Final Fantasy IX/Nightmare Fuel

We all know that Final Fantasy can be pants-wettingly scary, and the fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth installments have their shares, but Final Fantasy IX, as cute-looking as it is, also has some terrifying stuff underneath.

And the sequel doesn't disappoint on the scares...

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• The theme that plays when you get to beat Trance Kuja and meet Necron is disturbing. That sad, mournful tune that played with all that moaning in the background? Creepy as all get-go.
• The concept of Necron is beyond even Cosmic Horror. You beat Kuja, who wanted to destroy the essence of life itself, then you're faced with the Big Bad, Necron, who is the essence of eternal death, who comes to finish off where Kuja failed. It's a floating statue with a half-destroyed face in a colosseum that ascends into the sky. The colosseum has eyes that blink and watch your party take blow after blow of unpredictable attacks that cause all sorts of status abnormalities.

Necron: AS LONG AS LIFE EXISTS, I WILL REMAIN ETERNAL.

• • Yoshitaka Amano's vision of Necron is far more terrifying than the in-game model.
• Atomos can be extremely unnerving and more than a little frightening. Especially during the scene in which it destroys Lindblum.
• Zorn and Thorn's true form Meltigemini may give Yunalesca a run for her money for creepy One Winged Angels. Their Exorcist-esque spasms when they transform is pretty damn creepy too.
• The whole forgotten continent is creepy, despite it being a pretty big continent, it is very desolate and almost devoid of any type of civilization. The only way to get there is by airship, and by the time you go there for the first time, you are thrown off at the northern part of the continent. Then you have to travel south, encountering extremely weird enemies, until you get to an ancient building named Oeilvert. Oeilvert is a weird place with an anti-magic barrier that seems to be some sort of museum for an unknown civilization. Oh, and the music is very gloomy.
  • The creepiness doesn't stop there... While inside the building, you suddenly enter a gigantic dark room with scores of creepy stone faces on its walls. Your party members utter a few confused comments about the situation, and right at that moment, one of the stone faces suddenly comes to life (it kinda edges out of the wall, and its color changes to fiery tones) and says something in an alien language. It seems that Oeilvert wasn't creepy enough, so they made the boss of the place a demon airship in the basement.
• Burmecia. There's just something about the droning music, the endless bucketing rain, the dismal scenery, and, oh yes, the Burmecian corpses scattered all over the place.
• People say that Final Fantasy IX is one of the cheerier games in the tone for the series, but, when you think about it long enough, you realize that's it's not true. Through the events of the game, you will witness the deaths of millions through war and genocide. The entire summoner race is immolated to death by a giant death ray. Both Burmecia and Cleyra are destroyed, nearly wiping out the rat people. Thousands die in the attacks on both Lindblum and Alexandria. Kuja kills all the sleeping Terrans by blasting everything to hell. And god knows how many died thinks to the introduction of the Mist. Garland planned to kill every living person on Gaia, and he did a very goddamn good job.
• The poor black mages. It's not just that they have such a tragically short lifespan: their deaths come with absolutely no warning. They just 'stop'. The black mages are essentially a dying race; not only are they incapable of breeding, but the factories that produced them no longer function. Sooner or later, that village is going to be pretty much empty except for the Genomes.
• Black Waltz No. 3's Villainous Breakdown. Partly because he shows up again without any real warning, and partly because he's not just having an emotional crisis but legitimately malfunctioning. His "I exist only to kill..." mantra was creepy enough, but to see the most sophisticated Black Waltz reduced to no more than a twitching, disconnected puppet was actually really disturbing. The fact that Garnet tries to reason with him and he can barely even string a coherent sentence together, having lost the ability to think for himself (if he ever even had it)... In spite of all the hell he put your party through, he ends up being surprisingly pitiful. If you let him kill Steiner and Marcus, he goes crazy and starts attacking himself.
• Sections of Memoria are seriously horrifying. A special mention goes to the room that looks like it was designed by Salvador Dali, in which you have to climb over the melting fragmented remains of still-ticking clocks... But the hands-down freakiest room is the one that reenacts Garnet's memories of the power core of the Invincible as it destroyed her village. Since it's her childhood memory and operating under a child's view of the world, the core manifests itself as an enormous staring monstrous eye in the sky, red as blood, and surrounded by a swirling vortex of clouds. It is right there, glaring at you, all the way through the boss fight that ensues... and then you have to climb a staircase directly into its giant glowing pupil to get to the next room.