little fox, let us dine
Being a mod based on a famous creepypasta, it’s no surprise that Vs. Sonic.exe has more than a few frightening moments. However, due to how narmy the creepypasta is, though, it's said that it actually manages to improve over it.
- While Sonic.exe himself can be seen as Nightmare Retardant to some thanks to his unoriginal design and So Bad, It's Good origin Creepypasta, this mod gives him some effective touch-ups in the form of Body Horror, with a deformed purple tongue and hands inside of his mouth being seen in his poses, as well as directly staring at the screen and giving a Ghostly Gape when he does his Evil Laugh and jumpscaring the player mid-song.
- Early on in Tails' section and the start of Knuckles' and Eggman's sections in "Triple Trouble", hyperrealistic pictures of their faces suddenly appear. Already unnerving by itself, you can already hear screams, presumably their last words before Sonic.exe killed them. Tails' scream is very similar to the infamous bloodcurdling scream from MY5TCrimson's game adaptation of the original story, Knuckles gets a wheezing, agonized howl, and Eggman's scream sounds more like a Big "NO!".
- The forest Endless takes place in must be located somewhere in the uncanny valley, because everything about the stage (minus the song itself) is very unnerving, with unnatural blue lighting and a crowd of Mazins spectating and wagging their fingers. Speaking of which, they and Majin himself, while not gruesome eyesores like many of the other opponents, are unsettling with their perpetual smiles and the fact that those human faces do not belong on Sonic bodies.
- Should you lose in Endless, the game over screen gets slowly taken over by the Mazins as a timer slowly ticks down. If you don’t retry before it runs out, then Boyfriend suddenly hunches over and covers his face…And reveals that he’s been turned into a Mazin as a glitched out snippet of his vocals play. Oh, and the game crashes too for good measure.
- Execution/Cycles, on the other hand, takes place in a very weird place, with bloodshot eyes and rotting teeth sticking out of flowers, coconut trees that somehow have flesh under their bark, and hands waving around from behind... some weird mix between a venus flytrap and a jaw. Lord X himself is a big gruesome eyesore, even compared to the other opponents—from his deep black eyes with unnerving red and white pupils, to his haggard appearance with his scruffy fur, shoes that look more like hands bound with a leather strap, to the X literally carved into his chest.
- All his animations are freaky, too. Special mention goes to his up pose, with features two skeletal hands opening his mouth, with another one that uses his tongue for a ligament coming straight out of the gaping maw!
- Cycles itself might be one of the creepiest songs to appear in a Friday Night Funkin' mod. It's a slightly off-key piano piece peppered with droning ambient noises and distorted laughter (including a sample of Flowey's infamous laugh at the beginning of the track). Lord X's voice has an unsettling grainy filter that makes it almost indescribable, and it all comes together to give the song a very macabre vibe.
- One of the scrapped songs in the 3.0 build would give him a new sprite set that still made it into the files. The main difference is that they're of him facing you head-on, implying either a first person perspective... Or him dropping all pretenses of Boyfriend being his target and making it clear he wants you.
- At first, Faker (only in the 2.0 update) seems like a battle with an... off-brand, but normal Sonic. This changes at the end, however, as the Sonic doppelganger begins to twist and contort itself to reveal that it's another version of Sonic.exe; the former mod director's own take, known as -EXE. A lanky, blue-and-white abomination with blood-stained claws, skin that only looks like gloves and shoes, and a mouth full of razor-sharp teeth. And if you lose to -EXE you are treated to a close-up image of -EXE's face... which will eventually turn into a Jump Scare.
- The backgrounds for -EXE are quite the sight as well. In "Faker" it's more subtle; the totem poles are slashed up, the plant life seems to be dead or dying, and the sky is a reddish hue. However, after -EXE transforms, it gets much more apocalyptic in nature, with the scenery swapping to stone crags with black wisps of something curling around a mountain, and the charred, rotted corpse of Tails on display next to Girlfriend.
- Starved, one of the new opponents for 3.0 is a version of Robotnik who develops a strong taste towards animals and Mobians, managing to eat Sonic and later one of Tails' namesakes. His Nightmare Face doesn't help either. There is the small comfort in that his hunger does not extend to humans, so he has no lethal intent towards Boyfriend unlike most of the other opponents in the mod.
- The trailer for him was also rather creepy, using a VHS-style video, as Starved discusses about him smelling his next food. It then cuts to a picture of one of Tails' namesake before the word "little fox" fills the screen.
- His actual song, even if not entirely finished, ended up being against Tails and it is rife with horror. Not only is Sonic’s cut-up corpse nearby Starved himself and he has a deep voice to match his disturbing appearance, there is a Fear meter on the right side that grows over time, moreso if you Miss, eventually to the point where Tails will be permanently rendered a One-Hit Wonder and at that, the image for Tails’ losing icon is a creepy image in its own right, appearing mangled. Oh and the Misses in this are called Sacrifices, giving off scary implications on what happens whenever Tails messes up against Starved. And if you fail? You’ll end up with a haunting Game Over that, even if censored to some degree, is still absolutely nightmarish, starting with Starved taking a bite out of Tails, before cutting to an image of Eggman turning into Starved (pictured above), which then lunges at the screen mouth opening wide, all while distorted, electronic-sounding screaming can be heard in the background. You finally get the chance to move on after it settles on an animation of his teeth dripping with blood.
- The scrapped song "Prey" is fairly disturbing, thanks to being based on Starved and his remade Metal Sonic, Furnace. The song takes place in Stardust Speedway's Bad Future, which is a bad sign already, as Furnace chases after Sonic. Sonic manages to shake him off, only for Starved to arrive. Sonic tries to deliver his trademark snark at him, but Starved brushes it off by saying Sonic does not even know his own fate, before laughing manically and then taking on Sonic himself. During one of Sonic's verses, however, Furnace flies ahead of the both of them under the stage... leading to him cutting Sonic off once he manages to outrun Starved, charging at him before he even notices what's going on. You win, but it's clear that the fate Starved meant was, well...
- Starved is supposed to be just a Robotnik with different, disturbing motivations. Unlike the various demons and other mystical beings of the mod, he is not supposed to be supernatural in the slightest. So why does he look so... off? Nothing more than the results of overfeeding and an unbalanced diet? Perhaps he contracted some kind of disease from eating Mobians that caused him to start rotting alive? Or maybe his compulsion to devour Mobians and his warped appearance are the result of some kind of curse? The world may never know.
- One disturbing detail is how he refers to Sonic and Tails not by their names, but by what creature they are. He doesn’t call them by their names because he doesn’t see them as foes to defeat anymore. They’re just animals to him. And thus, his meals.
- Hog's transformation into Scorched in "Manual Blast". It comes completely out of nowhere to those unfamiliar with the characters, especially considering how cheerful Hog's portion of the song is. And, although we don't get to see it happen due to the update featuring them being unfinished, we do get to hear what it sounds like. Hog starts shouting in pain as we hear the delightful sounds of his flesh shifting and twisting. Then, when the shouting eventually stops, a psychotic laugh takes its place, which soon gives way to Scorched's own wild, monstrous laughter. The music crescendoing into a much more foreboding and dramatic song as this happens does little to help.
- Thanks to a sketch done by Jack Gore, we do have an idea of what the transformation sequence could look like... and it's not pretty.
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- Thanks to a sketch done by Jack Gore, we do have an idea of what the transformation sequence could look like... and it's not pretty.
