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Nightmare Fuel / Streets of Rage

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Taking on The Syndicate with nothing more than your bare hands along with the occasional lead pipe and 2x4 is all well and good, but sometimes the streets of rage can lead our heroes (and the players) into the alleyways of terror.

All spoilers below will be unmarked, per wiki policy. You Have Been Warned.


  • Stage 3 in the second game. Everything's normal until a certain section in Stage 3. Then you walk through an entryway decorated with teeth and eyes and find yourself in some dark, Gigeresque room with eggs containing evil-looking larval creatures scattered around that explode when struck, and you have to fight some giant demonic head called Vehelits in order to pass. Even granted the level's Amusement Park of Doom theme, this is straight-up weird.
  • The second encounter with Mr. X in Streets of Rage 3. After beating up his goons, he starts laughing and his body spontaneously combusts, revealing a Terminator-esque fake and proceeds to kick your ass. The real Mr. X is in a laboratory with his brain being preserved in a jar, while controlling a combat robot for the final battle (if you rescued the General in time). Oh, and in Streets of Rage 4 Survival Mode, Robo X can show up in the retro stages, and like before will turn to the screen to laugh at you creepily every time he knocks you down.
  • In the Japanese version of the third game (or its Fan Translation thereof), screwing the final stage up "rewards" the player with... this. Scenery Gorn ahoy! Not helped that the weapons that cause it are nuclear weapons, which are a very realistic threat.
  • The premise of the very first game: A city taken over by The Syndicate to the point where even the police, who are supposed to protect the citizens, are corrupted. Police corruption, be it by organized crime or otherwise, unfortunately, exists in real life. This is taken to its logical and horrifying conclusion in 4 as hordes of crooked cops attack the heroes.
  • The beginning of the fourth game truly shows the terrors of a Urban Hellscape in The Streets (Stage 1). They're implied to be the same streets from the first two games, and it shows that they have truly gone to shit. There are abandoned buildings, broken down or poorly lit neon signs, and the neighborhood's turned into a rundown Gangster Land. It shows us that for the past ten years, this part of Wood Oak City fell hard. A car crash happens midway through the level and the driver is implied to have died. And the music turns sinister as soon as the crash happens. It shows while the heroes were living their lives, the city was going to hell due to the influence of the Y twins.
  • An update added sound effects to players and enemies that fall into a Bottomless Pit. If someone falls into a pit during the sewer level, you get to hear what sounds like the character's body being eaten away by radioactive acid.
  • At the end of Streets of Rage 4's Stage 9, who awaits you for a duel at the top of Y Tower? Not the Y Twins, no, it's Max, who has been turned Brainwashed and Crazy by the Syndicate's mind-control music. He sports Glowing Eyes of Doom, is Immune to Flinching, and if you're caught in his hold, he will slam you down on the ground for a significant amount of damage. It feels like you're being chased by The Incredible Hulk. After he's defeated and comes to his senses, the Y Twins then decide to try their music on the heroes, immobilizing them and causing them great pain... and probably would've neutralized them or even turned them to the Syndicate's side like what happened to Max if not for a timely intervention by Estel.
  • On the stage select of SoR4, each stage is represented by its own ambient audio. Creepy enough, but the final stage is represented by a high-pitched sound and a very eerie Heartbeat Soundtrack.

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