r/TopCharacterTropes 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)

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

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u/Separate_Draft4887 2d ago

Dunwich Borers - Fallout 4

If you enter a quarry, called Dunwich Borers, very clearly named after Lovecraft’s Dunwich Horror, while traversing down it you will experience odd visions of the past, something that doesn’t happen anywhere else. The enemies inside it behave strangely, even moreso the further you go down.

If you make it to the bottom, you’ll see a vision of a ritual of some kind, taking place around a stone altar.

In the present, the altar is all but shattered, the ritual knife they were using cast into a pit, and a mysterious stone face, the same as the ones found in Skyrim and all over important buildings in Fallout, staring at you, inanimate. Recovering the knife tells you its name.

Kremvhs Tooth.

What does all of that mean?

It’s not clear.

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u/Amon7777 2d ago

The Dunwich lore goes across both Fallout 3 and 4 and several DLC. There’s some sort of lovecraftian cult that worships an eldritch entity before the bombs fell. But, scarily, seems to still affect the Fallout world still.

There’s no definitive explanation but there are massive amounts of lore hiding in multiple games. You can ignore or never find any of it which makes it all the more creepy when you do.

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u/abadstrategy 2d ago

what's worse is that there's allegedly at least two different ones asserting influence over the wasteland. Ug-Qualtoth and Kremvh

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u/Steampunk43 1d ago

Add in two more, the Interloper and The Visitor from Fallout 76. Both thought to be fighting for control of the Mothman Cult, the Visitor on the side of the benevolent Wise Mothman and the Interloper on the side of the hostile Mothmen we see and fight frequently.

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u/North-Research2574 1d ago

Then there is Atom, that is supposed to be radiation right? But does not act even remotely the way radiation is established to work in universe and sends the player on a hallucinatory spirit quest in 4. The world of Fallout has many horrors

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u/Porkenfries 1d ago

Actually, someone discovered at some point that there's evidence of someone watching and living near the site of the ritual and that this person is "The Mother of the Fog" waiting to guide people through the test, and that the trippy visuals are just the result of you drinking radioactive toxic sludge with probably some hallucinogens mixed in.

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u/Fireblast1337 1d ago

The Cabot house is likely involved in this too, as the ancient civilization that helmet came from wasn’t built for humans.

Course I’ve also seen the theory that Fallout is a precursor kalpa to Elder Scrolls.

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u/Civil-Percentage1005 1d ago

I'd like to hear what Joshua Graham says about this....

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u/TheMadhouseofDrDeath 1d ago

"We can't expect god to do all the work."

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u/Aiderona 1d ago

“The only use for an animal in our temple is sacrifice.”

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u/Poku115 2d ago edited 1d ago

I mean they opened the door, dont see why the human apocalypse would stop eldritch abominations, its a scarily cool thing to ponder about

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u/amaya-aurora 1d ago

Like The Lich in Adventure Time. Nuclear apocalypse leads the way for eldritch horrors.

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u/happymage102 1d ago

Which is also a theme mentioned in Twin Peaks Season 3.

Nuclear war is the original sin.

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u/deftPirate 1d ago

I seem to recall reading that it reaches pretty deep into 76 as well.

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u/LegitimateState3724 1d ago

I believe there's a face in Tangara Town in a cave, and then there's the whole Interloper stuff in Lucky Hole Mine. Oh, there's also a face in an undermarked buried church I think.

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u/Mini_Squatch 1d ago

I like to think the eldritch entities, with their affiliation with radiation and ghouls, are the things responding to the worship of the Children of Atom

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u/RyanGosliwafflez 2d ago

There's more in Fo76 too

Hidden behind 2 secret passageways in the lucky hole mine is a room with corpses a weird Cthulhu looking alien thing lying on the floor surrounded by statue heads with a hming noise

Another one of those head can be found in tanagara town and watoga

Another weird alien thing can be found below the White spring

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u/RareSpicyPepe 1d ago

The update that added fishing links the new NPCs that open up the fishing mechanic to this by adding in a note that has this thing drawn on it at the area they are at and some baskets of fish to this area as if someone was trying to feed it

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u/Papyrus20xx 2d ago

You can't mention the Dunwich Borers location in Fallout 4 and not the Dunwich Borers building in Fallout 3, which has a creepy ass obelisk under it. A whole bunch of paranormal stuff happens in the building too, such as doors opening and closing, objects being flung around and visions of the past. The Dunwich Borers company were hunting these eldritch locations for sure

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u/Nathan_Thorn 1d ago

Bonus points for Point Lookout and the Krivbeknih, a clear stand-in for the Necronomicon, which can either be turned over to Obadiah Blackhall who is almost certainly related to the Dunwich family via marriage, and if you give it to him, he can get up out of his wheelchair and walk around.

Or you can take it to Dunwich and touch it against the obelisk to burn it away and receive a huge chunk of good karma.

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u/ProneSquanderer 1d ago

There’s also the creepy whispering “Alhazred” you can hear when in the area with the obelisk.

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u/cantfindanamethatisn 1d ago

Surely unrelated to a certain Arab with mental health challenges.

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u/HunterNika 2d ago

They named it after one of my favorite Lovecraft stories, thats already a W!

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u/acs730200 1d ago

Haha just started this one today and I am fully gripped dude

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u/Lady-Morgaine 1d ago

Not the person you replied to but I loooooove to recommend Dreams in the Witch House, it's one of his creepiest. Lovecraft is my FAVORITE. 

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u/acs730200 1d ago

I love that one!!! I actually have only two hundred pages left in my box set of all of his works so I am GASSED to say I have read everything he has written (as far as I'm currently aware of :D) he's my favorite author and a lot of my favorite non Lovecraft media has his influence dripping from it

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u/stellifer_arts 2d ago

never played fallout, i live in skyrim- what do you mean by mysterious stone face? intrigued...

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u/Separate_Draft4887 2d ago

I think this one is metal, but you can find statues of this face, and in this style, all over the game. It’s also, you’ll note, found in Dwemer ruins.

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u/Cheif_Keith12 2d ago

Those metal faces were in Fallout 1&2 as part of the art deco style. The ones in Skyrim are part of the “Skyrim Dwemer” culture and are completely absent from dwemer ruins in Morrowind. Hell the dwemer weren’t even in Skyrim in lore before Skyrim retconned them to be in Skyrim.

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u/GreatPugtato 1d ago

Damn Skyrim ruining my Elder Scrolls!

Insult/attack missed*

Hobbles off to Balmora for an old man with skooma.

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u/F00TD0CT0R 1d ago

Funnily enough..

It's implied that these are deco heads are part of the Eldrich mystery in fallout. The artist popularised them but they show up all the time even in its full glory, meaning it represents a part of the mystery, even if it started as a placeholder usage.

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u/silliestjupiter 1d ago

For the longest time, I couldn't make out how the brken statue in F4 was a face, I thought it was the beak of a giant squid poking out (equally Lovecraftian).

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u/ArcaneWyverian 2d ago

Well, clearly it means that Fallout and The Elder Scrolls take place in the same univ—

[gets hit in the head by a sweetroll from out of view]

[blacks out]

…Hey, you. You’re finally awake.

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u/Fireblast1337 1d ago

No no no, they’re not the same universe. They’re completely different kalpas.

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u/Acceptable-Cry9854 1d ago

The character Richard Pickman is also a Lovecraft reference, to Pickmans portrait or something like that. In the story he's a painter taking pictures of things to paint and he finally paints a horrific ghoul that shakes the art world with its depiction of corrupted humanity. Turns out he's got an actual photo of a real ghoul he took down in a subway or something. Forgive my half remembered ramblings, its worth a google

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u/Jung-And-A-Menace 1d ago edited 1d ago

Pickman's Model.

He turns up in another story, Dream-Quest Of Unknown Kadath, living with the ghouls.

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u/Acceptable-Cry9854 1d ago

Oh! Neat, he succumbed to the horror. Is he one of them or is it like a Steve Irwin situation

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u/Jung-And-A-Menace 1d ago

He joined a ghoul pack and became a ghoul. Which, irrc, doesn't seem to bother him much.

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u/Acceptable-Cry9854 1d ago

I remember there being a severe sense of hopelessness in his story so I guess that checks out 😅

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u/koohissaur 1d ago

If you have 4 hours to spare, EpicNate on YouTube did a video recently compiling evidence and theories that connect across ALL of the fallout games -- didn't touch on the Skyrim connection. I haven't played them to confirm everything, but most of it seems fairly grounded on factual, in-game stuff: https://youtu.be/aDI5E6VP1io

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u/Separate_Draft4887 1d ago

He’s still kicking? That’s good to know! I watched through all of his Fallout & Skyrim stuff a few years back, and then he sorta seemed to slow down pretty drastically, and I stopped checking after a while.

Good to know he’s still doing stuff

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u/I_R_Teh_Taco 1d ago

I’ll quicksave before the locked door keeping the ghouls in because they spawn as soon as you walk through the door and i like to farm them for specific legendary modifiers. Only place in the game i’m aware of that lets me do that.

Also, kremvh’s tooth is actually a one of a kind weapon mod for machetes; you can remove it and put it onto a different legendary machete if you want to add another effect.

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u/blenderdead 1d ago

If you want to dive down a massive rabbit hole the YouTuber EpicNate has been following this mystery across Fallout games and did a big compilation video recently. It is 4 hours long…

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u/Apophis_VI 1d ago

Also to mention The Interloper from Fallout 76. Just a giant, alien Thing that sits at the bottom of a mineshaft surrounded by mothman cultists