Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey/Nightmare Fuel

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Some subtle, in that the game has no problem gutting optimism and human achievement in light of human atrocity. Some overt, in the hideous monster designs and grim plot twists. Some self-inflicted as you stumble around low on health and magic points looking for the next healing fountain.
  • Try talking to an Angel on a full moon. It's pretty disturbing.
  • Some of the demon designs will make you sleep with the lights on.
  • Mitra's castle, the "Palace of Pleasure." It starts off with Sexy Silhouettes peeking through diaphanous curtains in the walls of lower levels. As you climb up, the silhouettes are replaced with Iron Maidens, silhouettes of demons holding torture devices, and metal slabs hanging from the ceiling with the chained-up (and disemboweled) corpses of fellow Strike Team members and crewmen of the Elve. Then you're captured a second time and get to see the results of those experiments...
    • Discovering what Jack's Squad does to the demons is an Ironic Echo that's no less unsettling.
  • The Law and Chaos endings. Law? Everyone is reduced to mindless worshippers stripped of their free will. Chaos? Humanity lives amongst the demons... as barbaric savages in a world of Might Makes Right anarchy.
  • The standard Game Over screen. You see the Schwarzwelt quickly advance over the Earth's surface and absorb it entirely, which isn't that bad (the same thing happens in the Law and Chaos endings) but you also hear a swelling chorus of voices during the event. Whether this is is the demons or the angels crying out in awe, or every last living thing on Earth screaming as they're disintegrated, is up to you and your nightmares.
  • The absolute worst is that brief moment while your suit scans for a hidden demon. Will it be a pushover who drops a high-Macca forma? Or will it be one of the Heralds out to gut you like a fish? Or, God forbid, a Fiend?
  • Not everyone in the Law ending ends up being mindless beings stripped of their free will. The Three Wise Men mention after the defeat of Mother Maya that the weak willed shall be eliminated and only the strong willed shall be allowed to live in the new world.
    • So basically, neither side is willing to succor the weak? Yeesh, when did weakness become blameworthy...?