Paranoia Fuel/Video Games

• Duplicity, suspicion and untrustworthiness are the tenors of the Deus Ex. Nothing is what it seems, looks are deceptive and allies are unreliable. Your own brother will betray everything you fought for, only for you to find out that everything you fought for was a lie, and that your strings were pulled all along by an ancient perfidious cabal. And these guys mean deadly business. They unleash a concocted plague on the world and watch it die just to gain leverage on politicians and they tap into every phone line and web-traffic stream with a near-omniscent survelliance AI, which, by the way, has some ideas on the optimal global configuration of its own. You switch sides and begin to work towards overthrowing the conspiracy, but before long you can't help wondering if your new employers are another ancient perfidious cabal. They are. Well, maybe marginally less ruthless and more well-intentioned then the first one. Paranoia became such a common precondition to wellbeing that you are actually complimented once for offing a perfectly harmless doorkeeper on suspicion of him being a spy. He actually turns out to be a spy. The sequel raises the level of duplicity even higher but arguably falls into Narm territory.
  • Best/worst part for you as PC? The bad guys created you to begin with and wired you with false memories. That's it. Nothing you remeber about your life is true. And they can turn you off if they feel like it. And even if you escape your killswitch, their AI can see through your eyes and watch you everywhere you go, meaning if you think about it every ally you meet from now is being betrayed to the conspirators and there is nothing you can do about it.
  • Best/worst part for you as the gamer? Those perfidios cabals and global-surveillance systems more or less exist for real.
    • ICARUS HAS YOU
• Link's Awakening had the reveal that the world may all be a dream, and not even YOUR dream, at that, complete with what's more or less a Downer Ending. You're not expecting something like that on the GAME BOY, of all consoles.
• The house in Condemned. It could very well have been your house after all.
  • Also the Murderous Mannequins in the department store level. A disturbing number of lunatics have taken to adhering bits of plastic to their bodies and dressing up as the mannequins in the displays, waiting in very similar poses to the real mannequins to hop off and kill you. They have a slightly different pose from the real ones that can clue you in to their real appearence, but many players never know that it was a fake until they're getting beaten, they go up to every mannequin and whack it with a pipe, or they turn around and find that the mannequin that used to be behind them has disappeared....
• The Barnacles from Half Life have made people reflexively look towards the ceiling for years. Which is arguably good, because the commentary for Portal stresses that it is hard for developers to get players to look up.
  • Headcrabs. They are everywhere.
• Though it's more subtle than most of the entries on this list, Portal. There is the sudden change from FPS to Survival Horror in the final test chamber. And the cameras, constantly watching you. And the fact that GLaDOS and the Weighted Companion Cube both evidently survive. GLaDOS should have included "paranoia" on her list of the most common symptoms to develop in test subjects.
  • YMMV on the cameras. Some players just see them as fun things to pop off the wall using the portal gun.
  • Portal 2. You know that really nice robot guy that's been helping you this whole time? The one who doesn't seem too bright, but is willing to help escape? Guess what, something could go horribly wrong with him. He could end up corrupted by the mainframe of the lab and decide to obsessively want to test and/or kill you. But, what are the chances of THAT happening?
• Amnesia the Dark Descent has relatively few actual monsters. However, the floor constantly creaks and the music has thumps in it, so you'll cringe every time you hear a strange noise and go cowering for the nearest dark corner. There's just enough genuine danger to make everything terrifying.
• Eternal Darkness gave us the Bonethief, a type of spindly little skeletal fiend that wriggles its way into people's bodies and controls them like a puppet. Maximillian Roivas puts it best:

"The devils inside the servant's skulls were trying to kill me. They plotted behind doors locked and barred and planned the downfall of the human race! I took care of the ones around me...stopped their plans!...there are others, I'm sure...out there, manipulating us, secreting madness inside our very heads, while our souls are pushed into the corners of our skulls, watching as our hands do tasks that we have no control over! Ohhh horrible ... horrible things! WE MUST PURGE THEM FROM OUR MIDST!!! Kill them all! CUT THEM!!! BURN THEM!!! ... It's the only way ... I know ... I've ... done it ... it ... works."

• Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers once you find out about the Rada Codes. Then you notice the drummers stationed all over the city. You know, the ones you've probably been ignoring because they just sit there all day and drum. They're not only watching you, they're broadcasting your moves to the creepy voodoo cartel that's already left a number of messy corpses all over the city. And of course, the creepy looking guy who just stands outside the shop for two days and stares in the window.
• Persona 3. Let's not forget that by our very nature, every single one of us is summoning not one but two Eldritch Abominations to arrive and wipe every single one of us out!
  • Persona 3 also gives us the notion that at midnight, we turn into coffins while the world around fills with monsters, all without our knowledge. It also implies that we could be murdered by physical manifestations of our inner selves and our heads eaten from the inside out during this time! Persona 4 introduces the concept of a total demonic world inside televisions, which can be accessed from even the TV in your own bedroom.
  • Thankfully, that's not probable in Real Life. Now, one of your classmates murdering somebody, like in Persona 4 ...
  • By the way, steer clear of your TV whenever it's foggy out, be sure to look up in the power lines after it rains, and don't forget that the friendly neighborhood detective might actually be an Ax Crazy Serial Killer.
• The Cradle still remembers you. You're not out, it's just playing.
• Omikron: The Nomad Soul. Basically, the premise was that you put your soul into this game to help defeat evil scary-ass demons, and until you finished the game, your soul was trapped. I never finished it. D:
• Metal Gear Solid had the Patriots: A group of hyper-intelligent A Is are secretly running every aspect of not just America, but the entire world. They're watching, and orchestrating every minute event of the entire world, even perceived human failures and disasters, in the mother of all Xanatos Gambits. And you'd never even know who or waht they are, because they're so powerful they censor their name from even casual conversation.
  • From Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, there's The Sorrow, who follows Snake around for a good portion of the game. Until the "boss encounter" with him, the player has no idea who or what he is, or what he wants. He doesn't attempt to harm Snake in the scenes he shows up in, but he's still quite creepy.
  • Also in the third game is The End. The boss fight against him takes place over three very large, heavily forested areas, and The End is excellent at keeping himself hidden, usually in a very well chosen vantage point, meaning that if the player decides to get up, even for a second, when they are in The End's line of sight, they can expect to hear a voice saying "This is the end."
• Resident Evil....You take a drink of water on a nice, sunny day. You feel a slight build up of anger combined with an increase of energy. You feel a gnawing hunger, and look over to your little sister. "Yummy..." This is bad, just drinking any water becomes impossible if you get the implications! Combined with the fact water naturally increases your mitochondrial energy, if you feel any anger after reading this you'll lock yourself in the closet and hope the death that eventually comes is NOT painful.
  • Nemesis in the third game. Even when he's not around, he's watching you. Always. Watching. You. Even if the "he's somewhere" music isn't playing.
  • Unintentional (or was it?) paranoia fuel in the Gamecube remake of the first Resident Evil. Early on you're walking down a hallway and there's a body on the floor in an unfamiliar, but not terribly alarming red color scheme. Then when you get close it rises up like a puppet on strings and starts running around you at high speed and tearing at your flesh with sharp talons. Keep in mind this is a remake of a game where you still turn like molasses. And while you're swearing and trying to get a bead on this thing, you realize that you have no idea what else the developers put in the game to screw with you.
• Team Fortress 2 has the Spy. He can turn invisible at will, flawlessly disguise himself as one of your teammates, and kill you instantly from behind. And then do it all again in less than five seconds. They can be anyone, anywhere, at any time. In the past you stay be mostly safe as long as you pumped a few rounds into everyone, fried or foe, but...
  • A recent update gives the spy a new watch that lets him potentially remain invisible indefinitely (he just needs to stay in place occasionally), and another that allows him to perfectly fake his death. In other words, this man could be in any room he likes, and you can never trust you've killed him.
  • They up the ante again with Your Eternal Reward, a dagger that instantly turns the spy into whoever he just killed, cloaks the corpse, and erases the kill-icon for the unfortunate victim's teammates. The process happens so fast that most might not even realize their teammate just got skewered. Those friends you had coming up the stairs with you, that you just spychecked a minute ago, might not be who you think they are anymore...
  • To top it off, it can be combined with the aforementioned watch that fakes your death. So even if you find out who the offender is, chances are he's still alive and gotten a new face now.
  • And if the Spy chooses to disguise as one of his own teammates, the feign death watch drops a corpse that looks like the class he chose, not a Spy's corpse. In other words, the Spy can mask the fact that his team even has a Spy. So, unless you actually saw that enemy fire his weapon before you killed him, you can't be sure that he wasn't a Spy.
  • Oh it doesn't end there. The thing that makes that combination of items a REAL pain in the back is the Saharan Spy set. If a player who is playing the Spy has all three items from the set including the hat, they gain a bonus. For the Spy, the bonus is that there is a HUGE reduction to the decloak sound that plays whenever they come out of invisibility. The draw back to it is that if you bump into someone cloaked, you're revealed for a bit longer...But that doesn't apply to the 'feign death' watch. Now, the main draw back of the watch that fakes the Spy's death is that it gives off a very loud decloak sound...That is if you don't have the Saharan Spy set activated. Should a player actually have this set, they are given a totally silent fake death, a knife that kills silently and leaves no trace, AND a revolver that will replenish the watch's cloak meter. If you think you killed him, chances are you didn't. If you just spychecked a teammate who was tailing behind you, do it again five seconds later because that Spy might have taken his body. If you find him and start shooting at him, chances are he'll hit you enough with that revolver that gives him back enough of his cloak meter so that he can feign death, so good job, you just tried to ruin that Spy's killing spree. You activated his silent watch. He has uncloaked and you have no idea where he went, but he knows who you are. He has taken a new body. He is going to find you, and he is going to get revenge on you... Let's just put it this way. If that Spy gets behind your base: You're Screwed.
  • Yeah, it doesn't help that in the Meet the Spy video the BLU team Spy tells his surviving comrades about a certain skilled RED Spy that managed to get in their base and has causes a lot of havok...

BLU Spy: "Zis Spy has already breached our defenses... You've seen what he's done to our colleagues! And worst of all, he could be any one of us... He could be in zis very room! He could be you! He could be me! He could even be-*head demolished by BLU Soldier's shotgun*"

• • There is one drawback to that combo, and that is that the Spy cannot disguise normally and must make at least one kill before he is able to move freely among your comrades. This in theory should comfort you since you will see the spy coming and can at least prepare for him. However, once you realize that anyone capable of pulling off a kill without being routed out themselves will likely be a very experienced player and even if you do put him down for good, there's nothing stopping him from doing it again, and again, and AGAIN. In other words: This set makes the already powerful even more powerful, while ensuring anyone that isn't experienced enough to use it get weeded out very fast.
    • Unless, of course, you're playing as a Pyro.
      • A new knife, the Spy-Cicle, grants the Spy protection from fire for 2 seconds if he gets hit with flames. Enough time for a cloaked Spy to escape, or for a disguised spy to dissuade the Pyro or round a corner and escape. Yes, he leaves obvious ice sculptures of his enemies when he kills, and can't use the aforementioned set combo, but the bottom line is, unless you listen for the sound it makes upon melting, you cannot be sure if you successfully spychecked an ally, or merely set a Spy back for a mere 15 seconds while his knife refreezes.
• Tonberries from the Final Fantasy series have a counter-attack based on how many enemies a character killed, meaning they know how many enemies each character killed. They know what you're doing, even when you can't see them they're watching you.
  • Don't forget the enigmatic note you get before you fight them in Final Fantasy Tactics A2. "Once more, I pick up my knife. I'm coming for you." Phew.
  • What, no mention for Emerald WEAPON in Final Fantasy VII? Surely, somebody had to have been at least a little freaked out by the fact that, somewhere, in an ocean darker than a black hole, with nobody else around, there's a possibility that a GIANT GREEN GOD DAMN DEATH MACHINE could be following your little submarine, or waiting for you to go to a certain area that it may be hovering over, or may be right underneath your sub when you dive underwater, or could be right inside that cave entrance there... hell, if you get close enough, you can barely see its green-ish silhouette swimming around, just DARING you to try and sneak past it without getting caught. The actual fight is nothing compared to the prospect of a WEAPON sneaking around like Solid Snake, waiting for a chance to pop out of nowhere, scare the crap out of you, then murder you until you're dead.
• The Silent Hill series may have perfected making previously innocuous items and locations absolutely terrifying, the most obvious examples being the ubiquitous fog that shrouds the town and the hospitals that appear in every game, while the most effective singular examples are the screaming mannequin in the third game and that damn doll from the fourth.
  • The soundtrack for the games do this as well, making you think that you're not alone and that there's a monster right behind you waiting to kill you. You sometimes hear sounds that SOUND like they could've been made by a monster, but it's just the soundtrack screwing with you.
  • Pyramid Head and Valtiel. The former is a hulking, utterly invincible monster that stalks James around the town, often appearing with absolutely no warning, no cutscene, and no special music, and all you can do when he shows up is run. Valtiel, who appears in Silent Hill 3, does not directly attack the player at any time, but he obsessively follows Heather, and often appears in places that deliberately convey ideas of sexual voyeurism, and there is nothing you can do to stop him.
• F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin leaves us with the unsettling idea that any door we pass through could, any instant, lead us to somewhere completely different from where we intended to go. And of course, the possibility that at any given moment, you could turn around and OH JESUS SHE'S RIGHT THERE GRABBING ME FUCKFUCKFU-
• Fatal Frame. Just. Fatal Frame. There are hostile ghost and non-hostile ones, along with ones that will help you. You don't always know this when they appear. Sometimes the ghosts won't give any indication that they're one or the other until you start moving towards them. It doesn't help that the atmosphere of the games contribute to the entire idea that something could jump out and try to kill you at any moment... it's just meant to have to sitting on the edge of your seat ready to jump and hit pause the moment something jumps out of you. There's no shortage of creepy moments in the games that make you THINK something will happen, but not, so then you just wind up feeling that everything is trying to screw with you.
• Not even Pokémon is safe.
  • Pokémon Diamond and Pearl, Old Chateau, Pre-National Dex. You will not be able to sit near an off TV for days without looking at it out of suspicion. And the Pokemon this is connected to isn't much better, considering it can control other electronics in Platinum (A washer, fan, lawnmower, refrigerator, or microwave oven). If that thing wasn't on your side when it possesses the lawnmower...
  • Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver has a photographer that apparently follows you EVERYWHERE. Your player character is a 10 year old child. And he takes photos of you. Quite creepy...
    • Also the callers from the phone mechanic somehow always know what you've done. And then there's Juggler Irwin, who only says something like "Every time I think back on your adventures, I'm left in awe." and hangs up. Though in Crystal, he only acts like a stalker if you're playing as a girl. Wait, that didn't help...
  • Cipher's activities in Orre pretty much cement them as the patron saints of this trope.
    • Phenac City. In Colosseum, Mayor Es Cade is really Cipher's Grand Master Evice, and nobody seems to notice the evil hanging over their heads. In XD, however, everyone in town is a disguised Peon, and the real mayor's incomplete note is the only hint as to the truth behind the entire town.
    • Ceiling Peons. Everywhere. Even on the elevator.
    • Cipher does its damned best to keep its very existence confidential - you only know about it if you're in Orre, and that's because Wes caused a ruckus. Nobody outside the group knows just what they're planning, as whenever someone other than Wes and Michael try, they take action to keep the public from figuring out. Cute red-headed girl sees the black aura around a Makuhita? Sack her and take her back to headquarters! Running low on Pokemon for personnel armament? Steal a cargo ship and throw the crew overboard (THIS ACTUALLY HAPPENS)! Vital data about to be compromised because that brat with stolen technology snuck a disc off your admin? Raid the fucking news station and scrub their mainframe!!
• In BioShock (series), it's set up very early that around any corner, behind any door, when you turn around there could be someone there, standing quietly waiting to kill you, and nothing is as it seems. e.g. the splicer woman standing over her baby carriage cooing to her "baby", which is actually a gun and who will try to murder you if you get close enough. The rest of the game should go by in a mix of acute shock, horror and paranoia if they did it right, which they did.
  • Would you kindly do something for me?
  • Upgraded in the sequel, where Lamb will tell her followers Big Sister is Watching.
• You thought Bioshock was bad? Try System Shock 2. For most of the game, the ship will be dead silent, aside from the hum of an air conditioner and the sound of your own footsteps... unless, of course, you are spotted by a security camera, in which case you will hear every monster in the area screaming as it sprints to your position to maul you to death. Did we mention that there are no friendly or even sentient NPCs at all?
  • Made worse by the fact that most enemies will be heard before they are seen... so the smallest, tiniest sound becomes a horrific alarm bell to your ears. Do be silent yourself, though, THE ENEMIES CAN HEAR YOU.
• Playing Tenchu for more then two hours will leave you in absolute paranoia. Ninjas could come from anywhere this very second. Shadow Asassins made it even worse, allowing the Ninjas to hide in dark corners, pots, under the ground, in a cupboard, in the ceiling, behind doors, under your seat.
  • A similar thing occurs with playing Hitman and being around bald men... is that person really a police officer? Why is there a syringe in his hand...?
• Tales of the Abyss. The idea that some random ambient particle that only specific people can detect knows exactly who you are, what you're doing, and what you will be doing...
• In Martian Gothic: Unification, if two of your characters enter the same room, all three of them fuse together into a type of monster that you've been dealing with. Imagine, you could just come across someone, and suddenly be fused into a horrific monster.
• Dead Space will have you routinely dismembering corpses whenever you enter a room for fear of "infectors". As this game features "strategic dismemberment" as a game-play mechanic this tends to produce a lot of gore.
• The Infocom Interactive Fiction game A Mind Forever Voyaging invokes this in its prologue: "You have spent twenty years living a normal, unsuspecting life. You are YOU. The suddenly, one day, the universe around you is torn away, and you learn that your whole life has been a charade, a carefully calculated scientific experiment. Perhaps, at this very moment, you are a normal human being, sitting in some comfortable armchair reading this story. But - perhaps you are not."
• In Eversion, dying in the later stages will sometimes replace the "READY!" prompt with "BEHIND YOU" or "I SEE YOU". Or "GIVE UP". Or just a plain black screen. The "I SEE YOU" message seems to be foreshadowing for something that happens after the game is cleared with the good ending. On the other hand, the "I SEE YOU", "STOP" messages are particularly disturbing when you are making modifications on the game's files.
• The Milkman Conspiracy level in Psychonauts is an entire level based on Paranoia Fuel, a given when the level takes place inside a conspiracy theorist's psyche. It includes shady (albeit hilarious) Men in Black figures, a cult of Girl Scouts dedicated to keeping the Milkman hidden, and almost every thing in the level will sprout a camera or a pair of eyes (so much so that using clairvoyance on them actually gives you a view of yourself) when you're not facing them. Not to mention that they are all somehow obsessed with the "true nature" the Milkman, a split personality of the person who's head your running around in, who runs around filled with Tranquil Fury and throwing around milk-bottle Molotov Cocktails. Some of the lines from Boyd Cooper/The Milkman show exactly how paranoid this level can make you feel.
  • "My milk is filled with what the world wants. What the world deserves."
  • Just stand around listening to Boyd for awhile. He says the most inane things, but the tone he says them in can make them absolutely horrifying. Think "I'm dropping out of this yogurt convention-- there's no fruit at the bottom!" sounds funny? It's not. Then we get gems like "I scream, you scream, we all scream, we all scream"
• The Suffering. The games involve places filled with evil spawning murderous Malefactors embodying the sins that tainted them -- possibly because the evil eventually makes the places sentient and malevolent. Where the Paranoia Fuel comes in is that it's implied that there isn't anywhere people have lived that hasn't built up enough evil for this -- it's just waiting for the right catalyst to bring it out.
• If you leave a game of Bookworm Adventures 2 idle for long enough, Lex will say "How long does it take to go to the bathroom?" Perfectly innocent and amusing...unless you happen to be in the bathroom wearing wireless headphones at the time. Lex is watching.
• Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines features the line, "If you should survive and need information, come back and see me. I'm always here... and everywhere..."
  • Even better: "I'm over here, boss! Wait, maybe I'm over here! Or maybe I'm behind you with a hatchet in my hand! Or did you never stop to think that your fear, if given a voice, would sound... like... THIS."
• Chapter 2 of Mother 3, Osohe Castle - Anyone who has played EarthBound knows as soon as they see one of the abstract paintings that they -are- going to attack you. The problem is, most of them really are just paintings. "Most", not "all".
  • Or how about Tanetane Island?

Claus: Everyone's waiting for you, Lucas. Waiting to throw rocks at you, to spit on you, to make your life a living hell. Who's everyone? ...Everyone you love.

• • Then there's the Ultimate Chimera. Thought you left it behind in the Chimera Lab? Wrong. Dead wrong. It escaped, and managed to get from a science lab on the Nowhere Islands to a bathroom in an extremely well-secured building in a city that's floating possibly miles above the ground. Where else could it be hiding...?
• The Garry's Mod mod The Harmless Companion Cube. Manages Offscreen Teleportation... in a First-Person Shooter via pure physics.
  • A well done horror-esque movie about said cube
  • on a related note... well, I'll just leave this here...
• Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, and Modern Warfare 2 missions "Shock and Awe" and "No Russian". Consider the fact that neither event is even slightly fantastical nowadays, and actually a very real possibility.
• The Cocytans in The Dig are nice enough once you save them, apart from the comment their leader makes about how "if any of your people try to pick a fight with us, we'll mash them like bugs." In context, what he meant to say was "don't worry, we can take care of ourselves" in response to Commander Low cautioning him that not all humans would be as amenable to the idea of alien contact; but the way he said it, it makes one worry about what would happen if the Cocytans ever gave humankind a good reason to "pick a fight" with them...
• Small one in Mario Party DS. Boo's trophy description's last couple lines: "Do you think he's a nice ghost? Ask him yourself. He's right behind you."
  • For that matter, Boos in general. There could be one behind you right now, sneaking up for the kill. Or there could be one right in front of you, waiting for you to turn around.
• Forgetting the incredible Video Game Cruelty Potential and the fact that you play as a Nigh Invulnerable cannibal shapeshifter and think about the concept. Alex Mercer is capable of taking anyone's identity, even being capable of mimicking the sound of someone's voice when they're talking with a gas mask on (as Karen Parker found out the hard way), and is known to the city at large as a violent, sociopathic bio-terrorist. Just think about trying to live in the Big Applesauce with that knowledge and getting to sleep at night. Granted, Alex tends not to go after civilians except by accident, but that doesn't bring any comfort to anyone in the military. It's not a surprise the "Patsy" ability works so well.
• The Sims. On the surface it's a harmless simulation game. But when you start thinking about the premise...what if there is some higher "player" capitolizing on Video Game Cruelty Potential manipulating your every move and controlling your entire life? And there's nothing you can do about it. * Shudder*
• Kirby's Dark Matter. Already frightening, it just gets scarier if you think about it. After all, someone who is possessed by Dark Matter doesn't have to show any symptoms. Anyone you know could be the puppets of an Eldritch Abomination: your friends, your family, your pets... In fact, can you be sure that YOU aren't possessed! Those thoughts in your head-are they yours, or is someone else thinking them for you?
• Parasite Eve. Realize, if you will, that there are small intelligent life forms living inside EVERY SINGLE CELL of your body. Now, imagine if one day they decided to revolt...
• The Fade in Dragon Age is pretty disturbing. The realm of spirits and demons, it is the place where everyone visits when they dream, except for Dwarves. Usually one can sleep peacefully without any worries and even if you get the attention of any demons you will usually just wake up and only vaguely remember a bad dream. However, if you are a mage you remain aware that you are in the fade and when you wake up demons can hitch a ride and possessy our body to transform it into an abomination. As people are very well aware of this, all mages are forced to join a Circle when their ability is discovered, where they are monitored by templars all day round for the rest of their lives, to be slain instantly on any sign of possession. Everyone who refuses to join a circle or tries to escapes is killed as well. The only way to completely avoid this is to be cut off from the Fade entirely by being made Tranquil, a process that is essentially a magical lobotomy that robs you of all magical potential, the ability to dream, and the ability to feel any emotion at all.
  • How about in Ortan Thaig when you begin heading deep in and the spiders who have been ambushing you all this time run away back to their lairs it almost feels as if theres something even scarier up ahead.
• From the screen shown after you quit out of Wing Commander III: "While you sleep, they'll be waiting."
• They're watching you.
• In Metroid Prime 3, on your way to the Seeker Missile, you walk past shielded tubes containing Metroids. Guess what happens when you get the item.
  • But your paranoia fuel isn't enough to prepare yourself for how these Metroids works. You expect to be able to shoot the Ice Missiles at the Metroids since ice has been the easiest way to kill Metroids since the first game so you shoot the missile at the metroid and the Metroid just phases and the Missile just passes through. Cue major Freak Out.
  • The biggest source of Paranoia Fuel has to be the SA-X. You first see it right after you go down the elevator to the Sectors, blasting right through a wall that you just passed. Even worse, you start to realize that this evil clone could turn up anywhere and blast Samus to bits without breaking a sweat.
    • You enter a room. It's quiet. Then, you hear it. TAP TAP TAP. Coupled with that bone-chilling ambiance, it's like a bucket of ice water down your back. And you pray it doesn't turn into DAAA DA-DA-DA DA-DA-DA because then it sees you.
• In Shadow of Destiny, the game starts with you getting murdered out of nowhere, and you don't know why--and you don't get murdered just once like that. By the time you have finished the game and know the reason for your murder ( your time traveling to save your own life will set off a chain of events that the villain needs to be born, depending on your ending), you're already wondering whether death really could be lurking around every corner.
• The Reapers in Mass Effect.
  • ASSUMING DIRECT CONTROL.
  • And by extension, indoctrination. Undeniably a Fate Worse Than Death and once you even realize what's happening to you, it's already too late.
  • It gets worse in Mass Effect 3 where indoctrinated agents may be everywhere. You think you're safe? Maybe in the six months you were away from action one of your friends was captured and indoctrinated, and you have no real way to be sure, until they prove loyalty to you... or to the reapers. There are some examples in-game of characters appearing to be your friends, until they reveal their indoctrination.
• Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood's use of You All Look Familiar for multiplayer may actually be for this. With all the NPCs looking like the playable characters, how do you know which ones are the other players? Newbies will give themselves away with High Profile actions like running around and going on rooftops, but experts will hide in the crowds, waiting for you to pass by, and then OHSHITWHEREDIDTHISGUYCOMEFRO- poof, Yet Another Stupid Death.
  • When Ezio uses his "Call Assassins" ability, the Assassins will often leap down off roofs or ride in on horseback to kill your target. But if there's a hide spot like a well, haystack, or roof garden nearby, the Assassin will leap out of there with no warning - leaving one with the unsettling suspicion that every hide spot in the game has an Assassin waiting there.
    • Of course, this also adds a bit of humor value to whenever you drop into one of the hide spots. Imagine all those Assassins trying to fit inside that hay cart!
    • Somewhat supported by the dev team's explanation that the Assassin apprentices in the game are his bodyguard team when not deployed on missions elsewhere (though the Project Legacy Facebook game has him training Assassin apprentices who just do missions), so except for certain missions and the final Sequence, they are following him the whole time. On the other hand, we never see them enter their hiding spots...
    • Subtly reinforced by how Seekers -- the guards who would poke any hay carts or haystacks they came across on their patrol routes -- appear more frequently than they ever did in Assassin's Creed II, although the devs explained that as being a historical nod (to the rise of pike-and-shot tactics).
• Myst. Notice anything different? Gehn screwed up. AGAIN.
• From Kongai: A stealthed, deadly, unpredictable killing machine, Angelan just might be behind you RIGHT NOW!
• Any Stealth game provokes the feeling that there could be a quiet, well-armed man sneaking around near you right now. No, don't bother looking. He could be on the ceiling. Or maybe he's coming tomorrow. Or maybe he's already been there, and his superiors said not to kill you. And it doesn't matter where you are. Work, home, airport, third world country, castle...
• Doctor Chaos. You have to open doors and cabinets to find weapons... unless a boss jumps out an kills you because you don't have the weapons to defend yourself.
• Touhou: Every bit about Yukari Yakumo and her eyes-staring-at-you-from-inside-a-vagina-thing. Her power over borders allows her to snatch anyone from outside world to put into Gensokyo. Since "borders" are everywhere, you can potentially step into Gensokyo just by passing through an otherwise normal door inside your own home. Brrr.
• Batman: Arkham Asylum is an intensley creepy game in itself (due to the fact that your wandering around a dark, dirty insane asylum), and it doesn't help later in the game which takes place in Arkham's Cell blocks where you Pass through a room filled with screaming loonies in cells.. The Paranoia fuel really starts when ALL of the prisoners are released and you are forced to go back through the dark cell blocks, afraid that one could just leap out on you at any moment...
  • Subversion 1: You have Detective Mode, which reveals hiding loonies from quite a distance, giving you plenty of time to prepare.
  • Subversion 2: You're Batman.
    • One of the areas you have to find to get all of the Riddles that the Riddler leaves around the Island is Scarecrow's hideout. Take a close look at those photos on the walls. Notice anything? Yup, that's right, he's been watching you the entire game, waiting for you to show up just so he can attack you with fear toxin... Other such fun, paranoia-inducing touches include that creepy Joker mannequin in the visitor's center (hint: turn around when you reach the door), the fact that since the Joker controls the whole asylum and is taunting you over the PA system, that means he's also watching you (and he even leaves you 'presents' as a reward for jumping through his hoops), and Killer Croc's two little foreshadowing threats earlier in the game that lead up to you having to go into his lair while he stalks you the whole. Time.
• In Star Wars Battlefront, battles can go horribly wrong for you, leaving a huge army on the opposing side and only YOU on your side.
  • The real paranoia comes when you're the last guy on your team and you suddenly hear "Darth Vader has entered the battle"
• Anyone who's played Pikmin 2 knows that when you're in the caves, ANYTHING can suddenly drop on you at ANYTIME. In fact, when you're above ground in the Perplexing Pool after a certain number of days, a BEADY LONG LEGS can drop down on you out of nowhere.
  • Well, the Beady Long Legs only appears right in front of the landing area, so you do know where it is, but since it's huge and dangerous, you pretty much have to kill it if you still need one of the above-ground treasures.
  • Let's not forget the Waterwraith. He comes down to kill all your Pikmin if you spend too long on a floor in his dungeon. How long? You don't know. You can spend a while doing your business and dreading the inevitable moment this Implacable Man makes its appearance.
• This is a nice website you got here. Shame if something happened to it. SSSSSSSSSSSSS...
• I Wanna Be the Guy. Are you sure that that tree isn't going to kill you? How about the lamp in your bedroom? Have you checked those bathroom tiles recently? As far as you know, even this TVTropes page could be a trap...
• Have you ever taken a look at certain cults and religions such as Happyology, or the ones even more creepy? Well, in it's most extreme form, might I present The Cult Of The Damned They want the whole planet to be killed and revived to serve The Lich King. And they Almost succeeded but for a few Genre Savvy reactions from the remaining Alliance Kingdoms. Think about that for a minute. For any single warrior that fought in defence, and for every single individual that went to Northrend on the counter offensive, there is NO guarantee you will be granted a peaceful rest...
• The obscure shooter Chimera Beast does this with its good ending. It says this, and I quote: "EATERS have destroyed the entire ecosystem of the planet, which is now in ruin. Now the EATERS will roam the universe in search of more victims. Repeating their pattern of destruction on each planet they find. Eventually, they'll undoubtedly reach the Earth. And you'll have to live with the knowledge that what led them there was...you."
• Just exploring the wastes in Fallout can become this. You never know if that buzzing you hear in New Vegas is just ambient noise, or if it's a group of Cazadores trying to sneak up on you.
• Then there's chapter 2-4 in Super Paper Mario. Mimi, a shapeshifting villain, will stalk you throughout the basement of the mansion while in her nightmarish "true form." If you spend too much time in one room, you'll hear that chinging sound as the chase music starts up and she comes raining down on you.
  • Then there's Dimentio. Things he says and does throughout the story imply that he can just appear in front of you at any time or place and say weird, rhyming similes. Of course, between chapter 6 and 7, Dimentio shows up at the house you've been spending time at and nukes Mario, Peach, and Bowser to death. The way he did this implies he could have done this at literally any point if he wanted to. Luckily for you, it's part of a plan that he needs you alive for and doing this actually helps you.
• Bella! It's mummy. I came to get you!
• After the first time a Mimic instantly devours you when you try to open it in Dark Souls you will probably attack every chest you see.
• The later levels of D/Generation have enemies that can disguise as hostages or nearly anything in the environment - furniture, potted plants, and more. If you get too close, they'll shift form and decapitate you for an instant kill. Even better yet, they're immune to your laser gun, and they'll chase you from room to room until one of you dies!
• I'm not the only one who has thought that difficult parts of any game are programmed to predict your movements and outright screw you right?
  • Every game (especially RPGs or any kind of strategy game) will make you feel this way at least once. Then Pokémon Colosseum came along, and it actually is programmed to predict your movements. After you've chosen your strategy, the computer will choose its. Choose to counter special moves, it'll use a physical move.
• After your first encounter with a dragon in Skyrim, you'll likely flinch every time you see a shadow fall over you. Even if it's just a bird.