Deus Ex: Human Revolution/Nightmare Fuel


 * The Purity First propaganda video. Brrrrrrrrr.
 * Especially if you've played the original game and know which parts of it are true.
 * The dream (or possibly nightmare) Adam has in the trailer, with a group of men in a cathedral during the Renaissance, studying the corpse of a man with dissected arms, who looks exactly like Adam himself. Adam's spirit then rises from the body, grows angel wings and ascends, before they are burned away, Icarus style causing Adam to plummet to the ground. A perfect metaphor for the Transhumanism in Deus Ex, but also incredibly creepy.
 * It get's worse...
 * See this? Every one of those boxes transforms into one of these. Here are your brown pants.
 * The emails and conversations that make it clear that
 * Two of the scariest areas for some were the room in the  facility immediately preceding Barrett's fight and the dissection rooms in , both of which embodied Nothing Is Scarier. The first has a corridor which, at first glance, appeared to be filled with large crates. But, on closer inspection, it turned out to contain hundreds of inactive boxguards (read: combat robots eight feet high and wide when compacted). None of them activate, but they keep making noises. And in the dissection rooms? All those signs about handling 'subjects' and avoiding contamination, and obviously there's something on the tables, and just as obviously those 'somethings' are not human.
 * While hardly the scariest thing you'll ever encounter in gaming, Adam's initial steps into  is incredibly unnerving. Having Adam walk through the pristine but recently evacuated and empty news room of the world's largest media conglomerate, spilt coffee and all, is just plain creepy. Especially when you start reading emails from employees who've been told to pack up and leave in a hurry...
 * Becomes extra worrisome if you've played FEAR, which has the introduction to the Armacham building play out similarly. You'll be half-expecting Replica troops or Belltower goons to come out of nowhere following the mind-shattering manifestations of a psychotic little girl in red....
 * The Missing Link DLC adds a ton of this once you get down to the science labs. More specifically, you get to see all of the consequences of
 * The Harvesters gang. Exactly What It Says On the Tin. It's bad enough that muggers in the real world jam a gun in your face and take all of your money. But these guys will rip your arms and legs off so they can sell them or keep them for themselves and leave you bleeding in the street. Granted, they are cybernetic, but if they are linked to your nervous system...
 * The white room where you find, the room itself seems wrong, but there is also a crash test dummy in the corner that sways slightly, as if breathing..
 * The augmented people . One terrified woman screams at . I'd like to think that even players who generally punch out/stab anti-augs can forgive her for being a bit irrational after that.
 * Being chased by the . The way they run is... unsettling. The noises they make and the way they aren't unsettling, exactly. It's more along the lines of "Ohgodohgod it's just a game, it's just a game, it's just a--JESUS CHRIST THEY FOUND ME GET IN THE VENT, GET IN THE VENT--oh fuck, there's a body in the vent, can they follow me in here?!" Depending on how much, a Pacifist run might be hard to achieve at this point, if only because downing them all in a hail of bullets may just feel like It's the Only Way To Be Sure that they'll stay down.
 * By this point in the game, the player has had time to experience a rich, multidimensional game world and develop an attachment to it. To see this world unexpectedly descend into a
 * The "Suicide Apartment" in Hengsha Court Gardens. It's easy to miss, but if you hack the Level 1 security panel and go in, the first thing you see is a pooled bloodstain on the floor, and blood spatters on the wall -- just like someone had their brains blown out. Travel to the bedroom, and it looks normal enough -- until you notice the large bottle of pills spilled all over the floor. Go into the bathroom, and there's a toaster sitting in the bathtub, along with revolver ammo on the side of the tub. What the fuck happened here?
 * Well, yeah, but that doesn't really take away from the creepiness. Like walking into an amusement park's haunted house. You know it's only people in costumes and special effects, but hell if you aren't on edge and freaked out anyway.
 * This is quite a stupid one actually, but while playing The Missing Link, I noticed that a lot of the captives in the cryogenic storage were captured via Belltower recruitment drives. The concept itself is bad enough. However, to make it worse, Belltower is often of shorted to BT, and one of the captives was captured in London. I live in London, and my partner works for British Telecom (Commonly known at BT)...you do the math. I almost phoned him to make sure he was ok.
 * An in-universe example exists in The Missing Link DLC. To the NPC mooks, YOU are the Nightmare Fuel. This is especially so if you're going for that elusive Factory Zero achievement because Jensen's resourcefulness and efficiency is all that it takes for him to defeat a well-equipped private army. As one NPC states, "Don't be fooled by the low body count. That just means he's more resourceful.
 * Speaking of previous Nothing Is Scarier moments, is all about this. Blood stains are on the wall, corpses are on the floor, and various booby traps are laid everywhere just to prevent other horrors from breaching an area. While the previous levels that were seemingly void of enemies at first had a reasonable, calming reason ("Hey, at least they bothered to evacuated!" in one instance, likely because of a suspicion of you) for being completely deserted, the fact that you know something horrible has happened, and is still happening here is a different sensation. Especially the ambient sound. Just listen, and you'll hear insane rambling coming from seemingly nowhere mixed in between the otherwise fairly silent background. The one time you meet  is from an extremely obvious, barricaded room with only one entrance, and by then you're shuddering at how many others are nearby, just lurking out of vision... And then you actually see hordes of them, everywhere.
 * The "Suicide Apartment" in Hengsha Court Gardens. It's easy to miss, but if you hack the Level 1 security panel and go in, the first thing you see is a pooled bloodstain on the floor, and blood spatters on the wall -- just like someone had their brains blown out. Travel to the bedroom, and it looks normal enough -- until you notice the large bottle of pills spilled all over the floor. Go into the bathroom, and there's a toaster sitting in the bathtub, along with revolver ammo on the side of the tub. What the fuck happened here?
 * Well, yeah, but that doesn't really take away from the creepiness. Like walking into an amusement park's haunted house. You know it's only people in costumes and special effects, but hell if you aren't on edge and freaked out anyway.
 * This is quite a stupid one actually, but while playing The Missing Link, I noticed that a lot of the captives in the cryogenic storage were captured via Belltower recruitment drives. The concept itself is bad enough. However, to make it worse, Belltower is often of shorted to BT, and one of the captives was captured in London. I live in London, and my partner works for British Telecom (Commonly known at BT)...you do the math. I almost phoned him to make sure he was ok.
 * An in-universe example exists in The Missing Link DLC. To the NPC mooks, YOU are the Nightmare Fuel. This is especially so if you're going for that elusive Factory Zero achievement because Jensen's resourcefulness and efficiency is all that it takes for him to defeat a well-equipped private army. As one NPC states, "Don't be fooled by the low body count. That just means he's more resourceful.
 * Speaking of previous Nothing Is Scarier moments, is all about this. Blood stains are on the wall, corpses are on the floor, and various booby traps are laid everywhere just to prevent other horrors from breaching an area. While the previous levels that were seemingly void of enemies at first had a reasonable, calming reason ("Hey, at least they bothered to evacuated!" in one instance, likely because of a suspicion of you) for being completely deserted, the fact that you know something horrible has happened, and is still happening here is a different sensation. Especially the ambient sound. Just listen, and you'll hear insane rambling coming from seemingly nowhere mixed in between the otherwise fairly silent background. The one time you meet  is from an extremely obvious, barricaded room with only one entrance, and by then you're shuddering at how many others are nearby, just lurking out of vision... And then you actually see hordes of them, everywhere.
 * Speaking of previous Nothing Is Scarier moments, is all about this. Blood stains are on the wall, corpses are on the floor, and various booby traps are laid everywhere just to prevent other horrors from breaching an area. While the previous levels that were seemingly void of enemies at first had a reasonable, calming reason ("Hey, at least they bothered to evacuated!" in one instance, likely because of a suspicion of you) for being completely deserted, the fact that you know something horrible has happened, and is still happening here is a different sensation. Especially the ambient sound. Just listen, and you'll hear insane rambling coming from seemingly nowhere mixed in between the otherwise fairly silent background. The one time you meet  is from an extremely obvious, barricaded room with only one entrance, and by then you're shuddering at how many others are nearby, just lurking out of vision... And then you actually see hordes of them, everywhere.