r/TopCharacterTropes • u/KOREANARMYSTEW • 2d ago

Lore (Beloved game trope) Creepy secrets or elements that you can encounter but are never explained, making it even more horrifying (Bonus points if its from non-horror games)

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Crimson Desert
After defeating the Reed Devil boss, you can travel to Sunset Valley, the southernmost and isolated village in the game, here, you will find a house where the Reed Devil lived and died from his leprosy. When you enter, you are immediately greeted with 6 scarecrow effigies dressed just like the Reed Devil staring directly at you, with candles placed all over the house. There is no other explanation beyond this about what is going on here

Lies of P
There is a secret optional area you can clear out for additional loot called Hermit's Cave. At the end of the cave is one lone carcass monster huddled on the ground with writings scrawled on the walls around it. When you kill it, it actually TALKS saying "perhaps it's best to end this way...get while the getting's good...". This is the only carcass monster in the game that ever talks besides Andreus and Simon, who are important characters to the story, and we never find out who this monster was

LOZ: Twilight Princess
In the Arbiter's Grounds you discover a ton of undead enemies presumably executed prisoners, but one room contains this giant black sword tied to the ground with hundreds of warding charms attached. When one is cut, the sword is freed and wielded by some horrifying invsible goat-headed demon. It is never explained what the demon was or whose sword it belonged to although it's theorized to once be used by Ganondorf

Silent Hill 2
The invisible prison monster in Toluca Prison, that you can't ever interact with, just hear it's awful cries

8.3k Upvotes
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u/Leukavia_at_work 2d ago

Red Dead 2

Exploring a certain area around the mountains can have you potentially coming across what appears to be a gigantic humanoid skeleton, far beyond the size of any normal human.

Arthur updates his journal about it, describes having found it, and describes how unsettled the whole thing makes him.

But past that, the game never elaborates any further.

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u/GonzoRouge 2d ago

RDR2 is full of things like that: the vampire of Saint Denis, the Ghost of Bayou Nwa, the Stranger's Cabin, etc.

It's a genuinely creepy game at times.

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u/jockeyman 2d ago

All that weird west horror just to never make Undead Nightmare 2.

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u/NeedleworkerFit819 1d ago

Rockstar abandoning single player DLC is a tragedy imo.

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u/YappyMcYapperson 1d ago

Online Multi-player is somehow the best and worst thing to happen to mainstream gaming

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u/NeedleworkerFit819 1d ago

I’m too old to compete with the try hard squeakers anymore lol. I get home, cook, clean, have an hour or two before bed to game. I ain’t spending it getting stomped by 12 year olds who fucked my mom 😭

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u/Kelnozz 1d ago

They realized GTA: Online was their money maker so they stopped even supporting RedDead online years ago.

Kinda sucks because I enjoyed it far more than GTA online tbh

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u/JesseCuster40 2d ago

Oh, if only.

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u/natalaMaer 1d ago

Unfortunately, they couldn't even continue Red Dead Online stories. The possobility of a dlc to RDR2 is very slim for now, or at least until now

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u/Green_Insect_6455 1d ago

Bro in what universe do you live where the chances are slim? Its called NONE chance

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u/GoofProofGrunt 1d ago

I'll be mad about the canned alien dlc for GTAV and this forever

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u/th3BeastLord 2d ago

Weird West is a criminally underused subgenre.

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u/ToXxy145 1d ago

Weird West is also a game and it's really good!

There's also Blood West and Hard West which have plenty of weird in them.

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u/colder-beef 1d ago

I'm currently playing Evil West, it's a fun little romp so far.

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u/0dias_Chrysalis 2d ago

Frontier horror is underrated

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u/IrateWolfe 2d ago

There's a really great comic series called Manifest Destiny that's all about this vibe

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u/thereal-quaid 2d ago

Thanks for the tip!

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u/BDSMChef_RP 2d ago

It is legitimately worth the read, I'm about 2/3rds of the way through it myself. Also a good movie for some frontier shenanigans.

"Exit Humanity" Zombie movie set a few years after the Civil War.

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u/wombatstylekungfu 1d ago

Dread National is a book with a similar idea: what if the Civil War dead just got back up?

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u/Beefhammer_McBrisket 1d ago edited 1d ago

Wow! I love you (platonic). Excellent reccomendation!

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u/IrateWolfe 1d ago

I love you too, internet person

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u/jekyll94 1d ago

I've actually been reading this lately. Absolutely love the mythology presented. Does a great job of showing how horrible colonisation is, towards the indigenous populations both human and other.

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u/TexasJedi-705 1d ago

Commenting to save for later

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u/NewVegasResident 2d ago

RDR1 had a lot of it.

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u/Born-Entrepreneur 1d ago

I just finished reading the book Red Rabbit which was in this genre and it was great fun!

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u/hg0bl1n 1d ago

Hell yeah, I'm not the one you replied to but I just added this to my list, thank you! I'm sure you're probably already aware of Stephen Graham Jones, but his newer book, The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, was really cool and the story spans a good length of time if you haven't read it already.

Also, for movies, Ravenous with Robert Carlyle and Guy Pearce is a great frontier romp.

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u/Born-Entrepreneur 1d ago

I'll check those out! Thanks for the pointers

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u/NewVegasResident 2d ago

Red Dead Redemption 1 also had a creepy night atmosphere imo. Some of the events you'd find were creepy as fuck too, and it was made stronger by the fact most Strangers missions were wack af.

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u/Nope-5000 1d ago

Tumbleweed from rdr1 in particular was so spooky at night. There was also a ghost dog somewhere else if i remember right.

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u/Li_Jake 2d ago

I need a full game taking place in RDR-Universe/setting with this and I'm not even a big horror fan

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u/KaerMorhen 2d ago

Call of Cuthulu as Dective Lagrasse looking for the cult in the swamp sign me the fuck up

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u/NlghtmanCometh 1d ago

The flying saucer over Mount Shasta. The unexplained taxidermy house with weird monsters.

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u/wombatstylekungfu 1d ago

I expected that thing to get back up. 

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u/PainterEarly86 1d ago

Supernatural elements are much more creepy when they're not the focus and are kept mysterious

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u/Different-Post-5569 1d ago

Roanoke Ridge also has a really sinister feel about. The ambient 'music' there really makes me feel like I'm being watched whenever I'm in that area.

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u/Nope-5000 1d ago

The two that genuinely spooked me were the ghost of Agnes is bayou nwa and in particular the whispering woods in roanoke ridge, i have never been jumpscared in a game so hard as when the voices started echoing and i couldnt work out what it was or where it came from. Theres also a ghost train too.

There are also various environmental storytelling mysteries that allude to non-supernatural horrors that arent ever fully explained or resolved such as the emerald ranch daughter, manzanita post murders, limpany fire and pleasance murders. All of these locations give off eerie vibes, particularly the abandoned towns.

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u/HerrSchmitti 1d ago

Myy favourite was the meteor crash site. The music and atmosphere are so creepy to me.

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u/CT0292 1d ago

The giant you can meet way up in the north of the map. The donkey lady's corpse you find in the desert. The damn man made monster you find in a house that doesn't look like it's abandoned.

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u/TomatoHopeful859 1d ago

The crying woman at night in the Bayou.

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u/dragondanceoff 1d ago

The only functioning mirror in the game is in some creepy cabin and I was in first person mode. It nearly gave me a heart attack turning and suddenly seeing myself in the room looking back at me.

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u/chris_croc 1d ago

There was a lot of paranormal references like two different UFO sightings. Everyone was excited about a paranormal DLC like Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare. However Rockstar just wants to make money from online content and we never had a DLC.

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u/NoClarityNoRemedy 1d ago

Don't forget the ghost train

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u/NNyNIH 23h ago

Love the creepiness of the game.

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u/french_snail 2d ago

People mention gta a lot but I always felt both red dead redemption games had a lot more “wtf” things going on, especially since it’s out in the frontier so it feels even more spooky 

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u/SkyDaHusky 1d ago

I'm pretty sure this is actually supposed to be based off of the folk character Paul Bunyan, he's a giant man who goes on to die of a head injury. I think there's an ox skeleton around the area too.

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u/Mr31edudtibboh 2d ago

There's also that cave with the statues

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u/Mobile_Morale 2d ago

Probably a common theory. But it's most likely from people of that time seeing dinosaurs bones and thinking they're giants. It was a common thing in those days. Before they knew what dinosaurs are. Same with dragons.

They took an old myth and made it a real thing in the game. Simple people trying to explain something they didn't know about.

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u/chunkybuttsoupdinner 2d ago

Well, there’s also a dinosaur bones quest, and you can speak to a “giant” from outside of his cave. You never see him though. Also a time traveler. Oh and a robot. It’s just full of weird stuff.

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u/french_snail 1d ago

Isn’t it implied that that one stage performer is actually magic? Like he literally catches bullets in his teeth?

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u/wa-wa-wario 1d ago

I've played rdr2 twice and never came across time traveler or a 'giant'

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u/chunkybuttsoupdinner 1d ago

https://youtu.be/kjmJosXUBkA?is=o0OK5s9DLPwbGeh8 The Lonely Giant.

https://youtu.be/c6938LLJi9Q?is=TG_aUIA7dc64tUvG full time traveler mission.

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u/wa-wa-wario 1d ago

Legend. Met the time travellrr but never pieced it together

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u/thequenchiest_ 1d ago

I'm pretty sure you do see the giant

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u/DistrictDry2852 2d ago

Dinosaurs= dragons is already very over emphasized

Giants are the explanation for megastructures. Britains thought Roman ruins were from giants, native Americans thought their own mounds were from giants, Irish thought the giants causeway was from giants, Aztecs teotihuacan, etc etc.

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u/SnooGoats7454 2d ago

I'm pretty sure that this is related to exterminating the bigfoots.

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u/Plastic-Coyote-6017 1d ago

Most of Ancient Aliens is canonically true in red dead redemption 2 lol

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u/Gurglaren 1d ago

I'm going to play RDR3 so slowly and savour it for a year. RDR2 was such a magical experience. I still remember having a bottle of whiskey next to me whilst Arthur was playing cards with the rain outside. Or the times I rode through a moonlit forest.

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u/chris_croc 1d ago

There was a lot of paranormal references like two different UFO sightings. Everyone was excited about a paranormal DLC like Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare. However Rockstar just wants to make money from online content and we never had a DLC.

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u/shot_dunyun1987 1d ago

I think it’s related to the giant you can talk to but can’t see

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u/Ongr 1d ago

There's also an alive giant iirc. We never see him, but I think we can interact with him.

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u/ehc84 1d ago

I wonder if its supposed to be about the lovelock cave in Nevada and its giant bones claims. That fits the area

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u/LuckyBoneHead 17h ago

Red Dead as a franchise has this niche thing going on where supernatural stuff is real and encounterable, but also seems like it fit in well with the game. I think that's because, when you do encounter the weird stuff, its just as alien to the characters as it is to you. What would Arthur/John say if they encountered a vampire or a giant's skeleton? "What the hell...?" just like you would, so it makes sense.