Nightmare Fuel / The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess

"NOT TAKE MIRROR!!!"^note Not pictured: Her head turning 180 degrees.

There's a reason why this game is compared to Majora's Mask in terms of how dark it is, and the ESRB gave it a T rating (the first in the series).

For examples related to the manga, go here.

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Twilight-covered Hyrule

• The whole cutscene before Link enters Twilight is terrifying: after a heartwarming conversation with Ilia, she takes an arrow in the back, she Colin are kidnapped by Bulblins, one of them takes Epona, and Link is knocked out. King Bulblin realizes that he reached the spring, blows in his horn, and a weird portal appears in the sky. After they leave, Link wakes up and rushes through Faron Woods... only to see a giant black wall. Then "Psycho" Strings plays while a giant arm grabs him by the neck to drag him behind the wall.
  • After that, Link sees the creature who dragged him behind, the first Shadow Beast seen in the game, and he's only saved by his glowing Triforce. After a shot on the now corrupted Faron Woods, Link is laying on the ground, his Triforce glowing, and he screams in pain as he transforms into a wolf before collapsing. He's then dragged like a dead animal by the Shadow Beast to be locked in Hyrule Castle while a mysterious character is watching...
  • What's more terrifying about this in hindsight is how close the villain came to winning. By the time Link got involved in the plot, Zant had already conquered most of Hyrule, with the only province remaining being Link's hometown of Ordon, and that was only stopped because Link just happened to be there when a Shadow Beast appeared to steal Ordona's light. That bears repeating: If Link had not been there, Zant would have won, and his conquest of Hyrule was only thwarted by sheer chance.
• When Link encounters Midna for the first time, she makes it clear that she wants to be the one in control: she goes in every direction to confuse Link when he's stuck in his wolf form, suddenly jumps on his back after he escaped from his cell, and after they met Zelda, she transforms into your friends and screams in terror in order to convince you to be her servant. Fortunately, she becomes nicer, but a lot of those early scenes with her are just plain creepy.
• The regions covered in Twilight have an eerie atmosphere to them with their blurry orange light, black pixels raining from the floor and the anxious music.
  • Another thing is that the Twilight is not only visual, but metaphorical, as the regions seem to be in a state between being frozen in time and a slow but sure decay: the previously eerie but sane Faron Woods become a poisoned wasteland, Zora's Domain is frozen and the fishmen are imprisoned into ice (it's as eerie as it sounds), and the inhabitants become spirits who are in a constant state of fear. Also, while they're terrified by Twilight Messengers and Shadow Insects, they can't see Link slaying them, but only the monsters dying for no apparent reason.
  • The enemies, on the other hand, are transformed in shadow variants you fight on this music. Two of them take the cake in the horror department:
    • The Shadow Vermins are a weird mix between rats and squids◊ who often attack as a group, and they are as good on land and water. Worse, you encounter them for the first time in Hyrule Castle sewers which you have to flood to progress, leaving Link at their mercy.
    • The Shadow Kargaroks look like they have had their heads blown apart by an explosive or a shotgun◊. They also have these hideous cries and are quite annoying to fight. And in the Twilight Palace, there is an outside section where they are flying all over the place.
• When you save Ordona, it shows us how Faron lost its Light by simply displaying three Shadow Beasts going slowly to its direction, then cutting to a shot where it can't be directly seen, but where its light gives a last blow while it screams in agony before the region gets covered by Twilight. Then, when you return to Faron Woods to save it from Twilight, Midna makes you listen to the lamentation of the spirit, a Dark Reprise of the light spirits' theme.
• One menace you encounter many times across the game is the Cthulhu-like Twilit Messengers, better known as the Shadow Beasts◊, human-like monsters with Creepily Long Arms and Creepy Long Fingers, Tron Lines, tentacle-like dreadlocks and a shield-like mask as a face. As if they were not scary enough, they often attack this way: you are on the way to a spirit spring, a temple or something else, then pillars fall from the sky and form barriers, preventing you from going further nor going back. Then, you see a red and black portal piercing the sky and spitting at least three of these beasts who take one heart per hit. Even worse, you actually have to kill the last two at the same time, otherwise the last one will make a horrible scream to stunt Link while it revives its friends, forcing you to fight them again. The dreadful theme that plays whenever you fight them is a heartbeat soundtrack that is essentially a panic attack in musical form.
  • The cherry on the top? You find out that not all of them are transformed Twili; they have attacked and transformed some humans into them. You get to learn about it from the perspective of the surviving Kakariko villagers living in constant fear of the same thing happening to them, and it doesn't help that a creepy ambience plays when this is being explained. The knowledge that the monsters you are fighting were once Twili and humans is horribly unsettling.
    Barnes: They sure didn't seem impressed by my bombs! How long do you think we can hold this sanctuary against beasts that strong, huh? Once they attack, it's OVER! Remember the lady from the general store? Just one of those things attacked her, and a whole gang from town went to save her! And what happened? She was already gone, and there were TWO monsters waitin'!
  • If you consider the point above, when you slayed the beasts guarding the fountain, the survivors stuck in the church have only seen them collapse on the floor and disappearing. You can't blame Barnes for being scared after that.
• Let's settle the context: you are in Twilight Lanayru Province, and after having been almost burned alive on a bridge, fought and been clawed on a dried river by a giant Shadow Kargorok, defrosted Zora Domain, let yourself be taken by the water, and fought three squads of Shadow Beasts, you go back to Castle Town and kill the last Shadow Insect... and nothing happens. Midna calls you out and asks you to watch your map, and it happens that the last one was in Lake Hylia all along. When you go there (or if you're there already) you can see a much larger invisible shadow insect form flying around some platforms in the middle of the lake. As you swim there, you'll notice that the normally calm Twilight sky of Lake Hylia is now thunderstorming. Once you get to these platforms, there is a sequence where it looks like the water is boiling while a menacing song is playing, and it comes out of the water to begin the fight. This is all before you turn on your wolf senses and see its true form for the first time: it is the Twilit Bloat, a giant Shadow Insect who's inspired from the termite queen◊ (image B), an insect who exactly looks like a crawly with a massive abdomen (but who can't fly).
  • Its attacks consist of dashing through you while charged in electricity, and jerking its massive abdomen on you. The cherry on the cake are the... things that come off when it's paralyzed, which look like its guts are coming out of its belly.

Fused Shadow Quest

• The Hero's Shade, Link's Spirit Advisor and tutor in swordsmanship, takes two forms - a golden red-eyed wolf, which isn't that bad... and a towering skeletal figure in battered and decaying ivy covered armour, resembling nothing so much as a Stalfos Knight. Creepy Good, right? Well, Hyrule Historia makes it worse by confirming a fan-theory: the Hero's Shade is none other than the Hero of Time, ancestor of the Hero of Twilight, and like many of those he helped, he's stuck as a restless spirit until he can pass on his knowledge to his descendant.
• Quite a few of the dungeons in Twilight Princess are much creepier than your average Zelda dungeon, due in part to their eerie atmosphere and music. A recurring theme that runs through them is that they all seem abandoned - places of worship and celebration corrupted and left for dead. It gets quite off-putting at times.
• The Forest Temple is an abandoned place of worship for what appears to be a now-vanished tribe that was heavily involved with the wind, and is now populated by poisonous plants and enormous spiders. Oh, and it's also quite dark - literally, you'll need your lantern quite a bit here.
  • Also, the symbol on the doors of the Forest Temple is that of the Kokiri, who are conspicuously absent from this game despite surviving the events of Ocarina of Time. Nor are they mentioned anywhere by anyone. Not even the Great Deku Tree gets a mention. With the Forbidden Woods of Wind Waker confirmed to have once been the Lost Woods and still containing the Kokiri's old dwellings, it's entirely possible that a similar situation occurred here — perhaps they were driven out by the monsters moving in. Just where they went, though, is anyone's guess, but it's worth noting that the Kokiri were said to die if they left the forest...
  • The background music is pretty unsettling in itself, consisting of simple percussions followed by occasional choirs and some wind instrument.
  • It it's your first Zelda game, you can be terrified by the Skulltulas who look even more◊ like giant spiders. If you've played previous games, you may think "Wow, they did an amazing job of fleshing their look out" or "Heck those are pretty creepy", and all seems fine and dandy until you get closer and instead of it showing you its belly side, it crawls off its thread and chases after you.
    • Even worse: you attack it on its string. It doesn't go down like usual. Instead, it cuts the thread. The spider falls down. Then it chases you.
  • Ooccoo is Uncanny Valley personified. Link's face◊ when you first find her reflects the reaction many players had upon seeing her. Her sweet, matronly personality seems so at odds with the disturbingly human-like head on an otherwise avian body. Her son is even creepier, being a disturbingly human-like head with no body, just a pair of fluttery wings on either side.
• Goron Mines may be more alive than the other temples, but its dangers don't make it less scary than the other temples. It's a mine infested by lava with an ominous music, and enemies start to become nastier from here, some coming from the roof to make Link fall into lava.
  • Speaking of which, Link's death animation for falling into lava isn't pretty. In other games, Link usually gets comically burned with his butt on fire, or the game simply fades to black and respawns him at the expense of some health. In this game? Link screams in pain and slowly sinks into the lava, with him futilely reaching his hand out for help (presumably Midna's). It's surprisingly graphic, and really makes it apparent to the player just what happens to their character should they be careless enough to subject him to such a fate.
    • Wolf Link's version is perhaps even worse since his scream is replaced by a pained howl and long whine, all while Midna can do nothing but shake her head. It especially hits hard for animal and/or dog-lovers, as Wolf Link's pained cries sound disturbingly similar to a real dog.
  • When you keep in mind that the boss of the second dungeon, Fyrus, is actually Darbus, a sentient being that has been corrupted by the Fused Shadow, it’s very disturbing. The way he's been futilely chained up is like something from an R-rated exorcism movie. When you defeat him and take the Fused Shadow, it's chilling to think that you're gathering artifacts that can completely overpower a proud Goron patriarch like that. Coming into the room, seeing the solid black silhouette chained up really makes you feel like the hero finding the monster in the maze, especially since you've known it was coming the whole dungeon.
• Lanayru's little history lesson may be the first time that Surreal Horror has ever been used in the series. While it's no stranger to scare its audience, the fact that the scene is completely dissonant with the rest of the game makes it particularly disturbing.
  • It starts on a presentation similar to the one the Deku Tree gave in Ocarina of Time and even uses the same music, but it's only to create a fake sense of security before it becomes more sinister.
  • The scene depicts Link killing Ilia but it's a representation of the war for the Golden Power that took place. It's unsettling how the thought of ultimate power in the Triforce is so great that it can turn the best of friends and family against each other. As it was not creepy enough, both of them have Prophet Eyes in this precise moment, and the scene when Ilia is about to kill Link is shown in his perspective.
  • The Dark Link trio, who represent the Dark Interlopers in the cutscene. As Link runs towards the Triforce, they appear before a giant version of the Fused Shadows rises from the ground, eclipsing the Triforce in the process. The trio then extends one of their arms outwards, and the real Link flinches and yelps in terror before being disintegrated. The camera pans to reveal that the Dark Link in the middle has taken Link's appearance, bearing the same blank eyes Ilia and Link had earlier. The clone's deep laugh does not help make things less unsettling. When the Light Spirits appear and the Fused Shadows are sealed away, the evil copy of Link lets out a terrifying yell before he and the other two Dark Links disappear.
  • In the middle of that scene, Link has a rather... uncanny look on his face, like he's got some insane, evil desires swirling around in his head on account of the vision.
  • After that, you can see raining utterly demented Ilias that are Laughing Mad while the Spirit delivers a wise, but stern and dark Aesop.
  • Last but not least, it abruptly smashes on Link displaying a disturbing smile on his face... before recovering in shock, falling to his knees. Even after he's seen unimaginable horrors, this manages to leave him overwhelmed.
• Agitha's fascination with insects can come across as really creepy to some people, as she talks about how a stag beetle's pincers "must feel so good", or how she'd like to "take a bath" in the slime of a snail among other things. Also, if you leave without giving her every insect in your possession, she'll angrily mutter "I know you have bugs..." once you reach the door. Just what is her deal?
• The Non-Standard Game Over you get if you fail to keep Telma's wagon from burning down while escorting her, Ilia, and Prince Ralis to Kakariko Village is surprisingly disturbing. The flaming wagon is seen in a pitch-black void as the camera slowly zooms around and away from it in total silence before the Game Over music starts. This wouldn't be that bad on its own, but you can see Ilia in a Troubled Fetal Position and holding Prince Ralis in terror inside of the burning wagon.
• The Lakebed Temple is incredibly eerie. It is completely and utterly abandoned, you are underneath what appears to be several hundreds of meters of water, and there's ravenous monsters eager for your blood all over the place, notably in the dark tunnels of water.
  • The background music amps up this sensation, as it mostly consists of weird percussive synths above choirs and loud breathing sounds, and occasional guitar plucks in-between.
  • The boss of the dungeon, Morpheel, is the culmination of terror in this temple. For starters, after having opened the boss door, Link has to jump in a little hole of water, then he has to make a slow and eerie descent to the bottom of a very big drowned room where the boss waits for him. It starts out in a fashion similar to the boss of the Water Temple from Ocarina of Time (mixed with the Sarlacc scene from Return of the Jedi) but then the second phase begins - and Link now has to fight a giant lamprey-like creature. But that's not the worst of it: to kill, he has to Clawshot onto its back to stab it repeatedly in the eye, with blood spray coming out of it. And upon its death, once its eye explodes before the rest of the body follows suit, you have a disturbing view of its empty eye socket.

Midna's Lament

• At this point, you know Zant as the terrifying guy who conquered Hyrule and made Zelda surrender in a single day. Then Link meets him in person after he's completed the Lakebed Temple: instead of sauntering into the room with you to gloat, or making some big bombastic entrance as if he's breaching somewhere holy and safe, Zant is simply waiting for Link to teleport out of the dungeon, and it works, as he practically walks into Zant and doesn't know how to react.
  • After he easily defeats the Light Spirit, leaving Link to transform into a wolf and Midna to be forced out of his shadow, and stealing the so hard-won Fused Shadows from them, Zant curses Wolf Link by forcing a Shadow Crystal into his forehead, which leaves him trapped as a beast. The sound of the Shadow Crystal sinking into his forehead also makes makes it sound very painful and unpleasant.
  • Then Zant catches Midna, leading to a pretty disturbing scene where he whispers "I need you..." into her ear with his mouth drooling while she's unable to move, with this terrifying music playing all the while. This scene, coupled with a later one before the Twilight Realm, has a subtle but nonetheless uncomfortable parallel to sexual predation: he seems... jealous of her relationship with Link, he calls her "My Midna", and his following decision after she refuses to join him looks like another kind of violent jealousy reaction.
    • The decision in question consists of... restoring light to Lanayru, only so Midna will be suddenly exposed to the light and fatally wounded, but still alive long enough to suffer.
• Jovani, a man in Hyrule Castle Town who sold his soul to Poes for wealth. They gave him wealth all right, but also turned him into a living golden statue, permanently stationary with jewel eyes while still being conscious. And it's implied that he's been like that for quite some time before Link meets him. People are still looking for him, unaware that he's been trapped in his home the whole time.
• The Poes in this game are a LOT◊ scarier◊ than in the previous Zelda◊ games.◊ Imagine yourself walking in Hyrule Field at night. Suddenly, you see a light. You go over to investigate and then it chases you. Worse yet, they are already there before you can even become a wolf at will, so if you run into one before you get all of the Fused Shadow parts, you won't even be able to kill it because you can't see its true form. The creepiest thing about them is that no matter what, even when you're several yards away, their lanterns are still floating there in silence. They can attack you before you can attack them, leaving you swiped at by something while creepy laughter plays. It's rather cathartic to finally be able to see and hurt them, but even this is disturbing in its own right, as you're essentially pulling out its heart in the most animalistic and vicious way possible...
• More of a creepy example than anything, but going on into the middle of Lake Hylia and turning on the Wolf senses can be very unsettling. Just darkness... darkness... darkness... and more darkness. And some sparkly water, but it's just so dark.
• After Midna is saved, Link must find himself a cure in the Sacred Grove, and this can send slimy shivers down first-time players' spine.
  • First, he has to face a Skull Kid, who doesn't look like the cute dark wooden beaked face, but rather like◊ a Perverse Puppet with a large Cheshire Cat Grin, who opens and closes ways at his will and makes the woods foggy.
  • Second, he blows into his eerie sounding trumpet to invoke puppets◊ who look even creepier in endless packs to constantly lung at Link, and nostalgic and depressing version of Lost Woods' theme is suddenly smothered by the trumpet.

Arbiter's Grounds

The Arbiter's Grounds, considered by many fans to be the best dungeon in the game, is also by far the creepiest. It is a dark, dusty, derelict prison with undead monsters, enormous bugs, quicksand, and booby traps around every corner. There's also the four Poes you need to hunt down and the Death Sword miniboss (described above) that forces you to shift in and out of wolf form to beat. To say nothing of the background music...

• This temple features one of the scariest versions of Gibdos (referred to as "Redead Knights" in the game's official player's guide and simply "Redeads" in the Prima Games guide) in the history of the series.
  • In this game, they are depicted as giant, mummified zombies with red scarves (or possibly bloodied bandages) around their necks, and have giant, hollow eyes. They shamble about dragging a sword-cleaver that would make Pyramid Head proud. If Link draws close, they will let out a hideous banshee scream that paralyzes him instantly, and they will walk towards him and, if they get close enough and Link does not recover before then, they will cleave their swords into him, taking off a good chunk of his health. Heaven help you if you are in a tight room with FIVE of them, because then you get at least two going after you at once.
  • There is one point in the Arbiter's Grounds where it's possible to be paralyzed by a Gibdo's scream while you are standing on quicksand. Watching Link sink to his death while paralyzed is arguably worse than watching him get whacked by a ReDead's sword.
  • Becomes slightly Nightmare Retardant when you get the Ball and Chain and figure out that with it they go down in two or three hits.
• So, you're playing Twilight Princess, and you're in some damn dungeon or another. You're having a good time, whacking things with your sword and finding keys, when suddenly, you hear a faint squeaking and find that Link is not moving as fast as he normally does. So, you go into sense mode and see that you're covered from head to toe in Ghoul Rats.
  • What's even worse is when you see Midna start to freak out while you're in wolf form. For a character that spends most of the game ordering you around and making snarky remarks, seeing her scared tips you off that something very bad that you can't see is happening. This took many players by surprise, as they initially thought that this was a glitch.
• So you see a treasure chest on the other side of a quicksand pit and decide to wade across, no problem. But on the way back, hundreds of scarab-like bugs called Poison Mites swarm out of the walls, latching on to Link in such numbers that it slows him down and makes him sink into quicksand faster. Unlike the Ghoul Rats, they can be seen without having to use Wolf Link's senses. Link seems to be quite unnerved by the bugs crawling all over him, as his idle animation with the Mites crawling all over him clearly shows. Thankfully, despite their name, they don't harm Link outside of slowing him down and trying to drag him down into the quicksand faster, and they can easily be ridden of with a spin attack.
  • You can take out your lantern and every single one of them will fly off you, but they will form a circle around Link and jump back on him as soon as the item is put away or runs out of oil. Whether that makes it better or worse is up to one's opinion, but it makes them seem even more like the flesh-eating scarabs from The Mummy (1999).
• The Arbiter's Grounds also happens to be home to the Death Sword; yes, that is its name, or at least the only name mortal beings have for it. It starts out as a giant sword in the middle of a room embedded in the floor being held down by ropes covered in sealing charms. This means that whatever this thing is, it is so dangerous that the light spirits couldn't kill it or banish it and had to bind it in one spot with extremely delicate paper charms. Cutting any of the ropes frees it and the blade pulls free; its owner starts out completely invisible to the naked eye, but the enhanced senses of a wolf reveal it to be a horrific horned demon-like creature with a row of fangs and glowing red eyes, and it screams with the high pitched noise of a hundred damned souls, and it has horribly emaciated flesh. When it moves, it floats, leaving a trail of darkness wherever it goes. It holds its head at an angle like its neck can't support its weight or has been broken, and when you win the fight, rather than exploding into black dust, it turns into a cloud of bats which fly up towards the ceiling into blackness. Given this is completely at odds with how evil creatures die throughout the rest of the game, this suggests it may not actually be dead.
  • Adding a touch of the unknowable to all this, the enemy is called "The Sword of Gobera" in the Japanese version. Who or what is Gobera? We have no idea. The game doesn't explain anything, and the name has never appeared before or since in the Zelda series.
  • If you use the wolf's sense mode before you break any of the ropes, you can see Death Sword simply... waiting. Holding onto its blade, waiting for the day it is freed.

Mirror Shards Quest

• Snowpeak Ruins is a very interesting dungeon in that it is an abandoned mansion, obviously not built by the two Yeti that live there. Due to years of disrepair, the mansion has begun to fall apart, and with the Twilight Mirror shard in the bedroom, monsters have begun to roam the corridors and stalk the frigid sections outside.
  • Darkhammer is a pretty dark miniboss in himself. To settle the context, after having escaped ice wolfs, you quickly enter into a tower which happens to be a corridor between two prison cells, with two big armors in the way. You go for the other end, then the door locks on you. After that, you hear slow but heavy sounds coming from behind... then the armor behind you shatters around the weight of the Ball And Chain held by an enemy in the other armor.
  • Blizzeta is easily the scariest boss in the game. First, when Link is about to enter the boss room, Yeta appears out of nowhere to show you the piece herself. When in the room, she goes to the mirror and starts admiring it, thinking it's pretty, "so pretty...", the room goes darker as the cute lullaby playing in the background suddenly becomes unsettling, then... her head suddenly turns 180 degrees for a monster face◊ (the one that scared you above) and she shouts:
    "NOT TAKE MIRROR!"
    • Then the windows break, letting the snow and the cold enter, Yeta starts to float above the ground and cover herself with snow to turn into a giant Freezard before pummeling the ground to destroy the furniture and ice the room, fully becoming Blizzeta. This detail about the room makes a serious Difficulty Spike for a main boss that can disturb the player even more, especially when you consider that she's one of the most aggressive enemies in the game. To make things worse, she also makes horrible noises when transitioning between the two main phases of the fight, and after you've won, she combines them with erratic contortions.
• The Temple of Time is unusual in that it centers around guiding a large statue from the highest floor down to the main foyer - but along the way, there are numerous traps and quite a few spider-esque creatures to contend with. Even without taking the dungeon's boss into consideration, this is not a comfortable place for arachnophobes to be exploring. The background music goes a long way in setting the tense atmosphere of this ancient, dormant structure.
  • Darknuts in this game may leave ambiguity as to what they actually are as, even after you knock their heavy armour off, they are still covered in thinner armour, including a helmet. However, if you were to look closely at an armorless Darknut, you can make out a face that looks human. It has a square chin, a thin lip, and dark, beady eyes. Not to mention that Darknuts are about 11 feet tall and nimbly wield rapiers that Link would have to hold in both hands like a claymore if he had one. These must be freakishly tall humans.
  • Armogohma in Twilight Princess is the largest and most realistic-looking Gohma yet seen in the series, and as such is an arachnophobe's worst nightmare. If you're afraid of Armogohma, though, it's incredibly satisfying to squish it with one of the Dominion Rod's hammer statues, which can take the edge off.
    • For some, Armogohma's second phase is delightful Nightmare Retardant, as they spend the entire time running away from you, and only the main eye has to die for the rest of the spiders to disintegrate along with it. For others, this phase is even worse than the first, since the spiders crawl all over the boss arena in a fast-moving swarm that you'll barely be able to hit, let alone kill, with anything but your base weapons.
• The City in the Sky is - you guessed it - a largely abandoned city floating in the sky. Between the creepy music, gut-dropping height, and complex layout, the city may drive you insane despite it taking place in broad daylight. Scared of heights? This dungeon will have you on edge throughout with all of the traversing across vast pits you have to do. If you fall, you're plummeting hundreds - perhaps thousands - of feet from above the clouds! Even just watching a playthrough can be nerve-wracking to an acrophobe.
  • The city's background music sounds weird compared to the rest of the game, as though it's made up entirely of the Oocca hooting and chanting in their native language. Yet none of the other Oocca will actually speak to Link, which only adds to the weirdness of the place.
  • Veteran Zelda players playing it for the first time will just be expecting it to be at the boss room waiting for you. Then you cross a bridge, a cutscene is triggered and Argorok swoops down out of nowhere and destroys the bridge you just crossed. This can be some serious Paranoia Fuel, as it can keep players on edge thinking it could swoop down to wreak havoc when you least expect it. And if you're at a high enough place and use the Hawkeye, you can actually see it flying around the tower showing that it could, in fact, come after you at any moment.

Twilight Realm and Zant

• When you finally fix the Twilight Mirror and "discover" Midna's true identity, you have a flashback which reveals how Zant transformed Midna into an imp creature.
  • He walks slowly, smugly on her as she fearfully backs away with a hand raised to ward him off, like if he was about to do something else.
  • After that, she walks confused with nowhere to go before realizing she was holding a Fused Shadow on her, and her sad face becomes a... demented gaping smile◊, her face twitches with hatred, and the music swells at this precise moment. Some expected a Face–Heel Turn from her at some point in the game, and that part did not quell those worries.
  • Then there's the downright terrifying smile she makes when she first sees Wolf Link as he's being dragged off by a Twilit Messenger.
• The Palace of Twilight is the second-to-last dungeon in the game, and oh boy is it creepy. Apart from the sheer darkness of the place, you have to contend with Shadow Beasts by the bucketload, Alien Geometries, and a hand that chases you everywhere, Wallmaster-style.
  • The transformed Twili outside the Palace of Twilight are also quite creepy. They look like they've only been partially turned into Shadow Beasts, with their faces replaced with the shield-like masks of the Shadow Beasts and the same weird glowing markings on their bodies as well. Fortunately, they just stand there and they don't attack Link at all, but it's not hard to feel bad for the Twili for being cursed into such ugly monsters by Zant.
  • How about the Wallmaster-like "Zant's Hand" that chases after you when you are carrying the Sols? When it gets close to you, this suspenseful music starts to play - but you make it to the door with no real problem. Then as you're casually walking through the next room, the hand comes flying through the wall and continues its pursuit.
    • Thankfully, it's stupid enough to get stuck in at least one room, so you have all the time in the world to get to where you need to be to grab the Sol from the switch.
    • Also, whacking or shooting the hand three times will temporarily stun it. Locking on and firing the clawshot in rapid succession lets you buy time and grab the Sol from a distance.
• After all of these, you finally reach Zant, and discover who he really is: while he at first gives the impression of being a powerful, cold and ruthless warmonger, the reveal of his true nature in the Palace of Twilight only added to the depths of his frightening nature... because he actually is a completely selfish and cruel manchild who coveted the power of the throne out of a rotten sense of entitlement. While his methods might be fictional, all of the pain and misery caused by him, solely because of him being too childish and selfish to care about the depths he was sinking to get the power he craved makes him quite horrifyingly realistic, as there are far too many real life men and women who have done something similar.
  • The scariest part of all this is how much it clashes with Zant's personality beforehand. In the earlier parts of the game, Zant is incredibly collected and intimidating, possessing a degree of subtlety to him that no other Zelda villain has been able to reach. Then he just snaps. And that's when it becomes clear exactly why he was rejected by the Twili in the first place. They knew exactly what kind of psychopath Zant was and they didn't want a madman like that running their kingdom.
  • Also, the Twilight Realm was said to have made the Twili themselves calm and placid, causing them to lose their desire for revenge against those who locked them there in the first place and other negative emotions. Zant is shown to be a hell of a lot more emotional and unstable than all the others in the game. Imagine feeling things that strongly and constantly being shown that no one else feels like you do, while knowing that this is because they essentially cannot thanks to the magic of the place where you are all trapped. The parallels between Zant and certain cases of real life mental illness are kind of uncomfortable. Worse still, is he simply an anomaly and the only Twili not affected by the Twilight Realm's soothing magic, or are there others? Perhaps the Twilight Realm's calming effect is fading, and others like him will become more common... It makes sense why Midna would want to seal off the two realms forever.
  • Then the fight starts, and gets progressively more intense as Zant gets crazier, until the final phase where he goes fucking apeshit and attacks you madly. The music in the battle steadily grows more deranged alongside Zant himself. It shifts through increasingly hectic remixes of earlier boss themes with elements of Zant's leitmotif thrown in, until the final phase when Zant whips out the swords. By this point, the music has broken down so much it's become nothing but a distorted, psychotic staccato of notes barely able to qualify as a coherent song. It really does sell how far off the edge Zant has plunged.
  • Finally, when he's defeated, Zant is left Limp and Livid on his throne, only lifting his head to give a last wail, before Midna finishes him off by using a fraction of the Fused Shadows' power, leaving her terrified.

Hyrule Castle and Ganondorf

• Even though it is also a Moment of Awesome, when Midna uses the Fused Shadows, she transforms into something that looks like an Eldritch Abomination. The initial transformation scene outside of Hyrule Castle is also pretty unsettling.
• The final dungeon, Hyrule Castle, is nearly abandoned, populated by the toughest monsters the game can throw at you, and is very dark. It is a suitably creepy final challenge for a fairly dark Zelda game. Oh, and the outside areas have no music at all. When you do finally enter the building, you get a creepy, foreboding rendition of the Hyrule Castle theme from A Link to the Past, combined with another familiar leitmotif. The tune becomes more openly sinister upon entering the main keep, and the backing leitmotif slowly rises in prominence as you make your way up the tower. By the time you reach the throne room, Ganon's theme has overtaken the original melody completely.
  • Stepping out onto the balcony at the top of the dungeon is perhaps one of the most chilling experiences in the game. The background music disappears altogether, leaving only the sounds of a howling storm that has engulfed all of Hyrule while you made your way up.
  • The ghosts of Hyrule soldiers are visible only through senses, look half decayed, and do nothing but point accusingly (well, in the direction you're supposed to go, but still).
• Ganondorf has four different phases during his boss fights, and all of them are terrifying in their own ways:
  • The fight with Puppet Zelda is unsettling, as it's Ganondorf possessing Zelda, you're hearing Ganondorf's voice coming out of her, she flies around the room like a ghost, and doesn't behave like a fully-conscious being. And the way that Link and Midna free Zelda from Ganon's control is horrifying; first, Link plays Dead Man's Volley and electrocutes Zelda, then Midna uses the Fused Shadows to grab Zelda and squeeze, leading to what sounds like bones crunching and Ganondorf's screams of pain.
  • The beast Ganon of this game doesn't look like the usual Pig Man, but like a giant savage boar with a giant scar below the belly. The fight itself is Paranoia Fuel at its finest, going from Ganon running around the room and breaking the pillars on his way to going through portals and surprising the player before you can grab him, put him down and attack his scar... or before he falls from the roof to crush you. The music itself is as awesome as it's terryfying, combining Ominous Latin Chanting on tribal drums, and a twisted violonist playing a Scare Chord where the boar comes out of the portal. Worse, after this fight, Ganondorf transforms into the spirit form he took in the Twilight Realm to kill the three heroes, leading to Midna sacrificing herself and teleporting them out.
  • However, this sacrifice didn't change a thing, as the castle exploded and Ganondorf can be seen on his horse holding the Fused Shadow she used as a helmet and crushing it bare hands, before making his horse dash on Link and Zelda and holding his sword like a bloodthirsty warrior, all with a whole army of ghost horsemen following him for the cutscene and the battle.
  • Finally, the sword fight happens behind magical yellow barriers under a lightning storm, and he displays a surprising agility.
• Ganondorf's death scene has Zant's self-inflicted Neck Snap. This isn't that bad by itself, but the background music cranks the scariness up to eleven. Made worse by the fact of the utter Mind Screw of the shot.

Glitches

• If you manage to get to get to Eldin Bridge in Twilight Eldin Province (as this player did), all you have is a big, empty grassland.
• There's a massive glitch known as the "back in time" glitch that causes many creepy side effects. For starters, the glitch itself is pretty unnerving if performed correctly: Link spawns in at the Eldin Bridge area completely alone (Midna is not with him despite having the sword and shield, and there's no enemies or Epona) with no music or items, and the time of day will not change no matter how long you wait, so it's as if the whole world is frozen in time. All Link can do is walk around and if he attempts to go to Kakariko Village or Lanayru Province, all he'll find is a black void. From here, there's even more creepy side effects: either Link can end up in the King Bulblin fight then get trapped permanently in Twilight Kakariko as a human (there's still no Midna so he can't transform into a wolf), or he ends up in Faron Woods with no music and eventually gets stuck permanently in Ordon Village when the time comes to collect the sword and shield. Either way, Link runs into a dead end, so the world is essentially doomed and forever frozen in time since he can't go anywhere or do anything.

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