Nightmare Fuel / Ghost of Tsushima

"Your people are tired. Hungry. Cold. Open the gate and save them!"

• Just the many times you will come across victims of Mongol carnage scattered throughout the land. Some brought down with arrows, others hung from trees, and others are left as charred corpses. At some Mongol camps, you will even find impaled heads or dismembered feet.
• The opening of the game where Khotun Khan burns and decapitates Lord Adachi. It's both his Establishing Character Moment as a No-Nonsense Nemesis and Combat Pragmatist, but how brutal the man can be when dispatching his foes. And unfortunately for the players, Lord Adachi's death is not going to be the last one.
• When Khotun Khan captures Castle Shimura (pictured above), he forces Ryuzo to set a peasant, tied to a stake, on fire to get the defense forces to open the castle gates and surrender. Hearing the peasant's screams as he's set on fire is quite harrowing, and it doesn't help that Ryuzo breaks down shortly afterwards.
• Taka’s grisly death at the hands of the Khan. Khotun doesn't slice his head off, he tears it straight off since the blade didn't go all the way through.
• During “The Tale of Lady Masako”, one of the first tasks is to locate a monk, Sogen, who had involvement in the slaying of Clan Adachi. When Sogen defiantly tries to justify his actions, Masako wastes no time in slaughtering Sogen, which even becomes something of a Gory Discretion Shot since all that’s seen is Sogen’s blood flying in Masako’s face.
  • Also the true mastermind behind the massacre of Clan Adachi. Lady Hana, the older sister of Masako, killed her entire family, to cousins, to nephews, to her infant grandniece, all out spite against Masako for her getting to marry Harunobu and becoming a member of Clan Adachi while she married to an abusive drunk that was Ikeda. The idea that someone would kill all their family just out of envy and spite is horrifying.
  • What's more shocking is Hana's complete apathy for her actions when confronted by Masako and Jin. She cruelly asks Masako if she wept for her when she thought she was dead, and told her that her seeing all of her family get killed amounted to nothing compared to what Hana was put through. In a last act of spite, despite Masako trying to reason with her, all Hana does is kill herself in front of Masako and tell her that she now has nothing to live for.
• Yuna having a panic attack as she approaches the Mamushi brothers' farmstead. You already have an idea they are bad with the dismembered bodies on pike in the front yard, but seeing the usually collected Yuna hyperventilating at the mere thought of going there is frightening.
  • Speaking of the Mamushis, while it is satisfying to hunt the bastards down and take their heads without being seen, it also counts as a Mook Horror Show, especially when Jin and Yuna leave their heads on a burning pike as a warning. The game even throws in a few "Psycho" Strings when the Mongols find the display and flee in terror.
• The sight of the Mongols dying in droves from the wolfsbane poison, convulsing, screaming, and coughing blood, is pretty horrible. Walking through the yard strewn with corpses and utterly silent afterwards...
  • Similarly, when Shimura sees first hand Jin’s exploits as the Ghost during the castle raid — where he poisons two guards then beheads the Mongol war chief, screaming at the remaining Mongols to run like dogs while he keeps the head in his hand. Unlike his defeat of Temuge in Yarikawa, where the scene is showed as inspiring, here it shows how scary Jin's anger is.
• Jin coming to the realization that the Mongols had recreated his poison and used it on the peasants of the now-destroyed village of Kin. This is followed by Jin getting struck with a poisoned arrow, and his desperate attempts to escape, only to vomit blood and collapse, not helped by the intense music throughout the scene.
• During "The Guardian of Tsushima", Jin and Norio discover that Norio's brother Enjo, the guardian, is actually alive at Cedar Temple. What makes this nightmare fuel is the state they find Enjo in. His limbs have been severed, and he had been brutally tortured into giving information to the Mongols. It ultimately crosses into Tear Jerker territory when Norio has to put his brother out of his misery afterwards.
  • The subsequent mission, "This Threefold World", shows just how frightening Norio is when he is angry. Already devastated over Enjo's death, he is determined to avenge his brother and kill his murderer, a Mongol general, and stops at nothing to make sure he carries out his vengeance. In his rage, Norio goes to the Mongol camp where the general is stationed and burns it to the ground, including the general. It's enough to frighten the other monks and shock Jin himself.
    • Even more frightening, if still impressive, is that Norio did all that alone. You're led to believe up to that point that you'll be fighting alongside him to avenge his brother and hack your way through the Mongol camp like many of the others that you'll almost certainly have cleared before now. Jin rests before the attack, and wakes up to find Norio gone. Then you'll see that the camp is in flames, the other monks tell you how terrified they were of Norio and what he's done, and you enter the camp, possibly fearing that Norio has been mortally wounded, but no. He's already killed, or is in the process of killing, every Mongol in the base to a one. There is no one left for you to fight here. May Buddha and every single kami have mercy if you find yourself at the business end of Norio's naginata when he's this angry.
• Two of the Mythic Tales stand out for how unnerving they are.
  • The Curse of Uchitsune has Jin track down the whereabouts of a supposedly demon-slaying longbow while being warned to stay away by a man wearing a tengu mask. When Jin does find the bow, he's promptly knocked unconscious and forced to duel the "tengu." Players will notice how the arena is encircled by a swarm of crows, the world is tinted red and Jin is covered in blood when he begins the duel. When you defeat the "tengu" Jin clocks out again, and when he wakes up, everything appears to have returned to normal. Whether it was Jin hallucinating due to the incense burning where he found the longbow or a legitimate supernatural force is up in the air.
  • The Spirit of Yarikawa’s Vengeance. Supposedly one of the lingering phantoms during the Yarikawa Rebellion still wanders the area, heeding requests for vengeance left behind by the townsfolk. While in pursuit of the supposed spirit, Jin always arrives to find its handiwork. While it is established that the spirit is indeed human, when Jin confronts them after learning that someone has put a hit on him, they look like a traditional Japanese ghost woman. You'd be forgiven if you thought you were dueling an actual ghost and not a flesh-and-blood human.
• "Hidden in Snow", one of the side quests of Act 3. After observing how jumpy and nervous the men of Sago Mill are acting, Jin investigates the village and realizes that something sinister has taken place through numerous clues: namely, women's clothing all torn up, dead bodies hidden in a store house, and coffins with blood stains. He then discovers what ultimately happened to the women of the town: they were given away to the Mongols by most of the men in exchange for being left alone, and the men who tried to stand up for them were killed. It's truly a horrific fate that the women were forced to endure, and it's enough to anger Jin to the point of killing the dye master, who had been the mastermind of the sinister scheme.
• Imagine you're one of the Mongols, stationed at some random camp. All the Samurai were wiped out at Komoda Beach and everyone who might still oppose you is either scattered or being captured, enslaved, and/or tortured to death. Then you start hearing stories that one of the Samurai has returned from the dead as a vengeful spirit to drive the Mongols off of Tsushima. You and your buddies laugh it off... Until you find out this "spirit" is slipping into Mongol camps in the dead of night, slaughtering everyone inside to the last man. And this "Ghost", as he comes to be called, gets better and better at doing it, getting into the most heavily defended camps and forts without anyone ever knowing he was there, and even ambushing patrols in broad daylight, with frightened survivors of his attacks becoming more and more frequent. There's no way one man is doing all that, you tell yourself. Surely he'll never come to your camp, you tell yourself. Then one night, your buddies begin turning up dead all over the camp. Or they start attacking each other in a blind rage. Or they literally puke their guts out right in front of you. And then you see him. A figure that looks like a snarling demon clad in black, cutting down the last of your friends who didn't run and were brave enough to try and fight. And then he sees you. He is the Ghost, and you can either Run or Die.
  • Oh, and by the way, if you do run? Historically speaking, your chances at being shown mercy by your commanders, if you ever show your face to them again, are next to zero. The historical punishment for any Mongol who fled from battle was death.
  • And even if you get away with your life, let it sink in that you, a proud warrior of the most powerful empire in the world, just ran away from the field of battle. Nobody is going to let you or your fellows live it down.

Legends

• The otherworldly realm where the Ghosts battle supernatural forces in. Eldritch Location doesn't even begin to describe it.
• Iyo, the Big Bad. For most of the game, you only hear her disembodied voice recalling how she was killed by the ancient leaders of Tsushima, and this hatred and anger is what fuel her desire for revenge. When you move onto her raid "The Tale of Iyo", you actually get a good look at her for the first time. First, she appears as a pale, humanoid ghost with black eyes. But her giant form is truly terrifying, resembling a giant spider with hollow black eyes, all while located in an equally Eldritch Location that you must fight your way through.
  • Her backstory is equally scary. Once a powerful priestess, Iyo had been buried alive by the ancient rulers of Tsushima while pregnant, in the hopes of abating monsoons that were threatening the island. Her anguish and hatred have turned her into a monster who seeks to destroy all of Tsushima, regardless of the innocent who had nothing to do with her sacrifice.

Iki Island

• Ankhsar Khatun, full-stop. Everything about her, from her use of psychological terror as a weapon to the poison she force-feeds to her victims, makes her an even more terrifying villain than Khotun Khan. Compared to Khotun's use of brute force in trying to subjugate the people of Tsushima, the Eagle uses Jin's own traumatic past on Iki against him. And since he was forced to drink her poison, Jin is now forced to hear her voice in his mind whenever he suffers a hallucination.
• After Jin is forced to drink the brew, he wakes up to see that Yuna has come to rescue him. For a moment, it seems like a Hope Spot, but at the same time, something feels off about Yuna. Sure enough, it turns out that it wasn't Yuna that Jin was talking to, but the Eagle herself, which he realizes after having a vision of his father at the bottom of a pit of dead bodies.
• Jin's first hallucination, where he's running through a dark gorge, tormented by the voice of his father's disapproval of his softer personality and taunted by the Eagle, who constantly reminds him of his failure to save his father. All the while, he can see the shadows of his father on the walls of the gorge, and at one point, he sees hanged corpses of raiders hanging above him as he tries to run. It's truly a Mind Screw that shows just how dangerous the Eagle is.
• Many of Jin's hallucinations are straight up uncanny, and can be triggered by even the most innocuous items scattered about, from straw hats to flowers on graves. Not helped by the fact that his hallucinations are often tinged an unsettling purplish colour. This colour is reminiscent of the wisteria petals that feature heavily in Jin's flashbacks of his father's death, which is the greatest regret that he's forced to confront.
• The war horns that the shamans sound in the expansion. Unlike the war horns of the main story, these ones almost sound like someone screaming, which can really send a chill down one's spine.
• The Tale of Black Hand Riku is rife with this. First, we learn that Riku's favoured method of killing was to butcher his victims and save pieces of them to feed to his pet monkey. Upon witnessing Riku murder a boatload of children by throwing them overboard and skinning their samurai protector alive, feeding the peelings to his monkey as well, his crew finally had enough, and mutinied against Riku, poisoning, blinding and impaling him. Even so, Riku refused to die, and he set the ship ablaze to kill most of his crew before escaping to hide his armour somewhere on the island. Now, it's rumoured that his spirit still haunts the shores of Iki. At his last known location, Jin find the seas around the cove glowing ^note  due to bioluminescence, but Jin is unaware of the reason which lends to the growing creepy atmosphere as he follows the waters into the darkness of the nearby caves, watched by chittering monkeys all the way. Exploring the pitch-black interior by lighting torches against the oppressive darkness, He finds the dead bodies of raiders strung up from the ceiling, alongside the bones and skeletons of previous victims, making it clear that something is in the caves with him. Soon, Jin is confronted in a pool of the same glowing water by Riku himself, still very much alive and deadly with a sword, despite the loss of his sight. The ensuing duel between him and Jin feels especially otherworldly, as if you're fighting an actual vengeful spirit and not a flesh-and-blood being thanks to the creepy atmosphere built up over Jin's exploration, but the reality that Jin is trapped in the darkness with a Serial Killer who is an excellent swordsman unimpeded by blindness is hardly any better.
  • The visuals that accompany the tale itself don’t help at all, including as they do a close-up of Riku screaming in horror/agony with bloody eyes while his ship burns in the background.