Dead Space (series)/Nightmare Fuel

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Stuck in the deepest reaches of space, on a deserted ship. What was meant to be a simple repair mission becomes a heart-pounding fight for survival. And as they all say, in space...nobody can hear you scream bloody murder...

Before we begin let's make one thing clear: you are not a marine. You are not a supersoldier, police officer or badass(until the end). You are a normal guy fighting things that killed the marines. Your weapons: One gun. The rest are work tools. Good luck.

Dead Space

  • The trailer for Dead Space.
    • Hell, just play the damn game. It's like the developers watched Event Horizon and said "ok, ok, that was good, but what if we make some kind of Event Horizon/System Shock 2 hybrid and turn it loose on an unsuspecting gaming community?"
    • Even better, that spine-chilling rendition of "Twinkle, Twinkle" can be heard in the commons area of Chapter 10, a darkened room littered with corpses and dim lanterns. The fact that we never learn the origin of the disembodied voice singing it just heightens the creepiness. Also, see this.
    • The trailer for Dead Space 2 doesn't help. Here, there's plenty of horror in it. The even creepier song is just the background music.
  • The Guardians. Just. The Guardians. *Shudder* That pitiful, tortured cry they emit certainly didn't help matters.
    • I would try to kill them as quickly as possible just so I wouldn't have to hear those horrible, HORRIBLE screams anymore.
    • I dare you to walk up close to a Guardian...I just DARE YOU
    • Let's make it better, shall we? Immature Guardians are still somewhat human-looking, only really able to weakly flail around their intestines when Isaac gets near. However, they're wailing in pain and agony as you do so, which means that unlike other Necromorphs, they're still alive and feeling every bit of pain from their current condition. To make matters worse, they still scream and moan in their mature and lethal state, and if you listen carefully enough you can hear them sigh with relief when you finally put them down. This means that they're still alive and somewhat conscious after being mutated into some horrifying creature, eternally stuck in one place with their sole purpose being killing any one who gets too close and possibly subjecting them to the infection as well if the body's in good enough condition. And there's not a damn thing they can do about it- they can only watch helplessly, forever.
    • This troper always blew off the heads of Immature Guardians to make himself feel better, because that always seemed to kill them. Turns out Immature Guardians are still alive and fully responsive even if you do this, which means that you can't kill an Immature Guardian and prevent their Fate Worse Than Death.
  • Issac's death sequence from being killed by the head of a Divider. Isaac is decapitated and the Divider climbs into his neck, taking control of his body. Somehow the worst part is when Isaac's arm reaches up to keep the Divider from falling off.
  • The Hunter. Up until your first encounter with this unstoppable beast, you have become quite adept at dispatching the Necromorphs through bodily dismemberment. Then Dr Mercer unleashes this abomination which relentlessly pursues you throughout the game and regrows any limbs you cut off, making it virtually invincible. It is only when You incinerate it with exhaust from one of the Ishimura's shuttles that you can finally relax and catch your breath.
  • While the Necromorphs are a bad case of Body Horror, they are at least made from the corpses of people who are already dead. That 98% of the crew have been killed and turned into monsters is bad enough, but they are not even half as scary as the few unfortunate ones that are still alive.
    • The number of people still sane enough to put together coherent sentences can be counted on one hand. The one with the bandaged eyes who keeps talking to the half of a corpse next to her before collapsing is the most mentally stable. One of the first scenes in which you find a survivor is during the infamous scene with the empty corridor and the rythmic banging in the distance. After rounding some corners the first thing you see is the shadow of a man banging his head against a wall. When you approach him he caves his skull in and falls dead on the spot. Then there's also the insane woman that cuts open a living crewmember with a saw. As he dies she turns around to your direction, laughs once, and slits her throat with the saw. Other just stand there and laugh.
      • What about that one guy that you randomly come across in a hallway? He's all slumped forward and he asks Isaac to "Make us whole again" before wandering off and disappearing.
  • The babies... Oh god, the babies...with the tentacles...creeping along the walls and the ceiling....
    • Dear God, the Lurkers....and you can actually hear them crying! (And the ostensibly unharmed-for-now fetuses growing in the tanks...yeah, you can't like rescue them or anything! They're just part of the scenery...a really disturbing part of the scenery.)
  • Yet another thing. Remember, stores and terminals only pause you. Happy shopping.
    • You usually won't have any necromorphs attacking you as long as you take them out before you use a shop. But in chapter 3, at the very end going to the shop and a Slasher comes out of the hallway next to the store. However, for most this doesn't happen because they hear it's scream and see it so they kill it.
  • Using a certain workbench will actually cause a Necromorph to bust out of the vent behind you.
    • What makes this truly effective is that up until that point, (as long as you kill everything in the room before using them) you are safe when using the benches. Though this is the only time you will be attacked at a bench in the game, it destroys the trust you had in them to be "safe spots", making every bench afterwards an exercise in paranoia. Nice job developers!
  • The title screen gets a mention too, not only because of all the creepy noises, but because it also has momentary and (at first) unexpected flashes of strange alien characters. Going to the main menu is worse, because it has live-action video of what one can only guess is bits of raw meat that's supposed to be a Necromorph. Not to mention the video of the infection spreading to a twitching human hand.
  • Near the end of the game, Kendra tells you to watch Nicole's message again. Okay, she really wants to see Isaac again, she's sorry, we've seen this ... and then to get to the end of the message where she kills herself. Which means the entire time throughout the game where she's talked to you and helped you she was already dead.
  • By far the scariest part of Dead Space was the Divider enemy. Everything about them, from the falling apart and attacking you, to the vaguely stepping on piles of bones sound of them walking, but most especially the HOWLING.
    • That this troper can't help but see them (when they're whole, anyway) as Slenderman without his suit only deepens the horror. And squickiness. Of both.
  • A bit into chapter 5, you get an audio log from Dr. Mercer, who is experimenting on a guy behind him in an effort to prove to Dr. Kyne that he's wrong about the Marker. He claims that the guy understands his motives and that he's willing to cooperate. All the time throughout this monologue, you can hear the guy in question screaming in the background. The last noises you hear are Mercer starting up some kind of drill, ready to insert a sample of regenerative tissue. The guy starts screaming. He screams loud.
  • The Scream in the bridge's elevator, if you choose to go down. All of a sudden you hear this high-pitch, bone-chilling, heart-stopping scream of a woman.
  • A rather subtle moment happens at the start of Chapter 2 when you first visit the Medical Bay. You get off at the tram station and find yourself surrounded by dozens of bloody, meat-smeared bodybags. When you come back later after completing the level, all the bags have disappeared...
    • Worse, you can still find some flat on the ground in some areas. They were opened, either from the outside... or from the inside.
  • Early on in the game you learn that Necromorphs can use the ventilation shafts to get around. As you go through the ship, you see that 90% of all rooms on board have these vents. You could be attacked at any moment. Sweet dreams!
  • The first appearance of the Drag Tentacle; you go into a room and it looks empty until it shows up and drags you by your leg down into the hole from where it came.


Dead Space: Mobile

  • This is the final boss you face in the iOS Interquel. And that's just the tip of the iceberg of NF you'll have to face on your iPhone.
    • Speaking of the boss, you do NOT want to wait to kill the boss. Otherwise, this happens. Ugh...
    • The hallucination scenes are quite disturbing as well, as Vandal imagines seeing bloody corpses, the Marker, and even herself as a Slasher Necromorph. Yeesh.
    • And let's not forget the first level's ending...

"They're coming out of the walls! THEY'RE COMING OUT OF THE WALLS!!!"

    • Which leads to Tyler manipulating Vandal to open the doors to the public sectors. Just seeing the surveillance tape of the hordes shows just how much shit will hit the fan for the Sprawl residents and Issac.
    • And let's not forget the events after you kill your third Brute. After killing the Brute, more Brutes crash into the room and a false low-battery indicator blinks, making the player scared of both dying AND losing progress in the game. And then we have the hallucination scene that follows...
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