Nightmare Fuel / Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne

• The first game hinted that Max was a broken man from watching his family die in front of him, but at least he got his revenge and seemed functional in his undercover job. By the second game it's plainly obvious that the event has taken a toll. He's dysfunctional at his job and flat-out depressed. He's still utterly torn up by the death of his wife and consumed by guilt when lusting for Mona. To see him still suffering so much after several years is not just sad, but actually disturbing because it's a horribly realistic portrayal of extreme grief. It would happen to anyone after such a traumatic event.
• Some of the touches in the dream sequences are just as creepy as in the first game. Throughout the game, adverts are seen for "Gold Touch Brandy". In one dream, a billboard appears for it. Except instead of the smiling woman normally seen in other ads in the game for the drink, Max himself is simply depicted sat next to the huge bottle of alcohol. The brand name is replaced by "SADIM", which is Midas backwards. And the slogan? It simply says: "EVERYONE I TOUCH DIES". Max is so consumed with mental anguish that he sees himself as a curse, a death force that always sees everyone he loves taken from him, forever...
• The Cleaners are completely amoral and seem to take pleasure from their life of contract killing. They're also very competent and leave almost no forensic evidence until Max interrupts their plans. Imagine that a team of efficent, happy-go-lucky killers exist in your city and will probably never be caught and convicted...
• Anything to do with Address Unknown
  • The show marks a return from the first game and this time, it shows up in certain places on a television. What makes this particularly creepy is its coincidental airing, the show only pops up in secluded areas (or in one case, where a dead resident is slumped on a sofa chair in-front of a TV inside an apartment penthouse) as if the show itself is sentient, knew Max's every step, and somehow knew about his tragic event 5 years ago. It makes you wonder if the television show is somehow supernatural in origin and maninfested within Max starting in 2001.
  • The abandoned theme park of based off on Address Unknown that's explored in the game is VERY creepy. The story of the show is morbid and insane, and feels like a lampoon of Max's life and mental state. He's even bitterly aware of this, commenting something along the lines of "The joke wears thin when it mirrors your reality."
  • Perhaps the most disturbing part of the theme park is the final section, which occurs after the protagonist of the show loses his mind and enters "The Next Level" (of madness, presumably). First you walk down streets littered with cartoon corpses of people you have apparently murdered, and the cartoon shop-fronts have now become distorted, monstrous mouths. The electric signs say things like "HEAD INJURY". And then at the very end there's just a long corridor with road signs that alternate between saying "ESCAPE" and "There is no ESCAPE". The path simply ends at a locked door, with stark neon writing above simply saying: "THERE IS NO ESCAPE." It's a stark and chilling portrayal of madness, made even more surreal in that only a collapsed stage wall allows you to ever leave the corridor.
• What about Vinnie Gognitti's death scene? Being forced to watch him, in another nightmare, no less, being put through a trivia quiz on his favourite TV series with his life hanging in the balance, by the guy you considered to be your ally through most of the game? And then just stand there helplessly as he gets his head blown off, while he begs for his life? Classic.
  • Vlad's demeanour in that scene is also unnaturally smug and cheery to the point of being seriously creepy. He's doing something absolutely heartless and psychopathic, yet he seems outright amused as he psychologically tortures Vinnie. It's a nasty window into his sadistic true personality, and even if Vinnie had answered correctly, he likely would have killed him regardless.
  • When you're playing as Mona charging into the flames to rescue Max, you find Vinnie. Or, at least, what's left of him.
• In all but the ending the game gives you on the hardest difficulty, Mona dies. Max is on the verge of total mental collapse the whole game, he finds a second true love who is much the same as him...and then she is once against snatched from him in tragic circumstances. Brutal and haunting.
• The recurring theme that you can be completely powerless to save the ones you love, even if you have the ability to shoot hundreds of bad guys dead.