Final Fantasy VII/Nightmare Fuel



The pic on the left shows a close-up of the very same Eldritch Abomination that sums up the Nightmare Fuel of the whole Final Fantasy series so well, it's been chosen as the image for the page made for that exact purpose.

There's a REASON for that.

It's not like the sequel was any better, though.

"Barret: "Where's its $#&* &@ head?""
 * The nightmare begins with the line "I'm going to see my mother." This seemingly innocuous line, combined with Sephiroth's now apparent insanity and "Those Chosen by the Planet" kicking in at full force lets you know without a doubt that something terrible is about to happen. For the rest of the game you'll be one step behind Sephiroth, chasing a trail of blood, fear and horribly mutilated corpses.
 * JENOVA:
 * The headless Jenova scene. The fact that she has SQUID EYEBALLS for nipples is bad enough. It almost looks like her headless body is a severely deformed face.
 * You know when something is scary when an in-game character summed it up the best.


 * The creepy music and heartbeat sound effects didn't help one bit, either. The image itself is terrifying but adding the music, heartbeat and beeping noise made things ever worse.
 * And the scariest part about JENOVA? You see and fight her scattered limbs, you see her severely downsized form, you see her reborn form...but you never see the planet-destroying original.
 * The way that the whole Nibelheim Reactor scene is built up is nothing short of terrifying. The red lighting, the nightmarishly organic-looking wires straight out of HR Giger and (as pictured above) that weird doll/deathmask THING hanging there. We think it's Jenova, but then Sephiroth to rips it out (and it sheds Tears of Blood) before showing the actual creature. Oh, and did we mention her/its external biological system, complete with a seven-chambred HEART? Or the fact that the doll and room are vaguely shaped the same way, with it's blood-red cable connecting its torso to the floor's ventricle-shaped layout?
 * The specters of the Gi tribe underneath Cosmo Canyon. See here. It's just A TORSO YOU'RE FIGHTING? The spine just dangles there...
 * It's a small detail, but the Jenovan Reunion scene where a giant eye unexpectedly opens in the rock wall. It's creepy in it how it quietly hints that there's an Eldritch Abomination Weapon sitting right there.
 * The scene where the team 'escapes' from the cell block is still terrifying. You fall asleep in your cell, only to wake up later and find the cell door mysteriously open. You look outside and find the guard has been horribly murdered. You get your friends out of their cells and you see that everyone on that floor is dead. And the pod holding Jenovah has been burst open, leaving a huge bloody trail up the elevator. You follow it, trailing this massive blood smear up multiple levels past scores of dead employees while the creepiest music ever plays. Not to mention that there is no victory theme, when you win a battle.....All that's there is that frigging creepy music. And it ends with the Big Bad up until this point slumped over, dead, a sword in his back. Then you get introduced to the REAL Big Bad. The fact that you don't actually see Sephiroth yet & are just working off of this, coupled with Cloud's obvious mix of fear, hatred, & reverence further increase his creepiness.
 * Hojo. Zack and Cloud being stuck as experiments of Hojo's for four years. And the thirty-plus years he kept Vincent. For that matter, nothing says, "I love you, honey" like getting your girlfriend knocked up with an alien baby that nearly kills her and drives her insane!
 * Hojo really is the king of all assholes in Final Fantasy VII. Not only does he have no ethical standards at all, he's insane to the point of self-destruction and is the father of the Big Bad who also wants to wipe out everything. At some point, he figures out the truth of what Jenova actually is (by the time he starts rambling about Reunion Theory), and he simply does not care.
 * The Shinra submarine, which is required to progress the story at a certain point, can cause you to run into Emerald Weapon. Emerald Weapon has a chance to appear directly outside of the Gelinka, causing you to enter battle completely unwillingly. Seriously, the Gelnika deserves a proper mention. All of the monsters are mini-cosmic horrors including a monster vaguely resembling a half-decayed dog head which attacks you with its giant, lolling TONGUE.
 * The freaking Yin-Yang that you have to fight in the room where you find Vincent. Not only does it look like a zombie, but anytime it uses an attack, you have to sit there for a minute and watch it twitch in a disturbing fashion. A number of the other Shinra Mansion monsters were also freaky. In the PC version, when you go into battle at that point, BGM does not change. Now imagine battling Yin-Yang once again. At least they were decent enough to play the victory theme after that.
 * Crisis Core recreates the game's famous Nibelheim disaster with better 3D. And a Spooky Painting of a girl in Zack & Cloud's room. Despite not doing anything (that we know of) walking up to it prompts you to push X to examine it. Whereupon Zack will comment on how creepy it is. No other paintings in the room are considered noteworthy enough for examination.
 * Cloud's random Sephiroth/Jenova induced freakouts are just unsettling.
 * A whole bunch of people die in Sector 7 (or rather, under Sector 7). Also, the Planar Shockwave in the beginning of the game... if you don't make it out of the reactor in time....
 * Hell House! A house... THAT GETS UP ON ITS OWN AND DECIDES IT WANTS YOU DEAD!!! Then when you beat it up a bit, out pops a head and several limbs!
 * Super Nova, an attack that the final boss uses against your team, which shows a meteor plowing through just about every planet in the solar system, before crashing head-long into the sun, causing a supernova. That in itself is scary, but let's look at the attack animation again. Notice something familiar about those planets being blown up? Like, say, their names? That's right, that meteor isn't just causing a supernova in any solar system; IT'S CAUSING A SUPERNOVA IN OUR SOLAR SYSTEM.
 * The original Japanese release simply had the ending second or so where you see a wide shot to a celestial boom and the characters take damage. The western versions added the space sequences because, What Do You Mean It's Not Awesome? Later in Crisis Core, you get an email from one of Sephiroth's admirers going on about his signature Super Nova attack. So it's simply something he does semi-commonly even when he was more man than monster, not a real Earthshattering Kaboom.
 * In Crisis Core, the Genesis Copies. These were SOLDIERs, regular guys, that got injected with just a bit of Genesis' cells, stuffed in mako tanks, and get turned into mindless drones, stripped of everything that give them their individuality, even their physical appearance, in a process that is potentially very painful. Gah. Made even worse when you think that, when And some fans say Genesis isn't that evil.
 * The Midgar Zolom. No, not that snake in the marsh, the one you find. On your way to Junon you have to cross a marsh with a gigantic 100-foot snake living in it that will massacre your party if you try to cross it on foot. No biggie, you catch a chocobo and get across. But on the other side you get a cutscene where you see a Midgar Zolom VIOLENTLY IMPALED on a massive dead tree, with blood streaming down the trunk. The sheer brutality was horrifying. It gets better when you realize who did it. The giant snake that devours your body like popcorn if you try to fight it? Sephiroth spiked it on a tree without breathing hard. And that's when it sinks in just what sort of person you're dealing with...
 * Sephiroth. Every single time he showed up, something horrible happened, like the deaths of civilians, Cloud having his massive breakdown, Aerith's death, and the infamous scene of that evil smile as he burned Nibelheim to the ground. When he showed up in that game, you knew something horrible was going to happen.
 * One of the worst bits has to be in the Temple of Ancients, just before he attacks Tseng. You're having some sort of vision of the past, seeing the Turks search the temple, and then Sephiroth shows up, and he looks straight at you. You're not sure if he's just able to see Cloud & co., or if he can actually see you playing the game.
 * If you enter a certain room in the Honeybee Inn or whatever it's called, Cloud encounters... well... himself? What's going on in this part isn't exactly clear, but the general idea you get is that Cloud is really, seriously messed up inside - much more so than you're expecting at that point. The brief interaction they have, as well as the music playing in that room, is very creepy.
 * The BGM to the very first area you play in, "Mako Reactor", deserves mention in that it welcomes you, as you begin the game, like - for lack of a better comparison - a kick to the face. It was so creepy, that the Lighter and Softer FF title "Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo Tales" used it for the freakin' Very Definitely Final Dungeon.
 * Don Corneo is the resident pervert who picks women to come visit his mansion so he can spend time alone with them. You infiltrate his mansion with transvestitism, and go looking for Tifa to find he has a DUNGEON in his basement. Let's be clear - this is not your typical bondage-club "dungeon" either. It's a medieval torture dungeon. However, it's strongly implied that Corneo uses it like an S&M dungeon. Not even the hilarity of Cloud in a dress can make up for how deeply icky the whole thing is.