Final Fantasy VI/Nightmare Fuel

File:Kefka Anthologies 4521.jpg

The Joker's Final Fantasy counterpart, with magical powers and all.

Face it. The Nightmare Fuel seen in the Final Fantasy series may well have debuted in Final Fantasy IV and popped up again in Final Fantasy V, but this is where they got serious for real.

Keep in mind this game inspired the less fantasy-ish route the series took with further installments, with a parallel route filled with increasing horror following the former, and as a result the game's sequel holds the dubious honor of having one of its abominations as the image representing the scariness of the whole series.

Bring your brown pants, you'll need them.

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• Lots of it. What happens in Doma Castle, both in the World of Balance and the World of Ruin. Kefka's backstory. Narshe, a sleepy mining town in the World of Balance, revealed to be a monster-infested ghost town in the World of Ruin.
• Shadow's various Flashback Nightmares.
• Kefka in Final Fantasy VI isn't too nightmarish aside from the Monster Clown fashion, as even his Kick the Dog moments are done with gleefully over-the-top flair and humor. But during the final battle, he's a little... excited. Say what you will about some final bosses' nightmarish One-Winged Angel forms, at least none of THEM are sporting a poorly concealed erection during the climactic battle. Behold. And his dialogue in Dissidia Final Fantasy seems to confirm that he's getting off on the destruction he causes.
• The scene after the three-team battle in the fields of Narshe provide a bit of Nightmare Fuel. Right after the fight, your team goes to examine the esper they just saved. However, everyone aside from Terra is blown away by the esper's power, all of them either knocked out or hanging off the edge of a cliff. Then a faux battle starts, complete with creepy music, and Terra transforms into another being entirely. Battle ends, Terra spins around a bit, and then unleashes a BLOODCURDLING scream and flies away.
• Some of the enemy sprites in this game are pretty nasty. Humpties are pretty grotesque, looking like round, wrinkly, naked humanoid shapes, and they also use Hugs/Their own odors as a special move, which is so disgusting it confuses whoever they try it on. Brainpans could easily be images from a drug-induced nightmare, honestly being smiling flying zombie Buddha heads, and Crullers resemble twisting intestines covered in discolored tumors.
• The World of Ruin. The music, with that bone-scrapingly discordant pipe organ. Discovering Narshe has become a ghost town. Its inhabitants decimated except for that one old man, the mines left abandoned and filled with monsters, and that CREEPY ASS MUSIC driving it all home.
• The squirrel-like monsters on the first island of the World of Ruin. The way they just... die without being hit. It really hammers home the fact that this world itself is dying.
• The very cutscene at the end of the Floating Continent, that destroys most of the world. An entire continent is split in half by massive, city-sized explosions and people fall in to the created chasms to their deaths. The intro to the World of Ruin just adds more despondent salt in the wounds.
• The fate that very almost befell Figaro Castle. The castle was stuck underground when the Tentacleas gummed up the engines and kept the castle from moving or surfacing. Everyone inside nearly suffocated when they started to run out of breathable air under there.
• The Light Is Not Good of Judgement. Kefka uses it in the World of Ruin to destroy any town or any person that opposes him (or even just For the Evulz), destroying them instantly, and he can direct it towards any part of the world.
• FFVI is full of creepy bosses. One of them is Chadarnook. It is a painting of a sexy woman[1] that transforms into a freaking demon, [2].
• Also, thanks to certain "liberties" with translating the script, what Kefka tells the Esper reinforcements when they arrive in Thamasa in the SNES / PSX version absolutely reeks of Nightmare Fuel. He says "I'd say you're all charged up, boys and girls... or whatever... Say, remind me to show you my magicite collection.! You might find a few familiar faces!!!", the implications being that, after killing the Espers, he's showing them other Espers that he killed that they knew personally, which would be a terrifying thought to imagine.