The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild/Nightmare Fuel

Right when you start the game, it's clear that something's very wrong. Sure, someone's waking Link up as per series tradition... but it's a disembodied voice in his head, with an urgent tone that's full of despair. And Link doesn't wake up in a bedroom or any kind of conventional resting place, but a stasis chamber called the "Shrine of Resurrection". Then when you head out and explore the Great Plateau, you're met with the sight of a wraithlike cloud of Malice enveloping the ruins of Hyrule Castle... a wraithlike cloud of Malice that's alive, and briefly takes on the form of a snarling serpentine boar before vanishing. That "cloud" is Calamity Ganon, a monstrous abomination that drove Hyrule to near ruin 100 years ago and was only barely prevented from completely destroying it thanks to Zelda trapping him in Hyrule Castle. She's kept him trapped there for an entire century while Link recovered from a fatal injury sustained from fighting Ganon's hordes, and by the time he awakens she's losing her strength and on the urge of finally being overwhelmed.
Calamity Ganon may be the most frightening incarnation of the series' biggest villain yet. The scheming, prideful King of Evil is long gone, and in his place is a living amalgamation of Malice, bloodlust, and rabid hatred shaped into an Eldritch Abomination that overwhelmed Link, Zelda, and the Champions of Hyrule with his sheer power. And even while he's sealed away, he has a cult of loyal followers running interference for him, and his corrupting Malice can still ooze freely and corrupt whatever it touches.
- Despite being treated like an animal incapable of rational thought, Calamity Ganon is still capable of scheming and plotting to some degree. The reason why he won the battle with the Champions of Hyrule was because he knew to attack from under Hyrule Castle and corrupt all the Guardians they had unearthed and planned to use against him, taking the strategy that led to his defeat 10,000 years ago and turning it against his enemies. So with that taken into account, who knows just how intelligent this freak really is?!
- And when you finally confront him inside Hyrule Castle, you're met with a horror show that feels like something straight out of a Soulsborne game. Calamity Ganon's physical body hatches from what looks like some kind of malice-tainted egg sac, and it's a freakish, grotesque amalgamation of Shiekah technology and Malice merged with the body of a spider, with the top half looking like the rotting corpse of his long-abandoned Ganondorf persona. And this is when you've interrupted his reincarnation: who knows what the intended final product would have looked like?
- You may think Link and Zelda can finally rest easy once they've defeated him in his bigger, more imposing, but less freaky Dark Beast form, but the trailer for the sequel shows that their troubles are far from over. Why? Because they stumble upon the mummified corpse of Ganondorf reanimated by Malice, that's why!
The Malice created by Calamity Ganon is a mass of black and magenta slime that can manifest nasty fanged mouths and eyeballs that look like Sauron. It's pretty much Ganon's corruptive essence given a physical form, but when you see it enveloping Hyrule's abandoned ruins, clogging up the inner workings of the Divine Beasts, or latching onto Naydra, it looks uncomfortably like some kind of viral growth or tumorous mass.
Despite the disaster that ravaged Hyrule a century ago, civilization still endures. Peaceful villages can be found spread across Hyrule, plenty of stables have been established to serve as rest stops and trade hubs, and there are still lots of people cutting out a life for themselves in this ruined world. It's a nice, softer take on a post-apocalyptic setting, but it also makes stopping Calamity Ganon's impending return that much more dire. Because if he gets free, it'll be all too easy for him to snuff out what remains of Hyrule from his last rampage.
It's a quiet, peaceful evening, and you're on your way to a nearby stable to sell some ores you've mined and rest for a bit. And on the road to your destination, you run into a friendly traveler on the side of the road, one who really wants your attention. You think nothing of it and engage in some pleasant small talk, thinking that they'll point you in the direction of a shrine, or sell you whatever they've scrapped together. But when you talk to them, you're met with some seriously weird behavior such as aggressively trying to sell you tons of overpriced Mighty Bananas, or showing a suspicious fascination with your Sheikah Slate. And before you can figure out what's wrong with them, they vow to murder you and transform into a dangerous sickle-wielding ninja. Say hello to the Yiga Clan, a Calamity Ganon-worshipping cult of rogue Sheikah that are obsessed with killing any potential threats to their dark god's return! Their modus operandi is to disguise themselves as innocent travelers and get your guard down before going in for the kill. Once they start showing up, you'll find yourself unable to trust any lone wanderers you run into.
- Once you've broken into their hideout and exposed yourself to their wackier banana-loving side and pathetic goofball of a boss, you might expect them to lose whatever sense of menace they once had. You'd be wrong. Kohga's death ensures that they'll forgo all subtlety and start sending kills squads of Footsoldiers and powerful Blademasters to ambush you in the wilderness, while their disguised assassins continue to lie in wait for you on the road. And just in case that doesn't make you take them seriously, the Missing Heirloom sidequest will. You walk in on a Blademaster about to kill Dorian, an ex-member of the clan whose wife was murdered as punishment for his desertion. Had you not been in the right place at the right time, the Blademaster they sent would have killed him, and likely gone on to slaughter his adorable daughters as well.
The Guardians are a foe you will learn to fear. These highly mobile Killer Robots look like alien war machines and are aggressive enough to fit the bill, chasing Link over long distances as they roast him with ridiculously powerful, highly accurate laser blasts. The second one sees you, a frantic piano tune starts up, essentially telling you to get the hell out of there before this thing vaporizes you. It should come to no surprise that these things were the key to Calamity Ganon's victory a hundred years ago: by tainting them with his Malice, he added an entire army of Anti-Ganon robots to his hordes of loyal monsters and unleashed utter hell on the Hylians. The entirety of Hyrule Castle and the adjacent Castle Town have long since been reduced to a vast stretch of ruins, infested with Guardians that are always on the hunt for their next victims. Even Akkala Citadel, a towering fortress that was legendary for its impenetrable defenses, couldn't handle having so many of these things descend upon it.
- If you thought Guardians were scary in the final product, have a look at the one in this trailer from 2014 and thank your lucky stars that they're nowhere near as aggressive as they could have been. The Guardian chasing Link is out for blood, rapidly firing at him and recklessly destroying the terrain out of a mad desire to kill him. And eventually, it leaps ahead of his horse and traps the hero and his steed by destroying the bridge they were going to cross. The way it conducts itself is less like a cold, emotionless machine and more like an angry slasher movie villain pulling out all the stops in order to prevent his prey from escaping.
This game's versions of Wizzrobes are quite freaky. They're a bunch of ugly goblin creatures with wild bulging eyes and mouths full of nasty-looking fangs bared in a deranged smile, and can often be found frolicking among the ruins of houses they're heavily implied to have destroyed, likely with their inhabitants still inside. Most of the monsters are too goofy or cool to be creepy, but their frightening visages and unnervingly playful nature put them on a whole different level.
The Spirit Dragons may be friendly and peaceful, but your first encounter with one is bound to be quite a shock. They're easily over a hundred feet long and seemingly appear out of nowhere, making it easy to assume that they're some kind of superboss that you are in no way, shape, or form prepared for. And if Naydra is your first, you learn of their existence by way of a creepy-looking, Malice-infected dragon that's ominously coiled around a mountain.
The Divine Beasts are titanic Sheikah constructs the size of skyscrapers, and they're all under Ganon's control. Each one is imposing and dangerous in their own way, but the most menacing is easily Vah Naboris. It actively roams the Gerudo Desert, is enveloped by a combined sand and lightning storm that will blind you and scramble your minimap if you're caught in it, and the way it robotically stomps around dips straight into the Uncanny Valley. Its bellows are also hellish, sounding more like an irate monster as opposed to the recognizably animalistic cries of its brethren. It's hard to blame the Gerudo for being so worried about it, because unlike the more passive Medoh, Rudania, and Ruta who won't actively attack anyone unless they intrude upon their territory, it's said to be wandering closer towards the Gerudo settlements as the days go by, and both are relatively small communities right out in the open without any kind of defensive terrain to keep it at bay. Oh, and if you aren't careful, you can run right into it while exploring the desert, and things will go very poorly for you if you don't immediately run the hell away.
- When you infiltrate the Divine Beasts, the atmosphere is gloomy and unwelcoming but not outright scary: the tomb-like feel is more sad than anything, and the only threats are easily-dispatched Malice monsters and (save for Thunderblight) the non-threatening Blight Ganon bosses. But the themes of each Beast have an eerie little secret tucked away: before you activate the first terminal, you can hear electronic morse code. And it's two messages being played as opposed to one: one is an "S.O.S" message likely sent by the trapped Champions before they died, and the other is an "S.A.D"/Seach And Destroy message likely issued by the Blight Ganons as they hunted and killed the Champions. It's unnerving and heartbreaking to think of the helpless champions losing control of the weapons that were supposed to win the war against Ganon, and calling for help that would arrive 100 years too late while their eventual murderers are slowly, methodically tracking them down.
  - Vah Medoh's deserves a mention, because Revali's message comes quite a bit later than the other champions', but is also a lot louder. A common theory is that he held off on sending his S.O.S out of his stubborn pride, only to panic and send a truly frantic message after realizing that he was about to die. Even worse, you can hear what sounds suspiciously like a flatline after the message eventually cuts out.
Every so often, the moon isn't its usual welcoming shade of white, but a satanic crimson as it slowly rises in the sky. By 11:30, it starts to bathe the land in an eerie red glow, and the music you're listening to is replaced by a creepy discordant tune. The music grows more frantic and hellish and the world grows redder... until things come to a head at 12 AM, where every monster you've killed returns from the dead. Even the Guardians. This is the Blood Moon, a phenomenon created by Calamity Ganon that keeps most of his monsters from truly dying, and thus erases any progression in clearing out his hordes. Thank god they don't seem interested in banding together and swarming the various villages and towns en masse, because they can easily beat any organized resistance through sheer endurance alone.
In the Woodland Region, there's a strange island that's home to the Typhlo Ruins. It houses a shrine, some enemies, and all-in-all, isn't that different from any location in the game... other than the fact that it's perpetually shrouded in a thick, black fog that keeps the island under eternal darkness. Torches and campfires barely do anything to light it up, meaning that you'll have to fight swarms of Keese, Stal-monsters, and a Hinox that are almost completely hidden in the inky blackness. And what's really creepy about this place is that there's no explanation for the darkness: is it a Sheikah trick and one of their many trials to test Link's skills? Is it related to Calamity Ganon? Or could the fog be caused by something even worse? Perhaps we're better off not knowing.
The Breach of Demise isn't exactly scary, but the implications behind its existence are unnerving to say the least. It's a dried up, lifeless chasm in the middle of the fertile Ridgelands, and stretches across a vast expanse of land. It's infested with monsters, the grass and trees are dead, and the rocks and cliffs are made of an odd substance that looks almost like bone. The shape and name strongly imply that this is the place where Demise and his demonic hordes burst through the Earth and razed Hyrule eons ago, and if that is the case? The fact that the earth in the breach's immediate vicinity is still dead tens, if not hundreds of thousands of years later shows just how unholy the Demon King and his ilk really were.
- It should be noted that this isn't the only place with these kinds of rocks, either: Skull Lake and the neighboring Tempest Gulch as well as the Bottomless Swamp have them. And eerily enough, these places are also heavily associated with demonic or deathlike imagery. Could other horrific threats have invaded Hyrule from these spots, or is the Breach far bigger than we thought, and they're the only parts that are still visible above ground?
If you have thalassophobia, it's probably not a good idea to look too closely beneath the surface of Skull Lake. Giant, eerie-looking flowers can be seen sprouting upwards, and their stalks stretch out far past your line of sight into the pitch-black abyss below. It's clear that this lake is unfathomably deep, so who knows what terrors could be lurking in the darkness?
When you're exploring the snow-capped mountains in the Gerudo Desert, you might stumble upon an abandoned cabin a stone's throw away from a shrine podium. A nearby journal chronicles the final days of the cabin's owner, a treasure hunter who met his end while trying to uncover the shrine's secret. But he wasn't attacked by monsters, Guardians, or otherwise killed by anything related to the Calamity: he starved to death because he underestimated how resource-intensive trekking through such a harsh locale would be. It's a discomforting bit of realism for a series like this.
Getting caught in a sandstorm while exploring the Gerudo Desert is as disorienting and horrific as it would be in real life. You can't see any further than a foot in front of you, monsters can easily ambush you, and the Sheikah Slate's map is a scrambled mess. Since this cuts off fast travel, you have to escape the old fashioned way by walking in one direction and hoping for the best. In a game where there's almost always multiple solutions to any kind of problem, it's jarring to find yourself feeling so utterly helpless.
It's been discovered that Link can get sunburned if he's exposed to the sun for too long. It's a nice bit of attention to detail and not horrifying in the slightest... unless you play with mods that increase the sunburn threshold. The results are nightmarish, with Link looking like a horrific burn victim or a blackface caricature from deep in the Uncanny Valley.

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