The gaming community is full of disturbing urban legends about hidden levels, cursed titles, fictitious games, and more. As gaming grows in popularity, the myths and stories attached to its different aspects also continue to expand.
The creepiest urban legends about video games often start on the internet, where players are free to share or manufacture disturbing stories about their favorite titles. Some urban legends even revolve around games that don’t actually exist but have become wildly popular and thought of as a real title anyway.
It may surprise some to know that the family-friendly Mario game, Super Mario Galaxy 2, hides an unnerving secret in one of its levels. What’s often considered one of the best Mario games has gained notoriety in the horror community for a mysterious spot in the Shiverburn Galaxy.
Players who look up from a certain spot will see a mountain with three shadowy figures on top. Fans have looked through the game’s code to find out if these were meant to be trees or something else. They discovered that the strange silhouettes are labeled "Hell Valley Sky Trees," which only added fuel to the fire and made the entire situation even more disturbing.
Madden is an iconic game in the sports genre, which is why it’s not surprising that there’s a popular urban legend about it. Most iterations of the best Madden video games feature talented players on their covers and some fans believe that anyone who is unfortunate enough to be featured on the franchise's box art becomes cursed.
The aptly named “Madden Curse” allegedly affects these star athletes in various ways, ranging from poor performance to serious injuries. The "victims" that are often cited as examples are Daunte Culpepper, Rob Gronkowski, and John Madden.
The convoluted story of "Sad Satan" began back in 2015, when a now inactive YouTube channel, "Obscure Horror Corner," uploaded a video of a creepy game they claimed was sent to them by a subscriber. Footage of the game immediately caught gamers’ attention and even led to the creation of its own subreddit.
The game is mostly a grainy walking simulator with unsettling imagery of ghosts and historical figures like John F. Kennedy. It took on a life of its own and sparked debates about its origins, symbolic meanings, and more. Some users eventually speculated that the original uploader manufactured the entire thing in an effort to create a new urban legend, but by then, the story about the mysterious game had taken on a life of its own.
Inside Minecraft’s sandbox world hides a sinister character known as "Herobrine." He’s said to appear randomly, often wreaking havoc on a player’s world by building nonsensical objects and attacking users.
Some players are convinced that the bizarre character is a ghost that has decided to haunt the game. Others argue that it’s just a convincing fake story meant to increase interest in the title. Players who claim to have encountered "Herobrine" say that looking at him for too long will cause him to disappear into thin air.
"Petscop" starts out as an innocent-looking, charming PS1 game that reviewer "Paul" highlights on his YouTube channel. Things take a dark turn when it slowly transforms into a disturbing labyrinth that reveals new details about an unsettling narrative at every turn.
The most chilling part of the whole series is listening to Paul’s scared voice as he learns more horrible details about heinous crimes, but he can’t seem to stop. While the gaming community has agreed that the game likely doesn’t exist and that it’s most likely an ARG, "Petscop"’ still achieved urban legend status, with some users believing that it’s a retelling of a true crime story.
Legend has it that only a few thousand copies of "Killswitch" were ever released to the public back in the '80s. It’s supposedly a monotone horror game that follows the story of Porto as she navigates a series of puzzles with a demon called Ghast.
There’s little to no credible information about what the gameplay is actually like, probably because "Killswitch" isn’t a real game. The one detail that makes the fictitious title so popular is how it’s said to delete itself after the player dies, flooding the screen with brilliant white light before rendering itself unplayable. A ton of fan-made games have tried to capture the excitement and mystery around this urban legend, but none have lived up to the hype surrounding the enigmatic title.
Grand Theft Auto IV is often considered the best Grand Theft Auto game thanks to its compelling story and incredibly detailed world. Some fans believe that somewhere in its winding subway tunnels, there’s a creepy creature called the "Ratman."
The "Ratman" is a half-man, half-rat NPC that can sprint unbelievably fast and is extremely aggressive. Players who are unfortunate enough to come face to face with it may hear it scream its name before brutally killing the user. There’s no solid proof for this rumor just yet, as the main basis for this urban legend is a blurry screenshot that was passed around internet forums back in the 2010s. Who exactly captured or manufactured the screenshot has been lost to history.
The legend of "Polybius" is one of the most well-known stories in the gaming community, becoming even more popular after the fictitious arcade game was featured as a non-Marvel Easter egg in Loki. Those who believe in this urban legend sometimes claim that they were able to play the game back in the '80s when it first appeared in Portland, Oregon.
There are accounts of people experiencing inexplicable psychoactive effects, with others even developing an unhealthy addiction to the game. The frightening part is that enigmatic men in black allegedly visit these arcade machines to collect data for a larger government-run experiment. The machines would disappear after only a month and aside from the several stories about "Polybius," no evidence of their existence has been found since.
Numbers stations are actual radio stations used during wars to communicate with sleeper agents. They relay seemingly random numbers, but to the right listener, these can be translated into actual messages. This is exactly what the numbers station in Fallout 3 supposedly does, except instead of sending messages about the fictitious nuclear war in the game, it predicts the future.
Like a lot of urban legends, the existence of Fallout’s numbers station was initially passed around as a creepypasta. More details have been added to the lore throughout the years, with some saying that the station has accurately predicted some real-life deaths and even an oil spill.
"Ben Drowned" (also known as "Haunted Majora’s Mask Cartridge") centers around a user called "Jadusable," who claims to have purchased a strange version of the game Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask. Within a few hours of playing it, he gets the feeling that the game is somehow trying to communicate with him.
It’s eventually revealed that the specific cartridge he purchased from a peculiar old man is haunted by Ben’s malevolent spirit. The user continues to share his experiences about playing the eerie game, brilliantly including clues and small details that keep readers interested in the story. While readers ultimately learn that it’s a web series, the fact that it’s not a real game hasn’t stopped some fans from believing that they’ve somehow helped unleash Ben’s evil spirit in their own homes by opening a cursed file from one of Jadusable’s posts. Today, the popular phrase "You shouldn't have done that" is still quoted on several forums and memes, referencing the well-known urban legend.
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