Fatal Frame/YMMV
- Alternative Character Interpretation: Mayu can be viewed several different ways. Is she a sweet, helpless girl who the main antagonist has taken particular interest in and who you want to keep safe at all times? Is she an irritating little wimp who you need to keep safe at all times? Or is she an obsessively crazy young woman who deliberately fell off a cliff just to guilt Mio into staying with her forever?
- Bittersweet Ending: The series flip-flops between this and outright Tear Jerkers when it comes to the canon endings for the games.
- Crowning Moment of Heartwarming: Fatal Frame II's Xbox exclusive Good Ending.
- Crowning Music of Awesome: The Ending songs of number II, III and IV which has two of them. All by Tsukiko Amano.
- II - Chou.
- III - Koe.
- IV - Zero No Chouritsu and Noise.
- While not a Tsukiko Amano song, the final boss version of the Tsukimori Song is pretty hypnotizing.
- It Was His Sled: Mio will kill Mayu. This was originally the big plot twist in Fatal Frame II: Mio thought Mayu would kill her until she read the notes that said the twin that came out second was the eldest (it was thought that the "elder" twin would let the "younger" twin be born first).
- Les Yay: Miku and Rei gave off mild vibes in the third game.
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"Having trouble sleeping? Do you need to sleep in here with me?" |
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- Miya and Misaki also have a few moments which are... questionable.
- Narm: Protip: if you're going to try to make headless ghosts scary, do not make them constantly repeat "Where's my head?", especially when their head is on their shoulders for 80% of the fight. And Female Head rolls in midair as she moves, which just makes her hilarious.
- Paranoia Fuel: Possibly even more than the High Octane Nightmare Fuel. Usually a result of Nothing Is Scarier.
- Player Punch: And it hurts.
- Scrappy Mechanic: The Stealth-Based Mission in III; while there is precedent for being stripped of your camera, III takes the cake by forcing a character on the player whose ability to squat behind things is advertised as his 'special ability'. Made even worse by it not working most of the time.
- From the same game, the frickin' candles. After a certain part of the game, the whole house becomes covered in miasma, causing more and more dangerous ghosts than usual to appear, including Reika who is unkillable and kills you in one hit even if you have a Stone Mirror. Also, the whole game turns black and white, making it hard to see anything. The only way to counter this is to find candles, but they last a few minutes at best, are scattered at inconvenient locations in the manor, so you have to go out of your way to find them. In the end, you're stuck between a rock and a hard place: Do you hunt for the next candle (being hunted yourself by Reika on the way) in order to be able to proceed more safely to the next location you actually need to be, or do you just try to rush on without and risk getting one-shotted somewhere close to your goal. Good luck trying to kill those required ghosts with an unkillable one-hit-kill distraction chasing you around!
- Permanently distorting the player's view and forcing him to run as fast as possible without paying attention to his surroundings in a game which in no small part relies on its visual aesthetics? I see nothing wrong with this plan...
- From the same game, the frickin' candles. After a certain part of the game, the whole house becomes covered in miasma, causing more and more dangerous ghosts than usual to appear, including Reika who is unkillable and kills you in one hit even if you have a Stone Mirror. Also, the whole game turns black and white, making it hard to see anything. The only way to counter this is to find candles, but they last a few minutes at best, are scattered at inconvenient locations in the manor, so you have to go out of your way to find them. In the end, you're stuck between a rock and a hard place: Do you hunt for the next candle (being hunted yourself by Reika on the way) in order to be able to proceed more safely to the next location you actually need to be, or do you just try to rush on without and risk getting one-shotted somewhere close to your goal. Good luck trying to kill those required ghosts with an unkillable one-hit-kill distraction chasing you around!
- SNK Boss: Reika as the final boss in III. Whilst Kirie and Kusabi from I and II had one-hit kills they were both fairly manageable bosses thanks to their slow speed and easily read movement. Reika, on the other hand, has a habit of frequently flying high in the air which on its own she's rather hard to pinpoint without going into the movement limiting finder vision, so good luck getting out of her way when she comes dive bombing towards you straight afterwards, but on top of that her own one hit kill attack involves appearing in a completely unpredictable position close to you. If you're not facing clear away from her when she appears you won't be able to avoid running smack in to her and she will gladly watch that health bar of yours go all the way down whilst groping your lifeless corpse.
- Too Cool to Live: Mafuyu from the first game and Choushiro from the fourth.
- The Woobie: Pick a main character. Any of them. Many of the dead NPCs have tragic backstories as well.
- Uncanny Valley:
- Man With Long Arms in the first game stands out.
- Kageri Sendou´s disturbing mannequin is a notable one. Especially when it moves.