Nightmare Fuel / Pikmin 3

• The Armored Mawdad, the first boss encountered in the game. Resembling a cross between a lobster, a centipede, and a snake, the boss is first encountered in a rotting tree stump, right next to Olimar's first log entry...which says "to anyone who finds this, tell my son that I didn't make it..." Brrr. The foreboding atmosphere and scary-looking entrance to the Mawdad's lair don't help either. When you first enter the arena, it seems empty and desolate, until some wood fragments start falling off of the ceiling, and the camera pans around, revealing that the Mawdad was actually on the ceiling and watching the entire time!
• This footage of the third game shows, among other things, the Vehemoth Phosbat, a glowing, roaring moth-like creature in an area dark enough to make it next to invisible before it lights itself and attacks. It might not seem bad in the video, but imagine actually playing the game and encountering it. It doesn't help that it seems the player needs to activate the light sources by walking in the dark over to said sources. The baby Phosbats, encountered in the same dark cave, are less nightmarish than their parent and are actually rather Ugly Cute. That is, until they're exposed to bright light, and they start wildly thrashing in agony as their skin sizzles and smokes under the light, and upon dying their heads explode and their eyeballs pop right out of their sockets and roll on the floor. Ugh.
• The plot of 3, which involves a food shortage. There's also the fact that if you don't get enough fruit to sustain the captains, they'll have to cut their mission short and return home to a dying world. Except that they can't return home, because their ship is missing a part that lets them travel fast enough to make it. The Game Over screen shows them in their ship, too hungry to go out again.
  • It also means that Olimar and Louie will be left on the planet to die.
• Thanks to the upgraded graphics of the Wii U, Pikmin 3 is visually gorgeous. Unfortunately, this update is also applied to the enemies of this◊ game◊, and the realistic graphics combined with their cartoonish designs creates an Unintentional Uncanny Valley feel to them.
• The Sandbelching Meerslug is an enormous subterranean Sand Worm that tunnels underneath the ground and occasionally surfaces to spit boulders. Not really too bad...until it creates an inescapable funnel of dirt, with its chomping maw directly at the bottom like a Sarlaacc. And when it's low on health, it creates a pit nearly as big as the entire arena.
• The final boss is a seemingly immortal shape-shifter that chases you through the final area. Bad enough, you may think, but what's really disturbing is that it's chasing you so it can keep Olimar for no determinable reason; the first time you see it, it's lovingly stroking Olimar's helmet.
  • What makes it worse is the level of intelligence this thing has in conjunction with its ability to phase shift. What is phase shifting? Altering states of matter. It can be a solid, a liquid, or gaseous state, as well as imbue all these states with different elements. And this creature, with this godlike power, isn't even angry at Olimar. It thinks it's protecting him, mistaking him for an infant member of its species. So, take all that you've read, and apply a Papa Wolf mentality. Finally, see all the enemies fought there? All of whom are natural predators of Pikmin? They're made of the Plasm Wraith. It's intelligent enough to recognize how to stop the creatures most likely to come for Olimar, probably because some attempted to save him before. In conclusion? Imagine, being trapped by a creature that can literally do anything, holds every single card, can render you unconscious for days at a time if it so chooses — and you're its only focus. Nothing else matters. Meaning every ounce of this abomination's power is being used solely to keep you. Brrr.
  • The sounds it makes and the background music as it chases you through a maze is scary as hell.
  • Not to mention the music before the encounter when you first arrive to (or return to retry saving Olimar) Formidable Oak is haunting on its own. When raining, the music is given a little more of a tune instead of the near-silence it normally has. However, that theme is hardly any better, being a rather grim, soft sounding remix of the Final Trial from the first game.
  • At the top of the stump at the beginning, there's a dirt mound. Getting Pikmin to dig through it reveals a rather disturbing data file:
    Journal Entry #10
    Captured again... over and over. No matter how many times I try to escape, I find myself atop this tower. Each time, I awake to see that another day has passed. The grip of this wretched beast is taking its toll on me. My only hope is for someone to save me from this torment... going dark again...
    - Captain Olimar
  • As if all this wasn't enough, when you're fighting it, if you use the map function on the game pad and look around the area, in addition to the Plasm Wraith you're fighting, the radar will show the blip of another major boss in the area, somewhere far off and out of bounds of the map. Considering the enemies in the Formidable Oak are made of the same goop as the Plasm Wraith, this begs the question if what you're fighting is the Plasm Wraith's true form, or if its real form somewhere far off, watching the entire time as you fight one of its creations...
• The Arachnorbs manage to be not-spider enough to not trigger arachnophobia, but Pikmin 3 introduces the Arachnode, that spins a web and will actually eat trapped Pikmin; even worse, the fact they spin their webs in places where your Winged Pikmin are guaranteed to carry items through means that if you don't deal with them first, your entire squad of fliers can be made to be at its mercy.
• The Dessicated Skitter Leaf, like its harmless cousin, pretends to be a dead leaf lying motionless on the ground. Except this one actually eats Pikmin, so sometimes if you're not looking carefully you might march your Pikmin straight into a death trap...
• Aww, it's a widdle baby hamster! Oh, that beard looks so cute!◊ Maybe it won't be so ba-OH SHIT! RUN!◊ The way the Bearded Amprat devours Pikmin, grabbing them in its forepaws and gnawing away at them foot-first. The Pikmin are very much alive and screaming as they're chewed up by this horrific hamster from hell...
• The Quaggled Mireclops, a giant colossus that has a very long tongue that can easily lick all of your Pikmin in one go.
  • Just the appearance of the thing itself, it's a freaking Eldritch Abomination! Basically, it's a living chunk of land walking upon three hoofed, root-like legs, with a crystal-encased head resembling a strawberry with three stalks ending in leafy eyeballs. Most disturbing though is its mouth, which goes all the way around the bottom of its head and has a brightly-colored tongue that can lick in a full circle! This thing is just all kinds of bizarre and horrific. And given that it's implied that PNF-404 is Earth millions of years in the future, just exactly WHAT did this thing evolve from? Is it a plant, an animal, a mineral, or some strange fusion of all three?
  • Ingame, after Louie escapes from the ship, it's completely unknown where he went.... Until this hidden video confirms it.

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