WARNING: All spoilers ahead are unmarked, as per Nightmare Fuel guidelines!
- It's Persona as an Etrian Odyssey game. If you have any idea about F.O.E.'s from EO — that they're on-map enemies that are much more powerful than the Random Encounters surrounding the area and thus are to be avoided at all costs until you come back later with a more powerful team — yep, they're in this game too!
- ALL of the labyrinths are aesthetically disturbing and creepy in terms of design in their own regard, despite they have light themes. The bosses are basically the same thing, as they simply look like ungodly Eldritch Abominations.
- While all of the labyrinths are creepy on their own, the entire third stratum takes the cake; It's a HORROR HOUSE after all, so scary stuff are bound to happen. You think the first haunted school half is not that bad? The place is still full of F.O.Es that looks like baby with bloody bag on its head chasing after the party, disembodied piano playing Für Elise in background that you have to get closer to shrug off said baby, and the "Six Sisters" scenario where the party step inside a room, the light suddenly goes off, and disembodied giggles come from everywhere before the light is on again. Watch the minimap on the lower screen, and you then realize you've been surrounded by six F.O.Es the entire time the light was off. The second hospital half has several arms hanging from the ceiling as a background environment, bloody handprints appearing on the ground and squelching noises as warning signs of the F.O.Es' domain, and there's a part where Rei has to go through those things alone so the party can advance.
- The creepiest part about the "Six Sisters" scenario? The F.O.Es in question, the Lovely Dolls, are immobile and appear only in dark areas while hiding in light ones. Now, the first floor of the Evil Spirit Club is well-lit, deterring the Lovely Dolls from attacking, but their sudden appearance on the first floor during the scenario implies that they could potentially be anywhere in the dungeon. You just might not be able to see them.
- Regarding the Lovely Dolls, after you get over the Jump Scare factor of them the first time, they don't seem that scary. After all, you know where they are, so you're not going to run into one unless you're trying. So naturally, you wonder what happens if you do run into one. It's just a small doll, it can't be that scary, rightOH GOD! Let's just say the phrase "tip of the iceberg" comes to mind and leave it at that...
- Then there's the Old Doll, pretty much the F.O.E Climax Boss of the dungeon. The first time you encounter it is on the first floor, where you go through a series of doors, while every time it follows and holds the one behind you closed. It's not too bad there, since there's no risk of actually fighting it. The real creepiness comes on the third floor, where at a certain point, it appears again to hold down a door behind you. The scariest part of this? In the P3 story at least, there's no mention of this at all unless you look at the map or try to go through the door. No-one makes any comment on it whatsoever, so it's very easy to go a while without even realising until you notice an F.O.E symbol on your map that wasn't there before. And then you reach the final floor, where it finally decides to come after you. It acts like the above-mentioned babies, but it can move 2 spaces per step. And if you hadn't seen the Lovely Doll's true form before, chances are you're going to see it now. To make matters worse, it's accompanied by its own Leitmotif, which can only be described as Dissonant Serenity in music form.
- The Old doll becomes significantly less scary when you find out it doesn't have a resistance to Instant Kill spells.
- While all of the labyrinths are creepy on their own, the entire third stratum takes the cake; It's a HORROR HOUSE after all, so scary stuff are bound to happen. You think the first haunted school half is not that bad? The place is still full of F.O.Es that looks like baby with bloody bag on its head chasing after the party, disembodied piano playing Für Elise in background that you have to get closer to shrug off said baby, and the "Six Sisters" scenario where the party step inside a room, the light suddenly goes off, and disembodied giggles come from everywhere before the light is on again. Watch the minimap on the lower screen, and you then realize you've been surrounded by six F.O.Es the entire time the light was off. The second hospital half has several arms hanging from the ceiling as a background environment, bloody handprints appearing on the ground and squelching noises as warning signs of the F.O.Es' domain, and there's a part where Rei has to go through those things alone so the party can advance.
- Let this sink in for a moment: Shadows. At Yasogami High. In broad daylight!
- Worse yet, it's part of what will happen if the Investigation Team fail to catch the true murderer.
- And to think S.E.E.S. have it bad at Gekkoukan every midnight.
- The plastic surgeon Shadows that the coalition encounter in the third stratum could give J.S. Steinman a run for his money! Why else would Mitsuru of all people lose her composure and scream in terror?
- The doctor is flanked by two Bubblehead Nurse expies, whose bodies bend backward unnaturally and their idle animation have them violently twitch and spasm before you make your first move. Enough motivation to kill them fast just so they stop being creepy.
- Of course the doctor himself is nothing short of nightmarish. He looks like an obese doctor with giant pliers for a weapon, there are visible bloodstains on his costume and his head looks deformed and his face looks like some one tore off a baby's face and then sewed it on some one's head.
- It gets even worse if you take into account that Mitsuru may have been experimented on by the scientists under the employ of "Granddaddy Dearest", which may explain her reaction to the labyrinth guards in question.
- Whomever hears the bell to the end will die. What do you hear throughout the trailers? The bell.
- Any F.O.E. that looks like a baby riding a horse, like the all-gold example encountered by the hosts of Persona Stalker Club. To think that something that cute could be a Demonic Spider.
- The design for the boss of the fourth stratum: Best Friend/Shadow Rei, which turns out to be a Hair-Raising Hare. Jesus Christ…
- Everything about the fourth stratum boss is nightmare fuel. Compared to the other Shadow Selves, Shadow Rei is notably bestial after going berserk, becoming a roaring, screeching monstrosity who can't even speak a coherent word and literally drools at prospect of killing its real self. Even before transforming, Shadow Rei is a bundle of helplessness that came from her despair at having no self-worth. Small wonder that Erebus exists and is immortal; if one girl can form this horrible a death wish, imagine that of all of humanity.
- Said boss' attacks consist of shoving its toothy maw right into the camera.
- Back in Persona 4, all the Shadow Selves transformed by absorbing the other Shadows around them. Visually, this just mean that they would become enshrouded in a red mist before emerging in their boss forms. How does Shadow Rei do it? The rabbit doll she's holding snaps its own neck causing stuffing to flow out and engulf her entire body. Next, we see a pair of rabbit ears pop out and- HELLO!
- Rei's story is just prime adult concern mixed with Tear Jerker. It's just disturbing that a girl like that has lots of things that she wanted to do, but has to spend the rest of her life on bed because of some terminal illness, likely Leukemia and with absolutely nobody to care for. Her mother didn't even care about her in the first place and left her to die instead of caring for her. Her doctor wasn't able to save her and then she died, only to meet this merciless time and death god who just wanted to make her disappear. She then went on a complete breakdown and that apparently touches the god to the point that he gets emotions and he chose to delude her in a Lotus-Eater Machine school instead and make her happy. It was definitely not a good thing for both the girl AND the god.
- During his explaination of her story after he regains his memories, Zen casually mentions that Rei tried to gouge out her own eyes. Which is why they looked so strange all the time she was with you.
- Think back to her Shadow; after transforming, its eyes appeared to be bulging and surrounded by blood. Why do you think that is?
- The Reaper is back, as an F.O.E. for the final dungeon. And it's just as persistant as ever, following you throughout an entire floor, even across holes. And if it catches you, you have very little hope of escaping before it inflicts a Total Party Kill.
- The revelation what would happen to every one if the two teams don't just leave the Labyrinth after the Fourth Stratum. Basically, the Clockwork God will absorb Zen into himself to become Chronos again, and then erase the Labyrinth with every one inside it, which would not just result in everyone dying, but everyone being erased from the timeline for good!
- If you've played Persona 3 to completion, you'll know just how bad this is: without the protagonist and Aigis, Death would never have been sealed, meaning that the Fall would have been completely unavoidable.
- When the final dungeon reveals itself, all background scenes during the main hub are changed. In one of them, your whole party is gone, and instead you get a spider web covering most of the screen with a small white spider Shadow sitting there. Particularly unnerving the first time it appears, when you're not expecting it. The fact that the whole area is now tinted an ominous purple doesn't help either.
- While the wedding events in the Group Date Café are mostly hilarious, the fact that the protagonist and their "destined partner" have their hands seemingly permanently fused together is pretty creepy.
- While we're on the subject of the Group Date Café, can we just take a moment to appreciate its 3rd and 4th floors? Just to give you an idea, the first two floors are exactly what you'd expect from a "group date café". Not the last two. All the colors turn darker, the place becomes adorned with chains and demonic faces on the walls, the stuffed bears also turn demonic and appear to be dangling like hanged corpses... And this level was supposed to be cute?
- During Rise's wedding event to the P4 protagonist, she doesn't have much of a reaction to the fake wedding photo, because she says she has to deal with fans sending things like that to her all the time, and that most of them "are a lot worse than a magical wedding". Yeah, that doesn't leave much to the imagination, and it's likely Truth in Television too. It gets worse if you've played Persona 4, and you realize things like that probably had a hand in spawning her Shadow.
- The Game Over screen. Business as usual, for the most part: the standard Velvet Room music, except a whole lot more ominous than usual, plays over the standard Persona scrolling text...while a giant pair of disembodied crimson eyes gaze straight at the player, blinking coldly at you. Quite a scare if you're not expecting them, or if you really don't like those particular Eye Tropes.
- The final duel with Elizabeth showcases just what would happen if either of the heroes attempted to fuse/summon a Persona when they hadn't reached the proper level to control it. The fact it's happening to Elizabeth of all people just makes it scarier as a testament to just how mind-breaking powerful Zeus is.
