset that the children want to leave at one point.
  • The beast tribe quest "The Big Sleep" explains that Fairies at one point fall asleep and don't wake up anymore, merging with their own dream and thus disappearing. While one of the nicest ways to die on this page, it is still scary as the quest not only shows that the fairies could fall asleep anywhere with their friends not knowing where they went...but also that the other fairies as non-empathetic creatures don't really care.
• Vauthry, AKA Innocence, the disgusting leader of Eulmore who looks like a giant mass of flesh with a baby's head. When he's not demanding interlopers cut flesh from their own bodies to feed his pet Sin Eaters, he's screaming and flailing to kill whoever pisses him off. Innocence's transformation into his Lightwarden form is a sickening sight to behold: the obese man twists and jerks in obvious pain, three antenna-like wings sprouting from the gaping hole on his back, his body levitates on its own, every ounce of his fat flesh bulging in a very disturbing way, until light shines through his eyes and mouth and he ascends to his angelic form.
• Urianger reveals some of his studywork over the last five years, unifying the different theories of aetherology for two separate worlds. Unlike the Source's naming of the concepts of active aether as Astral and passive aether as Umbral, the First, with its far closer examination of these materials, has realized that active living aether is better identified as Darkness while static aether is Light-aspected. Puts a rather drastically different take onto the Ascian "oh, mournful voice of creation".
• The contents of the Amh Araeng dungeon are quietly terrifying. The first two-thirds of it are simple enough and even goofy, since the bosses are an armadillo and a local flavor of golem using some animations from Construct 8 to make it basically a Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann reference. And then you get to the lowest level of the mine, and you finally begin finding Sin Eaters. Critters, right?... not so much. You find Sin Eater... golems? Slimes? A Sin Eater salt elemental? This really drives home the threat: the Primordial Light will consume everything it touches. Everything. Not even constructs are immune. The Lightwarden doesn't help either, being a disc with a face on it, in command of a huge array of disembodied wings.
• During one conversation, after it is revealed that the world as we know it is actually fourteen parallel fragments of the Ascians' homeworld, Emet-Selch lets slip that because the races of the post-Sundering worlds only contain a fraction of the aether and lifespan as the Ascians during their prime, he hardly considers non-Ascians to even be alive. As far as he's concerned, killing a non-Ascian wouldn't really be an act of murder, because how can you murder someone who never really lived to begin with? Imagine if this mentality is the norm among the Ascians, seeing us as no more worthy of respect or life as ants!
• The player character absorbs the light of each Warden they slay in order to bring back the night sky. After a few Warden slayings, Y'shotla senses something is wrong when they didn't recognize the Warrior of Darkness at first due to how much their aether had changed. After clearing the level 77 dungeon of its Warden, the Warrior of Darkness suddenly keels over as light starts bursting from their body with a sound that sounds like glass breaking. The screen cuts to black and "Duty Complete" appears on screen without any fanfare. Once they return back to the Crystarium for some rest, they speak to Ardbert's ghost when the Warrior of Darkness keels in pain again as light radiates from their body. Even Ardbert, who can't feel anything since he's a ghost, manages to get zapped by the light!
  
  The Warrior of Darkness's situation gets much worse later on. By the time the last Lightwarden is slain, the Warrior of Darkness completely keels over while Emet-Selch mocks them for not being strong enough to contain the Light. Ryne intervenes, but says that she was only able to delay the inevitable and if the Scions don't find a solution to the problem soon, the Warrior of Darkness will transform into a Sin Eater themselves. Ryne also mentions that all the light the Warrior of Darkness absorbed is putting such a strain on their soul that it's starting to crack. By the time the party reaches Emet-Selch after the Final Dungeon, the light inside the Warrior of Darkness completely overwhelms them, has them puke up light aspected vomit like Tesleen did, and they are redcued to weakly staggering towards Emet-Selch before collapsing. Luckily for the Warrior of Darkness, Ardbert fuses his soul with theirs, which buys them time in holding the Light back. During the Final Battle, the Warrior of Darkness uses their excess light to protect themselves from Hades's overwhelming darkness before using the remainder on the White Auracite to finish him off. Sure, the Warrior of Darkness's soul gets restored in the end, but the amount of pain they had gone through and the knowledge that they could become the very thing they were fighting against is pretty terrifying in its own right.
• From the start, it's pretty clear that Eulmore isn't providing meol for the starving villagers out of the goodness of their hearts. Even more strange is the reaction by the townsfolk: they may be going hungry, but claiming that it's the 'best thing they've ever tasted' seems very, very off. It's not until near the assault on Eulmore that the truth finally comes out: meol is ground-up Sin Eaters. While that's horrifying enough in and of itself, remember that Eulmore regularly discards its suddenly-worthless bonded citizens by turning them into Sin Eaters. Oh, and those with an excess of Light turn into Sin Eaters as well. Eating all that Light-polluted food for untold years means that the townsfolk are easily susceptible to brainwashing, and if they eat it even longer eventual transformation into Sin Eaters. The whole city is trapped in a horror show of brainwashing, mindless excess, and eventual cannibalism!
• The final confrontation with Vauthry. After defeating Ran'jit once and for all, you and the Scions burst into Vauthry's throne room...only to find him gorging himself on the above-mentioned meol, utterly ignoring Alphinaud's speech. Ryne then realizes the truth: Vauthry hasn't been safeguarding Innocence, he is Innocence, having been raised and trained since birth to be the Sin Eaters' ultimate leader. This is then confirmed by Vauthry snapping his own neck in the party's direction, Exorcist-style, before giving by far his most deranged rant yet (and considering how deranged his rant upon realizing Alphinaud had insulted him was, that is really saying something).
  • And this is all reinforced by the sheer amount of Dissonant Serenity that Vauthry displays as he enters said rant. To see a man who, until now, has had all the patience of a toddler dismiss the Warrior of Light and their claims with barely even a flicker of annoyance and nothing but total calm is disturbing. And even when he devolves into yet another ground-pounding tantrum, he just as swiftly recovers and goes back to his detached state of serenity. The sheer sense of Mood Whiplash is jarring.
• Thancred's solo fight against Ran'jit drags on so long that in order to make some headway and gain the upper hand, Thancred uses a special technique that makes him invisible at a cost. While Thancred is invisible, the music completely cuts out and all you can hear is a heartbeat while the screen pulsates in purple. The status effect from the technique, Fading Fast, states that Thancred's aether is quickly draining him and if he doesn't cancel the effect in time, it can kill him. After you use the technique a second time, the game states that your pulse is starting to quicken. By the third time, Ran'jit sees through the illuison and will always counterattack to bring Thancred out of his invisibility. Thancred's really pushing his body to its absolute limit as the heartbeat gets even faster when you have to use Souldeep Invisibility. By using this skill, another status effect called Vital Signs kicks in, which state that Thancred is literally halting the flow of aether in his body to maintain strong invisibility at the cost of moving very slow and damaging his vital organs. By using his "Leap of Faith" attack afterwards, Thancred manages to at least force Ran'jit to retreat, but the strain on his body makes him collapse and pass out as his cheek is bleeding from his wounds. Thankfully, Thancred is found by Urianger off screen and is revitalized, but the amount of strain he put on his body during the fight wasn't pretty.
• The final dungeon is a recreation of what Emet-Selch's home world was going through before Zodiark intervened. The entire city is on fire and buildings are collapsing everywhere as monsters invade. At the last segment, you're above the planet in outer space where you can see down below that the entire world is being destroyed from within as the continents burn and crack apart, making it very similar to the world's end sequence in Final Fantasy VI.
  • What's worse is that even the leading Ascian scientists don't know what the direct cause of the planet falling ill is. A sound emanated from the earth driving Ascians mad and causing their Creation Magicks to manifest every negative emotion they had into misshaped horrors of skulls, spikes, etc. based on every primitive fear, even the planets aether and life was being withered away by this mysterious force leaving most of the planet lifeless. The final horror faced in the third wave of the disaster, However, was not born of the Creation Magicks and resembled something out of a H.P. Lovecraft story. Which is the worst part, no one knows where the final wave came from, not even the Ascians who are supposed to be the monsters of the story.
  • The Amaurot dungeon is basically a guided tour through one of the original literary sources of Nightmare Fuel: the Book of Revelation in The Bible. The bosses are referenced to various beasts described by St. John, up to and including the final boss with multiple heads and “upon his heads the name of blasphemy”. The seas turning to blood and fire raining from the sky are events that happen during the apocalypse. Instead of locations as you go through the ruined city, you get descriptions that are taken from Revelation as well. It literally is the end of the world as a dungeon.
  • Normally the Ascians don't manifest something unless they want it to be manifest, not even when they feel a strong emotion like fear. Whatever the sound was, it took out the Ascians ability to consent to creating creatures, and then made every negative emotion manifest against their will.
• The Stinger to the Shadowbringers story. Zenos is back. Not only did he cheat death with his artifical Echo, but he beat Elidibus, using a body that was considerably weaker than his own (which was under Elidibus' control), and even without anything like Auracite he convinced Elidibus to get out of dodge. And his first order of business upon getting his body back is to kill his father and cause the Empire to collapse on itself, with later plans to take Zodiark or Hydaelyn's power for himself - and given the revelations the Shadowbringers story brought to the table, he could probably do it. And he went through all of this just for another chance to kill you. Super-Persistent Predator doesn't even become to describe this man, and this scene highlights with frightening clarity just what kind of monster the Warrior of Light will have to face.
  • Not only that, but the way he commands fear and respect from the leader of the Ascians and the Emperor during the confrontation implies that he himself is a greater threat than either of them. It's very possible that Zenos, being the most "personal" enemy of the Warrior of Light/Darkness, and by far the most individually dangerous being encountered so far, could very well be the ultimate villain or final boss of the entire story.
• The quest involving Akadaemia Anyder shows that despite it being a recreation based on Emet-Selch's memory, Amaurot is still able to effect the world around it, as shown when an Ondo tells the player that something came out of the city. In the dungeon proper, much like the Amaurot dungeon, the Ascians are clearly fleeing from something that apparently broke all their creations out. The panic gets to the point that at the end of the dungeon an Ascian sacrifices himself to create a powerful guardian that the party needs to put down. And even after the dungeon is over neither the Ascians nor Ondo can figure out what exactly caused this incident. The beast turns out to be Archaeotania, who still roams the Tempest after this quest as a massive FATE boss.
  • The FATE chain leading up to Archaeotania shows that the Benthos Ondo worship the beast as a god, and the story of B-rank elite mark Gilshs Aath Swiftclaw reveals that the Benthos routinely kidnap Eulmoran fishermen and even other Ondo to feed them to Archaeotania as a sacrifice.
• The quests leading up to the Eden raid has Urianger surveying the Empty, an area that is completely devoid of life thanks to the Flood. The whole zone is just a white barren wasteland where life cannot be supported and being in the area for too long can sap your strength. Urianger comments that ninety percent of the First is barren like the Empty. To further prove the point, when you fight Eden Prime and it unleashes its ultimate attack, the view cuts to outer space and the world is seen as nothing but white landmasses and clouds. That's what most of the First is like. If Minfilia hadn't stopped the Flood, the entire world would look like that.
• People becoming Sin Eaters is terrifying enough, but you get to witness some people who transform right before your eyes and they still retain their sense of self. However, you can tell their human selves are are quickly fading. In the level 74 tank role quest, you see one of the Cardinal Virtues attack a helpless scavenger and he transforms right before your eyes while begging you to help him. As soon as the cutscene ends, his human self is gone and you have to put him down.
• Patch 5.1 allows us (and Krile) to experience Estinien's mission in Garlemald just after Zenos murdered the Emperor. While escaping the palace, the final obstacle Estinien faces after an otherwise-basic gauntlet of foot soldiers and Magitek is Arch Ultima, a prototype replica of the Ultima Weapon. Whereas the Weapon was wholly robotic, Arch Ultima has an organic component in the form of an eyeless Garlean man partially fused into the back of the machine, who unleashes a bloodcurdling scream as it is activated.
  • Even worse, Ultima Weapon had one Heart of Sabik through which to cast Ultima. Arch Ultima seems to have four.
• The Stinger for 5.1:
  • We get treated to the absolute hell Garlemald is undergoing now that the Emperor is dead. True to Estinien's word, the capital is in absolute chaos from the civil war ensuing, with Zenos perched up on one of the buildings watching the capital burn. Then comes the sudden appearance of a white-robed and hooded person that knows who Zodiark is. The robes aren't Elidibus', but if it is him under a different guise, then it raises some serious concerns over what plans Elidibus would have.
  • The fact Zenos recogizes the "Soul" of the person garbed in white makes things even more terrifying. If it isn't Elidibus, who the hell else could Zenos know to be around?
  • Following that, it cuts to Eulmore, whose living conditions are starting to improve now that the Daedalus Stoneworks are back in operation. As the Gatetown folk are chatting about their newfound lives, the camera pans to...Ardbert? But wait, didn't Ardbert already merge with the Warrior of Light? So why does he appear to be alive? If one would recall, Ardbert's and his companions' bodies were left behind when his group traversed to the Source, his companions' bodies eventually becoming the Cardinal Virtues with one (if not all) felled by the Warrior of Light. Then you realize...what happened to Ardbert's body? His was unaccounted for until now. Someone else must be using his... And the answer in 5.2 is none other than Elidibus!
• After the Copied Factory raid, the player gets to explore the place on their own. It is mostly innocuous except for a room full of what looks like 2B corpses. It seems very well that 9S still hasn't gotten over his hatred and bloodlust for 2B and A2. A more subtle disturbing note of the raid is the final area being coated in what the dwarf helpers describe as "flour". Those experienced with Yoko Taro games can quickly tell that such "flour" means only bad things...
  • The creepiness gets noted down the questline when repairs for 2P are needed, and the Warrior of Light can outright call it "the Corpse Room". Considering everyone runs right by it in a regular run and an examination of the area despite the doors being swung wide open, and that the game does a case of Leaning on the Fourth Wall by not showing it on the map, it leaves an eerie feeling like it isn't even supposed to exist. Especially since, as later revealed, this may not have been 9S's doing.
• The 5.2 trailer shows some horrible things to come. Zenos is now on the First and walking through Amaurot. Something else is also happening to make Cid cough Blood from the Mouth as well. To make matters worse... DALAMUD has returned! It turns out that Zenos walking through Amaurot is a recurring dream he's having. As for Dalamud, it turns out to have been a star shower that turns out to be a Mass Empowering Event that allows everyone in the Crystarium to hear Hydaelyn's voice and the presence of Dalamud itself is an illusion of the Ruby Weapon fight.
• The star shower in general has some pretty disturbing implications. It causes all of the Crystarium residents who see it hear Hydaelyn's voice. The implication as Urianger points out is that the Echo isn't so much a gift as much as a latent part of mortals whose original forms were sundered. Between this incident and Zenos having dreams of Amaurot and suddenly Emet-Selch's final request of "Remember that we once lived" takes on a more ominous tone.
• The Ruby Weapon is a biomechanical monstrosity designed by the Garlean empire to work as an anti-Primal weapon, explicitly noted to be stronger than the Ultima Weapon proper. It has a monstrous face, freaky whip-like fingers, and feet that look closer to hooves. It can and will repeatedly cast Optimized Ultima at you. You know, an improved version of the spell which in A Realm Reborn is essentially a Fantastic Nuke.
  • While the Ruby Weapon is already freaky on its own, the true purpose of its use is revealed: it forces the driver to merge with it, and if the machine is activated in Oversoul mode, it essentially rewrites the person. Ruby Weapon's is none other than Nael van Darnus. The worse part? The way the pilot reacted to being overwritten implies she had absolutely no idea what Oversoul would actually do to her.
  • Phase two of the fight has a disturbingly biological Nael burst out of the Ruby Weapon's neck, smiling in a deranged way, and then transforming the battlefield into a mockery of the Battle of Carteneau, with ruins of Limsa, Gridania and Ul'dah in the background, and Dalamud looming above. Nael throws repeated Meteor-like attacks at you, all the while ranting insanely about her devotion to Dalamud. Meanwhile, Rise of the White Raven is blaring in its full Ominous Latin Chanting glory.
  • The conversation after between Gaius and Cid makes it clear that it's something so horrible that both men are furious, as the last moments of the pilot must have been agony. They also bring up the worrying possibility of this technology being used to revive other notable Garlean soldiers, most of which would be extremely difficult for anyone other than the Warrior to defeat.
• The final fight of the Eden's Verse raids in 5.2 has us fighting Shiva, but with Ryne as the summoner this time instead of Ysayle. Horrifyingly, because of ice aether's proximity to light, Ryne immediately loses control of her Primal form, and proceeds to attack the Warrior of Light. Even more frighteningly, it appears that this Shiva has enough aether to restart the Flood of Light, the selfsame event that destroyed 90% of the First 100 years ago. Raids who fail to clear through specific phases of the fight have this succeed, with the implications being the certain doom of the entirety of Norvrandt.
• 5.3 brings us the fight against Elidibus and the lead-up to it. He's managed to wrest control of the Crystal Tower from the Exarch, and is using it to summon other Warriors of Light to attempt to kill the Warriors of Darkness. This is killing the Exarch, which Elidibus is completely nonchalant about, and when the Exarch comments the spell needs quite a lot of preparation to summon one person, the Ascian replies that he doesn't need whole souls. Just enough of one to cross over and fight per summon. The final boss of the Heroes' Gauntlet, the Berserker, is practically a larger and meaner version of Curious Gorge but with a BFS instead of an axe, having fully given into the Inner Beast.
  • Elidibus' implied plan for the First should he succeed: he wants to create the world where peace simply isn't an option, just people using their newfound power to bring misery and disaster towards one another and unknowingly usher the Rejoining.
• The stinger for 5.3 has Zenos sitting in the throne room of Garlemald, still dreaming of the Final Days. The real nightmare is the reveal of who the white-robed Ascian is. His name is Fandaniel, a sundered member of the Convocation of Fourteen, and he's taken possession of the body of Asahi sas Brutus who has been dead since his sister, Yotsuyu used the last of her power as Tsukuyomi to kill him. This is an Ascian who proceeds to utterly Chew the Scenery in a way that makes even Emet-Selch as Solus zos Galvus look restrained. In short, this is the closest the game has to an Expy of Kefka Palazzo... and that's just scratching the surface of his character!
  • And finally, not to be outdone in the nightmare fuel, Zenos makes a declaration that he in no uncertain terms plans to set the world ablaze so he and the player can have the pyre as the backdrop to their final battle. And if G'raha's narration is to be believed he indeed is going to "kindle the flames of apocalypse". It is especially chilling after having seen the apocalypse during the Final Days, and the very idea that history will seemingly possibly repeat is horrifying.
  • 5.4 reveals that the comparisons between Kefka and Fandaniel are dead on the money; when he reveals himself to the Scions and Alliance leaders, he explains that his plan is to use the Evil Towers Of Ominousness that he's summoned all over the Source to recreate the Final Days that nearly wiped out the Ascians' world, which would kill every living soul on the Source. When pressed for why he'd want to pull off such an insane plan, he suddenly drops his theatrical attitude and rants that it's for no other reason other than because he wants to die and take everyone else with him in the process. The Ascians seen so far may have been Well-Intentioned Extremists, but Fandaniel just wants to watch the world burn.
    Fandaniel: I'm different, you see. From the ancients who clung to dear life. And from you. So don't bother trying to reason with me. You will find I have no reason. Or creed. Or any such tripe. I just want to destroy the world. But please do resist with all your might. It will add to my enjoyment.
  • Fandaniel also gets to flex his muscles a bit by showing that he can just casually use his creation magic to make copies of Primals like Bahamut, which he dubs Lunar Bahamut, and tells the Warrior of Light that should they refuse Zenos's challenge, he will set this copy to burn down the city states.
  • Finally, there is The Stinger of 5.4 which gives up a glimpse of what Fandaniel's towers do, and it seems all but stated that they induce Mass Hypnosis to force innocents to fight for the Empire.
• Four launches after 1.0, with Garlemald being a shadow of its former self, the Ascians broken with the cycle of calamities and new beginnings at end and a miraculous cure for tempering discovered, we finally have peace between most of the surviving sovereign nations, groups and even the beast men of Eorzea, with primals no longer relevant. It would be an age of profound peace and progress... Except for the towers appearing all over the world which temper everyone who gets close and mass produce primals, even Bahamut. A united Eorzea can barely keep up with them and they are just the precursors to a greater terror which may annihilate all of existence itself with no new beginnings afterwards... the true Final Days.
• So you know 2P? The palette swap version of 2B in the YoRHa raid who we had spent time helping in the previous raid and helped fight off a seemingly hateful 9S who was intent on killing her? Yeah, she's actually evil and would have killed little Anogg if not for the unexpected arrival of the actual 2B. When players enter the Puppet's Bunker, scene of the last boss shows 2B seemingly successful in killing 2P. Then all of a sudden, a hand bursts out of 2P's torso and then an entire army of blank faced android start spawning at once, who then all run and jump into each other into a giant ball of fused bodies similar to the Legion from Castlevania. And that's just the first form... The second form of the Compound has the mass of bodies collapse, then reform into a disgustingly grostesque giant 2P!
• Even with everything going on in Patch 5.3, there's still some to go around in the second part of the "Sorrow of Werlyt" storyline. The new VIIth legatus, Valens van Varro, barely remembers his own subordinates names, especially Alfonse, one of Gaius's sons who's one of the people behind the Weapon project. He throws a cup at Alfonse for reporting the Sapphire Weapon's defeat, especially since Gaius is involved. He keeps children around to use as servants, having them put on his armor. When Allie comes to see him, it has all the look of a sexual predator grooming his victims. Out of everything in this patch, this one hits a little close to home in reality.
  • There's also the fact that he has CHILDREN in his room. Yeah...
  • The next chapter in 5.4 explains things more during Alfonse's "correction" session for his failure. Valens uses violence and Cold-Blooded Torture to discipline in his subordinates... or if he just feels like venting. The children are there so he can indoctrinate them into his cruel ways. The reason why they were silent before? Every last one of them is terrified of him. When an Au Ra boy hesitates with the hot iron during a torture session, he goads the boy into complying by chanting "Burn out the bad!" in a gleeful, childish manner. The other children join his chant and the boy reluctantly delivers the last press of the iron. Valens then declares that Alfonse is going to be Diamond Weapon's pilot and that they'll be remotely triggering an Oversoul so he can't try to steal it. That Valens adds that if Alfonse even thinks of trying anything else, he'll exterminate the entire Au Ra race, capping off his threat with an absolutely deranged Slasher Smile.
• In the Bozjan Southern Front, there's a massive glowing crater to the south of the playable area. An NPC in the first outpost you unlock tells you that the crater is where Bozja Citadel used to be. There's some ruined buildings further up the area that have been blown back and partially melted into corrupted crystal. Bahamut was able to cause that much destruction while still trapped inside Dalamud thousands of miles away from Hydaelyn.
• While we're on the topic of Sorrow of Werlyt, 5.4 has a bit more to it than just how screwed up Valens is to his subordinates. First we see Rex go out as Gaius van Baelsar with the real one present and suitably disturbed... but the true nightmare fuel kicks in when we see Valens testing the planned Oversoul for Diamond Weapon: We get a brief glimpse of what Oversoul looks like on the inside. Lets just say it involves a whole bunch of goo forming up like a cocoon.
  • And that is to say nothing of what happens with the aftermath of the test, where the test cockpit cracks open from the stress. We don't get to see the full result but we do get to see a very long and pale arm fall limp. And if Valens wasn't enough of a bastard, he immediately says that the test subject's wife and child, who are present, will be the next test subjects. When a researcher points out he promised he would spare the man's family, Valens laughs maniacally right in the researcher's face, saying that it shows how stupid the "savages" are that they trusted him in the first place. Oh, and the Garlean they are basing the Diamond Weapon's Oversoul on is of course Zenos.
• The precursor to 5.5's Nier raid has the Warrior finding a heartbroken Konogg, who had been trying to make up with Komra for holding him responsible for what happened with the Androids' attack, especially since one woman was pregnant. The Warrior goes through the entire length of the Puppets' Bunker and goes to the room where they fought 2P and find a GODDAMN SEED OF RESURRECTION! They get a flashback that shows the twins wandering around Kholusia when an earthquake happened and Anogg fell into the chasm. Konogg finds only her gloves and her beard before finding the Seed where it replicates an exact clone of a beardless Anogg who, after speaking once to Konogg goes from speaking Angelic to English. This is no longer just a Nier Automata crossover, people. We're now in full on Drakengard mode! LA LA LA LA LA LA! Speak not the Watchers!
• In 5.45's story just when there's a Hope Spot after defeating Queen Gunnhildr and putting Misija in solitary confinement, not only do they find that Save The Queen is unable to be destroyed in any way... but the Garlean reinforcements have finally arrived.
  • Speaking of Gunnhildr, her theme is an absolutely chilling Dark Reprise of the Bozja leitmotif, complete with warped sounding vocals.
• If you thought the Weapon Project had some nightmarish means, the Diamond Weapon stoops to an all new low as it is discovered that the auracite's data is not Zenos, but Alfonse. How? Valens thought it was a swell idea to lobotomize the man and transplant his consciousness into the weapon itself, and he's still conscious as he's taking control of the warmachina. Not even Valens's demise was a pretty sight. Sure, there's all the catharsis in watching him get crushed to death, but we're also watching all the painful contorting onscreen, complete with his eyes rolling over as he snaps like a twig before makes a sickening pop just offscreen, with the sound of blood gushing down Diamond Weapon's claws before he throws the mangled corpse into the horizon. We don't get to see what exactly happened at the end, but it's safe to assume his head popped open.
• The end of Paglth'an reveals just what those towers that have been tempering people and were able to make Lunar Bahamut are for, as Arenvald and Fordola find out the hard way. They find the amaal'jaa rooted to the walls of the tower and they're used to summon a Lunar version of Ifrit. The original Primals are bad enough, but now that there are Lunar versions that they needed to unseal and cure the tempering of Tiamat to deal with Lunar Bahamut means we're getting closer to the Final Days of Hydaelyn.
  • The way the tower wrings Lunar Ifrit out of the amalj'aa is pretty horrible too: They're embedded neck deep in fleshy panels along the walls. Arenvald tries to pull one out, but sets off a security system. The tower does something that causes all of the captured amalj'aa to writhe in pain, and Lunar Ifrit appears. It's later revealed that all of the amalj'aa in the tower died, and it's implied that the tower's security measures deliberately killed the captives so they couldn't be saved.
• The Tower at Paradigm's Breach, true to Yoko Taro fashion, comes with a couple of creepy things to unnerve players.
  • After taking down an army of 2P's, they all suddenly transform into the Red Girl, who already sports some freaky things in the source game. And she is everywhere you look as you make your way to the fight against her. She even flashes her signature Slasher Smile midway through the battle on your screen.
  • The final boss is one that will send shivers down anyone that's followed the Drakengard series from day one. The Machine Network has recreated the Grotesquerie Queen, under the alias Her Inflorescence, and is horrifying to fight. She fights by throwing buildings and trains at you, including the Square Enix tower and creates her infamous black and white rings of death. Appearance-wise, she's a horrifying mish-mash of numerous characters and elements from across the series, including 2B, the Red Girl, Lunar Tears, and the original Flower itself. To top it all off, the song, "Kainé (Final Fantasy Main Theme Ver.)", opens with the bells tolling; the same bells from Drakengard's final boss theme. While it's within the digital space, even a replication of it getting out into the real world would be bad news for the First.
• Even after the YoRHa raids are done, there's still a bit of creepiness. During the second Weekly Quest for Komra, while talking with the Dig Site Chief, Glagg appears and accuses them of trying to take over the village, like the machines. However, he suddenly clutches his head, and wanders off, wondering what he was just doing. Which is...worrying, to say the least. If Glagg was being controlled, then...who was controlling him? What's even worse is that this goes unanswered in the end.
• The Stinger of 5.55 has The Reveal of Zenos in his new Reaper class having left a trail of bodies, soldier and citizen alike, not even caring for Fandaniel's plans just so long as he gets the Warrior of Light so pissed that they finally have their climactic showdown exactly as he wants it.
• Patch 5.55 with Zadnor introduces a cult devoted to Ultima the High Seraph (the Anthropomorphic Personification of Ruin) of all things, who utilize auracite that still functions after her death.
  • Zadnor is full of other nightmare fuel as well. Anything Sicinius is involved in could fit this, but most especially Dabog, an altered captive whom he justified experimenting on as it was to "save his life." But the biggest twist happens in the Zone 3 Skirmish for his chain. After defeating "Dabog," his allies mourn him... only for Sicinius' voice to cut through to shock them: that wasn't Dabog. Sicinius had surgically altered OTHER prisoners to look like Dabog and to function as pilots for the Delta Gabriel Kai... and five more show up.
  • Wondered what eventually became of Dabog? He's been hypertuned beyond recognition, looking like Inferno from Castrum Abania. The worst part? He's the boss of Solo Critical Engagement "The Broken Blade". If the fight is lost, then he's still out and about as a mindless killing machine; and succeeding this fight means he's been slain by you.