Come Closer, Little Lizard!
- Rez and his respective stages, both of which add a dark atmosphere to the usually cartoony game. They're a dystopian nightmare, with the floors and walls of the levels appear to be made out of metal and flesh. The idea of Rez abducting innocent people to be mascots for his network is unnerving, too.
- Rez himself is a horrifying cyborg lizard made of a twisted mess of mechanical parts and exposed organic bits who's missing the entire lower half of his body and has a huge mouth full of abnormally long needle-like teeth. He's like if someone fused a T-Rex and a great white shark and added a ton of H.R. Giger-style biomechanics, all in a delightfully uncanny presentation.
- The messages seen on the walls in No Weddings And A Funeral and the secret level Mazed And Confused makes the whole thing feel even more like a totalitarian nightmare. You know you're stepping into something morbid when the first thing you see in the latter level is a giant scrolling banner reading "WELCOME TO REZOPOLIS... PLEASE DIE CAREFULLY..." And this is one of the tamer messages.
- Rez's voice alone is pretty unsettling, particularly in the second game where you get to hear him frequently taunt you offscreen, usually before boss channel encounters. It's inhumanly deep and metallic sounding, with a ridiculous amount of reverb.
- The life-loss fanfare from Enter The Gecko might make you jump the first time you hear it, but the game over music is an Up to Eleven horror remix, to really let you know you messed up. Deep Cover Gecko shares a fanfare for losing a life and getting a game over, but fortunately it's more comical than scary.
- The living taxidermy bear statues that can be found prowling around the mansion in the Mystery TV level in Deep Cover Gecko. They're massive, towering over Gex by a large margin, they slowly lumber around with their arms raised above their heads, looking very much like zombies, and their faces are permanently etched into a snarl, complete with bloodshot eyes.
- One commercial for Enter the Gecko parodied the movie Scream and had Gex calling up a woman and questioning her about her TV. He goes into increasing detail until it's obvious he's in the house with her. He doesn't do anything, but the supposedly heroic gecko gives off some really uncomfortable stalker vibes.
- The secret, unfinished boss of Planet X in the first game - a slowly walking, poorly digitized man made out of liquid Rez. It's completely unlike the other flashier and goofier bosses and generally seems incomplete, like it doesn't really belong anywhere in the game.
- Some of the Scream TV levels of Enter the Gecko have faces lurching of the walls, biting at Gex, and making an inhuman moaning noise that can be heard across the room. In a level full of horror spoofs, these stand out as legitimately creepy.
- Similar faces appear in Deep Cover Gecko's Tut TV level. However, these faces actually have human features, causing them to fall squarely into the Uncanny Valley.
- Mooshoo Pork looks threatening on the TV image, but when you face him, the only thought going through your brain is "RUN". The thought of a half pig, half cow hybrid Mad Scientist chasing you around his lab, guffawing all the way, is downright terrifying, and the graphical limitations somehow make him look even more jarring.
- His theme song really adds to the fright. (Unless you're playing the N64 port)
- It's bad enough that in the page image above shows him at an angle that's downright petrifying.
- How you defeat him is (while satisfying) quite horrific, as you need to throw a switch to electrocute him into a skeleton until he shatters like glass.
- The level based around the Titanic in the second game. If you're not hugging the bottom, then you're in a deep, dark void of open water. The surface isn't much better, with the only real feature being a small ice berg that's easy to miss. The scary music absolutely doesn't help.
