...it's like TV Tropes, but LINKED DATA!
Word-Salad Horror
- 333 statements
- 63 feature instances
- 44 referencing feature instances
| Word-Salad Horror | type |
FeatureClass | |
| Word-Salad Horror | label |
Word-Salad Horror | |
| Word-Salad Horror | page |
WordSaladHorror | |
| Word-Salad Horror | comment |
The pillow... The pillow is describing the topic. Hurry! This is what happens when bizarre phrases, Non Sequiturs, and random successions of words are used and arranged either to be frightening on their own or to imply that something sinister is going on behind the scenes. The Word Salad might result from some supernatural alteration of local reality, a Nightmare Sequence, a drug-induced hallucination, an Eldritch Abomination oblivious to the fact that this is not how those Puny Earthlings actually talk, and many other myriad causes. Sub-Trope of Surreal Horror. Characters who spout this are often Laughing Mad too, to deepen their sense of insanity and instability. The opposite of Word-Salad Humor (well, usually). Compare and contrast Cryptic Conversation, with which this trope frequently overlaps. |
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| Word-Salad Horror | fetched |
2024-04-08T03:32:19Z | |
| Word-Salad Horror | parsed |
2024-04-08T03:32:19Z | |
| Word-Salad Horror | processingComment |
Dropped link to ApocalypticLog: Not an Item - FEATURE | |
| Word-Salad Horror | processingComment |
Dropped link to EldritchLocation: Not an Item - FEATURE | |
| Word-Salad Horror | processingComment |
Dropped link to GodspeedYouBlackEmperor: Not an Item - IGNORE | |
| Word-Salad Horror | processingComment |
Dropped link to NonSequiturThud: Not an Item - FEATURE | |
| Word-Salad Horror | processingComment |
Dropped link to Radiohead: Not an Item - IGNORE | |
| Word-Salad Horror | processingComment |
Dropped link to TearJerker: Not an Item - FEATURE | |
| Word-Salad Horror | processingComment |
Dropped link to TheMarsVolta: Not an Item - IGNORE | |
| Word-Salad Horror | processingComment |
Dropped link to TheSociopath: Not an Item - FEATURE | |
| Word-Salad Horror | processingComment |
Dropped link to ThirteenIsUnlucky: Not an Item - FEATURE | |
| Word-Salad Horror | processingComment |
Dropped link to TomWaits: Not an Item - IGNORE | |
| Word-Salad Horror | processingComment |
Dropped link to WordSaladHumor: Not an Item - FEATURE | |
| Word-Salad Horror | isPartOf |
DBTropes | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_1133352a | type |
Word-Salad Horror | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_1133352a | comment |
During a Facebook AI experiment designed to get two chatbots to negotiate with each other, the researchers forgot to incentivize speaking coherent language, resulting in the chatbots evolving an efficiency-oriented patois that made absolutely no sense to humans ("I can can I I everything else", "Balls have zero to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to"). Given the existence of the Terminator franchise and the prevalence of the A.I. Is a Crapshoot trope, every layperson who learned about this found the idea of chatbots creating their own language, English-based or otherwise, incredibly creepy. So creepy, in fact, that when Facebook reset the bots on the basis that chatbots at the bare minimum need to speak a language we squishies can easily decipher, Snopes had to debunk claims that the researchers, fearing they'd created our robot overlords, had freaked out and aborted the experiment. | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_1133352a | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_1133352a | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
| Terminator (Franchise) | hasFeature |
Word-Salad Horror / int_1133352a | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_14a837ea | type |
Word-Salad Horror | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_14a837ea | comment |
Awful Hospital makes use of this sometimes. It's usually more partial to Word-Salad Humor, but it's occasionally used for horror instead. For example, when a door tries to take over Fern's mind: | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_14a837ea | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_14a837ea | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
| Awful Hospital (Webcomic) | hasFeature |
Word-Salad Horror / int_14a837ea | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_24a0eb84 | type |
Word-Salad Horror | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_24a0eb84 | comment |
The Shining: As Jack digs into the Overlook Hotel's history, he finds several disturbing artifacts in the attic, including a poem scribbled on the back of an old menu: "Medoc/ Are you here?/ I've been sleepwalking again my dear/ The plants are moving under the rug." | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_24a0eb84 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_24a0eb84 | featureConfidence |
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| The Shining | hasFeature |
Word-Salad Horror / int_24a0eb84 | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_26674ed5 | type |
Word-Salad Horror | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_26674ed5 | comment |
Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty features this as part of its memorable ending, with the Colonel suddenly spouting off bizarre nonsense over the codec to Raiden. This is the first indication that it's a fake AI Colonel. | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_26674ed5 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_26674ed5 | featureConfidence |
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| Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty (Video Game) | hasFeature |
Word-Salad Horror / int_26674ed5 | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_291dc90e | type |
Word-Salad Horror | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_291dc90e | comment |
Octopath Traveler II: The hidden village of Lostseed is populated by various "vessels" who all act off in different ways. The Inquire/Scrutinize/Bribe/Coerce data for the Ruined Vessel is a cavalcade of nonsensical rambling that forms a meaningful acronym if you take note of all of the randomly capitalized letters. | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_291dc90e | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_291dc90e | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
| Octopath Traveler II (Video Game) | hasFeature |
Word-Salad Horror / int_291dc90e | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_2af72b92 | type |
Word-Salad Horror | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_2af72b92 | comment |
Played with at the end of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. We, the audience, know exactly what Francis' deranged shouting means, but to everyone else, it comes across as this. | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_2af72b92 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_2af72b92 | featureConfidence |
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| The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari | hasFeature |
Word-Salad Horror / int_2af72b92 | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_2df8bc8d | type |
Word-Salad Horror | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_2df8bc8d | comment |
Lacey Games is full of these, usually from Lacey's perspective. Some of them being unreadable, leading to fan attempts on deciphering the texts. Such as this post. | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_2df8bc8d | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_2df8bc8d | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
| Lacey Games (Web Animation) | hasFeature |
Word-Salad Horror / int_2df8bc8d | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_31313512 | type |
Word-Salad Horror | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_31313512 | comment |
ANNO: Mutationem: Throughout The Consortium's facility, there are various staff members slumped over and spouting complete nonsensical sentences while cackling in madness without any clue to their surroundings as each of them were exposed to The Eroder that drove them to insanity. | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_31313512 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_31313512 | featureConfidence |
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| ANNO: Mutationem (Video Game) | hasFeature |
Word-Salad Horror / int_31313512 | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_34fd3cf6 | type |
Word-Salad Horror | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_34fd3cf6 | comment |
Aqua Teen Hunger Force: In "Hypno-Germ", Shake undergoes a hallucination where he sees inanimate objects coming to life and having conversations before tossing in commands for him to random stuff. Outside the hallucination, his body is motionless while being covered in junk. | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_34fd3cf6 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_34fd3cf6 | featureConfidence |
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| Aqua Teen Hunger Force | hasFeature |
Word-Salad Horror / int_34fd3cf6 | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_42ffb88e | type |
Word-Salad Horror | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_42ffb88e | comment |
SCP Foundation has several: SCP-1981 a.k.a. "RONALD REAGAN CUT UP WHILE TALKING" is a Betamax video tape showing Ronald Reagan's "Evil Empire" speech, only the speech and concurrent events are different with each viewing. Each iteration has in common Reagan talking about various events that happened after the real life speech, surreal sidetracks into disturbing, nonsensical subjects, ominous references to possible future events, Reagan being mutilated by invisible forces while casually continuing the speech, and a black-robed figure who replaces a random member of Reagan's cabinet each time. note Except for the time that it showed up by itself and stared at the camera for 20 minutes before "I SEE YOU" flashed on the screen. Since Reagan was still alive when the tape was discovered, somebody at the Foundation had the bright idea to show it to him. It caused him to suffer horrible nightmares for years even though the Foundation almost definitely wiped his memory of the event, and it's implied that the reason he developed Alzheimer's is because it was the only way he could actually forget what he saw. SCP-058 is some creature resembling a cow heart with limbs that constantly spouts off completely incomprehensible phrases even while going around killing humans. SCP-1782 is a rather anomalous room whose randomly manifested entities and disembodied voices say some very bizarre phrases, most prominent of which is "There's a hole in the wall in the bottom of the floor." This is because the cause of the anomaly is the still-living aborted fetus of a Reality Warper, and it's trying to help the Foundation discover its location, which is indeed in a small hole in the wall. SCP-2030: The Netflix description for the anomalous TV program Laugh is Fun reads like a foreign language which has been translated into English extremely poorly, resulting in this: SCP-2432 is an anomalous hotel room which causes anyone who sleeps in it to leave glowingly positive Word Salad Horror online reviews. Despite being creepy and nonsensical, the reviews manage to persuade people to visit the hotel. |
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| Word-Salad Horror / int_42ffb88e | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_42ffb88e | featureConfidence |
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| SCP Foundation (Website) | hasFeature |
Word-Salad Horror / int_42ffb88e | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_442d5e20 | type |
Word-Salad Horror | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_442d5e20 | comment |
In Alter A.I.L.A., Trauma drops a log entry after you defeat him in Orbital Prison Level 3 that reveals his thoughts during the time he got corrupted by Nightmare: | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_442d5e20 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_442d5e20 | featureConfidence |
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| Alter A.I.L.A. (Video Game) | hasFeature |
Word-Salad Horror / int_442d5e20 | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_49ebb569 | type |
Word-Salad Horror | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_49ebb569 | comment |
An episode of Code Lyoko: Evolution involves this happening to Odd due to XANA's interference and the only way to fix it is to slip away to Lyoko; the horror is downplayed since the characters know what is going and can fix it, but it's still uncomfortable for all involved and puts everyone on edge. Later subverted for laughs when Yumi runs into Ulrich and William outside the principal's office and remarks on the school's decision to give the kids orange juice to make them healthier and combat stress; the boys think XANA has scrambled her brain while she wants to know what the heck they're talking about. | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_49ebb569 | featureApplicability |
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| Word-Salad Horror / int_49ebb569 | featureConfidence |
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| Code Lyoko: Evolution | hasFeature |
Word-Salad Horror / int_49ebb569 | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_4ba244d1 | type |
Word-Salad Horror | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_4ba244d1 | comment |
Five Nights at Freddy's: The message left on the answering machine on night five is garbled speech. Even when decoded into English, the message is completely irrelevant to the game and is just there to be freaky; it's an excerpt from "Autobiography of a Yogi" by Paramhansa Yogananda, speaking about "marvelous mechanisms" used for farming. | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_4ba244d1 | featureApplicability |
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| Five Nights at Freddy's (Video Game) | hasFeature |
Word-Salad Horror / int_4ba244d1 | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_4ce969a9 | type |
Word-Salad Horror | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_4ce969a9 | comment |
One of the enemies in the Marathon series is the Simulacrum, a bio-android suicide bomber created by the Pfhor for sabotage purposes. Despite looking reasonably human (from a distance, anyway), they don't exactly think like a human would due to how their brains are wired, and thus have a tendency to shout pure gibberish while trying to blend in. If you ever hear a "crewmate" shout "Frog blast the vent core!" while running up to you, back up and shoot it before it gets too close. | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_4ce969a9 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_4ce969a9 | featureConfidence |
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Word-Salad Horror / int_4ce969a9 | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_510a425b | type |
Word-Salad Horror | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_510a425b | comment |
In The Man Who Was Thursday, Sunday begins sending seemingly inexplicable messages that terrify the members of the council: | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_510a425b | featureApplicability |
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| Word-Salad Horror / int_510a425b | featureConfidence |
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| The Man Who Was Thursday | hasFeature |
Word-Salad Horror / int_510a425b | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_537e7fe9 | type |
Word-Salad Horror | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_537e7fe9 | comment |
Around the middle of >OBSERVER_, Dan Lazarski ends up having occasional hallucinations and after-effects from observing some of the people in the apartment complex. In one of these, Dan can talk to an unseen person on a door intercom, but all of Dan's responses range from nonsensical phrases, like "I smell like Daffodils on a Corpse" or "Don't make me get the Enchanted Membrane", to random strings of characters. | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_537e7fe9 | featureApplicability |
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| Word-Salad Horror / int_546769dd | type |
Word-Salad Horror | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_546769dd | comment |
The Slender Man Mythos features this frequently, particularly when dealing with totheark. For instance, his name comes from the phrase "lead me to the ark" from his videos in the Marble Hornets series. No indication is given as to what "ark" is being referenced, nor why he wishes to be taken there. | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_546769dd | featureApplicability |
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Word-Salad Horror / int_546769dd | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_559fab69 | type |
Word-Salad Horror | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_559fab69 | comment |
"1408": Mike's recordings become this ("My brother was actually eaten by wolves one winter on the Connecticut Turnpike"), though it sometimes makes sense in context — he turns the recorder on to say "The door is crooked" but stops after "The door" because the door isn't crooked anymore, and then is crooked on the other side, and then on both at the same time. The room's "conversation" with Mike Enslin is made of random sentences and series of numbers that add up to 13. |
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Word-Salad Horror / int_559fab69 | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_56069dc5 | type |
Word-Salad Horror | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_56069dc5 | comment |
Celtic Frost does this often in their songs. It gets cranked up on Monotheist, which features such songs as "A Dying God Coming Into Human Flesh". | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_56069dc5 | featureApplicability |
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| Celtic Frost (Music) | hasFeature |
Word-Salad Horror / int_56069dc5 | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_562e8a6e | type |
Word-Salad Horror | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_562e8a6e | comment |
Max Payne: When Max is tripping on Valkyr in the first game (the prologue to part 3), he receives a "prank call" (in his dream), wherein the caller just spouts some creepy nonsense (a disturbing parody of Max's usual Private Eye Monologue) at him, until Max puts the phone back down. For extra creepiness, just a bit later, Max receives another call, wherein the caller tries to explain to him that he has been drugged. Max proceeds to call it nonsense in exactly the same words as before and put the phone down. The Twin Peaks-esque Show Within a Show "Address Unknown", whose episodes are scattered throughout the first and second games, is all about this with the flamingo character. An actual flamingo that speaks nonsense like "the flesh of fallen angels" and "she has dyed her hair red" with absolutely no context. Even worse is that some Valkyr junkies spout the exact same nonsense as it does... |
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| Word-Salad Horror / int_562e8a6e | featureApplicability |
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| Word-Salad Horror / int_562e8a6e | featureConfidence |
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| Max Payne (Video Game) | hasFeature |
Word-Salad Horror / int_562e8a6e | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_5908ee91 | type |
Word-Salad Horror | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_5908ee91 | comment |
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim: The Gilded from the Game Mod Clockwork by Anistar have lines that are nothing but word salad meant to evoke their madness. It can definitely come off rather unsettling when exploring the large labyrinth that is the Dwemer city of Nurndural to hear monotonous robotic voices saying things like "Love can last forever" or "I don't like these colours one bit" when they turn aggressive. Somewhat Narm-inducing given that the majority, if not all of their lines, are song lyrics taken out of context. | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_5908ee91 | featureApplicability |
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Word-Salad Horror / int_5908ee91 | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_5a3dae52 | type |
Word-Salad Horror | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_5a3dae52 | comment |
In one episode of Misfits, one Reality Warper character's LSD-induced hallucination, imagined while flipping channels between an animal cruelty documentary, golf tournament, and action movie, becomes real. The result: a giant rabbit in a suit that kills people with golf clubs. | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_5a3dae52 | featureApplicability |
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Word-Salad Horror | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_6afdd74f | comment |
Daily Equestria Life with Monster Girl: In chapter 8, one of the unicorns in the expedition is in the middle of a technical explanation about the magical traces left by Cerea's summoning when she (and everypony else) starts babbling nonsense words. This is soon revealed to be the effect of a neurocypher, a monster which projects a magical aura that scrambles the thoughts of all nearby sapients, allowing it to safely approach and devour its victims alive while they are too brain-scrambled to defend themselves. Cerea, who isn't affected and doesn't know about the monster's effect, loses a few precious seconds to assuming that her enchanted translator's charge is running down. | |
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| Word-Salad Horror / int_6c1d09b1 | type |
Word-Salad Horror | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_6c1d09b1 | comment |
The Master from Fallout speaks in a manner that combines elements of this trope, Voice of the Legion and Electronic Speech Impediment, having four distinct voices that speak in semi-random intervals, leading to bizarre interjections and repetitions in his dialogue. | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_6c1d09b1 | featureApplicability |
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Word-Salad Horror | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_6fa2c383 | comment |
When Max is tripping on Valkyr in the first game (the prologue to part 3), he receives a "prank call" (in his dream), wherein the caller just spouts some creepy nonsense (a disturbing parody of Max's usual Private Eye Monologue) at him, until Max puts the phone back down. For extra creepiness, just a bit later, Max receives another call, wherein the caller tries to explain to him that he has been drugged. Max proceeds to call it nonsense in exactly the same words as before and put the phone down. | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_6fa2c383 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_6fa2c383 | featureConfidence |
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Word-Salad Horror / int_6fa2c383 | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_73b4d4c1 | type |
Word-Salad Horror | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_73b4d4c1 | comment |
Call of Cthulhu: Invoked in the 3rd edition, published in the late 1980s. In the back of the rulebook, there's a paragraph-long word salad that is stated to potentially do 3d6 SAN damage to the reader. | |
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Word-Salad Horror | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_73b74949 | comment |
Borderlands is a comedic game series, and its raving mascot Psychos are generally more likely to engage in Ax-Crazy Word-Salad Humor than anything truly disturbing, though some of their threats during combat can be quite... colorful (although too coherent to qualify for this trope). This goes for the playable Psycho Krieg as well, though he'll occasionally dip into this territory. | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_73b74949 | featureApplicability |
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| Word-Salad Horror / int_760ce135 | type |
Word-Salad Horror | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_760ce135 | comment |
Subverted in Blindsight. When the alien artifact Rorschach speaks to the protagonists, it seems like it's using perfect English, following all of the grammatical rules. However, after a series of testing, the ship's linguist discovers that Rorschach is actually speaking nonsense, and is just procedurally generating responses telling them to stay away, like an organic Cleverbot. | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_760ce135 | featureApplicability |
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| Blindsight | hasFeature |
Word-Salad Horror / int_760ce135 | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_78fc0025 | type |
Word-Salad Horror | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_78fc0025 | comment |
The Twin Peaks-esque Show Within a Show "Address Unknown", whose episodes are scattered throughout the first and second games, is all about this with the flamingo character. An actual flamingo that speaks nonsense like "the flesh of fallen angels" and "she has dyed her hair red" with absolutely no context. Even worse is that some Valkyr junkies spout the exact same nonsense as it does... | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_78fc0025 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_78fc0025 | featureConfidence |
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| Twin Peaks | hasFeature |
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| Word-Salad Horror / int_7a04fba8 | type |
Word-Salad Horror | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_7a04fba8 | comment |
The title character of Nayuta of the Prophecy is a Creepy Child who only speaks in a nonsensical stream of words related to violence and misfortune. | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_7a04fba8 | featureApplicability |
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Word-Salad Horror | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_7c17a780 | comment |
So, so much in Naked Lunch. | |
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| Word-Salad Horror / int_814af133 | type |
Word-Salad Horror | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_814af133 | comment |
Early on in Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs, Mandus answers a mysterious ringing phone, and gets the cryptic message "Precious eagle cactus fruit... help us." before the other person hangs up. That said, the phrase does have an actual meaning (though most players are unlikely to know that) — it's a poetic name by which Aztecs referred to hearts ripped out of sacrifices' chests. | |
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Word-Salad Horror | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_8674eacf | comment |
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, much like the TV show that spawned it, has its share of this, again with the elements linked to the Black Lodge. | |
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A vast majority of Acid Bath's songs feature this, usually juxtaposing images of beauty and youth with creepy vocal effects and lyrics | |
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Word-Salad Horror | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_924b6d63 | comment |
While not by any means a horror game, Xenogears has quite a few uniquely unsettling moments, though that is likely par for the course for a game that is essentially an extended Creation allegory; a famous example from the game's opening scene involves a spaceship's command displays slowly being overwritten with the repeated message "You shall be as gods" shortly before the ship self-destructs. | |
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Word-Salad Horror | |
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In The True Meaning of Smekday, early in the story, Gratuity writes about finding her mother acting possessed, and shouting random words in both English and Italian in the middle of the night (later revealed to be Boov interference). | |
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Babysitter Bloodbath: Before breaking in to murder her, homicidal maniac Neokalus Burr calls Sarah to deliver the following message to her in his deep, raspy, hard to understand voice: | |
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The "Taken" enemies in Alan Wake and Alan Wake II spout this constantly. The words usually seem to have something to do with the possessed individual's former life, but they do not appear to comprehend the sense behind their words. It's described in Alan's manuscript as being merely "the nerve twitches of a dead thing". It also very often crosses over into Word-Salad Humor territory. | |
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Word-Salad Horror | |
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The Fog: While Stevie Wayne is playing station promos on a tape recorder, supernatural things start to happen and the tape recorder plays a bizarre message. | |
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Deltarune: For reasons not wholly known, Spamton G. Spamton from Chapter 2 is a disaster of a Living Program that has completely lost it, and is afflicted by an Electronic Speech Impediment that constantly filters and mangles his words at every turn, preventing him from speaking clearly. It doesn't help that he's more aware of everything than the average character and trying to use this knowledge to reach a mysterious goal and cast off his strange affliction with your help. As a result, when his crazy rants aren't humorous, they get disturbing. | |
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In Darkest Dungeon, the Irrational affliction causes characters to speak in incoherent gibberish. | |
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In Paprika, a mad dream is used by terrorists to inflict people with temporary insanity. The victims break down into long-winded, bizarre speeches that don't make any sense at all. It's actually kind of amusing, until said victims start throwing themselves off of buildings. It gets worse when people start actually seeing the nonsensical things that are being described. | |
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A lot of songs by Mili are like this, like the eerily beautiful "Utopiosphere". | |
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Several emails are found in Panchaea towards the end of Deus Ex: Human Revolution. These emails, ostensibly from an automated system, are often underlined with phrases like "I see it, Mommy...." and the automated passwords are similarly eerie, such as "lstforver". It all leads to the reveal that the Hyron AI controlling the site is Powered by a Forsaken Child. | |
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Fate/stay night: Pretty much guaranteed whenever Angra Mainyu shows up. | |
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Word-Salad Horror | |
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Dream, vision, hallucination, revelation and/or brainwashing sequences in Illuminatus! and its spinoffs tend to be either this or Word-Salad Humor, although they are frequently both simultaneously, combining imagery from everything from The Bible and Classical Mythology to Masonic lore, Occultism and the Kabbalah to H. P. Lovecraft, pornography and Krazy Kat, with Arc Words chosen seemingly at random and very clever yet completely nonsensical wordplay. | |
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Word-Salad Horror | |
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Happens all the time on Welcome to Night Vale, particularly when Cecil reads advertisements, notices, or whatever else he is handed by others in the studio. A Running Gag is for Cecil to announce "a word from our sponsors," and then read an "advertisement" consisting of an extremely surreal Word-Salad Horror passage, followed by the name and slogan of a real-world company such as Audible.com or Home Depot. For bonus creepy points, sometimes the real slogan is followed by a nightmarish variation on the same phrase. | |
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In The Southern Reach Trilogy, expedition members sent by the eponymous agency into Area X discover a subterranean structure containing a spiral staircase, along the walls of which is written a pseudo-biblical text going on and on and on. A sample: | |
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Word-Salad Horror | |
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Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair: The end of the fifth chapter features the entire world around you collapsing as the program begins to corrupt. The screen is constantly glitching, particularly when people who are supposedly dead appear onscreen. The speech before and throughout this part often glitches and contorts into weird, unreadable strings of letters, numbers and punctuation. If you visit the houses of people who died at the end of Chapter 5, word salads filled with numbers and punctuation appear once again, but this time it's their last thoughts jumbled up. Notably, nothing appears for Komaeda, which could point to many theories. |
|
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Doctor Who: Dalek Caan seems to speak like this, but it's ultimately subverted; all of his cryptic riddles are perfectly accurate, if obtuse, either describing what he saw while traveling through the time lock around the Last Great Time War, or what is about to happen. Donna also descends into this after absorbing Time Lord knowledge, and it leads to one hell of a Tear Jerker moment where The Doctor has to wipe her memories. We see her regain them and survive due to splitting it with her child 15 years later though. |
|
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Word-Salad Horror | |
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Towards the end of Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus, Sly damages Clockwerk enough to overtax his Healing Factor, causing him to spout random Non Sequiturs as he slowly reconstructs in the middle of molten lava. The last coherent thing he says to the young Cooper before getting his head knocked off is "Clockwerk is superior!". | |
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Unus Annus had Ethan/Unus descend into madness during the end of the episode "Crushing Watermelons Betwixt Our Mighty Thighs", becoming "the Melon Man" as he continually attempted to destroy a watermelon in his room before moving it into the shower, cast in a sickly green light. | |
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In Doki Doki Literature Club!, one of Yuri's poems is nothing but short sentence fragments, all of which are rather morbid observations about the human condition. Once things go off the rails and Monika takes over the game, random garbled characters begin to replace normal text, and some text turns from a sans-serif font to a serif font with thick black strokes that cover up the normal text. After Yuri kills herself, both happen at once. | |
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The Lighthouse: Many of Thomas Wake's rants are barely coherent, but filled with mythological and literary allusions foreshadowing both main characters' ultimate doom. | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_d269ede1 | featureApplicability |
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In World's End, Mysterious Waif Aizu talks very incoherently when she's throwing fireballs and supposedly the avatar of a dead god. | |
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Word-Salad Horror | |
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Tsukihime has several pages of this while Shiki is bedridden in Hisui's route. | |
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Word-Salad Horror | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_e68decb8 | comment |
In Star Control II, the translator computer is seriously taxed when trying to decipher the Orz's Starfish Language, and has to put in 'best-fits' for words and concepts too alien for the English language. The resulting mess looks (and sounds) absurd, but giving it a tiny bit more thought will bring chill up your spine. | |
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Word-Salad Horror | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_eef69f10 | comment |
Subverted in the Sherlock Holmes story "The Adventure of the Gloria Scott", in which a grammatically sensible message ("The supply of game for London is going steadily up. Head-keeper Hudson, we believe, has been now told to receive all orders for fly-paper and for preservation of your hen-pheasant's life."), as Holmes puts it, "struck Justice of the Peace Trevor dead with horror when he read it". The solution is actually mundane — read every third word and it becomes "The game is up. Hudson has told all. Fly for your life." Hudson was blackmailing both the sender and recipient of the message, but Holmes believes the sender managed to get rid of him and escape. | |
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Word-Salad Horror | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_f1aaff66 | comment |
Professor Pyg, a villain introduced in Batman (Grant Morrison), is a somewhat more realistic depiction of insanity than most of Batman's foes in that most of what he says is complete gibberish. | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_f1aaff66 | featureApplicability |
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Word-Salad Horror | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_f64ceaf2 | comment |
In the creepypasta "My Dead Girlfriend Keeps Messaging Me On Facebook": The messages the main character receives from his dead girlfriend's Facebook account almost entirely consist of recycled snippets of past messages she's sent to him rearranged in seemingly random order, but still feel like someone or something trying to communicate: Eventually, the seemingly random recycled snippets coalesce into something far more terrifying: The original poster eventually makes a comment similarly pasted together from other comments on the thread — It's his last comment, and the account was never used again: "I should be scared. I've occasionally opened a heart" |
|
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Word-Salad Horror | |
| Word-Salad Horror / int_f8acc9ea | comment |
Weaponized in-universe in Control by The Hiss. Possessed people keep repeating parts of the lengthy and intensely creepy Hiss incantation over and over in order to boost the Hiss' "resonance," and both the protagonist and the incantation itself explicitly compares it to an Ear Worm you can't get out of your head. Given that Alan Wake wrote the Hiss into existence in order to give his protagonist a Starter Villain to practice and hone her skills on before she could come to free him from the Dark Place, it makes sense that they are very similar to the Taken in this respect. Write What You Know, after all. The word salad nature of the Hiss incantation is also justified in that Wake wrote it as a form of Dadaist "anti-art" via cutting up several sentences and words, putting them in a shoebox, pulling out the words at random, and then haphazardly forming them together into sentences so as to represent "an alien force imitating human intelligence". | |
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In I Sit Behind The Eyes, Emily begins to suspect that something is trying to possess her when she starts blurting out seemingly random words mid-sentence whenever she is thinking too deeply. The words she yells out form unsettling sentences when put together, such as "LET ME OUT!". The truth is actually more complicated and disturbing. | |
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The title character in Eden Green gradually loses her rationality to an alien needle parasite. The narrative is increasingly interrupted by incoherent visions, nightmares, paranoid fantasies, and babbling. | |
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