While the other Zero Escape games have not shyed away from some rather extreme violence and horror, Zero Time Dilemma is unquestionably the most horrific game in the franchise.
All spoilers below are unmarked, as per Nightmare Fuel guidelines!
- Some of the deathtraps and Decision Games you need to play are absolutely horrific.
- Sigma is strapped to a chair, and a gun is pointed at his head. The gun is loaded with 6 shots, three blank and three live. Shooting the gun frees Phi, who is going to be burned to death. Diana must make a 50/50 gamble on Sigma's life. If she loses, Diana takes her own life in a horrifically creepy way, leaving Phi alone. It gets worse when you learn about the relationship between team D's members and realise that Delta is making his mother shoot his father to save his sister.
- C-Team must make a 0.46% gamble on rolling a 1 on 3 dice. If they fail, gatling guns rip them to shreds.
- The Decontamination Room trap where all three groups are trapped inside in separate rooms, where Zero instructs everyone to press a button to sacrifice the other groups in order to save themselves from a horrible death by acid shower. The screams of the six victims are agonizing as they are slowly melting to death, and although their deaths take place off-screen, we get to see what's left afterwards: a small pile of organs sitting in a puddle of liquefied human. What makes it even worse is that the game doesn't just show you the cutscene, but takes you to the fragment select screen first. Except, there's only the one fragment to choose from, just driving the point home that you have no choice but to watch it all happen. The utter lack of agency in a game based around choices is possibly the most terrifying thing about this.
- After entering the Control Room password BETESTEDBYFIRE and following the instructions, a fire is indeed lit in the room - and immediately put out by the CO2 fire extinguisher. Fine? Well, no, because the fire extinguisher is the deathtrap - it's not stopping, and the air is running out..
- One section has Akane and Carlos wake up in the Pantry. Their dialogue confirms that Akane really does love Junpei, and overall it feels like one of the game's lighter moments. They then solve the room's puzzle, and open the door only to be greeted with Junpei's severed head on a shelf, next to a chainsaw and fire axe. Akane goes Ax-Crazy and cuts the power, than stalks up behind Carlos with a chainsaw. What happens next can go two ways.
- Carlos believes he killed Junpei, and is Driven to Suicide by cutting his own throat with the fire axe. Complete with High-Pressure Blood.
- Carlos accuses Akane of killing Junpei. She cuts off his hand and bracelet, and he strikes her down with the axe.
- There's also that one moment when a series of seemingly innocuous parts used for a puzzle sequence all ends up being turning into a horrific form of the Chekhov's Gun tropes in recent history. Players would initially assume that Junpei had died off-screen once Carlos and Akane wakes up wondering where Junpei had vanished to, and upon finding the chopped limbs parts used for the pantry puzzle, they may breath a sigh of relief upon realizing that the clothes part worn by the chopped limbs does not match the clothes worn by Junpei, so they couldn't all possibly be from Junpei... right? Then the player finally opens the door to the freezer, and sees Junpei's severed head on a shelf. Then it finally hits them... the player was tricked into using Junpei's body parts to complete a puzzle in the pantry without realizing it.
- Mira's monologue about her Start of Darkness as a Serial Killer. Delivered to Sean as she's tearing out Eric's heart.
- The game's Fragment system can lead to some horror, as the place on the timeline is only revealed after you complete the segment. This means a missing person in one fragment could either be dead or just missing, and this leads to some absolute dread as what could have happened to the missing person.
- Eric shows zero hesitation to shoot and murder a young child during the 3-Way Standoff should Sean decide to shoot no-one and tries to persuade everyone to put their weapons down. Even Mira, of all people, is shown to be disturbed by Eric's underhanded and cold execution of Sean.
- The first possible executions are also no slouch in the nightmare fuel department; if you cause one of the teams to get two execution votes in the first decision game, that team will wake up with collars around their necks that then explode, blowing their heads off. In fact, later in the game, Sigma and Diana transport to a timeline where they were executed and find the headless bodies of their alternate selves.
- The ultimate solution to all the problems in this game, and by extension, the whole series, requires everybody to die no less than three times each. When the Force Quit Box is opened, nearly all of them are instantly filled with the memories of those deaths. In the final, happy ending, all of the protagonists will have to live with the memories of all of their deaths for the rest of their lives.
- At the start of the game, Zero flips a coin with the players. If the players win, they are set free without playing the Decision Game at all. But then the ending reveals that their minds are then swapped with the characters from the Force Quit ending and they find themselves inside the shelter a few seconds before it self destructs. The worst part? The team absolutely knows that this is going to happen, but prefer it to their own deaths.
- The first time Sean takes off his helmet, watching it hit the ground and hearing him scream in horror is just awful. Not to mention the cables later on.
- The core game mechanic is actually terrifying, which is probably why VLR didn't look too closely at it — but ZTD embraces it wholeheartedly. Yes, you do displace your own consciousness when you change timelines, and yes, this means a copy of yourself dies in your place whenever you shift out of danger. The only brief lip service paid to this being a morally difficult decision is the final choice (which, once made, isn't brought up again). And ZTD doesn't stop there — it introduces that most Fridge Horrifying of sci-fi devices, the Star Trek transporter, and this one doesn't even pretend to move you rather than copying you. The characters all use this machine with reckless abandon. Suffice it to say that if you have the slightest belief in a soul, this game will have you climbing the walls.
- Perceptive End. It is in fact possible to piece together enough of the hints to think of entering Delta's name as a solution to the Mexican Standoff and stumble into this ending before getting the actual reveal sequence about Q's true identity and presence (especially if you're savvy or just curious to try out any possible option). As a result, instead of getting the "normal" shock of Sean pointing to you and accusing you of being Zero first, you get Sean pointing a gun at you through the screen and shooting you. Rattling.
- D-End 2. With no indication that a rescue team ever came to the shelter, Sigma, Diana, Gab, Phi and Delta starve to death. Even worse, Phi and Delta are the infant children of Sigma and Diana.
- The only happy, non-horrifying thing about D-End 2 is the fact that Sigma and Diana fall in love and seem happy at the idea of being parents. It doesn't change that they know ahead of time that there's only enough food for them to get to the end of the pregnancy, with absolutely no chance of any of them surviving beyond that. The futility of their situation is just awful.
- When C-Team's plan to swipe their own X-Passes from alternate timelines fails due to Zero being Crazy-Prepared, Junpei runs off, presumably to off himself to give Carlos and Akane his X-Pass for their current timeline. The door opens... and there stands a Sean robot, eyes glowing bright red. Then he utters the following line in a Creepy Monotone, and VLR players familiar with Zero III's Insistent Terminology instantly know that some seriously bad shit's about to go down:"Sean": Penalty. Penalty. You are charged with a rule violation.
