Nightmare Ned (video game)

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
"Adventure that turns fear into fun."
—Tagline to the game

Ned Needlemeyer is a nervous 8-year-old with several intense fears, which play themselves out in exaggerated fashions in his dreams.

A decent walkthrough of the game can be found here.

Tropes used in Nightmare Ned (video game) include:

Tropes featured in the intro/ end/ throughout/ and by the game itself:

  • Abnormal Limb Rotation Range
  • All Just a Dream: At the very end.
  • Amazing Technicolor Population
  • At the Crossroads: The Quilt.
  • Arc Symbol: The five Shadows are represented by five distinct symbols play a very important role in the game.
    • Also, the patching and color of the sickly green Quilt usually appears whenever something bad will/ has happened to Ned.
  • Big No
  • Black Comedy
  • Bloodless Carnage: In the game Ned can get stabbed, decapitated, crushed, and other such fates with nary a drop of blood.
  • Body Horror
  • Breaking the Fourth Wall: During use of the game's menu, Ned will talk to the player.
  • Cats Are Mean: Two black cats repeatedly toss hand mirrors up into the air to purposely injure Ned with shards from the mirrors as they shatter on impact.
    • Also, a word-animal in the Chalkboard area of Alcatraz Elementary.
  • Closed Circle
    • Subverted when exit portals are used.
  • Cyclops: The Gum Monster from in the Mouth and Cyco (Toilet-Paper Cyclops) from the Bathroom Nightmare.
  • Darker and Edgier: In a way, the game has lost much of the cartoonic and silly nature presented in the show.
  • Defanged Horrors: The nightmares Ned comes across...for the most part.
  • Demoted to Extra: Ned's family and classmates from the TV show to the game.
  • Downer Ending: The bad ending, in which Ned is still terrified of his nightmares.
  • Eldritch Location: Much of the Nightmare, but primarily in The Mouth and in the Attic, Basement, and Beyond.
  • Face Your Fears
  • Family-Unfriendly Violence
  • Foreshadowing: Many, many points in the intro.
  • George Washington: After the locker stage is completed, the room turns into a diorama recreating the legend of him chopping down the cherry tree.
  • Homage/Shout-Out:
    • The Attic, Basement, and Beyond stage in the game has a likely reference to Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds in which a flock of birds swarm in through a window and viciously peck at Ned.
    • The art class segment, which is reminiscent to fighting games, namely Mortal Kombat and the use of its phrase, "FINISH HIM!".
  • Horrifying the Horror: As the game continues and the Shadows begin to reveal, their expressions become increasing chilled and terrified themselves.
  • Irony: The animals and objects in the game are usually altogether more clever, intelligent, and sentient than the people are.
  • Mad Doctor/Depraved Dentist:
    • The Medical Shadow (really Dr. Klutzchnik) is shown to be the most insane and sadistic of the bunch: "I'm going to rip off one of your fingers, put it in a jar, and keep it as a souvenir!"
      • Also, at the end, if Ned is able to beat the Shadows and conquer his fears, the Shadows are shown to be still hiding in his closet. They contemplate of what to do now that Ned has won, and the Medical Shadow suggests that "We could perform hideous, painful medical procedures on each other!"
      • Subverted when it is shown that she was actually friendly and it just the child in Ned that made him fear doctors so badly
    • The crazed dentists, aka Doctor Shots, who will try and stab/ impale Ned clean through with many giant needles if he gets caught when the Mouth closes on him.
    • Psychotic doctors that will swipe at Ned on his ride on the rolling medical gurney.
    • A nurse in Alcatraz Elementary School is one of the few enemies that poses no real danger to him. Though she will try and grab Ned and toss him backwards.
  • Medium Blending: At many points, the artwork of both the background and some of the character mixes with technicolor, Real Life artistry, and more.
  • Mistaken Identity: "IT'S GOT ME!! HELP!! HELP!! IT'S GOT--" Oh, wait, no. It's just the phone...
  • Mooks: At one point, countless mice are repeatedly sneaking out one at a time to a portal leading out to the Bathroom Nightmare, where many are burned by a fire-spitting furnace.
    • Also, the Plaque Monsters from in the Mouth.
  • Multiple Endings
  • Our Vampires Are Different: In the Chalkboard part of the school level, there is a vampire bat made from the actual letters of the word "bat", and some sort of plaque vampire bats in The Mouth.
  • Phoney Call/Evil Phone
  • Red Herring: There is a latrine that is even labed "The Worst Toilet in Ned's Nightmare" which Ned chooses to outright avoid by leaping down into a chasm.
  • Rodents of Unusual Size: The Mouse/ Rat civilizations.
  • Secret Path: Escape portals between the Nightmare realms.
  • Scare Chord/ Psycho Strings: As the view of the hallway begins to stretch out in the intro.
  • Scenery Porn/ Scenery Gorn: In the game. The 2D artwork and animation STILL looks beautiful even 14 years later.
  • Snarky Inanimate Object: Also sort of a Running Joke, the lamp with eyes, whom at one point is seen tap-dancing on an end table.
  • Spear Carrier: The enormous pair of clawed, monster hands--and a likely Eldritch Abomination--that casts Ned into the Shadows' Nightmare World and does not appear again, unless the players ends with the good ending to which it bring him to the final battle. It is also seen on the game cover--but portrayed as more slender and presented in a much less cartoonic manor.
  • Sudden Anatomy
  • Swarm of Rats
  • Throw the Book At Them: An angry librarian squishes Ned between a book, as does the skeleton man if Ned disturbs him.
  • The Unintelligible
  • The Unsolved Mystery: The true nature of the Attic, Basement, and Beyond Nightmare, its connection to the real world, Sally the little girl's connection to Ned was never learned.
    • Although, some have speculated that the little girl Sally may actually be Mrs. Needlemeyer herself as a child.
  • Void Between the Worlds: When Ned is first cast into the Nightmare World by the Shadows.
  • Vomit Discretion Shot

Tropes featured in the Graveyard Nightmare:

Tropes featured in the Medical Nightmare:

Tropes featured in the Alcatraz Elementary School:

Tropes featured in the Bathroom Nightmare:

Tropes featured in the Attic, Basement, and Beyond Nightmare:

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