The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time/Nightmare Fuel




 * Three Words: The Final Battle. Just when you think Link and Zelda have won, what with Ganondorf getting a No Holds Barred Beatdown from Link beforehand and having his entire castle come crashing down on him, you hear a strange noise...Link goes to investigate...only for a ring of fire to surround the area and this blocking him off from Zelda...and then BAM! Ganondorf's mangled, beaten body bursts out of the wreckage of his castle, with an expression of anger so chilling it could send fear into anyone's soul, his eyes lit with a bright, yellow glow, all while panting heavily. Then he shows the Triforce of Power glowing on his clenched fist. Cue him roaring like a beast and transforming into a horrifying, boar-like abomination, complete with two absolutely massive blades which alone dwarf Link himself in size. And just before Link can attack, he knocks the Master Sword right out of his hand and right beyond the ring of fire, with a ominous droning theme playing during this final, seemingly hopeless battle between good and evil. Get ready for the fight of your life, Link!
 * And in one branch of the timeline, Link lost.
 * Specifically, this refers to the branch of the timeline leading to A Link to the Past... and the original game... and The Adventure of Link...
 * Arguably Ganon himself. Most of the games he's appeared in before and since have shown him doing some frightening stuff, but Ocarina is his crowning achievement for horror.
 * Death Mountain's whole 'Raining an EFFING VOLCANO on top of you', especially since there's no real build-up to it -- one second, you're leisurely climbing up the mountain, the very next, the mountain is spontaneously erupting.
 * The Golden Skulltula. If you're near one, it will always make that horrible scratching noise, EVEN IF YOU CAN'T SEE IT.
 * On the plus side, it's Nightmare Retardant as well, since it doesn't really attack you; it just stays in place, waiting for you to slaughter it and collect its carapace.
 * Finding out the the Skulltulas were actually benevolent and happy to help Link proved further Nightmare Retardant.
 * So you're 8-10 years old, when the game came out and on your first playthrough. It's daylight, and you're casually sauntering about Kakariko Graveyard, entering the graves in hope of finding heart pieces. As you enter one, you notice a man huddled at the back of the grotto/grave. And then it gets up and SCREAMS, paralysing you. Panicking, you reset the N64, terrified. Congratulations, you've had your first encounter with THE RE-DEADS.
 * As if coming out of the Temple of Time to see what has become of Hyrule wasn't enough, one of the first things you see as an adult are hideous zombie creatures that latch onto you and suck out your life energy. And let's not even talk about their shrill scream that scares Link so much he stays rooted to the spot...
 * Or the fact that while they're latching on to you and draining you of your life, they appear to be raping you.
 * Oh, and don't think you can just sneak up behind them in the 3DS remake like you could in the original. Because now they can twist their bodies around to look at you from any angle.
 * Actually, the Redeads don't "look" at you; the things are actually blind. This means that you can just sneak past them... but if your finger slips and Link takes a single running step in their presence, well, have fun. Hilariously, you can force Link to walk slowly by equipping him with the Iron Boots. Yes, the Redeads will still be oblivious to your presence.
 * Take a gander at what the Iron Knuckles really are.
 * Fridge Horror for the player: Over the course of the Spirit Temple, you defeat three Iron Knuckles. The last one turns out to be a mind-controlled Nabooru. She doesn't remember what happened, but who says she wasn't conscious throughout, forced to attack an innocent boy, feeling his sword/arrows/what have you pierce her body? That video shows the Gerudo inside with her eyes open... (By the end of the game, you'll have killed five Iron Knuckles. Five mind-controlled young women. You murderer.)
 * (Actually, the third one in the Spirit Temple lives.)
 * You can't see their faces anymore in the 3DS remake. This is because they don't have any heads anymore. It's not the porting team being lazy, either, since you can still see their body, just not their heads. I'm not sure if this is better or worse...
 * The Bottom of the Well in Ocarina of Time. The boss there is a huge lump of flesh with multiple skinny, pale arms sticking up. Go near the arms and they grab you, then the huge lump of flesh leaps out of the ground and moves towards you slowly, groaning all the way, while you flail about in the arm's grasp. Oh, and the walls and floor look like exposed innards complete with a few skeletons scattered about.
 * And the townsfolk DRINK from this well. Yeah, they drink the water these unspeakable abominations tread.
 * Not to mention...the way to reveal the Dead Hand is to let one of the smaller hands GRAB YOU. The slender, blood coated arm that reaches out of the ground like a flower, swaying in perfect synchronization with the others, grabs you and PREVENTS YOU FROM MOVING AS THE MONSTER ITSELF INCHES TOWARD YOU MAKING A HORRIBLE NOISE AS IT DOES SO. The way the monster's neck is out-stretched and looking up resembles a hanged man. The way it wiggles as it comes toward you looks like a hooked fish suffocating to death. Once it reaches you, it lowers its head, and Link is staring into black holes that once held eyeballs. It grins at you as it shivers and takes a bite out of the hero before scurrying away with its head lowered. Need to stay up late tonight?
 * Not to mention the fake walls, which are really eerie to pass through, and the fake floors, which can be hard to spot even with the Lens of Truth. If the Water Temple is the designated Scrappy Level, then the Shadow Temple and Kakariko Well are the Nightmare Levels.
 * On an added note, the room that you fall into through the fake floors has a poisonous pond in the middle. That's fine and all, but look at the "plants". In reality, they're arms and hands, presumably from the victims of Dead Hand.
 * The Master Quest version of the Bottom of the Well is even more nightmarish than the original. In the original, you can grab the Lens and be out of there in five minutes if you know where to go, because the room that has it is right next to the entrance. In the rearranged MQ edition, you HAVE to brave the entire place, and not only that, deal with constant Wallmasters. This includes a Wallmaster and a Floormaster in the SAME ROOM. Nintendo's official guide to that room just tells you to "RUN."
 * Not to mention that they freaking kept Bongo Bongo's SPIRIT in there.
 * What about the GIANT Green Bubble? You know, the one who most likely would APPEAR BEHIND YOU WITHOUT WARNING (at least until you figured out his simple, predictable path) AND RUN INTO YOU?
 * And those disgusting piles... WHAT ARE THOSE PILES MADE OF?
 * With the better graphics of the 3DS remake, they appear to be piles of various bones and possibly other remains. Great.
 * You can still see a skeleton in one of the piles, in the room where Navi hears the spirits whispering about finding the Lens of Truth.
 * There is one room of nothing but coffins and Gibdos. You have to open all the coffins, which releases several Keese at once who then immediately catch on fire, and to get the key from the room, you have to jump inside a coffin. If you are reading this in the dark, good luck sleeping tonight.
 * In the MQ redo (at least the one in the 3DS version), that room has no key. That means that players who remember that room and go in there expecting to be rewarded for fighting the Gibdos get nothing. Oh, and the first Gibdo is right in front of the door. Good luck reacting to that!
 * No mention of Master Quest's changes to the dungeon other than the above? Never mind the fact they put a Redead right next to the entrance ladder to catch out those lacking in patience, what about how the Lens of Truth now appears right in the middle of a large group of Redeads? It's absolutely nerve wracking to try and get that item, hoping the Sun's Song doesn't run out at the worst possible time...
 * The Freelance Astronauts (and almost certainly others before) discovered another way to get past them:.
 * Speaking of Master Quest's changes, in the original, Surprise Skulltulas don't appear until the Shadow Temple. In Master Quest, they drop one on you in the freakin' Dodongo's Cavern. Dear God.
 * As if the well couldn't get creepy enough, smack in the middle of it there's a large wooden X shape with a pool of blood underneath it. It's pretty easy to assume that people were tied/crucified to this thing. Not creepy enough? Now remember that the floor directly beneath this thing is fake. The implication sets in that after being tortured to within an inch of their lives, they were dropped into this room to die.
 * The face of the organ player in the windmill (evil/angry version).
 * The secondary (primary) purpose of the Shadow Temple is a tomb/dungeon (torture-chamber kind). One of the first areas is a room lined with holes with skulls inside them. Several rooms have wall and ceilings made of skulls, including the Dead Hand's chamber, which is a hollowed-out mass grave. Of skulls. Studying the details of an unequally-disturbing dungeon makes things worse than they already are.
 * What would they need one that size for? And why would the final torture room only be accessible by the Royal family -- oh God.
 * It gets worse in the 3DS remake. The ORIGINAL graphics of this game tried (and failed) to show the Shadow Temple in A Form You Are Comfortable With. In the remake, each skull has been replaced by a full skeleton! Those aren't rooms full of skulls, they're actually rooms full of crushed skeletons. Oh, and Dead Hand actually looks like a quivering blob of pale flesh, with the dark spots looking like bruises. Maybe Dead Hand was formed from the flesh of the skeletons that make up his room?
 * One of the things the skulls say to you if you get close enough is "Shadow Temple... here lies Hyrule's blood-stained history of greed and hatred..." or something similar, implying that at some point before this game, the Shadow Temple was a very active and grisly dungeon/jail/torture emporium used by the royal family against its enemies, instilling fear upon the whole of the populace. It's a bit like the Black Palace of Lecumberri in a way. So, what does that make Bongo Bongo?
 * An old man in Kakariko mentions how the Lens of Truth was once owned by a man whose house stood where the Well is. Could Bongo Bongo be that man?
 * Bongo Bongo's... vocal... noise... is the single creepiest thing outside of the ReDeads.
 * It almost sounds like "I want to die"...
 * This gets even worse when you've played Majora's Mask and note the vocalizations sound familiar...the Eldritch Abomination from the well is singing as it tries to kill you in the same language as the Four Giants!
 * While jumping off of the boat and to a nearby ledge is the right course of action, one of the player's guides still makes it frightening by noting that few things are as they seem in the dungeon, implying that there could be something dangerous or creepy lurking there.
 * In the 3DS remake, the day when you play the Shadow Temple and board the ferry will be the day you gain insomnia. You'll see.
 * The Forest Temple. From the dark atmosphere, to the enemies (Skulltula, Wallmasters and Floormasters, Stalfos, the four Poe sisters), to the boss (Phantom Ganon), it's a generally unsettling place. However, most creepy of all is the music.
 * Well, we're at last in the boss room... What? No boss? Anyone around here?... Maybe I've overlooked something that would trigger the battle. Back to the dung... whoa, metal spikes. Now I'm trapped here with no boss arou... WAAAAAHHH!!! OH SHIT YOU FUCKING HORSE-RIDING BIG-NOSED ASSHOLE DON'T SCARE ME LIKE THAT!!!!1!!
 * Something that makes the Forest Temple even more disturbing. The small doors have the same design as the door you use to enter the windmill in Kakariko. The same windmill that, once broken, allows Bongo Bongo to escape from the well. Seems like the Forest Temple was built or designed by the same person who built the windmill. Perhaps there is some terror similar to Bongo Bongo hidden in a dark corner of the Forest Temple that the game doesn't let Link explore....
 * The original Fire Temple music. The Arabic chanting combined with the droning noise in the background gave off an eerie vibe (which is why it was better for the Arabic chanting to be removed).
 * The Skulltula family from Ocarina. You walk into the dark, uninhabited house, a house which didn't seem to have anything in it, when suddenly giant spiders descend from the roof and scream at you!
 * And look at the horrified faces on these trapped, deformed beasts!
 * They look less human in the 3DS remake. Not sure if that makes it better or worse though...
 * It doesn't help that even after you save them, their faces look like the Happy Mask Salesman's. (see below)
 * Wallmasters and Floormasters. At least Navi gives you a warning about the Wallmasters, but the Floormasters would split into three little bitty Floormasters. If you didn't kill all three fast enough? They would turn back into the one big Floormaster. Oh and hey... let's not even mention the Invisible Floormasters...
 * There are even points in the Spirit Temple (especially Master Quest) where hitting a wrong Sun Switch will release one of those things.
 * It's even creepier with that ominous sound effect that plays whenever one of them is hovering over you, closing in... Scared the shit out of me.
 * The Invisible Skulltula Cavern past Zora's Domain as Adult Link, where Jabu Jabu used to be. You gain access to a hidden cave passage, and enter to find nothing... UNTIL YOU ARE SLAPPED IN THE FACE BY TRANSLUCENT MONSTERS!
 * Get either a cartridge and a Gameshark, or an emulator and ROM, and use the codes that allow access to the leftover beta and development areas that are still in the game code. Some of these are absolutely creepy, either due to their unfinished nature, odd bugs, or the lack of music.
 * So, after pulling out the Master Sword, Link gets put into a seven-year coma... But while his body has matured, he's still basically a ten-year old. A ten-year old who, first thing after leaving the Temple of Time, finds the Town Market in ruins and filled with zombies. Not to mention he has to go through all those temples with equally scary things, like those Wallmasters and other zombies and freaking Dead Hand. And he experiences all this while he is pretty much still a ten-year old boy. Imagine going through a well full of rotting corpses and dead things while you're 10.....
 * The worst part? Link is actually in his 10-year-old body when he goes through the Well, after having just gone through three temples in his 17-year-old body. So he's not only got the mind of a ten-year-old, but the smaller body and diminished strength of one, too.
 * The Anubis monsters and the way they hovered ominously above the ground in the Spirit Temple...gaah. They. Just. Stare.
 * Who can forget.. .their first impression of Gohma....
 * Speaking of early bosses which are terrifying, King Dodongo. He's not terrifying in his own right, he's actually pretty funny looking. But... the trick to beating him is to throw bombs down his throat. And his death scene is even worse. He rolls into a pit of lava, and you get to watch him WRITHE in pain for 15 seconds while his skin gets progressively more and more charred. Eventually his own body absorbs enough of the heat that the pit of lava solidifies, leaving his head and front legs sticking out of a patch of rock.
 * Another thought: the only way to enter his room was to fall down a hole. There was no exit. How long had he been there, trapped in a small circular room with a slightly smaller pit of lava in the middle? Just him and the lava. Alone. Really, Link's murdering was a more of a mercy kill. Still horrific.
 * It's a wonder he didn't starve to death.
 * And if you come back later to the boss room, the body is gone...
 * Actually, King Dodongo is supposedly an all-eater according to the Stratergy Guide. Would explain how he was able to survive down there, but that doesn't explain other things...
 * That one Redead by the door as you escape Ganon's Castle. Dear God, the game designers were cruel by placing that enemy there, especially as it's the sole one in the game which isn't stunned with the Sun's Song, and is placed just right so careless people will have to run straight past it.
 * The trick to getting past this ReDead with minimal stress is to hit him with the Longshot, which will both stun the Re Dead and draw Link closer to him, allowing him to hack away with the Biggoron's Sword. Two quick slashes should do the trick.
 * The Sun's Song does work in the 3DS remake.
 * Lake Hylia when the water is drained is creepy. It looks like a giant crater with a little bit of water and a large mound in the middle. It's made even creepier by the fact that as you head towards the center, the overworld music stops playing and it starts storming. Not to mention Lake Hylia is now swarming with Guays and more Blue Tektites than ever before, something that doesn't change even after you complete the Water Temple and refill the lake to its former glory.
 * It's actually even worse after you refill it, as well as Zora Fountain in the future. You're just swimming along leisurely and BAM! You get a face full of Octorok! These guys appear out of nowhere, like little aquatic Skulltulas.
 * Lon Lon Ranch at night as young Link has a similar problem: Guays everywhere! The sounds of Gold Skulltulas only add to the brick-shitting.
 * Don't mess with the chickens!
 * Unless you're riding on Epona, since you can't get hurt then. Then it's fun to trample over the chickens next to Talon and Malon's house and watch their futile attempts at revenge!
 * Jabu Jabu's Belly. You start by feeding Jabu Jabu a fish so he swallows you. And It Gets Worse. Hitting the walls (read: his insides) doesn't cause the usual sword rebounding effect, but instead your sword completes its animation as you hear a groan and see a little splatter of blue "blood". There are strange holes in the "ground" that take you to unexpected destinations. At one point you have to sever a couple "Parasitic Tentacles" to advance. Some areas have water... or what we can only hope is water given where we're in. And to top it all off, in the Master Quest, there are cows in the walls. Cows that serve as shootable switches.
 * The beta version of the game seems like it was probably worse here, since guess what feature from it the fan sequel/remake of Ura Zelda brings back? invisible Redeads! Yes Redeads only viewable through the Lens of Truth... Good job the released game never had that in the Shadow Temple or well...