The 6 Most Unintentionally Horrifying Moments In Kids' Games

The answer is: all of the dark. In one scene, our hero is sent on a mystical acid trip straight to the 10th circle of hell. Things start out pretty tame, with Link floating calmly through an endless black void.

Next, we see Link hanging out with his childhood friend, Ilia. Both of them are happy and laughing ... until she turns around and waves a blade at Link like she gonna cut him up real bad. Also, she seems to have misplaced her pupils.

Ilia screams and drops the knife, and next thing you know Link is alone and he's the one with all-white eyes. What in David Lynch's therapist's name happened there? We don't have time to consider the disturbing implications, because this is when three dark-skinned, red-eyed Link doppelgangers show up and turn you into dust.

But wait, now Link is one of the doppelgangers, and he's laughing again (albeit slightly more evil-y this time). His good spirits don't last long, though, as the scene progresses and he ends up screaming at the camera.

But, really, it's when countless upside-down, maniacally giggling Ilias begin raining from a darkened sky that we truly begin to suspect we're not getting any sleep tonight.

And, again, it's not like this game is devoid of lighthearted moments, like when a kindly Yeti lady takes Link in as he travels to a snowy mountain mansion, and- OH FUUUUCK

Clanker is an enormous mechanical whale monster that finds himself eternally stranded in the middle of the murk, for the sole purpose of serving as a garbage grinder for the game's antagonist. Despite the "mechanical" part of the previous sentence, Clanker is absolutely covered in massive, bloody, fleshy scars. This suggests that 1) he might be a cyborg and 2) he's into some kinky Fifty Shades shit.

Eventually, you end up traveling inside Clanker by shooting out one of his rotting old teeth with your projectile eggs, which is just the saddest video game puzzle we've ever heard. That's when you see his gross insides -- and, surprise, surprise, his belly is covered in red, gooey guts.

So, either Clanker is the product of some horrible experiment, or he's murdered so many people that his mechanical stomach is literally lined with their flesh. Come to think of it, the discarded hoops might confirm it's the latter. Yeeesh, just when you thought it was safe to go into the horribly polluted water with the giant, bloodied, metal dino-whale thing ...

Kirby's Dream Land 3 for the Super Nintendo upped the cuteness-factor even further by adding a bunch of cuddly-wuddly animal friend companions and a soft, pastel-colored art style that sorta makes the whole game look like a third-grader's art project. That is, until you reach the last level, which is when everything we just said is inexplicably replaced by a 16-bit re-creation of the eyeball-cutting scene from Un Chien Andalou.

The final boss is a giant floating eyeball called Zero who fires red beams from his cornea. Huh, it almost looks like those are blood droplets ...

And then you find out that, yep, that's totally his blood he's showering you with -- the more you smack him around, the more gushes out.

It gets worse. Most final bosses simply fade away when you defeat them or go down in a series of unjustified micro-explosions ... but that wasn't childhood-killing enough for this game. Instead, the red-pupil violently rips forth from a rapidly bleeding gash and begins attacking Kirby one last time, while the rest of the eye falls off-screen.

Squids in Mario games are usually erratically moving, profanity-inducing, hyperactive creatures shaped like Mickey Mouse gloves. Super Mario Sunshine, from 2002, however, injected a dose of grittiness to the Mario universe by introducing Gooper Blooper, a squid boss with more realistic proportions who wriggles in impotent agony as he bakes in the hot summer sun. As always, Mario's gotta clean shit up.

To beat Gooper Blooper, you need to pull out the cork that's stuck in his mouth and send him jetting away on a plume of ink, because science. The problem is, when you try to get close to his face, he whips at you with his tentacles. What's a frustrated plumber to do?

The answer, of course, is dismember the squid, slowly and with a disturbing and unnecessary amount of realism. It's the only way.

You have to jump on his tentacles one by one to stun them, then tug at each one for a couple of seconds until it finally snaps and flails around noisily in Mario's hands, as if the poor creature's severed nerve endings were misfiring. Once all of his tentacles are torn off, you're free to approach his face and struggle to pull out the cork, which takes another few seconds of tugging and yanking while the now-defenseless animal visibly suffers. Cartoon teardrops gush from its tightly shut eyes as Nintendo's beloved kid-friendly mascot basically tries to pull its face off.

To make matters worse, this boss reappears two more times in the game, and the only way to dispose of him is exactly the same each time, lending further credence to the well-supported theory that anyone who enjoys Super Mario Sunshine is an awful, awful person.

And speaking of Mario ...

If you looked at the cover for the Nintendo Wii game Super Paper Mario, you'd be forgiven for thinking it's Baby's First Mario Game.

In reality, it's part of the Paper Mario RPG series, which means it's full of RPG staples, like HP points, stats, and unbridled insanity. The plot revolves around an evil magical being named Count Bleck forcing Bowser and Princess Peach to get married, which somehow summons a powerful artifact called the Chaos Heart. He uses the Heart to open up a big, black void in the sky that's gonna ruthlessly suck up everything and everyone in its path, bringing about the destruction of the entire (Super Mario) world.

But that's not the creepy part yet. Bleck, being the wonderfully stock video game villain that he is, has a trio of sinister minions at his disposal: a Scottish warrior called O'Chunks, a dimension-traveling being called Dimentio ... and Mimi, a little girl with two ponytails.

Awww, ain't she cute? Yep, until Mario finally confronts her, at which point she gets super pissed off and announces that she's revealing her true form. First, she very audibly snaps her neck, then spins her head around Exorcist-style.

If you haven't already dropped the Wiimote and ran screaming from the room, you get to witness as long, spindly legs sprout out of her neck cavity and she assumes the shape of a huge-ass spider. What was once her little girl flesh is now deformed beyond recognition.

While in monster form, the bulk of her dialogue is just "mimimimimimimimimimi," which is further evidence that Nintendo writers secretly want to write H.P. Lovecraft fan fiction. Eventually, Mario and friends deal with Spider-Mimi the same way they deal with all of life's problems: by jumping on them until they fucking die.

The Mother (or EarthBound) games are best known in America for 1) putting a kid with a baseball cap and a yo-yo in Super Smash Bros. and 2) being written about a lot on Cracked.com. For a series with the simple, straightforward premise of "psychic children fighting inanimate objects and hippies," these games seem to be packed with creepiness. However, nothing in the franchise is creepier than this:

Pokey/Porky Minch is a chubby, obnoxious, cowardly kid who at first appears to be nothing more than comic relief. By the end of the second game, though, the little shit ends up joining forces with the greatest evil in the known universe and fighting the heroes from a spider-mech suit thing. He's like the Nintendo version of Eric Cartman, if Cartman wanted to destroy all of existence instead of just the Jews.

Once you defeat the last boss, Pokey uses time travel to escape to another era ... but we find out in Mother 3 that he's still alive after 10,000 years. Turns out the effects of time travel have made him immortal and unkillable, but not any less of a genocidal jerk -- he wants to murder everyone who dislikes him, which is to say everyone.

But then, when Pokey sees he is to be defeated, he calls upon something called the "Absolutely Safe Capsule" and climbs into it for protection. The capsule seals Pokey inside, and its inventor reveals that it can never be opened by anyone ... including the person inside of it. So while Pokey is indeed "absolutely safe," he's trapped in a Transformer's gonad forever. And we mean forever.

Shigesato Itoi, Mother 3's creator, has confirmed that when the world ends in 5.5 billion years, Pokey will still be in there, suffering from the worst case of butt cramps known to man. Itoi also says he won't do more Mother games, probably because they'd just be Pokey sitting perfectly still for 10 hours.

Mike is obsessed with scary stuff in video games. If you'd like to read more spooky stories, why not check out his personal creepy gamer stuff blog.

We're pretty sure people who made things for kids secretly hate their audience. How else do explain the stuff in 9 Traumatizing Moments From Classic Kids Movies and The 7 Most Unintentionally Nightmarish Children's Characters.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel, and check out The Dark Truth Behind the Most Famous Cartoon Company Ever, and watch other videos you won't see on the site!

Also, follow us on Facebook. Or, you know, don't. We aren't the boss of you.