< Metal Gear

Metal Gear/Nightmare Fuel


"I need scissors! 61!"


General

  • The title of the series alone speaks volumes: The Metal Gear is absurdly terrifying once you realize what it can do. The thing launches nukes that could reduce a city to ash in seconds, but unlike a missile silo, it moves. And if you try to shut it down, it fights back. It can launch its nukes from anywhere on Earth...and they're completely undetectable by radar. If these things really existed, we would have to live with the knowledge that nukes could fall from the sky at any moment without warning. Most games would leave this as simple Fridge Horror, but Kojima is absolutely blatant about Metal Gear's implications because, well...SomeAnvilsNeedToBeDropped.
  • Many came to dread the "Game Over" screens in Metal Gear Solid, where a random character will scream for Snake after his death ("Snake, what happened? Snake?! SNAAAAAAAKE!!").
    • Of course, this is a subjective trope for a reason.
      • In MGS4, one of the possible Game Over screams is Otacon and on one occasion, This Troper heard a version with him screaming Snake's name in complete and utter agony. It's among the most heart-rending sounds she's ever heard. Since then, the Game Over voices have never made her laugh.
        • Meryl's scream in MGS1 made this Troper quit playing for a while because of how disturbing her sobs are. Or maybe it was Mei Ling, both are bad at any rate.
    • MGS4's game over is even more disturbing: in addition to the "Snake? SNAAAAKE?!!" line, the most vital scenes from the game's story up to that point flash rapidly on screen as Snake dies, as if to remind the player what was at stake.
      • Plus, the music who plays during the game over is so fast paced, it makes it more nerve-racking.
  • Gray Fox gave this troper nightmares. Imagine dying, then waking up in a painful exoskeleton, and experimented on repeatedly, with your memories coming and going and the only sensation you can ever have is pain, the poor, poor guy.
    • Imagine a man who can turn invisible at will, deflect bullets with a spin blade spin who can suddenly and terribly go Axe Crazy while you are unable to land a hit. You never felt any pity for any Mooks than the ones he slaughters just before you fight him.
  • No matter how badly Raiden is looked down on by the fandom, he really did not deserve what happened to him between MGS2 and MGS4. He was eventually kidnapped and put through a similar stage of torture and experimentation that Gray Fox has been through, only worse - he loses everything below his upper jaw and gets replaced with cybernetic parts. Fortunately it seemed that he hasn't suffer the same psychological trauma that Gray Fox did.
    • And for those who feel sorry for the poor guy, at the end of the game you find out that he has had surgery to look human again, but there are still marks from the cybernetics visible.
  • Vamp is a Depraved Bisexual with the ability to jump from any place, anywhere with great skill with that knife of his, an extreme blood-addiction to the point where he even ripped the throat out of a SEAL, and he can pin you into place by using your own shadow.
    • Don't forget the fact that he was caught in a church bombing, pierced by a crucifix, forced to lie in the rubble next to his dead parents, and only survived by drinking their blood. Fun times!


Metal Gear Solid

  • The complete mindrape that is Psycho Mantis. He's part fourth-wall-breaking fun ("You enjoy playing *name of game you have on your memory card*, don't you?") and part horror (watching as Meryl is helplessly forced to put a gun to her head).
    • The dreaded HIDEO screen, forcing gamers to shriek as they think their Play Stations blipped out, or if they knew what they were doing, frantically struggle to switch controllers before that thing un-screws the screen and starts pummelling you while you have nothing in either hemisphere of your "brain."
    • Just when this guy couldn't get any creepier, there's his theme, which encapsulates the man perfectly.
  • Gray Fox's massacre of several soldiers.
    • It's actually worse in The Twin Snakes. Much, MUCH worse.
  • The underground caves definitely belong here. The creepy music combined with the distant howling of those dangerous wolf-dogs really unnerved This Troper.
  • The moment that stands out to this troper is when Vulcan Raven is defeated...imagine, as you're dying, that craploads upon craploads of ravens are pecking and eating you, even though you aren't dead. It creeps me out to think that Vulcan actually wanted that to happen to him (seeing it as "returning to the earth"), but in both the original and The Twin Snakes, that discretion shot with blood falling about reminds this troper how much buzzards in general scare the crap out of her.
    • To add to this horror, it makes Raging Raven of MGS4's backstory all the more terrifying, even compared to the other three.


Metal Gear Solid 2

  • That entire sequence where your support team is revealed to really be an AI. The AI gets corrupted by a virus, and the "Colonel" starts spouting goofy non-sequiturs. Occasionally, you'll get him shouting at you to shut off the game console because you've been playing too long, which can be a bit jarring if you have been playing for six hours or so.
    • Add to the fact that, in later CODEC shots, the Colonel's image is replaced with an X-rayed version of his head. And then you get this skull-faced Colonel staring at you...with no eyes...
      • And halfway through the battle with Solidus, you get a codec call from the AI Colonel and Rose, and Rose's eyes suddenly go blank as she's talking. Still freaks this troper out to this very day.
    • The demand to shut the game off is pretty much the worst of the lot. You're naked and unarmed, and while there's definitely something wrong with what's going on (besides you being naked, of course), there's nothing certain except that you really should get moving to finding your suit. Then you get a CODEC call from Colonel. "Raiden. Turn the game off NOW." I very nearly did. The lines and the Interface Screw afterwards aren't nearly as creepy - perhaps the writers knew that anyone who survived that isn't gonna get unnerved by anything afterwards. Well, except maybe...
    • The creepiest part for this troper (who, admittedly, didn't actually play the game, but rather watched it on YouTube) was the final conversation you have with the main character's girlfriend, who also turns out to be an AI (this is the scene where she's replaced by one); the conversation is fairly normal, but then her voice gets deeper and deeper until it cuts off. While she tells you she's pregnant. Seriously creepy.
  • This troper was having fun doing codec calls with the Colonel in the beginning of the game. Then the Colonel tells Raiden that they removed all his blood and replaced it all with artificial blood that includes nanomachines. This troper was very creeped out.
  • For this troper, it was the names of the parts of Arsenal Raiden's entering or exiting. (The 'oh WHAT' locations the AI throws at you are a relief, which, yeah.) Jejunum, Ilium, Ascending Colon - it's snicker-inducing at first, but then you stop to consider it, and you realize these are all parts of the human digestive system, so basically Arsenal ate you alive. This troper still has a twitch.
  • They were more set pieces, and a puzzle than anything you had to actually, seriously deal with - but all those fucking cockroaches in Big Shell. This troper has no problems with bugs, especially digital bugs, but the swarms of them just did it.


Metal Gear Solid 3

  • After saving the game after Snake ends up in prison in MGS3, this troper turned off his PlayStation 2 to return to it hours later, expecting to load up at the prison where he left off. Instead, he was treated to the most bizarre sequence ever, where the entire screen was black and white, you wielded a big sword, were capable of gravity defying stunts, and zombies came lumbering at you endlessly that spewed impractical amounts of blood after you sliced through them, something that might have come out of a machine that mixed Resident Evil with Ninja Gaiden. The sheer unexpectedness of such was freaky; even if you weren't necessarily scared by the zombies, you'd probably be wondering if your MGS3 disc is faulty.
    • This was actually a very cleverly hidden tech demo for a game in production at the time, entitled Guy Savage. Said game never wound up being released, which debatably makes the demo even better.
  • Several of the bosses count. There's The Pain, who attacks using thousands of bees, and is, himself, a living beehive. The Fear has a long, forked tongue, and double-jointed elbows that allow him to scurry up and down trees in a very creepy manner. The End's battle is a long, drawn-out sniper battle, and though tense, isn't scary... though if you sit around in first-person view for too long, he'll sneak around right behind you and shoot you, which is sure to make some people jump. The Fury stalks you around in a series of dark corridors, with slow, heavy footsteps; hearing those footsteps running full-speed at you can be freaky. And, finally, the worst of the bunch, there's The Sorrow, who comes to you during a near-death experience, and takes you on a nightmarish trip through a river filled with dead fish and human skulls. Disturbing pictures occasionally fill the screen, accompanied with a scream. You must confront everyone whose lives you've ended so far, too. They're depicted in the way you killed them: If you shot a guy in the leg, his ghost will be limping. If you slit his throat, his head will be hanging back, his neck spurting blood as he shambles towards you. If you've been taking the Rambo approach to the game, indiscriminately gunning down guards and innocent scientists alike, this sequence can be quite gut-wrenching, as you'll be facing down dozens, even hundreds, of angry ghosts.
    • Not to mention his speech. Firstly, The Sorrow himself has that deliberately quiet tone that suggests he's absolutely furiously angry (more so than The Fury, who just overacts a bit) as he admonishes Snake; "The dead...are not...silent." As he finishes his speech, a bloody tear runs down his cheek, a gunshot sounds out, and one lens of his glasses shatters. Shiver.
      • He mentions 'you will be killed by your own sons.' If you have slaughtered enough guards, you get a nifty picture of Solid shooting Naked as one of the images you can get.
    • Then you have the sequence itself, with screams and whimpers of 'I'm worthless now!' as the dead try to grab at Snake. Creepier still, though, is the sight of The End. He's floating face-down in the river, and still somehow drifts towards you.
      • This becomes complete and total Retardant if you, like This Troper, went through capping almost every guard in the testes. Try and keep a straight face when you see literally hundreds of guards wobbling towards you, grabbing their junk and moaning. I couldn't stop laughing till it was over.
      • Or, in the case of this This Troper, a 3 minute sequence of "Only the bosses? Huh..."
      • "Rawk! Grandpa, grandpa!" Cue whimpers of 'I didn't shoot the bird! I didn't!' for a few minutes. Later, after finding out what happened to the animals in the cages when Snake was captured... * shiver*
      • This troper, on the first time through the game, took "no witnesses" to mean "no survivors". That was a hell of a long battle.
    • On the topic of The Sorrow this troper has to admit...the idea of him just LURKING over The Boss' shoulder CREEPS HER OUT. Maybe it's lack of sleep but imagining him just hovering there looking creepy made this troper shiver! Fellow tropers imagine if you will The Sorrow hanging out behind you at all times. You can't see him. You can't hear him. You can't touch him. But HE IS THERE. Just watching you. Enjoy running that scenario through your head.
      • Dunno if this makes you feel any better, but this creeps The Boss out. Looks how she looks freaked out when his ghost appears.
      • He's her lover. He would never harm her. He's protecting her. Not that she needs protection...
  • When you're as insectophobic as this troper, The Pain seems almost like a cruel joke played upon him. Take, for example, just after the fight with Ocelot. All the sudden, hornets start flying everywhere, attacking everyone. One guard pulls off his balaclava, revealing his face horrifically swollen with bee stings. Worse still is when the hornests appear to fly onto and crawl over the camera...fuck you, Kojima!
  • "I can see the earth!" (cue explosion)
  • The worst thing you can hear the ghost of a dead guard say on the river; "You ate me! You ate me!"
  • What about the ending, where you have to shoot The Boss in the face? Kojima actually forces the player to personally pull the trigger.
  • The End's bulging eyeballs are both creepy and disgusting.
  • This troper (who has a bad fear of passing out/fainting) was scared shitless playing the End's bossfight. Switching to first-person view to find that bastard after being hit and discovering that Snake's vision is slowly fading out = huge DO NOT WANT moment.
    • "What's the matter?...I'm over here." Bang.
      • Honest truth, this troper screamed loudly every time she exited FPV(just in time apparently) to see The End almost right behind her to shoot Snake.
    • This troper decided it would be a good idea to lay low on a hill and use the directional microphone to find him and was promptly head-shotted within a minute or so. "Oh, cool, I can hear him breathing! Okay, I can just switch to the scope and--...Why can't I unequip the mic? Why is the breathing getting louder? Why can't I turn arou--" BANG
  • This troper is deep set fear of snakes, and it took him two years to work up the courage to play MGS3 due to the snakes that slither around in the game. And even then he had to press pause and take a deep breath every time he saw a snake. Damn you Kojima!


Metal Gear Solid 4

  • The fight against Screaming Mantis. It doesn't help that the dead are reanimated, and you're dealing with a boss that can float and teleport in a game that isn't supposed to be absurdly supernatural. The second half of the battle is, if possible, freakier; dealing with a woman slowly walking up to you while effortlessly sidestepping your attacks as the screen goes to black and white, all while hearing a chorus of screams of what must be torture victims, made it a rather distracting battle.
  • The fight against Laughing Octupus. Octupus has a cloaking device that renders her near invisible, making night-vision pretty much your only option of seeing her. She can also go anywhere with her tentacles, meaning she could be right above you at any given moment. Also note the fact that she could disguise herself as a dead body, your pal the Mk. II, furniture, and your friend Naomi Hunter. It gets even scarier later in the fight when she does away with the tricks and starts to randomly jump out at you from the windows charging maniacally, allowing her high-damage dealing tentacles to hit you.
    • All of the B&B corps were freaky; this troper was disturbed just watching them on YouTube. Take beautiful women in what appears to be skintight latex, add horrible psychological problems and cybernetic augmentations, arm them heavily, have a scene that shows them slaughtering a dozen or so Faceless Goons and imply that they knew the Player Character was watching all along. Then in the second stage of each boss fight, you have to defeat the same women in their human form with their masks off, still in the bodysuits. If they get close enough, they can hug you to death. The repeated Fetish Fuel shots of their feet don't help either, nor does the easter egg where you can take photos as they pose for you, in one case while one of the women is crying. Guess what the juxtapositions cause? This troper still isn't sure if this qualifies Hideo Kojima as a Magnificent Bastard.
    • While most players find the Beauties' backstories full of Narm, Raging Raven and Crying Wolf have pretty realistically horrifying ones. Raven was abducted by insurgents as a child, beaten, starved, and had her flesh pecked at by hungry crows for who knows how long. Crying Wolf was escaping a war-torn African village with her infant brother, and accidentally smothered him to death while hiding from pursuers. Even worse, after that she began hallucinating and murdered every child in her refugee camp. After all of that, being put in a high-tech killing suit and forced to practically run on negative emotions sounds like the epitome of And I Must Scream to me.
    • Just a guess, going by these scenes and End of Evangelion do you think Hideo Kojima and Hideaki Anno know each other?
      • Never mind the constant screaming as the women stagger towards you, as the sounds of whatever trauma broke their minds play back.
    • Quite frankly, this troper found Laughing Octopus to be the creepiest. The others are fine. It's normal for someone in that kind of situation to scream, be angry, or even cry. Octopus just laughs the entire time. She's not even laughing at you. She's just...laughing. Even while you shoot her. And she just won't stop.
      • You think that's scary? This troper tried to use the same tactic fighting Laughing Octupus and Laughing Beauty (which involved hiding under a bed). Since Octupus couldn't get him under the bed, he thought Beauty would be the same too. That is, until I see a psychopathic laughing woman in first-person view slowly crawling towards him.
      • Though in her case that could count as fetish fuel.
  • This troper found Zero's death in the ending to be quite disturbing. No matter how responsible he is for the countless atrocities and disasters caused directly or indirectly by The Patriots, watching a wheelchair-bound old man suffocate to death for several seconds as his air supply is cut off, right before he goes limp and flatlines, is not exactly pleasant.
  • When this troper first saw the unmanned Scarab scouts for the first time, it brought shivers down his spine.
  • Call me crazy, but this troper finds the Gekko extremely unsettling, on an intellectual level. Those legs aren't just nanotech synthetic muscles, they're actual cloned living ungulate tissue. They're basically two disembodied cow legs hooked up to life support, with a mini-tank on top. And after doing anything strenuous, they excrete excess lactic acid. Creepy. As. Hell.
    • They're very likely designed to scare and unsettle, especially considering the variety of bizarre noises they emit during combat. These range from the chirping of cicadas to the screams of cattle, the latter being particularly unsettling considering their relation to Japanese WWII air raid sirens.
  • For This Troper the scariest part of Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots was what Zero did to Big Boss. After supposedly being best friends and brothers in arms, Big Boss turned on Zero and left the Patriots. Zero's revenge? Have Snake "kill" Big Boss (in Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake), retrieve his body, and keep it barely alive on life support, using him as the only working key to his Super Computer network that he chose to be his successor. It gets worse though. It turns out that Big Boss is not simply in a coma - he's actually in a permanent state of locked-in syndrome, a state maintained by the nanomachines injected into his body by the Patriots. As a result, he cannot move, speak, or do anything, but he is fully aware of his environment. Okay, he can thrash about a little bit - which only makes it worse. And of course, it turns out they did this to Solidus too.
  • That bit where Snake wakes up with his pixelated MGS1 head on his hi-res MGS4 body. It just drives straight into the Uncanny Valley and never leaves.
  • The Microwave Hallway is a combination of this and Tear Jerker.


Peace Walker

  • A fairly mild example, but This Troper was extremely unnerved by the Boss AI's speech dissolving into random phrases while its voice drops into static. Especially near the end where she just screams "Jack!" over and over in a slow, distorted voice. The Boss just should not sound like that. Ever.
  • The Peace Walker unit, specifically what would happen if it were mass produced, is also extremely terrifying to imagine. Aside from the fact that it can launch retalitory strikes at countries, or even be tricked into launching nukes at other countries by making it think that there was going to be an attack on the US homeland, there's also the fact that it is equipped with a huge hydrogen bomb so it could sneak into enemy territory and self destruct, most likely obliterating an entire nation. When you remember that Hot Coldman planned on mass-producing Peace Walker throughout Central America (from Belice all the way to Panama), it becomes a lot more horrifying when you take into account the implications of what might happen if he, or some other mass-murdering madman, decided to have all the Peace Walker units stationed in Central America self destruct in their respective countries. In fact, Hot Coldman is the most evil, insane, and depraved character in Metal Gear history, even outranking Colonel Volgin (If he managed to make even an extremely sadistic GRU Colonel who has absolutely no qualms about blowing up countrymen for laughs run for his money, you know that Coldman is bad news.)


Metal Gear Rising

  • The art rendering of Raiden in the original incarnation of Metal Gear Solid Rising, particularly his missing jaw replaced with a mechanical one. If one does not find it heart-wrenching, then one is not a human at all - especially given what was going on in the original story of Rising.
  • The live-action "Make it Right" viral ad campaign, depicting Raiden experiencing flashbacks while undergoing surgery. Sure, the acting is cheesy, but there is some pretty disturbing imagery.
    • For example, at about 1:20/1:21 on the "Arm" ad, you can see what looks like an authentic eye with wires stuck through the pupil area. Sweet dreams.
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