Nightmare Fuel / Fire Emblem: Awakening

Ladies and gentlemen, meet Grima. One of the largest, evilest, and terrifying dragons yet.

Fire Emblem is no stranger when it comes to nightmarish and creepy moments. And Fire Emblem: Awakening in general is no exception as we get to witness a lot of terrifying moments in all its glory, especially when it comes to the Big Bad himself.

Unmarked spoilers below!

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• The fact that you, the customizable self insert hero, are the vessel of the Animalistic Abomination dragon that will eventually take over your mind and soul and destroy the ones you love. And there's nothing you can do to remove it, as it is part of your existence.
• Grima and the Bad Future in general. In a flashback, even Lucina, who is a badass and mostly fearless young lady, lets out a blood-chilling scream at the sight of the monster. All the reports you hear about the Bad Future are no better. By the endgame, your evil counterpart from the Bad Future that Lucina escaped from makes their Grima incarnation appear, giving Lucina a second opportunity to be terrified of the Beast. Even her father Chrom is unnerved and visibly distraught by Grima's appearance in their world!
  • Oh, and Grima's 'face' is actually not its real face. It's actually a bony exoskeleton that you can break off in the final fight, revealing Grima's true, HUMAN face.
• While most of the things that Henry says are Played for Laughs, being pure Black Comedy, they are still unnerving.
  • A notable one is in his B-support with him and Cherche, where he says the hunters that killed the wolf that's been taking care of him have "paid in blood." It should be noted that instead of his usual smile, he has his distressed face, implying that he has a darker expression on his face than usual.
• Tharja's stalking of the Avatar. While one can respect how devoted she is to them, facts are still facts, and the fact that she watches virtually EVERYTHING THEY DO when they are unaware of it is extremely unsettling...
  • Robin even points out how creepy this is in their C-Support. And then there's Tharja's confession scene to a male Robin, where she threatens to kill him should he ever back out of the relationship.
  • And if that's not enough, in Fire Emblem Fates, it's all but stated that the Tharja Expy is in fact the preincarnation of her, and she will always stalk you across both of your lifetimes. Both in this one and the next.
• Take Henry with you during the Death's Embrace DLC map. It's Nightmare Fuel on its own for different reasons, but you know that horrible floor that shoots sharp spikes to impale your party and always reduce your HP to One? Every turn? Yeah. Henry mentions that the room is just like one that he was sent to during school as "punishment." Is it any wonder he's so unhinged?
  Henry: The spikes here remind me of the ones back in wizard school. Whenever I did something naughty, they'd put me in a room like this. ...I almost died! It was neat. Still, nonstop pain is no fun for anyone, so I'll try to make this quick!
• Brady's quote in the same chapter is also horrifying, as he recounts how in the Bad Future he regularly had to deal with people turning into Risen while he was trying to heal them. And then there's Inigo's quote...
  Inigo: I wish I could be shocked at this, but the dead rose all the time in my future. Friends, neighbors—they all became Risen... And then they had to be taken down. I've done this so many times now, I barely feel anything at all...
  • If you bring Cynthia into this map, she'll make a remark similar to Inigo's, where she comments that she couldn't think too hard about where any particular Risen might have come from. It's not quite as blatant as his is, but seeing the normally-cheerful Cynthia say things like that is still pretty distressing.
• The Death's Embrace DLC map is pretty horrific overall, but the worst of it would have to be the special Risen Chief that the boss summons. It appears to be a regular Soldier on the map, so one would probably think that it would appear the same in battle, just with the demonic Risen face. But no, what one will see is an... abomination. Instead of a regular Soldier, you face an armoured knight Risen with no eyes, and with faces all over its body, complete with the glowing Risen eyes. It even has some skulls attached to it. One of the most terrifying things in the game aside from Grima itself.
• The giant revenants in the Roster Rescue DLC can be pretty freaky, too. Again, they look like normal Risen on the map... and then you fight one and see that they're about 3 times the size of normal enemies, are a bit more detailed, and have chains and weapons sticking out of them. A lot of their creepiness comes from the fact that Roster Rescue is otherwise mostly funny, so the giant revenants are pretty jarring.
• The first chapter titled "An Unwelcome Change". It starts off as really light-hearted with nonstop jabs at Lissa's refusal to eat bear meat and Frederick ironically calling her out on this. Come around some hours later and Chrom decides to go take a walk in the forest because he's getting an eerie feeling that something's not right and Lissa tags along having nothing better to do. The name of the song that plays during this time is even titled "Something Is Very Wrong" and it is eerie as hell. During this time Chrom and Lissa overlook a crucial detail here: where the hell is the local wildlife? The moment things look like they can't get any scarier than that, it does. Cue a song titled "I Mean it, Go!", followed by a massive earthquake and giant trees being uprooted from the ground towards Chrom and Lissa's spot with the Earth itself is splitting open spewing out magma and fireballs everywhere setting the forest ablaze with Chrom and Lissa desperately running for their lives. And you think that's the end of it? Think Again! Cue a freakish, blue eye shaped portal opening in the sky and Undead Eldritch Abominations falling out of them. They are NOT friendly, they have some plot relevance, and their presence marks the beginning of a Zombie Apocalypse instigated by none other than GRIMA. And all of this is as early as Chapter 1?!
• The special "entombed" risen. The other risen are just a Palette Swap of Generic classes. The entombed, on the other hand, are unique little freaks that wear bag... things on their heads, sink in the ground and attack you with their bare hands. Oh, and their head twitches all over the goddamn place. The fact that they're basically weak metal slimes does little to comfort.
• The Cockroach in Lucina's C support with her sibling. Thank the gods we never see it, because by the looks of things, it would be utterly terrifying. It's enough to freak out Inigo, a consummate ladies' man, to the point where he says he'd "sooner die loveless and alone" than touch it, reduces the badass, tomboyish, borderline Blood Knight Kjelle to a panicking wreck, and in every version of the support, it instills great terror within Lucina, a woman who has stared into the gaping maw of Grima itself as it came bearing down upon her. And everyone who can possibly be involved in this conversation is a veritable badass who regularly fights zombies. Thankfully, again, we never see the thing, only other peoples' terrified reactions, which, much like watching a playthrough of Amnesia: The Dark Descent, makes for comedy gold.
• In the DLC chapter "Rogues & Redeemers 2", your NPC allies are all major villains from past games. If you bring Tiki along to the level, you can have her talk to Gharnef. It plays out uncomfortably like someone who was raped as a child confronting her rapist as an adult — which, in a way, it is.
• The "Dire Future II" cutscene. Besides the fact we get to see Grima's massive size for the first time (as he completely dwarfs Ylisstol), the way he mercilessly taunts Lucina about how she's lost shows off just how sadistic this colossus is. The scariest part, however, is how it ends — Grima tells Lucina how it's her turn to die and lunges at her, mouth agape, and it ends by showing the poor girl screaming in terror.
  • Granted, it is somewhat alleviated by the fact that the third Drama CD lets us know that Lucina is rescued by Gerome, Cynthia, and Noire at the last second, confirming that it isn't a nightmare or even another timeline where Lucina is killed off by Grima.
• One of the map themes, Chaos, as well as its Ablaze equivalent, stand out as incredibly unnerving. The regular version is an eerily quiet track with a menacing harpsichord, while the Ablaze equivalent that plays during combat is a louder version with violently thumping beats and roaring. While vastly different, both tracks carry a downright apocalyptic sense of dread, highly fitting considering that they aren't used until the Chapters around the time of Grima's awakening as well as in The Future Past 1 and 2, and they help to give the chapters involving the Grimleal and the Fell Dragon itself a terrifyingly hopeless feeling that really sells that Grima's return means The End of the World as We Know It.
• Grima's method of regaining power, namely a mass Psychic-Assisted Suicide of Plegian civilians.
• That the people in Plegia had to live with the Grimleal for a thousand years, then survive destructive wars by the past Exalt of Ylisse and Walhart starting to destroy the Grimleal is horrifying.
• Cervantes' conversation when battling Chrom. His sheer fanaticism for Walhart is rather disturbing, especially since he's otherwise portrayed in a comical manner.