Hush, little baby, don't say a word...
Even though the meat of the game is puzzle-solving and digital exploration, Welcome to the Game is still one of the horror variety, and it occasionally shows.
WARNING: Spoilers are unmarked.
- The Russian kidnapper. It's not so much who he is or what he does, but those sounds he makes when searching for you can be extremely unsettling. The background ambiance does not help, either. Imagine sitting completely alone in your house, dead silent, at the middle of night, and all of a sudden you hear a chair scraping against the floor from the next room.
- The Breather's phone calls are absolutely horrifying by themselves, let alone knowing they mean a Serial Killer is about to break into your house and butcher you.
- If you're at the computer and he manages to get in, you turn around to a Jump Scare of him standing Right Behind You glaring you in the face before proceeding to cut your throat.
NIGHT NIGHT. *slice* - The Red Room video. While some consider it Narm, the point is that an innocent man is getting put through Cold-Blooded Torture. And you spent the entire game looking for the address to watch it.
- Oh, and some players like to entertain the idea that those victims are the ones who couldn't make it to the livestream and were kidnapped.
- Websites with music are extremely startling if you don't expect it, because the game is almost completely silent besides some clicks, wind, crickets chirping, and the hacking minigames.
- Warehouse 33 is full of fucked up shit. In one series of experiments, the "medical" staff gangrape a kidnapped girl and fill her uterus with bleach to bathe the ensuing fetus with, trying to determine how long it'll survive For Science!. It's really hard to get more evil than that. They do plenty of other Squick-y stuff too, like force-feeding a man feces until he vomits himself to death. Even worse, it's being done to prove the theory "Not all humans are equal, for some of them were born superior to others", implying that they may be Nazis.
- "The Doll Maker" (pictured) is possibly the most disturbing site in the game, as it is a horribly detailed advertisement of a European surgeon explaining how he kidnaps homeless women before completely disabling all motor functions, twisting their appearance into that of a hollow doll, and brutally torturing them into submission, permanently breaking their minds and turning them into a sentient, immobile toy to be sold and turned into a Sex Slave. Oh, and a music box rendition of "Hush Little Baby" is playing in the background. And this is a toned down version of an existing creepypasta- in that version, the girls were preteens.
- And it gets much MUCH worse in the sequel, where you get to see his work in action, and also have to help him find new victims.
- "Forgive Me" is an anonymous confession generator. Half of the confessions are silly or mild, like getting a blowjob during a Skype presentation, having a serial killer fetish, and hating being called "bro". The other half, however, tell stories of soldiers who accidentally killed dozens of civilians and didn't care, sociopaths who tell how much they enjoy cheating on their husbands and emotionally manipulating him, and a sadist talking about how he can only enjoy sex if his partner is in excruciating pain and doesn't want it.
- "Father Donald", about a supposed Pedophile Priest and sociopathic Serial Killer who wants to purge the world of "heathens", including all LGBT members. This doesn't seem so bad because, like sites like The Loogaroo and Legion, it's probably just a troll with sick fantasies and/or desires of attention. But if you've played Rides With Strangers, you know that he believes every single word he has written.
- "The Gatekeeper" for the most part is a simple quiz that requires you to answer questions based on trivia found in fellow Deep Websites. The presentation of the site however is creepy as all hell, being displayed as an eerie rusty metal door in a dark and damp hallway while disturbing ambiance and whispering can be heard throughout. Also, if you get a question wrong, you will be instantly hacked every time.
- If you get too many questions wrong, the Kidnapper will immediately catch you.
- "The Shadow Web Portal" is similar to the "The Gatekeeper" in presentation, this time being a dark stairwell with nothing but blackness at the other end. The site is meant to be a portal to even more disturbing websites not allowed even on the Deep Web, but there is no actually way to go through it.
- Until the 2.0 update, the player's unfettered motivation for a Red Room, real-life, live Gorn, was subject to much debate, and was left purposely ambiguous by the developer. Were they morbidly curious? Were they a sadist? Were they some kind of law enforcement trying to stop the Red Room by finding it first? As the "Who Am I?" ending reveals, none of these. The player is actually a sexual predator and rapist who is looking for more ways to get off. Yes, YOU get off to innocent people getting horribly mutilated, tortured, and murdered.
- In The Waiting Room DLC, you play as a to-be Red Room victim trying to escape their cell before they become the Executioner's next plaything. You have to convince the Executioner you're asleep in your cell whilst trying to escape, so you frequently have to play possum in your bed. The Executioner gets really thorough in his investigation though, getting right up in your ear and literally breathing down your neck for several seconds as you squeeze your eyes shut. If you open them even for a second...
