Nightmare Fuel / Tales of the Abyss

And you can't do anything to save him...

Tales of the Abyss was considered to be the darkest Tales Series game released and held that title for over a decade until it was surpassed by Tales of Berseria.

Spoilers Off applies to all Nightmare Fuel pages, so all spoilers are unmarked.

• Normally, Guy Cecil's gynophobia is funny. Then you find out what caused this fear. When he was a child, Duke Fabre attempted to commit genocide against his family. His older sister and the maids of the house sacrificed themselves to protect him. He wound up buried under their bodies for days on end.
• The horrifically brutal death of the boy John (pictured above) after the fall of Akzeriuth as he sinks while buried under his father's corpse may very well be the single most terrifying event in the entire Tales franchise. Neither the player nor the party can save him.
  • Worse still, when evacuating Engeve, you meet with his mother.
  • Later on in Shurrey Hill, you eventually get to fight monsters called Darks, a blob of purplish mass and with a base of dirt. Then it likely comes to fruition that they're possibly the spirits or remaining flesh and living remains of things and horrifyingly melded with the toxic mass of the Qliphoth's sea.
• Once you make it back to the Outer Lands after St. Binah's fall, you see both Kimlascan and Malkuthian forces engaged with each other in an all-out war as a result of Akzeriuth's destruction earlier, not shying away in showing both forces wiping each other out while the innocent are caught in the crossfire. What follows is the party of six splitting in two with Jade's group having to evacuate Engeve's residents out of the battlefield and to Chesedonia, and Natalia's group heading to Kaitzur to stop Kimlascan forces from further engagement. Neither scenario is pretty, as the former shows the Engeve residents in distress while the latter has Natalia failing to convince the army to halt their advances and is forced to reunite with the others in Chesedonia. With the Rugnica Plains in danger of collapsing and potentially wiping out all forces, this would obviously be seen as a Hopeless War on both sides.
  • The gameplay during the war segment isn't nice to players either. First off, Holy Bottles are ineffective as encounter deterrents—all factions will relentlessly pursue the player the moment they're visible. Second, failing to avoid them will trigger scenes where either some of Engeve's residents are lost in the crossfire, or the party is engaged in a faction they didn't want to fight. Lastly, it isn't just two factions—apparently the Oracle Knights for some reason are in this war as well, showing up late in Natalia's side, and they will pursue the player with much more speed compared to the other two sides. Also, you get bonus items if you manage to avoid as many encounters as possible, forcing you to keep on your toes just for those items as the war throws everything at you. Yes, this also includes avoiding the delusional Oracle Knights charging at you like angry rams. Good luck.
• The pivotal point of Jade's backstory: his experiments with fonic artes as a child caused an accident that left his mentor Nebilim on the verge of death. He tried to use fomicry, a technology he created himself, to bring her back to life as a "clone". She came back...but as a murderous, bloodthirsty monster. Since replicas are always born as blank slates, she has no recollection of her previous life except looking exactly like the deceased.
• Grand Maestro Mohs is turned into a freakish monster because of inability to control Seventh Fonons, causing sanity degeneration. Upon defeating him, he melts into goo and disintegrates.
• The miasma is a deadly poison that comes from the core of the planet. Breathing it in for too long will kill you, and can consume entire continents with enough time. The party sees it early on in Fubras River, but later in the game, they end up in the Qliphoth, which consists of an ominous purple sky, landmasses very far and few between, surrounded by a seemingly endless sea of mud and miasma.
  • The process cleansing of the miasma basically involves a mass suicide of replicas with Luke's words sounding half Survival Mantra, half Madness Mantra.
    Luke: I don't want to die! I don't want to die! I don't want to die! I don't want to die!
• The whole of Luke's story and the end result is this when you take into account the fact that, as a replica, he's only seven years old and he goes through so much crap and ultimately dies in the end.
• And then there is later in the game when all of the replicas are let loose. a lot of them can't even speak and people react with horror seeing people that look just like those that have died or like relatives. Worse yet is that it is mentioned that several replicas were taken and "used for unsavory purposes" by regular people. Doesn't take a genius to figure out what they mean. And keep in mind that they are all mentally like children.