[Hello. This is One Shot's Nightmare Fuel page.]
As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.
The video game
- The game knows your name.
- A lot of the Interface Screw the game pulls in addition to this can lead to a lot of Paranoia Fuel, something the game's help file even warns players about.
- There are many notes scattered around the Barrens. One in particular is a suicide note, left by someone who didn't want the darkness to claim them after the sun had gone out.
- When wandering around in the gas vent area of the Barrens, Niko can find a note. A group of explorers had found the area at one point, but they didn't have gas masks. The note simply says "They failed", implying they didn't make it back alive.
- The odd, glitchy squares you see everywhere seem pretty harmless. They look weird, but aren't causing any actual damage. Then you discover that it destroys walkways and disables elevators. At least it's not hurting anybody, right? Then you get to the factory, where you see that it mangles robots and/or messes with their programming. Sometimes it takes more than an arm or a leg. Worse, Refuge has the highest number of these anomalous sightings. If a person were to get caught in one of them...
- To make matters worse, the Solstice run shows you exactly what happens when someone does get caught in one. It's not pretty.
- Even worse is that Cedric explains that getting caught by the squares effectively results in a Cessation of Existence. You don't die, you're just... gone.
- To make matters worse, the Solstice run shows you exactly what happens when someone does get caught in one. It's not pretty.
- The deterioration of the Glen. It used to all be one piece, but now it's a disjointed mess. And soon it will all sink into the water.
- In the Refuge apartments you'll find some rooms that you can just barge into. In one of them is a silent girl, who seems to own a cute stuffed penguin. Said doll makes a very... disturbing sound, almost on par with the weird spinning ram in the Glen.
- If you choose so, you may save and quit at any time by X-ing out instead of using a bed. Meanwhile, Niko immediately sees everything go pitch black. They can't hear you, and the sun can't light things up. It's over quick, no matter how long you're gone, but to them, everything just ceases to be. And it terrifies them.
- This is for the Steam version, however, as the original version is more sadistic, as it straight up causes the worst ending: if you close the game like you close your web browser, when you relaunch the game, the sun is broken, only Niko's hat and scarf remain, and you return to the first room, which is even darker than before
. You are granted with two of the unsettling tracks in the game, "My Burden Is Dead" for the title screen and "Someplace I Don't Know" for the dark room. If you try to close the game again, the Entity will call you out for this incident:
- This is for the Steam version, however, as the original version is more sadistic, as it straight up causes the worst ending: if you close the game like you close your web browser, when you relaunch the game, the sun is broken, only Niko's hat and scarf remain, and you return to the first room, which is even darker than before
- Once you get either ending, unless you know how to get New Game Plus with the remake, the game pretty much no longer works. One ending has Niko literally walk out of the game, and it suggests they're unlikely to walk back into it, and the other suggests they're stranded in the dying world. Alternatively, if one goes and considers that the Unreliable Narrator is a Death Seeker, it can potentially change the endings dramatically: If Niko saves the world, then everyone gets a new chance to restore the world (as Silver implies) and with Niko accepting living the rest of their life there with only the narrator being left unhappy until this sun breaks as well. Or shatter the bulb, dooming the world and everyone in it with a Cessation of Existence.
- Actually, there is a way, but it's not easy. You have to manually edit the registry on your computer and delete the data it wrote for the game, effectively bypassing the one try you really have and the ending you got, washing you off the guilt, but it's a risky move.
- When Niko leaves the bulb with Maize, the bulb has gone out by the time Niko returns and only begins glowing again when they touch it. That could mean that if Niko saves the world and installs the sun, that they can never leave the sun's side because without them, it will go out. It could also further explain why the previous sun had went out: the last messiah died and thus their sun couldn't shine anymore by default.
- The Solstice run, despite being the Golden Ending, kills off several characters with the squares, including Silver, Maize, the Lamplighter and even most of the denizens of the Glen including Calamus and Alula.
- What makes things worse are that the Lamplighter and Calamus and Alula get very And I Must Scream-ish deaths courtesy of the squares. The Lamplighter gets trapped in a lift with the squares slowly closing in on him fully knowing that there's no escape, and Calamus and Alula are marooned on one of the islands in the graveyard as the squares are advancing desperately waiting for Cedric to pick them up in his flying machine... which will never happen because the squares have disabled it. (Fortunately, the World Machine resurrects them all in the Golden Ending.)
- While the ending credits of the Golden Ending is mainly a Crowning Moment Of Heartwarming and a happy Tear Jerker, it is slightly eerie to talk to Silver, the Lamplighter, Calamus and Alula as they describe what happened as the squares caught them and seem unsure of how they escaped, seemingly unaware that they're effectively telling you about how they died.
