Step right up...
At first glance, Poptropica's style does not give off the immediate impression of its capability to be scary. However, the game can have its islands go into a variety of genres, and with those genres arrives a variety of ways they can spread fear...
In Game
- Any Non-Standard Game Over, especially in Survival Island. It's essentially the same as cutting to black before your Poptropican dies...
- The video on Virus Hunter Island shows what the CC13 Influenza can do. The virus can infect whole organs and eventually the whole body. Soon, the infected can infect everyone else. The scariest part is that it mentions that the virus can easily make everyone extinct. The creepy music does not help either.
- Ghost Story Island has one of the seven instances of sound in the AS2 islands. (The others being the bell you can ring in the comic book shop on Super Power Island, the phonograph on Time Tangled Island, the Chupacabra breaking out of the box and the information videos on the cryptids on Cryptids Island, the lightning on Vampire's Curse Island, the post-production sound effects on Back Lot Island, and the videos on Game Show Island.) When you look through a telescope in a creepy, boarded-up house, Fiona suddenly appears behind you and asks "Are you looking for someone?"
- Ghost Story Island contains a foggy cemetery. While navigating the hedge maze, you may see a statue of the Grim Reaper.
- The Jersey Devil on Cryptids Island. You look for him in an old abandoned house where something is suspiciously shuffling around. It tuns out to be just a raccoon, and you'll probably be caught off guard when you turn around to see the Jersey Devil staring right at you through the window.
- Whatever happened in the Bad Future on Time Tangled Island is never explained. But judging from the terrifying damage and the fact your character, now 50 years old, is the sole survivor, something bad happened.
- The main villain of Survival Island, Myron van Buren, is one of the darkest characters in Poptropica history. He hunts humans.
- What makes Myron stand out from most of the villains is how much his villainy is directly connected to your player character. The other villains are only after your character because you’re thwarting their plans, ranging from illegal mischief to world domination. If your character weren’t there, those villains wouldn’t have bat an eye at them- they’d have just been another person affected by what’s being done. Myron’s goal? Hunt and kill your player character, as well as Max Mcgullicutty. His goal is to make you a hunting trophy, and all you did was crash land in the wrong place from a storm. This goal wouldn’t have existed if your character wasn’t there. This goal specifically revolves around your player character’s harm. Although the overlord wannabes can have frightening power with them, the harm your character may get from those baddies is more due to the meddling. The personal nature of Myron’s villainous goal therefore makes him stand out as one of the darkest characters in Poptropica’s history.
- The first two parts of Monster Carnival Island, where you set up the carnival games and try to win them, are rather tame, but things take a creepy turn once you beat all the carnival games. You navigate the dark woods and see a cloaked figure transform the carnival workers into monsters. The carnival then turns nightmarish, with scarecrows with glowing eyes, the message in the duck game spelling out "GORY," and a floating puppet monster invading the Haunted Lab.
- Virtually everything about Steamworks Island, being a perfect storm of Nothing Is Scarier, Botanical Abomination, and Apocalyptic Log.
- The enormous green sewer spider in early Poptropica is quite a nasty surprise.
Graphic Novel
- In the Graphic Novel, Octavian is forced to watch Paulla die in the lava.
- The main characters Mya, Oliver, and Jorge (who can't be older than the age 11) are put in many life-threating situations throughout the series, such as:
- Falling off a cliff and drowning
- Eaten by a sabretooth tiger and polar bear
- Freezing in a Artic blizzard
- Crushed by a crumbling building
- Being severely hurt/killed by several adults (Vikings, Octavian, Lieutenant Rogers)
