It’s no secret that most video games are chock-full of Easter eggs and little secrets. They’re usually pretty light-hearted, and don’t alter the experience too much.
Some developers, however, seem to have a dark side that they channeled into the secrets they put in their games. Some of these are so grim, you have to wonder if they’re Easter eggs because of how dark they get.
Check out the list and see how many of the darkest video game secrets you already know about!
The 10 Darkest Secrets In Video Games
1. Ocarina of Time – Dying Man
In Ocarina of Time, there’s a precise moment where you can find a dark easter egg. After obtaining the Ocarina of Time but before entering the Temple of Time, go to a back alley in Market Town to find a wounded guard, who will beg you to save Zelda. He then dies in front of you.
2. World of Warcraft – Upside Down Sinners
In World of Warcraft, there’s a mausoleum outside Karazhan with a gated entrance no player can enter. But if you had the opportunity to glitch through it, you could find a surprisingly expansive area filled with bodies hung by their necks. Dozens of them. To the fandom, it became known as “The Upside Down Sinners.”
3. Bloodborne – NPC Cannibal
In Bloodborne, there’s a central “hub” area that you can send NPCs to for their well-being on the night of the hunt. Eventually in the game you come across an area called Forbidden Woods, and find a man in a lighthouse standing over the corpses of a mother, father and child, making movements like he’s eating them. If you send him to the hub with the rest of the NPCs, he stays outside, separate from the rest. Slowly all the NPC’s in the hub will vanish and blood marks appear where they used to stand.
4. Fallout 4
In one area in Fallout 4, there is a building with a ramp on one side and another on the building across the street. Below in the street is a pile of bodies that tried to jump across and didn’t make it.
5. BioShock 2 – Big Daddy
In BioShock 2 you can find several audio tapes from a guy whose daughter was kidnapped and taken to rapture. You find out that he followed his daughter to the underwater city only to find out she became a little sister. In the final audio diary you find out that he made a deal to become a Big Daddy to be with his daughter. You find this final diary… on the body of a Big Daddy you just killed.
6. Neverwinter Nights: Shadows of Undrentide – Sacrificed Baby
In Neverwinter Nights: Shadows of Undrentide there’s a baby you can steal from some woman, you have to keep it in your inventory for the whole game and then import the character into the next expansion, Hordes of the Underdark.
After playing for quite a while, you find some device that accepts various offerings, if you put the baby inside you get an item that summons a pretty strong goblin once a day.
7. Psychonauts – Milla’s Secret Room
Psychonauts takes place at a summer camp for kids with special mental abilities, and also within characters’ minds. One of the camp counselors exudes warmth and levity, and her mind is a big dance party!…except for the room you’re not supposed to find, where you hear the screams of kids who died in a fire while Milla watches helplessly.
8. Majora’s Mask – Swordmaster Secret
In Majora’s Mask, during the final countdown to the destruction of Termina, you can enter the swordmaster’s dojo, cut the tapestry apart in the back, and find a secret room where the master is cowering and begging to not die.
9. Super Mario 64 – Baby Penguin
In Super Mario 64 you can throw a baby penguin off a ledge in front of the mother.
10. Undertale – Gaster
In Undertale, every time you start a new game, there is a very slim, random chance that the game will flag despondent, monochrome NPCs who will stand in odd locations throughout the game to appear. They speak very cryptically about “the man who speaks in hands,” and you may receive random phone calls from a strange voice which tells you “it’s rude to talk about someone who’s listening.” All the fandom has been able to piece together is that this may or may not tie into an unused sprite in the game’s files titled “Gaster.” Most speculate that Gaster was once an individual in the game’s story who, in a tragic science experiment, was wiped so completely out of existence, that all that remains of him are scattered fragments in the game’s files. Undertale’s love of breaking the fourth wall and directly messing with your computer fuels this theory. Outside of the very rare random NPCs that have a chance to appear in your playthrough, there’s no direct mention of this hidden plotline.
Due to Gaster’s wide, pupiless black eyes and round, white face, most speculate that he is related to the fan favorite skeletons, Sans and Papyrus. In Sans’ house, you can find a photograph with the description “you see many people you don’t recognize.” There’s no concrete explanation for this, and due to Sans’ seeming knowledge of the many split timelines going on in the game’s plot, a lot of people think that it’s a photo of Gaster. The sprite is blobby and squat, also leading some to think that Gaster is fueled by Determination, much like Undyne, who melts into goo should you choose to kill her.
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