KH1 definitely felt the most uneasy. There was this big sense of mystery and melancholy; a vast yet empty setting with so many (at the time) unanswered questions. Even the boxart portrayed that foreboding feeling of the characters and the player having to dive into the unknown headfirst. Unlike the later games, the characters didn't have the option of just standing around while Yen Sid explains everything; the player and Sora just have to wing it and pick up scraps of information along the way. As for creepy stuff in the other games, a few things come to mind. Strelitzia's murder (in a series where death is usually either Disney-fied or easily undone) and the way she appeared in Lauriam's dreams is kinda dark. The Keyblade War seemingly being fought entirely by children (no parents ever seen in the game) who either killed each other or were so traumatized that they were sent to a dream world with their memories erased. Most of CoM is creepy. The plot is an abused kid being forced to brainwash another kid by a group of psychopaths who kill each other by the end of the game. Everyone Sora met forgot about him, likely including his own parents, which is a whole other rabbit hole of potential terror (imagine waking up one day and noticing a bunch of photos of a kid you've never met and a child's bedroom in your house when you don't remember having kids). Namine's entire short existence was child abuse and she ended up hating herself. Repliku originally had his own personality and was fine with himself until Larxene forced Namine to break his mind and heart. Xion's whole existence, Roxas living an entire fake life in the span of a week and losing it, and the whole purgatory segment in 3 are also big ones. (Yay, I get to meet a dead child and the ghost of a woman with postpartum depression in my Disney game)
Yeah, seriously. It's dark as fuck. I felt so bad for Namine and Repliku, as well as Sora. CoM was actually pretty messed up. How is Sora able to stay so sane, despite all the shit he's been through, same with Namine and Riku, especially in the first game and being manipulated by Maleficent? I mean, I know Kairi went through some shit as well, but I guess I'm glad she ended up losing her memories of her childhood, since she was a subject in Xehanort's messed up experiments. Imagine if she were to one day remember what had transpired, how traumatised she'd be. I feel so bad for many of the characters, honestly. It's both unsettling and sad; Yet, these games now hold a place in my heart, despite me getting into KH in 2015 and being late to the party, it's thanks to Nico B's let's plays of the games, then afterwards playing the games myself. Yeah, Xion and Roxas went through absolute shit too and KH3 purgatory was so friggin' unsettling and I admit to shedding some tears when speaking to each star. It was goddamn deep and dark. KH games are pretty dark, despite the fact they're with Disney. I agree entirely with you and you're awesome for writing out such a well thought out comment, with so much detail. :D
@@ReptilianTeaDrinker I assume Nico B got you into KH with his "Platinum Match" playthrough? *OH GOD, HELP ME PLEASE! NO NO NO NO NO NO! AAAAH, HE'S RUNNING AT ME! DARK SPHERE POWER?! ARGH MY BALLS!*
Kh1 is the absolute best. The sense of mystery and originality in every corner is just unmatched. No world has beaten the feeling I’ve gotten throughout ‘The End of The World’ for me
The most "creepy" aspects of Kingdom Hearts, in my opinion, would be: - The experiments Ansem the Wise and his apprentices performed on people, particularly children (for example Subject X, Kairi). The Reports in KH3 even states "the wails and screams of humans could be heard echoing into the night" - KH2 and Union X/Chi: living in a simulation (like the Matrix), where everything and everyone is not real - maybe even yourself, without you knowing. This, I think, is one reason why KH2's intro is so memorable, despite its long duration. - The Keyblade Graveyard: the fallen Keyblade wielders, the destruction of the land that used to be. All that history, and some of which we probably don't know. There is a lot of sadness there. - Losing memories, having false or no identity, FADING ENTIRELY FROM EXISTENCE. Possessing the body, soul and mind of another person, for different purposes. - The Beta trailer for KH1 has surprisingly dark themes - "Destati" is among the darkest soundtracks in KH franchise for the lyrics alone - As you mentioned in this video; the emptiness of it all, the lack of people, End of the World etc. - The Final World; talking to the Stars (souls/hearts) of the dead as they linger in Purgatory or Limbo, listening to their regrets and sorrows. This one - "my dear, beloved burden" giving the idea of a mother dying during childbirth - struck me while playing KH 3 for the first time. A 26 year old man shedding tears whilst playing 'a children's game'
From what I remember Ansem the Wise didn't take part in the human experimentation, but was there for some of the experiments before Xehanort really got the others into that. He did study Subject X, but more so in questioning her amnesia instead of experimenting on her. Everything else is valid though.
ur right on all of these x'3 don't forget the one heart/soul that was a child saying they couldn't find their father, and that he was calling to him from a bright light. ugh my pain knows no bounds QAQ
Interesting fact: you could hear a owl hooting outside Merlin's house in the original kh1, there was a drop water sound too but these sound effects was removed in the remix version, i don't know why tho cuz i think it's creepy but cool.
I used to think Sora had died after the fall of Destiny Islands, and he was trapped in a sort of afterlife in Traverse Town. There was something about the mood of the world, the guy eaten by Heartless, the eternal state of night, music and just the fact everyone had lost their worlds. Made TT seem like some sort of purgatory
@@Someone-gp3jh isn’t traverse town kind of like an in between world where characters who lost their real home go. It kind of makes sense that it feels kind of unsettling as no one is truly supposed to reside there.
I so agree with this list! People will complain about the original Kingdom Hearts and it's 'clunky' control scheme... but honestly, as polished as the storytelling has become in the modern titles- it's missing something. No matter how deep Nomura dives off the edge into the themes of existentialism and destiny, the convolution can make things a bit too murky to appreciate. The simplicity of the original game really left enough dark/serious undertones out in the open for us to ponder and be slightly disturbed about. I miss that feeling from a Kingdom Hearts game.
I would say the storytelling is actually the best together with the story itself. It implies stuff or shows it instead of just telling you it exists. Not to mention that it actually makes a big deal out of everything instead of trying to normalize things. I am actually impressed that games after did not say "getting back your human body as a heartless is a normal thing" and instead you usually need to get your butt kicked to turn back. because that is usually what convoluted and hackmeat sequels tend to do, make everything in the original nonspecial and just a thing that is already known and that happens. Though KH still does that in other areas.
The issue of worlds not having very many people in them is addressed in KH: Dark Road. (Spoilers) When worlds come back from the realm of darkness and/or sleep in stages. First small bits of the world, then buildings, then people, and finally then does time move in the proper way. So all the world's in KH1 and even 2 that have so few residents is due to that process.
That explains it not only that but In kingdom hearts 3 there’s a lot of people in the worlds now especially kingdom of corona the Caribbean and San fransokyo which shows the results of the stages
This is for the game that establishes so well for me what darkness is. I know Kingdom Hearts characters love to say Darkness Darkness Darkness, but this is the game that made Darkness feel threatening and real.
Ikr, the most of the ambients and "threats" don't sounds like real darkness threats on another games, of course that there are problems and missions around but at the most of the time it is just "oh! Xehanort is doing that" or "Organization XIII are that" or something wich is missed, even the Realm of darkness don't sounds so disturbing if you compare with some places wich you explore on KH1, honestly, I think that if the main games continued something with the energy from KH1 maybe the impact for the history about darkness and light could've sounded be more... natural?
it really showed that the worlds affected by darkness became less lively and eerie, which is what made me realize how the heartless really affected the kingdom hearts universe
I can't explain The End of the World one, but the others at least have the Traverse Town excuse. If lots of people from other worlds were landing in my city, I'd commission hotel art of their worlds to make them more comfortable.
I'm glad this showed up in my reccs. I love it when people discuss KH1, it's got such a weird sort of melancholy atmosphere to it. Something that slowly went away until it completely disappeared with KH3. 1. When I first played KH1 and the Phantom popped up (the original dark color version) I got so freaked out I quickly turned off the game. I don't even remember how I got the balls to fight it lmao. 2. I never noticed the castle in the corridors nor the fact that it's remnants of destroyed worlds. I just knew it looked so unsettling. 3. That heartless logo freaked me the hell out because it was just so...big.
KH1 and to a lesser extend com just took advantage of a darker atmosphere more. Heartless are demons. The ansemreports tell a story of a man slowly going to madness with power and also experiments where the core of a person is described to literally crumble to create more demons and in com, the antargonists are all basically as much of a phantomimage as the fake worlds as they suddenly fade away when they die and marluxia is essencially the grim reaper.
They make a whole game to explain why Mickey doesn't wear a shirt in Kingdom Hearts 1 Where is the game that explains the ghost Hotel owner who psychically communicates about paintings?
This whole explanation to show him with no shirt reminds me of the shitty Expanded Universe Star Wars comics that detail every single piece of garbage that ever appeared in the movies, there are complete stories just to justify some weird things from the movies.
Kh1 has that uneasy almost dreamlike feeling of shadow of colossus. It’s such a strong yet subtle thing even though you can’t really put your finger on it. Weirdly those games are the only examples of this feeling I can think of and Im not sure if it was a product of their time or unintended and just happened to be this way due to hardware constraints. A mystery I’m happy never solving because I love that sense of not knowing what’s going on or why I’m there alone
Idk why this channel is suddenly getting recommended to me but i'm glad it is, you've got some good analysis and it's nice learning more about KH which was, in retrospect, such a weird game.
I noticed a very creepy design choice with the Darkball heartless. If you look at it through the journal with it looking straight at you, you notice that the "face" of it is very humanoid with a very human looking nose and eyes. It might sound weird but it freaks me out
Heartless formed from people with a lot of darkness in their hearts can retain human form like Ansem did. So Darkballs were humans dark enough when they lost their hearts to retain the vague form of their face. so, less dark than say, invisibles, but so much more creepy.
I find the heartless Sora more creepy, I mean imagine seeing an exact copy of yourself that is out for your blood and is nothing more than a black figure with strange yellow eyes. It can have the same moves as you, fight like you, and wants nothing more than to kill you. If anything I find that more disturbing and after Sora kills it, it doesn't just die, the heartless Sora just floats down into a dark abyss portal and is gone, that's it.
I don't know why but fighting Roxas in kh2 is still terrifying to this day. His movements and everything just seem so unnatural. Plus you can just feel the pain radiating off the entire fight. You can feel all his regrets and that just makes the atmosphere so much more horrifying because you know he's taking those regrets out on you.
Kingdom Hearts 1 will always be the scariest game to me in the KH series (notice: not the darkest but the scariest. There's a difference). It was always so eerie to play and you felt like someone was always watching you...even you as like the player...but no one ever was. I thought maybe it was because I was 5 when I first played KH1 (I'm 21 now), so I replayed it last year (Final Mix 🤗) and it was _still_ eerie and creepy to me... You just always felt so alone while playing it. You're separated from your family, home town, and friends. You're in this weird area and have no clue about what is happening to you. You have no magic and like 1 potion to heal yourself while you're surrounded by--what felt like--thousands and thousands of heartless that are very powerful (at the time they felt like it). You were so weak at the time, which is understandable because you _just_ got your Keyblade. Everything looked darker compared to the brighter contrast on other KH games. Even when you meet Donald and Goofy, you first feel distanced from them. Yeah they were nice, but they made it clear to you that they are there for Mickey's request/mission and not really you, you. So, we just stay focused on finding our friends and after both objectives have been cleared, you both will go on your separate ways, never seeing each other again (of course they are our friends now and we feel WAAAAY more comfortable around them). Like when Riku gets the Keyblade, they prove this point by straight up abandoning us (yes they come back but at the time, we didn't know that). It hurt me as a kid when Riku came up to us in Traverse Town, only for him to leave us "alone" again with technically still strangers even after us telling him that we were looking for him. We are alone yet again. Yeah there are other scary, eerie stuff in KH1 (some you hit in the video) that always terrified me as a kid. Like how ghostly Kairi looked and flew through our arms; it made you question what happened to her to make her look that way and what did she see? What did that door do to her? Why did she fly through our arms and why the wind? Or when we first encountered that BIG shadow heartless where we see our large shadow and then it lifts from the ground and transforms. I was terrified of my shadow for YEARS after seeing that lol! I was scared of ants too because I thought that ants looked like shadow heartless and I felt powerless because I didn't have a Keyblade lol. And the secret reports and so much more 😩 You just felt alone, weak, powerless, confused, and felt like a loss of control...
The whole thing with Mickey speaking to Sora while he's in his Station of Awakening is also pretty weird. It's almost like we've been playing as Data Sora this entire time.
I always felt sorry for Sora, to have teammates like Donald and Goofy. So shallow. Donald straight-up refused to let Riku come with them and wouldn't even give Sora a reason. Donald refused to land in Deep Jungle, Sora had to wrestle the gummi ship controls away from him. "The king wouldn't be there." "But what if Riku and Kairi are there?" "No." Even in Kingdom Hearts 3, in light of all the scenes showing what good "friends" they are, when Sora expresses how much it hurt him when they abandoned him in KH1, and how he understands that it hurt because of how much he cares for them, they're just like "That's what Data Sora said! Any Sora is still Sora!" like how bout y'all apologize or show even a hint of remorse for hurting him? Oh that's right, cause you're only with him cause of that Keyblade, not because of who he is as a person. If Riku hadn't been corrupted when he took the keyblade, Donald and Goofy wouldn't have gone back to Sora, and we all know it. Mickey and Riku, on the other hand, are shown to actually care about each other. And Sora... is so gullible he doesn't even see it. He latched onto them because he had no other way to look for his friends. It's sad. The whole series would have been different if Donald would have let Riku go with them in KH1 in Traverse Town.
@@jenius9164 I was so pissed when Donald left sora and goofy. It was a Betrayal as far as I was concerned as a kid and I wouldn't heal him (donald) for the longest time when he inevitably got knocked out. Though I was pissed at goofy too...just goofy at least saved sora last second unlike some duck that casually went back to sora after goofy's display. Kh1 was also darker thanks to that feeling of desperation, and running out if time with the world's too. I remember how each heartless had the potential to be a menace & taking each battle seriously. I remember how BIG the heartless were compared to sora & the keyblade. It's like a tangible way of knowing Sora's in over his head and grappling the uncertainty each step. Oh, I love how u mentioned deep jungle & sora wrestling the controls away. It's a great example and a great memory I forgot! Thanks for bringing it back :)
I wanted to see if I'd end up in the Velvet Room and hear Igor's voice; Just to find out it's a Persona crossover, thus why it's blue. But Igor wasn't introduced until the 3rd Persona game, if memory serves me well and that was well after Kingdom Hearts 1 came out. lol Still, as Persona and KH trash, I couldn't help but have that thought when first playing KH1, which was in 2016. (I was late to the party.)
Bro, I've wanted to go into the diner next to the accessory shop in the first district for forever. It has a barely legible menu on the outside. Hot dogs, pizza and ice cream are apparently sold there.
The manga shows the heartless grabbing the heart with his own hands, it's actually creepy, also, the girl offers sora a good time or something like that if I remember correctly
As a kid, i've always had this theory that the phantom boss was either the heartless of Lord Ombra from the Peter Pan book series, or at least inspired by it
Sabor in Deep Jungle scared the shit out of me when I was younger, because he was so fast and he jumpscared you! Even today when I hear the battle theme in Deep Jungle and see no heartless my butt clenches in preparation for being jumped by that damn cat.
I'm glad you mentioned the fact that Ansem was on Destiny Islands all this time, especially in the context of BBS, DDD, and Dark Road. He had been there for at least fifty years, watching and waiting for the perfect vessel. He saw people arrive of the islands for the first time since Xehanort's Caretaker passed away and he sent Teen Xehanort to Scala Ad Caelum, saw as kids came and went from the play island, and was there for when Aqua, Terra and Ventus each visited the islands. He watched as Sora, Riku and Kairi grew up, and must have used that time to determine which of the kids would be his ideal vessel so that he would have a physical form for the first time in half a century. It's no wonder why he was so crazy and hammy, imagine the sheer joy of having hands again after all that time.
Atlantica in Kingdom Hearts 1- when you first swim into the open area where the shipwreck is and Glut the shark comes out of the haze from afar, circling it, just waiting patiently to munch on you. I thought that was intimidating as hell back in the day.
This game works best in isolation. Replaying it now, i can fully appreciate the atmosphere more than before, and even regard it as the superior game compared to 2. This game is the perfect example of "Fridge Horror"; demons born from evil in the hearts of man, that steal your soul. If this game was stand-alone; one-and-done, it would be a much more powerful experience. My experience with the other games has lessened the impact.
1 is my favourite, 2 grows on me each time I play it even though I hate the roxas prologue it's just painful. Imo all of the other kh games are trash, even 3. They, bafflingly, seem to channel the worst elements of the best two games and drop the best elements in every subsequent game.
@@johnwatchesyoutubeandstuff3947 You put it perfectly. I've always been puzzled at the dislike some of the community has for KH1. I originally played it as a six-year old, and it was a profound experience. There is a "magic" in KH1 that no other KH game, in fact no other game I've ever played since, has recaptured. The mystery surrounding the heartless, Ansem, and just the whole world was enthralling, and piecing together Ansem's journals was a thoughtful way of forcing us to engage with the lore. KH3 was an extreme disappointment, just a tensionless story driven by flanderized characters. The biggest problem with the KH games after KH2 (and even KH2 wasn't completely free of this issue) is that there is generally nothing driving the plot forward other than the tying up of plot threads. KH1 follows an archetypal story where Sora's world is destroyed by the darkness and he must set to save the other worlds from the same fate. Since we witness this firsthand as Sora we are compelled as players to save the Disney worlds from the same fate, thus we are emotionally engaged in the story and the fight with the main antagonists. KH2 is similar with the fight against Organization XIII, at least in the second half of that game. However, in KH3, the finale just feels like "oh okay, let's get all the dudes from the previous games to fight Xehanort because we need to save the worlds... I guess... even though all the story-relevant cutscenes have nothing to do with the Disney worlds." KH3 put the nail in the coffin of this series for me, a vacuous mess of story used as a Disney/Square cash cow.
@@happychey13 Some of it, I think, has to do with SquareSoft's transition to Square Enix. KH1 was made when they were SSoft. Also, Disney has too much restrictive control. And no characters truly die, so there are no consequences
So I may be a little late to the draw but I remember experiencing something creepy playing KH1 for the first time that totally changed the way I viewed riku vs how many other people probably experienced the character. Its not widely known but you dont have to beat Monstro in order to progress the story. I remember, as a kid, getting hopelessly lost in monstro and eventually just flying to another world out of frustration. I realized I could just leave and progress the story without ever getting Pinocchio from Riku. I remember that i only returned later in the game after the heartless increase in difficulty. Because you still need to rescue Pinocchio but Riku is now possessed by Ansem, the devs actually made contingency cut scenes if the player decided to bail on Monstro and come back (which is crazy since I don't think many people had that problem, I was just too young and didn't have much experience with video games and not trying to exploit some bug) The cut scenes now had "riku" there but he was much more stoic and unresponsive to sora. Sora would actually call out in disbelief asking if it truly was his fallen friend. If you went this route, riku would not assist you in the fight against the parasite heartless and you'd have to defeat it with only Donald and Goofy twice. At the end, after Pinocchios farther pleads for his safety, riku silently leaves through a corridor of darkness. Since this was a patch work solution to a very unlikely chance the player would make this choice, it is never brought up again nor referenced in future games as the cannonical events is that sora finishes Pinocchios world before riku gets possessed. And with that it leaves the player with a strange eerieness. Questioning if that was a sort of hallucination, a vision created by Ansem to taunt sora, or maybe it was the echos of rikus heart, not being able to cope with the fact that his light was snuffed out of his own body reaching out to Sora in a sort of state of denial over his own end. Imagine what sora thought, in his understanding, riku was gone, seeing the ghost of his friend must have been haunting. And it leaves the player with a different perspective of riku. Never seeing riku assist sora, adding a bit more context to their struggling relationship as they slowly drift apart. I hope my comment doesn't get lost and I hope you see it! I'd love if more people talked about this obscure fact
End of the world gave me chills. Justthis graveyard of worlds and floating around in dark abysses with no land outside of the enemy itself. No other last world has given me more chills.
Most definitely. You're in this dark, Hellish wasteland that's nothing but broken fragments of worlds that were destroyed by the Heartless. When you think about it, these are worlds like Beast's Castle, The Land of the Dragons, Pride Lands, Destiny Islands, Enchanted Dominion, Castle of Dreams, Dwarf Woodlands, and possibly several others that we have yet to visit like Pongo and Perdita's home in London, or Oakey Oaks, the home of Chicken Little. Even the corridors that showed off the first three worlds of Birth by Sleep in ruin is haunting. I never realized it at first because I was so intent of kicking Ansem's ass, but I recently played through Birth by Sleep: Final Mix on PS4 and am currently finishing Kingdom Hearts: Final Mix. Seeing the destroyed ruins of Enchanted Dominion's woods and King Stephen's castle, the dim and destroyed Castle of Dreams, and creepy trees of the Dark Forest from Dwarf Woodlands is that terrifying because you realize what's at stake for Sora. If someone doesn't stop Ansem, all those other worlds you've visited on the journey will meet the same grizzly fate, and that's exactly how I'd like to add on to your comment. It's HAUNTING.
I've been wanting to do a deep dive into KH for a long time now!!! I haven't uploaded any content but I love the franchise and there is SO MUCH to go into. Kingdom Hearts is very underappreciated and misunderstood. There is a lot more to this series that most haven't pieced together yet. Thank you for the inspiration!!
The 3 worlds in the Volcanic Crater corridors also make an appearance in KH 0.2 Birth by Sleep, A Fragmentary Passage. In that game they are all in the realm of darkness.
In the game: _the guy who died and turned into a Heartless but mysteriously still appeared_ In the manga: _One heartless shows up and stabbed a woman and destroyed her hearts (instead of her soul?)_ Which one is darker? XD
Haha yeah, from the KH1 Ultimania: --- I heard that there apparently was a “cursed song.” Shimomura: In the beginning and ending of the game, there is a song with a chorus. That chorus is a phrase that expresses the dark side of Kingdom Hearts, and it was used in several songs. However, once we tried loading the chorus data in when we were creating the songs, something bad would happen. The worst thing that happened was when the electricity to the building was cut off. (laugh)
If i remember correctly, that cursed track is Destati. I don't remember if it was the one we know from every single game or a beta version of it that's "Cursed"
The creepiest thing about kingdom hearts 1 it's realising you can't go back to the happy times when you first played it for the first time and all you have are your childhood/teen memories
I feel if we showed more people turning into heartless by heartless stealing their hearts, it really would have kept some of the creepy vibe, but also show how REAL the heartless threat always is for keyblade wielders to face against them, you know? There was real potential there, but they only showed it on rare occasions.
Yeah, they should’ve shown those like the anime Goblin Slayer. The first episode unapologetically displays what happens when lower tier monsters get their pounds of flesh... and why the mc is so important to ordinary people!
@@kdkennedy4712I don't watch Goblin Slayer because of those rape scenes. I can't handle watching those, it cuts too personal for me. At least the heartless don't rape people, the one thing I will say about them that makes them more preferable between the two.
The ansem reports are really creepy imao. And interesting point, KH1 was my first game i ever played as kid. The weirdly creepy atmosphere really effected my taste in gaming.
Ikr. Like, still I'm always looking for something creppy and unsettling. I played the game when I was a child, like in 2002-2003, and I was so obssesed with the Hollow Bastion part, and the way Riku was, like the heartbreaking story we saw, everything was so depressing and dark. It wasn't a "Mickey and Riku saved the world with Sora", it was a sacrifice from disney characters sacrificing themselfs for a greater good, but like I legit thought Mickey died in that final scene. It was so disturbing. It wasen't a happy end either, it ended like here is Kairi, we don't know where Sora is, Mickey and Riku died to close Kingdom Hearts.
just a fun little thing to say, The first hallway in the volcanic crater is actually a reference to fantasia. that is the town that Chernabog destroys in "Night on Bald Mountain"
for some reason when i originally played this back in 02 as little kid i did get chills but not enough to really think about how scary or dark the game really was the disney mix i guess sugar coated it enough for me and innocent mind to just enjoy the game but now that im older and just finished the hk3 literally 2 days ago with my much more developed and matured mind i cant believe the series is a lot darker than i thought and watching you point these things out about hk1 really gave me chills on how accurate you are about it being pretty creepy at points with hk1 being the darkest of the later games nonetheless, still a badass series
I never knew about the paintings. I think I remember seeing the first guy in Agrabah though. But that machine in Hollow Bastion's part of the World Terminus is actually very important now. It's in Union cross. It has a interesting purpose
I always felt that it was implied to be a machine that artificially seperates hearts from humans to create emblem heartless. I dont like the retcons that came from later games
I exactly felt this melancholia, not to mention that emptiness and the scary soundtrack provoked a sense of anxiety, but the scariest moment of the game was the end of the world, the music, the emptiness and etc...
Creepy things in KH: 1) KH1: When Sora sacrifices himself for Kairi. Its a beautiful scene, but when you think about it this 14 year old boy is killing himself for his crush, all with a smile on his face. 2) KH2 Drive Form: Depending on which form you use Donald Goofy or both disappear. I always found that creepy. Where the heck do they go? KH2 Hollow Bastion/Radient Garden: The whole area's in ruins and, compared to what it once was, its just a shell of its former world. Mix that with the number of experiments and murders and you realize how dark this world really is. 3) Union X the war and what lead up to it: Not to spoil the anything but the war is basically kids fighting each other and the Union leaders. But even worse you have the Mom basically setting everything into place for the war: giving every player a Charithy, giving each apprentice a role, warning them of a traitor, and then just leaving. He claims the war is inevitable, but is that true or does he love seeing innocent children killing each other?
About 2), in other translations like the Spanish or the French ones drives are called fusions, so it's implied Sora absorbs them, hearts and all, and that's why he can dual wield
Stupid Child I believe that’s just a gameplay mechanic. When Sora first acquired Valor Form in Yen Sid’s tower Goofy didn’t disappear. He can duel wield because of Ventus.
@@superiorofthein-between8790 I'm talking 2005 info, when drives were first revealed. I remember the previews at the time saying something like "Sora's borrowing their strength" so if they don't become part of his heart my bet is they become pure vitamins and Sora swallows them for a minute, which is still very scary
@Honnjyx VII Yeah, he's always so ecstatic, eccentric, and happy. Talk about creepy. Then there's Luxu, who we now know took the name of Braig/Xigbar. I've only played some of the mobile game, and I do love it because it's telling the story and events that led to the Keyblade War and the origins of Marluxia, Larxene, and Ventus. However, I'm still confused on what happened to Ava. Luxu said at the end of Kingdom Hearts III that she finally served her purpose. What happened to her?
I agree with you! Good video :) i remember playing kh1 as a kid and feeling scared in several areas including Ariel’s level. There are so many dark areas in that world. Even the palace is over a dark abyss. Then there’s that dark area you fight giant Ursula in and her creepy lair Glad someone finally made a video like this
This is very interesting how you pointed out alot of these things and I can't believe they just slipped by me after all this time. I'd like to add my own contributions to this actually. In Kingdom Hearts 1, when you go to the level before you fight Riku as he's possessed by Ansem, you see the Disney princesses. Now you see Jasmine and Alice who were just recently captured but then you see Aurora and Belle and Cinderella and its been confirmed that they've been stuck up on those walls like hunting trophies for years! Imagine having to suffer that fate. Another one I've mentioned on other sites is the huge Mickey Mouse emblem in the form of a massive crater in the Keyblade Graveyard. I honestly consider that the most bone chilling hidden mickey in all of Disney's history and its enough to make you wonder just what made that kind of mark in the ground and like, who all may have died in that type of explosion?
The part when you see the princess being held in those crystal coffins in Hollow Bastion looks even more eerie in the concept art images.khinsider.com/2015%20Uploads/07/Lost%20Artwork/New%20Art/Captured%20Princesses01.png images.khinsider.com/2015%20Uploads/07/Lost%20Artwork/New%20Art/Captured%20Princesses02.png
When I first played this game--in 2005 I think?--I remember dwelling on all the mysteries Kingdom Hearts introduced. This video feels so nostalgic of that time and it really solidifies how the first entry in this *incredible* series really stands out in unique ways from the other games.
Surprised that with the World Rooms at the end you didn't mention that 100 acres is somehow there as well, despite it NEVER being a combat area in any of the games
The really freaky thing about Xemnas in the original Final Mix was the vague text quotes he would trigger when going through Sora, which all would later turn-out to be future dialogue for KHII. This showed that Xemnas had knowledge of the future, which makes it even more chilling to come back to years later after the series has brought-in the time traveling element.
I actually checked that to see if it was true. It's actually dialogue that's happened in the first game up to that point, like Sora telling Riku he's stupid for siding with the Heartless, Sora saying the there's no way Leon will get the Keyblade from him, or that Alice isn't who the Queen of Hearts is looking for.
Great video! It's really interesting how despite KH is the most simple KH game story-wise it has so many intriguing details. Personally the moment that is creepiest to me is when you visit Ursula's Lair, and IMO another creepy moment in KH is when you visit the broken ship in Atlantica and a shark appears, I find it kind of unsettling how the camera changes to a fixed camera angle to warn you that something is about to happen, that's more creepy than the actual jumpscare, and if I remember correctly I think the music stops during that moment. LOL, about the guy from the hotel I have a theory that I'm a bit ashamed to share but it makes sense, gonna try not to write too much text to explain it: I think that moment was a 4th wall-breaking one, the game is acknowledging the players' existence and that's why the character is thinking instead of talking. If you take it seriously and forget about the fact that you're playing a video game (which is not real, ofc), this makes it even more creepy because it can make you question why this character knows about your existence, that you're controlling Sora (your in-game avatar, a video game character) And it's even more unsettling when you pay attention to KH 3 and Union X [Cross]'s cutscenes and notice that there are two moments directed at the players: 1) When Sora takes a photo with Hayner, Pence, Olette, Donald and Goofy, everyone is posing for the photo but no one is using Sora's phone to take it and they haven't asked someone else to take the photo, then Pence wonders: ''Wait, who's taking it?'' None of the characters realize how shady it is what they've just done, posing for us the players. 2) In Union X we're supposedly the only ones who see the Game Over screen in the Wreck-it-Ralph world, why aren't we shown a cutscene of either Player (our avatar) or Brain seeing this screen? Brain was taking a look at what is going on in the data versions of the Disney worlds through the screens of a computer. This is very suspicious because in another story update we can see what's outside of Sugar Rush's arcade machine, in other words we're seeing the real world while we're in the video game world. Not to mention that in the beginning of KH 1, Sora says: ''I've been having these weird thoughts lately. Like is any of this for real or not?'' He and Yozora say this line in the Secret Episode of KH 3's ReMind DLC. ''Coincidence? I think not'' Plus Young Xehanort tells Sora in the Verum Rex world from Toy Box that Sora is a video game character in the Verum Rex world. I think Nomura has been planning since KH 1 to make two universes in KH: one that's real and one which is a video game universe, and in the latter one it's where the characters of KH live. That, IMO, would be the creepiest and most disturbing thing to ever happen in the KH series, because that would mean the KH characters are perceived as toys by other characters, and that's why there are 4th-breaking wall moments. Just take into account all what we do to video game characters in real life or how we react to them, I don't think it's really necessary to explain that, it'd be distasteful and not something pleasant to read... Moreover, that would explain why the Master of Masters tells this to Luxu in Back Cover about the Book of Prophecies in order to convince him that he'll fulfill his role and Luxu can't understand how that makes sense: ''The fact that it exists is proof of your success!'' Maybe the Master is aware that he and everyone else is living inside a video game and that could be why he doesn't have moral boundaries. And I wonder if the Master has really created the Book because in Case of Gula he says: ''Oh, I see'' If presumably you've already seen the future and you've recorded it in a Book (there isn't actually a confirmation that he wrote the Book, Chirithy just says that the Master has an eye that gazes into the future but that could be the Gazing Eye from No Name) why would you start to understand something that you already know? I don't know, maybe I'm missing something but that is extremely suspicious. Anyway, that's my theory, sorry for writing too much, I had to get this theory off my head because I've been obsessed with it ^_^U
Definetly don't apologize this was amazing to read and thank you for sharing it. It helped me understand more what tetsuya might mean to do with the whole world of fiction bit he talked about it the melody game with Kairi. I hope you continue with your love of theories & your passion for kh!
The entire final world is creepy. That whole world is just a giant graveyard of fallen worlds. Everyone on them is most likely dead, and have gone through what we might call an apocalypse. Then when you visit Sora's world, you kind of just reflect on how happy that place was before it fell. Seeing Tidus hitting the air, Sofia on her jump rope, Wakka just chilling out; all of that just gone. Imagine Sora's thoughts. Imagine coming back to your home, knowing that none of it is real, and some monster can transform it at will. Some might collapse from the overbearing stress, the dread. That and the creepy music that plays too, which serves to deliver that sense of lonlieness whilst on Destiny Islands.
The secret endings for KH3 and Remind give me that mysterious melancholic atmosphere and vibe the original Kingdom Hearts 1 did. I'm not sure how future games will turn out but I'm cautiously optimistic . Kingdom Hearts 1 has such an amazing unique atmosphere full of mystery and wonder.
I will say the creepiest thing in KH1 in my opinion is the secret Xemnas fight. The way he doesn't talk with voiced words gives me shivers. That and how it teases the nobodies and Organization XIII
What do you mean by personalized? Are you saying that each game bends to the desire, fears, and personality of the person playing? And that these characteristics don't change even if the game is given away?
In the French version of Kingdom Hearts, World Terminus is called "Pandemonium", which in itself can mean a complete state of chaos/madness, but might also be a reference to Pandæmonium, the capital of Hell in Milton's "Paradise Lost"; perhaps suggesting the World Terminus is something of a capital for End Of The World?
This game is easily the darkest in the series imo. Just look at Hollow Bastion. Not to mention the stakes the are just inherently involved when it comes to the first game in a series.
DDD seems like the creepiest one to me. You’re traveling to another dimension where a bunch of comatose worlds are forced to repeat their final day before getting destroyed until they’re awakened by Sora and Riku. Sounds like some HP Lovecraft stuff
The interesting thing about that guy in Traverse Town is that I think he's the ONLY character in all of Traverse Town that actually reuses a model. From what I can recall, all the other NPCs are entirely unique
I remember the first time I played KH1 and wanted to go back to the clock tower. Tinkerbell offering to take me back there and suddenly…. Phantom. This silent grim reaper being that floats around and put a timer on the battle.
Just a little point about the NPC thing, in law reason for the lack of people is explained in Dark Road by the process of the worlds reforming after destruction. People are the last thing to be recreated but the people of that world think that everyone is there already. Hence "The guests were just starting to enjoy them selves" in an empty ball room in BBS. ALso the people in the pods aren't being experimented on. That is a device called "The Arc" again, look into the up to date Union Cross updates and info.
Also, about the World Terminus, if I remember correctly, if you don''t lock the Keyhole (specifically in Olympus Colliseum) you don't get to or have to do that "world" when going through the World Terminus.
Funny you brought up Oogie's Manor. I always found the scene where Oogie becoming his house to be kinda sad. He allows his darkness to consume him and he becomes a mindless monster. And I think of a lot of the Disney villains and how they meet their end. Some of them are defeated by the hero, but a lot of them are undone by their own evil. And this game is all about that. The villains seek to control the Heartless, but the Heartless grow far too powerful for them and as Maleficent said, "The Heartless consume the careless.."
3:40 I mean if you think about it. When someone loses their heart they become a heartless, and the body left behind becomes a nobody. Weve seen sora come back from being a heartless, so why not other people too right? Maybe this was actually a hint toward the end of the game where sora becomes a heartless and roxas is born. This guy now exists at the same time as his nobody.
I remember when I first saw the secret super boss fight against Xemnas (then known as "The Enigmatic Man" or "Unknown") and heard the music called "Disappeared" was super extra creepy.
Funny story. When I first fought Mysterious Figure in KH1, I was playing the PS3 version, which was and is a little dodgy, mechanically. The moment he walked through Sora, the volume glitched out, and the entire fight was basically on mute. I thought that was normal until he started his second phase, and then the sound would come in occasionally and was crackly. I won, but spent the rest of the day thinking that my game was haunted, and that I somehow managed to exercise the disk by battling some sort of data ghost.
Something like "My friends are dead..." and then Sora just pulls out his keyblade, slashes whoever is in his way, and slowly gains some black accents in his character's color palette?
Many other creepy things in KH: 1) KH2: in ansems study in hollow bastion/radiant garden there’s a human diagram and the diagram just looks creepy to me. I don’t know if it’s really disturbing or not but I’m pointing it out anyway. 2) KH3: xehanort kills Kairi which is sad and disturbing bc he basically killed a Kid. I honestly don’t know how old she is I’m assuming she’s either 14 or 15. 3) KH 0.2 BBS a fragmentary passage the realm of darkness: you visit worlds that are completely lifeless and are completely in ruins and are completely distorted. which gives you the fear of uneasiness and loneliness. their are three worlds in the game which are the castle of dreams, dwarf woodlands, and enchanted dominion and the music that accompany the worlds creep you out and disturb you even more as the music matches and fits the lifelessness, the uneasiness, and loneliness of the worlds and the appearance of the worlds. I especially find the dwarf woodlands the creepiest out of the three due to the many rooms you visit in the mirrors and with phantom Aqua occasionally taunting you. 4) KH3 secret reports: in KH3 not all the reports but some of the reports are unsettling and creepy to read. Secret Reports 1,3, and 4 are creepy and especially secret reports 11,12,and 13 bc you don’t know who it could be which is creepy and suspenseful and there is probably a few other secret reports that are unsettling.this is just my opinion it’s possible I’m not the only one who finds the secret reports unsettling to read. 5) KH3 the final world: The final world is practically a purgatory for people who can’t pass on bc something or someone is stopping them from doing so. All the unvoiced stars have very sad and tragic stories. The world despite being beautiful is unsettling due to its purpose. And due to the many stars that reside there.
The fact that Kingdom Hearts III's reports mention the haunting wails and screams of pain coming from the test subjects could be heard in the night is horrifying. You do realize that kids, most likely Kairi as well, had their hearts painfully tested on in the Ark and that some of these kids didn't survive and were killed in these experiments. That sounds like something out of a bodily horror film! Is this Kingdom Hearts or fucking Hostel (2005)!?
Mauricio Garcia oh god the haunting wails and screams I’m not lying I got a chill just reading that I can just picture and visualize the screams and wails of children I get a feeling we might see the experiments and hear the wails and screams of the test subjects in melody of memory
Sora and Kairi are 14 in KH1. KH2 happens almost a year later, so she would be 15 there. I would say Kairi in KH3 is 16 or 17(not sure because we get no clear timestatements anymore after 2.)
When that cloak heartless sidles up next to you, it reminds me of fast and furious. lol Like when racers look at each other in their cars, windows rolled down, taunting one another. xD
I didnt know that there was a guy or girl in the hotel also the scariest thing for me from this series was Cherbourg since I first play kingdom heart It was around 2009 I believe that is basically satan and even the word satan scared me since I got scared over the littlest things
There's this place in an alleyway in the second district behind the Dress and Suit shop that looks like a creepy goth club with purple windows and black wiry bars covering them. I imagine that the people who go there actually *_like the Heartless_* and share all their poetry about darkness with each other while drinking weird tea. In game though, Heartless actually spawn right next to the building's front door, so it makes sense that all the patron's negative emotions would draw the Heartless to the club. This is my head canon. _Change my mind._
KH1 was definitely creepy in terms of the small things. I remember being obsessed with the painting lobby guy and trying to find a way to get to him lol. In the fire door, I thought there was gonna be a scary boss fight cause I went there before the actual story called for it
Oh I always thought the accessory shop guy had the dialogue for chatting because before he takes over, you can "chat" with Cid and he says something, and so it's kinda like.. they didn't wanna take away the menu option, just altered the response to a more "oh you think you know me? weird" joke that some rpgs just let you casually chat with npcs even when they should have no idea who you are Those 3 hallways under Chernabog are odd to me since... there is nothing there BUT those hallways.. no heartless, just.. 3 empty hallways.. oh did not know they were meant to be Cinderella, Snow White, and Aurora (Sleeping Beauty) worlds... those are like.. at the time I would think were big 3 and they weren't given full worlds.. just... hallways leading to final swarm of enemies and final boss.. yo wait... those 3 were like first 3 worlds in BBS.. so development side they probably were like "we can now do these justice" but lore-wise.. maybe those were first few to go since... were in same "space" as Radiant Garden at the time.. if that makes any sense... Destroying Ooogies Manor felt also bit awe-inspiring since it was one of few things that.. isn't just magically back when you come back for funsies or grinding, like it was left to be unexplored (plus in FM if any chests are unopened they wind up at the deepest part, under a guillotine so that's creepy too) Oh ya Ursula's lair... knowing that all those.. things were shriveled up merpeople because of Ursula.. they just... stare... Ya the Hollow Bastion room was offputting when i first came across since.. obviously up until then you're just revisiting worlds/rooms you've seen before but suddenly new place with a theme you recognize, but it's still not even normal with the giant logo and the portals, and then iirc activating whatever making the Heartless pop up in the small room just was like.. so creepy Sniperwild was not creepy it was more annoying and scary in terms of "oh now your health go bye bye" to inexperienced player when first playing... just thought was normal monkey thing from Deep Jungle... so didn't realize it was special..until got gangbanged.. and it being in Traverse Town, the "safest" world since sorta was a hub of sorts with shops and the FF gang just made it worse since I was in Second District a lot just because
I hope you make more of these countdown Kingdom hearts list I've learned few new things just from the two you've already put out alone... I don't know maybe it's just cuz I love the first a lot 🥰
No mention of King Triton and the fact he both knew what a Keyblade was, and seemed to have had some bad experiences with them? There used to be a running theme of the Keyblade being...dangerous.
What I've always wondered about is the Hollow Bastion picture slide in Deep Jungle. How did it get there? Were Jane, her father, and Clayton just hoping around in different worlds and take a picture of the place? Did Ansem visit this place at some point?
I think the most fucked up thing about kingdom hearts is the kayblade war was fought by children. And the deaths of those Children was what summoned kingdom hearts.
That final world one makes sense when looking towards BBS where in the secret episode and in 0.2 you see Sleeping Beauties, Snow Whites, and Cinderellas worlds in the World of Darkness.
@@lpfan4491 no, the end of the world is home to the remnants of the worlds taken by darkness. The worlds fell the End of The World is just where the few piece's of a world that isn't destroyed goes.
many worlds in KH1, esp hollow bastion gave a very creepy or odd vibe, i liked it though. as a kid first time playing i was scared going through them 😂
I was always creeped out by the door in the cave on Destiny Island, because you see it at the very beginning and of course there’s no knob or anything and you think “hmm I guess that’s there for a reason but idk why yet” and then if I remember correctly it leads to the end of the game right? So it’s like, was it that way all along?
Sephiroth is pretty creepy in KH1. Selecting the mysterious ??? match and then entering the spooky dark version of the coliseum, the weird summoning glyph suddenly appearing and beaming the guy down, the eerie slow build up as he stands before the intimidating One-Winged Angel music kicks in and then of course the startling moment when you most likely instantly die the second the match starts. It's possible that it's creepier if you're like me and you didn't know anything about Final Fantasy or Sephiroth when you first played KH, I get the feeling that the excitement over Sephiroth's presence in the game cancels out the creepy factor for people who knew him already.
KH1 definitely felt the most uneasy. There was this big sense of mystery and melancholy; a vast yet empty setting with so many (at the time) unanswered questions. Even the boxart portrayed that foreboding feeling of the characters and the player having to dive into the unknown headfirst. Unlike the later games, the characters didn't have the option of just standing around while Yen Sid explains everything; the player and Sora just have to wing it and pick up scraps of information along the way.
As for creepy stuff in the other games, a few things come to mind. Strelitzia's murder (in a series where death is usually either Disney-fied or easily undone) and the way she appeared in Lauriam's dreams is kinda dark. The Keyblade War seemingly being fought entirely by children (no parents ever seen in the game) who either killed each other or were so traumatized that they were sent to a dream world with their memories erased.
Most of CoM is creepy. The plot is an abused kid being forced to brainwash another kid by a group of psychopaths who kill each other by the end of the game. Everyone Sora met forgot about him, likely including his own parents, which is a whole other rabbit hole of potential terror (imagine waking up one day and noticing a bunch of photos of a kid you've never met and a child's bedroom in your house when you don't remember having kids). Namine's entire short existence was child abuse and she ended up hating herself. Repliku originally had his own personality and was fine with himself until Larxene forced Namine to break his mind and heart.
Xion's whole existence, Roxas living an entire fake life in the span of a week and losing it, and the whole purgatory segment in 3 are also big ones. (Yay, I get to meet a dead child and the ghost of a woman with postpartum depression in my Disney game)
I have much respect for you, for writing so much clap clap
Yeah, seriously. It's dark as fuck. I felt so bad for Namine and Repliku, as well as Sora. CoM was actually pretty messed up. How is Sora able to stay so sane, despite all the shit he's been through, same with Namine and Riku, especially in the first game and being manipulated by Maleficent? I mean, I know Kairi went through some shit as well, but I guess I'm glad she ended up losing her memories of her childhood, since she was a subject in Xehanort's messed up experiments. Imagine if she were to one day remember what had transpired, how traumatised she'd be. I feel so bad for many of the characters, honestly. It's both unsettling and sad; Yet, these games now hold a place in my heart, despite me getting into KH in 2015 and being late to the party, it's thanks to Nico B's let's plays of the games, then afterwards playing the games myself.
Yeah, Xion and Roxas went through absolute shit too and KH3 purgatory was so friggin' unsettling and I admit to shedding some tears when speaking to each star. It was goddamn deep and dark. KH games are pretty dark, despite the fact they're with Disney.
I agree entirely with you and you're awesome for writing out such a well thought out comment, with so much detail. :D
@@ReptilianTeaDrinker I assume Nico B got you into KH with his "Platinum Match" playthrough?
*OH GOD, HELP ME PLEASE! NO NO NO NO NO NO! AAAAH, HE'S RUNNING AT ME! DARK SPHERE POWER?! ARGH MY BALLS!*
Not to mention that there's a feeling of anxiety during the whole game due to this emptiness and lack of people, the end of the world really creeps me
Kh1 is the absolute best. The sense of mystery and originality in every corner is just unmatched. No world has beaten the feeling I’ve gotten throughout ‘The End of The World’ for me
The most "creepy" aspects of Kingdom Hearts, in my opinion, would be:
- The experiments Ansem the Wise and his apprentices performed on people, particularly children (for example Subject X, Kairi). The Reports in KH3 even states "the wails and screams of humans could be heard echoing into the night"
- KH2 and Union X/Chi: living in a simulation (like the Matrix), where everything and everyone is not real - maybe even yourself, without you knowing. This, I think, is one reason why KH2's intro is so memorable, despite its long duration.
- The Keyblade Graveyard: the fallen Keyblade wielders, the destruction of the land that used to be. All that history, and some of which we probably don't know. There is a lot of sadness there.
- Losing memories, having false or no identity, FADING ENTIRELY FROM EXISTENCE. Possessing the body, soul and mind of another person, for different purposes.
- The Beta trailer for KH1 has surprisingly dark themes
- "Destati" is among the darkest soundtracks in KH franchise for the lyrics alone
- As you mentioned in this video; the emptiness of it all, the lack of people, End of the World etc.
- The Final World; talking to the Stars (souls/hearts) of the dead as they linger in Purgatory or Limbo, listening to their regrets and sorrows. This one - "my dear, beloved burden" giving the idea of a mother dying during childbirth - struck me while playing KH 3 for the first time. A 26 year old man shedding tears whilst playing 'a children's game'
Oh those are all very good indeed. The final world one definitely hit me too
From what I remember Ansem the Wise didn't take part in the human experimentation, but was there for some of the experiments before Xehanort really got the others into that. He did study Subject X, but more so in questioning her amnesia instead of experimenting on her. Everything else is valid though.
ur right on all of these x'3 don't forget the one heart/soul that was a child saying they couldn't find their father, and that he was calling to him from a bright light. ugh my pain knows no bounds QAQ
Even recoded has some creepy and dark stuff in it.
Sometimes the creepiest stuff isn't what's shown but what's implied.
Interesting fact: you could hear a owl hooting outside Merlin's house in the original kh1, there was a drop water sound too but these sound effects was removed in the remix version, i don't know why tho cuz i think it's creepy but cool.
that's such a deeply recessed memory you just brought back to me wtf
It's possible it's something they just forgot about given that they had to rebuild the game for the remix
the owl sound you mention makes me think of Merlin's pet talking intelligent owl Archimedes
I've been playing this game for 15 years now and I never knew about the painting thing
KH1 has a lot of secrets like that. I only very recently found out that you can weigh Sora on the scales in the item shop, haha.
Novayon WTF. I did not know that. Hahahahhaha
Ive been playing Kingdom Hearts for about as long and Ive never seen those Agrabah NPC's...
Northern Gaijin probably cuz u never went back lile me
@@Kattsoppa1 I never thought to check, I'd just leave Agrabah
I used to think Sora had died after the fall of Destiny Islands, and he was trapped in a sort of afterlife in Traverse Town. There was something about the mood of the world, the guy eaten by Heartless, the eternal state of night, music and just the fact everyone had lost their worlds. Made TT seem like some sort of purgatory
very interesting idea!
Damn, that's like a creepypasta theory
And now he's actually dead lol
"I've been having these weird thoughts lately... like is any of this for real or not?"
@@Someone-gp3jh isn’t traverse town kind of like an in between world where characters who lost their real home go. It kind of makes sense that it feels kind of unsettling as no one is truly supposed to reside there.
I so agree with this list! People will complain about the original Kingdom Hearts and it's 'clunky' control scheme... but honestly, as polished as the storytelling has become in the modern titles- it's missing something. No matter how deep Nomura dives off the edge into the themes of existentialism and destiny, the convolution can make things a bit too murky to appreciate. The simplicity of the original game really left enough dark/serious undertones out in the open for us to ponder and be slightly disturbed about.
I miss that feeling from a Kingdom Hearts game.
I would say the storytelling is actually the best together with the story itself. It implies stuff or shows it instead of just telling you it exists. Not to mention that it actually makes a big deal out of everything instead of trying to normalize things. I am actually impressed that games after did not say "getting back your human body as a heartless is a normal thing" and instead you usually need to get your butt kicked to turn back. because that is usually what convoluted and hackmeat sequels tend to do, make everything in the original nonspecial and just a thing that is already known and that happens. Though KH still does that in other areas.
The issue of worlds not having very many people in them is addressed in KH: Dark Road.
(Spoilers)
When worlds come back from the realm of darkness and/or sleep in stages. First small bits of the world, then buildings, then people, and finally then does time move in the proper way. So all the world's in KH1 and even 2 that have so few residents is due to that process.
That explains it not only that but In kingdom hearts 3 there’s a lot of people in the worlds now especially kingdom of corona the Caribbean and San fransokyo which shows the results of the stages
Would be cool in the final game when they finally defeat the heartless they show the worlds restored with there people
The fact that time never really moves in any world feels quite disturbing now
This is for the game that establishes so well for me what darkness is. I know Kingdom Hearts characters love to say Darkness Darkness Darkness, but this is the game that made Darkness feel threatening and real.
Ikr, the most of the ambients and "threats" don't sounds like real darkness threats on another games, of course that there are problems and missions around but at the most of the time it is just "oh! Xehanort is doing that" or "Organization XIII are that" or something wich is missed, even the Realm of darkness don't sounds so disturbing if you compare with some places wich you explore on KH1, honestly, I think that if the main games continued something with the energy from KH1 maybe the impact for the history about darkness and light could've sounded be more... natural?
it really showed that the worlds affected by darkness became less lively and eerie, which is what made me realize how the heartless really affected the kingdom hearts universe
Darkness felt like a living entity in this game, almost like skme sort of cosmic elderitch abomination
I feel like there's a kind of horror that can only be experienced in media for children
I think it's kind of creepy that the Hotel has pictures of different worlds, including The End of the World.
I can't explain The End of the World one, but the others at least have the Traverse Town excuse. If lots of people from other worlds were landing in my city, I'd commission hotel art of their worlds to make them more comfortable.
@@protatype7487 end of the world is made up of parts of worlds that were swallowed by the darkness so bald mountain was in a world before it got there
@@Morrigan101
Makes sense to me
Morrigan101 yeah symphony of sorcery is where bald mountain came from
That actually makes sense. Bald Mountain though... Spooky.
I'm glad this showed up in my reccs. I love it when people discuss KH1, it's got such a weird sort of melancholy atmosphere to it. Something that slowly went away until it completely disappeared with KH3.
1. When I first played KH1 and the Phantom popped up (the original dark color version) I got so freaked out I quickly turned off the game. I don't even remember how I got the balls to fight it lmao.
2. I never noticed the castle in the corridors nor the fact that it's remnants of destroyed worlds. I just knew it looked so unsettling.
3. That heartless logo freaked me the hell out because it was just so...big.
KH1 and to a lesser extend com just took advantage of a darker atmosphere more. Heartless are demons. The ansemreports tell a story of a man slowly going to madness with power and also experiments where the core of a person is described to literally crumble to create more demons and in com, the antargonists are all basically as much of a phantomimage as the fake worlds as they suddenly fade away when they die and marluxia is essencially the grim reaper.
They make a whole game to explain why Mickey doesn't wear a shirt in Kingdom Hearts 1
Where is the game that explains the ghost Hotel owner who psychically communicates about paintings?
Wait why doesn't he wear a shirt?
@@lillianmonet5952 it got destroyed in a fight with a heartless that he was fighting with aqua while they were protecting riku.
Smh, he should have magically spawned another shirt. So inappropriate! LOL
@@ReptilianTeaDrinker Then you wouldn't get to see Mouse nipples and that would be the real tragedy...
This whole explanation to show him with no shirt reminds me of the shitty Expanded Universe Star Wars comics that detail every single piece of garbage that ever appeared in the movies, there are complete stories just to justify some weird things from the movies.
Kh1 has that uneasy almost dreamlike feeling of shadow of colossus. It’s such a strong yet subtle thing even though you can’t really put your finger on it. Weirdly those games are the only examples of this feeling I can think of and Im not sure if it was a product of their time or unintended and just happened to be this way due to hardware constraints. A mystery I’m happy never solving because I love that sense of not knowing what’s going on or why I’m there alone
Idk why this channel is suddenly getting recommended to me but i'm glad it is, you've got some good analysis and it's nice learning more about KH which was, in retrospect, such a weird game.
It honestly really is, and I love it for that
I noticed a very creepy design choice with the Darkball heartless. If you look at it through the journal with it looking straight at you, you notice that the "face" of it is very humanoid with a very human looking nose and eyes. It might sound weird but it freaks me out
Yeah I can definitely see that, I'm imagining seeing one of those things in real life now 👀
Heartless formed from people with a lot of darkness in their hearts can retain human form like Ansem did. So Darkballs were humans dark enough when they lost their hearts to retain the vague form of their face. so, less dark than say, invisibles, but so much more creepy.
I find the heartless Sora more creepy, I mean imagine seeing an exact copy of yourself that is out for your blood and is nothing more than a black figure with strange yellow eyes. It can have the same moves as you, fight like you, and wants nothing more than to kill you. If anything I find that more disturbing and after Sora kills it, it doesn't just die, the heartless Sora just floats down into a dark abyss portal and is gone, that's it.
i remember being terrified of that heartless in my first play through 😭
The Xemnas secret boss it's insane, the atmosphere of all these scenes gives me chills
I don't know why but fighting Roxas in kh2 is still terrifying to this day. His movements and everything just seem so unnatural. Plus you can just feel the pain radiating off the entire fight. You can feel all his regrets and that just makes the atmosphere so much more horrifying because you know he's taking those regrets out on you.
@@youfailed3089 Well, during the fight you can see him literally shivering in anger. That battle stance isn't one of control
@@youfailed3089 REFLAGA and hes not so scary lol
Yeah, you basically hear NOTHING as he moves across the battlefield. That dude moved like a true Sith...
Kingdom Hearts 1 will always be the scariest game to me in the KH series (notice: not the darkest but the scariest. There's a difference). It was always so eerie to play and you felt like someone was always watching you...even you as like the player...but no one ever was. I thought maybe it was because I was 5 when I first played KH1 (I'm 21 now), so I replayed it last year (Final Mix 🤗) and it was _still_ eerie and creepy to me...
You just always felt so alone while playing it. You're separated from your family, home town, and friends. You're in this weird area and have no clue about what is happening to you. You have no magic and like 1 potion to heal yourself while you're surrounded by--what felt like--thousands and thousands of heartless that are very powerful (at the time they felt like it). You were so weak at the time, which is understandable because you _just_ got your Keyblade. Everything looked darker compared to the brighter contrast on other KH games. Even when you meet Donald and Goofy, you first feel distanced from them. Yeah they were nice, but they made it clear to you that they are there for Mickey's request/mission and not really you, you. So, we just stay focused on finding our friends and after both objectives have been cleared, you both will go on your separate ways, never seeing each other again (of course they are our friends now and we feel WAAAAY more comfortable around them). Like when Riku gets the Keyblade, they prove this point by straight up abandoning us (yes they come back but at the time, we didn't know that). It hurt me as a kid when Riku came up to us in Traverse Town, only for him to leave us "alone" again with technically still strangers even after us telling him that we were looking for him. We are alone yet again.
Yeah there are other scary, eerie stuff in KH1 (some you hit in the video) that always terrified me as a kid. Like how ghostly Kairi looked and flew through our arms; it made you question what happened to her to make her look that way and what did she see? What did that door do to her? Why did she fly through our arms and why the wind? Or when we first encountered that BIG shadow heartless where we see our large shadow and then it lifts from the ground and transforms. I was terrified of my shadow for YEARS after seeing that lol! I was scared of ants too because I thought that ants looked like shadow heartless and I felt powerless because I didn't have a Keyblade lol. And the secret reports and so much more 😩
You just felt alone, weak, powerless, confused, and felt like a loss of control...
The whole thing with Mickey speaking to Sora while he's in his Station of Awakening is also pretty weird. It's almost like we've been playing as Data Sora this entire time.
I always felt sorry for Sora, to have teammates like Donald and Goofy. So shallow. Donald straight-up refused to let Riku come with them and wouldn't even give Sora a reason. Donald refused to land in Deep Jungle, Sora had to wrestle the gummi ship controls away from him. "The king wouldn't be there." "But what if Riku and Kairi are there?" "No." Even in Kingdom Hearts 3, in light of all the scenes showing what good "friends" they are, when Sora expresses how much it hurt him when they abandoned him in KH1, and how he understands that it hurt because of how much he cares for them, they're just like "That's what Data Sora said! Any Sora is still Sora!" like how bout y'all apologize or show even a hint of remorse for hurting him? Oh that's right, cause you're only with him cause of that Keyblade, not because of who he is as a person. If Riku hadn't been corrupted when he took the keyblade, Donald and Goofy wouldn't have gone back to Sora, and we all know it. Mickey and Riku, on the other hand, are shown to actually care about each other. And Sora... is so gullible he doesn't even see it. He latched onto them because he had no other way to look for his friends. It's sad. The whole series would have been different if Donald would have let Riku go with them in KH1 in Traverse Town.
@@jenius9164 I was so pissed when Donald left sora and goofy. It was a Betrayal as far as I was concerned as a kid and I wouldn't heal him (donald) for the longest time when he inevitably got knocked out. Though I was pissed at goofy too...just goofy at least saved sora last second unlike some duck that casually went back to sora after goofy's display.
Kh1 was also darker thanks to that feeling of desperation, and running out if time with the world's too. I remember how each heartless had the potential to be a menace & taking each battle seriously. I remember how BIG the heartless were compared to sora & the keyblade. It's like a tangible way of knowing Sora's in over his head and grappling the uncertainty each step.
Oh, I love how u mentioned deep jungle & sora wrestling the controls away. It's a great example and a great memory I forgot! Thanks for bringing it back :)
Still bothers me we cant go into the Blue Room in the Hotel
As I child I would try every time to find a way into the blue room, it was so fun
I wanted to see if I'd end up in the Velvet Room and hear Igor's voice; Just to find out it's a Persona crossover, thus why it's blue. But Igor wasn't introduced until the 3rd Persona game, if memory serves me well and that was well after Kingdom Hearts 1 came out. lol Still, as Persona and KH trash, I couldn't help but have that thought when first playing KH1, which was in 2016. (I was late to the party.)
@@ReptilianTeaDrinker nope. Persona 1. Even if he was only in the release or rerelease on psp. It would be persona 2.
Bro, I've wanted to go into the diner next to the accessory shop in the first district for forever. It has a barely legible menu on the outside. Hot dogs, pizza and ice cream are apparently sold there.
@@ReptilianTeaDrinker Persona 1, 2 both feature Igor.
I used to think the shop keeper was a heartless and the guy by the door was his nobody.
That could actually be true we did see his heart get taken away so that could be legit
that's a solid theory 🤔
The manga shows the heartless grabbing the heart with his own hands, it's actually creepy, also, the girl offers sora a good time or something like that if I remember correctly
Yeah, a prostitute hits on Sora.
The Xemnas boss fight was crazy because he foreshadowed Roxas by saying Sira was incomplete
Sora*
Rixas*
@@zalanum3063 Lmao!
@@ReptilianTeaDrinker Look who it is
The final mix revision came out shortly after com in japan and that already featured the idea of nobodies in a more limited way.
Really liked the detail of King Stephens Castle being barely but a shadow on the wall! 👍🏻👍🏻
As a kid, i've always had this theory that the phantom boss was either the heartless of Lord Ombra from the Peter Pan book series, or at least inspired by it
Sabor in Deep Jungle scared the shit out of me when I was younger, because he was so fast and he jumpscared you!
Even today when I hear the battle theme in Deep Jungle and see no heartless my butt clenches in preparation for being jumped by that damn cat.
Hello. Just some information that I would like to share: Sabor is female.
@@fademario2000 not in the game for some weird reason, Sabor is referred to as male in Jiminy's Journal
Honestly I was more scared of the shark. Thing always came out of nowhere.
"I've been to see him...
He looks a lot like you.."
roXas
"He's been standing outside the plaza all night."
@Repo man KH2 brother.
I'm glad you mentioned the fact that Ansem was on Destiny Islands all this time, especially in the context of BBS, DDD, and Dark Road. He had been there for at least fifty years, watching and waiting for the perfect vessel. He saw people arrive of the islands for the first time since Xehanort's Caretaker passed away and he sent Teen Xehanort to Scala Ad Caelum, saw as kids came and went from the play island, and was there for when Aqua, Terra and Ventus each visited the islands. He watched as Sora, Riku and Kairi grew up, and must have used that time to determine which of the kids would be his ideal vessel so that he would have a physical form for the first time in half a century. It's no wonder why he was so crazy and hammy, imagine the sheer joy of having hands again after all that time.
Atlantica in Kingdom Hearts 1- when you first swim into the open area where the shipwreck is and Glut the shark comes out of the haze from afar, circling it, just waiting patiently to munch on you. I thought that was intimidating as hell back in the day.
My mind would be absolutely BLOWN if that Traverse Town guy ended up being the MoM. I wouldn’t even be upset lol.
That guy that loses his heart is actually the Master of Masters.
This game works best in isolation. Replaying it now, i can fully appreciate the atmosphere more than before, and even regard it as the superior game compared to 2.
This game is the perfect example of "Fridge Horror"; demons born from evil in the hearts of man, that steal your soul.
If this game was stand-alone; one-and-done, it would be a much more powerful experience. My experience with the other games has lessened the impact.
1 is my favourite, 2 grows on me each time I play it even though I hate the roxas prologue it's just painful. Imo all of the other kh games are trash, even 3. They, bafflingly, seem to channel the worst elements of the best two games and drop the best elements in every subsequent game.
@@johnwatchesyoutubeandstuff3947 You put it perfectly. I've always been puzzled at the dislike some of the community has for KH1. I originally played it as a six-year old, and it was a profound experience. There is a "magic" in KH1 that no other KH game, in fact no other game I've ever played since, has recaptured. The mystery surrounding the heartless, Ansem, and just the whole world was enthralling, and piecing together Ansem's journals was a thoughtful way of forcing us to engage with the lore. KH3 was an extreme disappointment, just a tensionless story driven by flanderized characters. The biggest problem with the KH games after KH2 (and even KH2 wasn't completely free of this issue) is that there is generally nothing driving the plot forward other than the tying up of plot threads. KH1 follows an archetypal story where Sora's world is destroyed by the darkness and he must set to save the other worlds from the same fate. Since we witness this firsthand as Sora we are compelled as players to save the Disney worlds from the same fate, thus we are emotionally engaged in the story and the fight with the main antagonists. KH2 is similar with the fight against Organization XIII, at least in the second half of that game. However, in KH3, the finale just feels like "oh okay, let's get all the dudes from the previous games to fight Xehanort because we need to save the worlds... I guess... even though all the story-relevant cutscenes have nothing to do with the Disney worlds." KH3 put the nail in the coffin of this series for me, a vacuous mess of story used as a Disney/Square cash cow.
@@happychey13 Some of it, I think, has to do with SquareSoft's transition to Square Enix.
KH1 was made when they were SSoft.
Also, Disney has too much restrictive control.
And no characters truly die, so there are no consequences
The voice text behind the reception desk at the hotel still creeps me out
yeah the story is garbage now but the gameplay is so good now ugh
That thing in the End of the World thing with the smudge in the rooms with the destruction I never noticed it! Thats creepy/amazing!
So I may be a little late to the draw but I remember experiencing something creepy playing KH1 for the first time that totally changed the way I viewed riku vs how many other people probably experienced the character. Its not widely known but you dont have to beat Monstro in order to progress the story.
I remember, as a kid, getting hopelessly lost in monstro and eventually just flying to another world out of frustration. I realized I could just leave and progress the story without ever getting Pinocchio from Riku. I remember that i only returned later in the game after the heartless increase in difficulty. Because you still need to rescue Pinocchio but Riku is now possessed by Ansem, the devs actually made contingency cut scenes if the player decided to bail on Monstro and come back (which is crazy since I don't think many people had that problem, I was just too young and didn't have much experience with video games and not trying to exploit some bug)
The cut scenes now had "riku" there but he was much more stoic and unresponsive to sora. Sora would actually call out in disbelief asking if it truly was his fallen friend. If you went this route, riku would not assist you in the fight against the parasite heartless and you'd have to defeat it with only Donald and Goofy twice. At the end, after Pinocchios farther pleads for his safety, riku silently leaves through a corridor of darkness.
Since this was a patch work solution to a very unlikely chance the player would make this choice, it is never brought up again nor referenced in future games as the cannonical events is that sora finishes Pinocchios world before riku gets possessed. And with that it leaves the player with a strange eerieness. Questioning if that was a sort of hallucination, a vision created by Ansem to taunt sora, or maybe it was the echos of rikus heart, not being able to cope with the fact that his light was snuffed out of his own body reaching out to Sora in a sort of state of denial over his own end. Imagine what sora thought, in his understanding, riku was gone, seeing the ghost of his friend must have been haunting.
And it leaves the player with a different perspective of riku. Never seeing riku assist sora, adding a bit more context to their struggling relationship as they slowly drift apart.
I hope my comment doesn't get lost and I hope you see it! I'd love if more people talked about this obscure fact
I love that kh1 has little attention to detail moments like that
End of the world gave me chills. Justthis graveyard of worlds and floating around in dark abysses with no land outside of the enemy itself.
No other last world has given me more chills.
Most definitely. You're in this dark, Hellish wasteland that's nothing but broken fragments of worlds that were destroyed by the Heartless. When you think about it, these are worlds like Beast's Castle, The Land of the Dragons, Pride Lands, Destiny Islands, Enchanted Dominion, Castle of Dreams, Dwarf Woodlands, and possibly several others that we have yet to visit like Pongo and Perdita's home in London, or Oakey Oaks, the home of Chicken Little. Even the corridors that showed off the first three worlds of Birth by Sleep in ruin is haunting. I never realized it at first because I was so intent of kicking Ansem's ass, but I recently played through Birth by Sleep: Final Mix on PS4 and am currently finishing Kingdom Hearts: Final Mix. Seeing the destroyed ruins of Enchanted Dominion's woods and King Stephen's castle, the dim and destroyed Castle of Dreams, and creepy trees of the Dark Forest from Dwarf Woodlands is that terrifying because you realize what's at stake for Sora. If someone doesn't stop Ansem, all those other worlds you've visited on the journey will meet the same grizzly fate, and that's exactly how I'd like to add on to your comment. It's HAUNTING.
I've been wanting to do a deep dive into KH for a long time now!!! I haven't uploaded any content but I love the franchise and there is SO MUCH to go into. Kingdom Hearts is very underappreciated and misunderstood. There is a lot more to this series that most haven't pieced together yet. Thank you for the inspiration!!
The 3 worlds in the Volcanic Crater corridors also make an appearance in KH 0.2 Birth by Sleep, A Fragmentary Passage. In that game they are all in the realm of darkness.
In the game: _the guy who died and turned into a Heartless but mysteriously still appeared_
In the manga: _One heartless shows up and stabbed a woman and destroyed her hearts (instead of her soul?)_
Which one is darker? XD
Question- Why does she have more than one heart? Is she Doctor Who? lol
manga cuz she was confirmed to b a hooker
@@ReptilianTeaDrinker no actually she has one heart. Since I'm tired of the game always told me to share hearts so I typed that. 😂😂
@@okayibelieveyou9330 Okay I Believe You
The painting says jungle(deep jungle)
Bald mountain(end of the world)
I'm so glad these are finally being talked about!
Also a cursed track??? O_o
Haha yeah, from the KH1 Ultimania:
--- I heard that there apparently was a “cursed song.”
Shimomura: In the beginning and ending of the game, there is a song with a chorus. That chorus is a phrase that expresses the dark side of Kingdom Hearts, and it was used in several songs. However, once we tried loading the chorus data in when we were creating the songs, something bad would happen. The worst thing that happened was when the electricity to the building was cut off. (laugh)
If i remember correctly, that cursed track is Destati. I don't remember if it was the one we know from every single game or a beta version of it that's "Cursed"
The Darkside boss terrified me as child, and so did the Chernobog boss in the End of World.
KH1 is probably my most cherished game from the franchise.
Yeah when I saw darkside boss I was wondering if I was playing dark souls for a second 😂
The creepiest thing about kingdom hearts 1 it's realising you can't go back to the happy times when you first played it for the first time and all you have are your childhood/teen memories
I wasn't aware they were people in Agrabah
That is because they vanish instantly again after leaving. And I have no idea why or how the game does that.
they only appreared after you defeat jafar, then they disappear
I feel if we showed more people turning into heartless by heartless stealing their hearts, it really would have kept some of the creepy vibe, but also show how REAL the heartless threat always is for keyblade wielders to face against them, you know? There was real potential there, but they only showed it on rare occasions.
Yeah, they should’ve shown those like the anime Goblin Slayer. The first episode unapologetically displays what happens when lower tier monsters get their pounds of flesh... and why the mc is so important to ordinary people!
@@kdkennedy4712I don't watch Goblin Slayer because of those rape scenes. I can't handle watching those, it cuts too personal for me. At least the heartless don't rape people, the one thing I will say about them that makes them more preferable between the two.
The ansem reports are really creepy imao. And interesting point, KH1 was my first game i ever played as kid. The weirdly creepy atmosphere really effected my taste in gaming.
Ikr. Like, still I'm always looking for something creppy and unsettling. I played the game when I was a child, like in 2002-2003, and I was so obssesed with the Hollow Bastion part, and the way Riku was, like the heartbreaking story we saw, everything was so depressing and dark. It wasn't a "Mickey and Riku saved the world with Sora", it was a sacrifice from disney characters sacrificing themselfs for a greater good, but like I legit thought Mickey died in that final scene. It was so disturbing. It wasen't a happy end either, it ended like here is Kairi, we don't know where Sora is, Mickey and Riku died to close Kingdom Hearts.
just a fun little thing to say, The first hallway in the volcanic crater is actually a reference to fantasia. that is the town that Chernabog destroys in "Night on Bald Mountain"
for some reason when i originally played this back in 02 as little kid i did get chills but not enough to really think about how scary or dark the game really was
the disney mix i guess sugar coated it enough for me and innocent mind to just enjoy the game but now that im older and just finished the hk3 literally 2 days ago with my much more developed and matured mind i cant believe the series is a lot darker than i thought
and watching you point these things out about hk1 really gave me chills on how accurate you are about it being pretty creepy at points with hk1 being the darkest of the later games
nonetheless, still a badass series
I never knew about the paintings. I think I remember seeing the first guy in Agrabah though. But that machine in Hollow Bastion's part of the World Terminus is actually very important now. It's in Union cross. It has a interesting purpose
And we're about to find out more in Melody of Memories
I always felt that it was implied to be a machine that artificially seperates hearts from humans to create emblem heartless. I dont like the retcons that came from later games
@jonbill1477 oh buddy if you hate retcons you picked the wrong series
I think it's creepy that they're always drowning and falling in the opening scene of each game
I exactly felt this melancholia, not to mention that emptiness and the scary soundtrack provoked a sense of anxiety, but the scariest moment of the game was the end of the world, the music, the emptiness and etc...
Creepy things in KH:
1) KH1: When Sora sacrifices himself for Kairi. Its a beautiful scene, but when you think about it this 14 year old boy is killing himself for his crush, all with a smile on his face.
2) KH2 Drive Form: Depending on which form you use Donald Goofy or both disappear. I always found that creepy. Where the heck do they go?
KH2 Hollow Bastion/Radient Garden: The whole area's in ruins and, compared to what it once was, its just a shell of its former world. Mix that with the number of experiments and murders and you realize how dark this world really is.
3) Union X the war and what lead up to it: Not to spoil the anything but the war is basically kids fighting each other and the Union leaders. But even worse you have the Mom basically setting everything into place for the war: giving every player a Charithy, giving each apprentice a role, warning them of a traitor, and then just leaving. He claims the war is inevitable, but is that true or does he love seeing innocent children killing each other?
About 2), in other translations like the Spanish or the French ones drives are called fusions, so it's implied Sora absorbs them, hearts and all, and that's why he can dual wield
Stupid Child I believe that’s just a gameplay mechanic. When Sora first acquired Valor Form in Yen Sid’s tower Goofy didn’t disappear. He can duel wield because of Ventus.
@@superiorofthein-between8790 I'm talking 2005 info, when drives were first revealed. I remember the previews at the time saying something like "Sora's borrowing their strength" so if they don't become part of his heart my bet is they become pure vitamins and Sora swallows them for a minute, which is still very scary
Honnjyx VII at long last, finally someone agrees with me
@Honnjyx VII Yeah, he's always so ecstatic, eccentric, and happy. Talk about creepy. Then there's Luxu, who we now know took the name of Braig/Xigbar. I've only played some of the mobile game, and I do love it because it's telling the story and events that led to the Keyblade War and the origins of Marluxia, Larxene, and Ventus. However, I'm still confused on what happened to Ava. Luxu said at the end of Kingdom Hearts III that she finally served her purpose. What happened to her?
I agree with you! Good video :) i remember playing kh1 as a kid and feeling scared in several areas including Ariel’s level. There are so many dark areas in that world. Even the palace is over a dark abyss. Then there’s that dark area you fight giant Ursula in and her creepy lair
Glad someone finally made a video like this
One creepy part I found in this game was fighting that devil guy thing from Fantasia and fighting the guardian too
This is very interesting how you pointed out alot of these things and I can't believe they just slipped by me after all this time. I'd like to add my own contributions to this actually. In Kingdom Hearts 1, when you go to the level before you fight Riku as he's possessed by Ansem, you see the Disney princesses. Now you see Jasmine and Alice who were just recently captured but then you see Aurora and Belle and Cinderella and its been confirmed that they've been stuck up on those walls like hunting trophies for years! Imagine having to suffer that fate.
Another one I've mentioned on other sites is the huge Mickey Mouse emblem in the form of a massive crater in the Keyblade Graveyard. I honestly consider that the most bone chilling hidden mickey in all of Disney's history and its enough to make you wonder just what made that kind of mark in the ground and like, who all may have died in that type of explosion?
The part when you see the princess being held in those crystal coffins in Hollow Bastion looks even more eerie in the concept art images.khinsider.com/2015%20Uploads/07/Lost%20Artwork/New%20Art/Captured%20Princesses01.png
images.khinsider.com/2015%20Uploads/07/Lost%20Artwork/New%20Art/Captured%20Princesses02.png
When I first played this game--in 2005 I think?--I remember dwelling on all the mysteries Kingdom Hearts introduced. This video feels so nostalgic of that time and it really solidifies how the first entry in this *incredible* series really stands out in unique ways from the other games.
Surprised that with the World Rooms at the end you didn't mention that 100 acres is somehow there as well, despite it NEVER being a combat area in any of the games
I actually kind if missed the empty rooms, it felt unnatural but in a good way. Looming dread just fills your mind.
The really freaky thing about Xemnas in the original Final Mix was the vague text quotes he would trigger when going through Sora, which all would later turn-out to be future dialogue for KHII. This showed that Xemnas had knowledge of the future, which makes it even more chilling to come back to years later after the series has brought-in the time traveling element.
I actually checked that to see if it was true. It's actually dialogue that's happened in the first game up to that point, like Sora telling Riku he's stupid for siding with the Heartless, Sora saying the there's no way Leon will get the Keyblade from him, or that Alice isn't who the Queen of Hearts is looking for.
Great video! It's really interesting how despite KH is the most simple KH game story-wise it has so many intriguing details. Personally the moment that is creepiest to me is when you visit Ursula's Lair, and IMO another creepy moment in KH is when you visit the broken ship in Atlantica and a shark appears, I find it kind of unsettling how the camera changes to a fixed camera angle to warn you that something is about to happen, that's more creepy than the actual jumpscare, and if I remember correctly I think the music stops during that moment.
LOL, about the guy from the hotel I have a theory that I'm a bit ashamed to share but it makes sense, gonna try not to write too much text to explain it:
I think that moment was a 4th wall-breaking one, the game is acknowledging the players' existence and that's why the character is thinking instead of talking. If you take it seriously and forget about the fact that you're playing a video game (which is not real, ofc), this makes it even more creepy because it can make you question why this character knows about your existence, that you're controlling Sora (your in-game avatar, a video game character) And it's even more unsettling when you pay attention to KH 3 and Union X [Cross]'s cutscenes and notice that there are two moments directed at the players:
1) When Sora takes a photo with Hayner, Pence, Olette, Donald and Goofy, everyone is posing for the photo but no one is using Sora's phone to take it and they haven't asked someone else to take the photo, then Pence wonders: ''Wait, who's taking it?'' None of the characters realize how shady it is what they've just done, posing for us the players.
2) In Union X we're supposedly the only ones who see the Game Over screen in the Wreck-it-Ralph world, why aren't we shown a cutscene of either Player (our avatar) or Brain seeing this screen? Brain was taking a look at what is going on in the data versions of the Disney worlds through the screens of a computer. This is very suspicious because in another story update we can see what's outside of Sugar Rush's arcade machine, in other words we're seeing the real world while we're in the video game world.
Not to mention that in the beginning of KH 1, Sora says: ''I've been having these weird thoughts lately. Like is any of this for real or not?'' He and Yozora say this line in the Secret Episode of KH 3's ReMind DLC. ''Coincidence? I think not'' Plus Young Xehanort tells Sora in the Verum Rex world from Toy Box that Sora is a video game character in the Verum Rex world. I think Nomura has been planning since KH 1 to make two universes in KH: one that's real and one which is a video game universe, and in the latter one it's where the characters of KH live. That, IMO, would be the creepiest and most disturbing thing to ever happen in the KH series, because that would mean the KH characters are perceived as toys by other characters, and that's why there are 4th-breaking wall moments. Just take into account all what we do to video game characters in real life or how we react to them, I don't think it's really necessary to explain that, it'd be distasteful and not something pleasant to read...
Moreover, that would explain why the Master of Masters tells this to Luxu in Back Cover about the Book of Prophecies in order to convince him that he'll fulfill his role and Luxu can't understand how that makes sense: ''The fact that it exists is proof of your success!'' Maybe the Master is aware that he and everyone else is living inside a video game and that could be why he doesn't have moral boundaries.
And I wonder if the Master has really created the Book because in Case of Gula he says: ''Oh, I see'' If presumably you've already seen the future and you've recorded it in a Book (there isn't actually a confirmation that he wrote the Book, Chirithy just says that the Master has an eye that gazes into the future but that could be the Gazing Eye from No Name) why would you start to understand something that you already know? I don't know, maybe I'm missing something but that is extremely suspicious.
Anyway, that's my theory, sorry for writing too much, I had to get this theory off my head because I've been obsessed with it ^_^U
Definetly don't apologize this was amazing to read and thank you for sharing it. It helped me understand more what tetsuya might mean to do with the whole world of fiction bit he talked about it the melody game with Kairi.
I hope you continue with your love of theories & your passion for kh!
Ģ
The entire final world is creepy. That whole world is just a giant graveyard of fallen worlds. Everyone on them is most likely dead, and have gone through what we might call an apocalypse. Then when you visit Sora's world, you kind of just reflect on how happy that place was before it fell. Seeing Tidus hitting the air, Sofia on her jump rope, Wakka just chilling out; all of that just gone.
Imagine Sora's thoughts. Imagine coming back to your home, knowing that none of it is real, and some monster can transform it at will. Some might collapse from the overbearing stress, the dread.
That and the creepy music that plays too, which serves to deliver that sense of lonlieness whilst on Destiny Islands.
“The deep ocean is one of the coolest and most disturbing places...”
*Grins in Subnautica* 😬😆
The secret endings for KH3 and Remind give me that mysterious melancholic atmosphere and vibe the original Kingdom Hearts 1 did. I'm not sure how future games will turn out but I'm cautiously optimistic . Kingdom Hearts 1 has such an amazing unique atmosphere full of mystery and wonder.
I will say the creepiest thing in KH1 in my opinion is the secret Xemnas fight. The way he doesn't talk with voiced words gives me shivers. That and how it teases the nobodies and Organization XIII
Thats not in the og game its from thr final mix re release
@@zebracrusade I know that. But it's still the og game with extra bits added in
Every Kingdom Hearts 1 Game Is Personalized...
Lmaoooooo not you too
@@Fedrone lmaoooo yessss we must make kh creepy pastas now
You want fun? I, Ansem, will show you fun!
What do you mean by personalized? Are you saying that each game bends to the desire, fears, and personality of the person playing? And that these characteristics don't change even if the game is given away?
@@blessedevelyn339 THE ANSEM APPARITION
In the French version of Kingdom Hearts, World Terminus is called "Pandemonium", which in itself can mean a complete state of chaos/madness, but might also be a reference to Pandæmonium, the capital of Hell in Milton's "Paradise Lost"; perhaps suggesting the World Terminus is something of a capital for End Of The World?
Makes sense, the area after it is where you fight Chernabog and he is pretty much the Devil.
Thats an awesome reference thank for sharing bro ♡
Hotel guy is Sora time travelled from the future
Hotel guy is MoM. Just imagine how stupid the reveal would be.
@@totalradlad well Nomura can do anything at this point
@@thn4296 I think he has enough self awareness to know how cursed of a decision that would be.
That's why he doesn't need to speak his thoughts lol
@@totalradlad imma have to take a shot if that ends up to be true
Like with a bullet
This game is easily the darkest in the series imo. Just look at Hollow Bastion. Not to mention the stakes the are just inherently involved when it comes to the first game in a series.
The scene with the brown cloak dude in destiny islands in the secret place will always creep me out
DDD seems like the creepiest one to me. You’re traveling to another dimension where a bunch of comatose worlds are forced to repeat their final day before getting destroyed until they’re awakened by Sora and Riku. Sounds like some HP Lovecraft stuff
I've always wondered about the Brown Robed Ansem in the beginning.
You deserve alot more subscribers and likes and comments. Keep doing awesome things man
Thanks!
@@NovayonKH No problem!
The interesting thing about that guy in Traverse Town is that I think he's the ONLY character in all of Traverse Town that actually reuses a model. From what I can recall, all the other NPCs are entirely unique
The final ansem boss the atmosphere is very spot on creepy and chill
I remember the first time I played KH1 and wanted to go back to the clock tower. Tinkerbell offering to take me back there and suddenly…. Phantom. This silent grim reaper being that floats around and put a timer on the battle.
Just a little point about the NPC thing, in law reason for the lack of people is explained in Dark Road by the process of the worlds reforming after destruction. People are the last thing to be recreated but the people of that world think that everyone is there already. Hence "The guests were just starting to enjoy them selves" in an empty ball room in BBS. ALso the people in the pods aren't being experimented on. That is a device called "The Arc" again, look into the up to date Union Cross updates and info.
Never would've thought that Duke line would make sense... holy crap mind blown
Also, about the World Terminus, if I remember correctly, if you don''t lock the Keyhole (specifically in Olympus Colliseum) you don't get to or have to do that "world" when going through the World Terminus.
I had Atlantis and i skipped that world
Funny you brought up Oogie's Manor. I always found the scene where Oogie becoming his house to be kinda sad. He allows his darkness to consume him and he becomes a mindless monster. And I think of a lot of the Disney villains and how they meet their end. Some of them are defeated by the hero, but a lot of them are undone by their own evil. And this game is all about that. The villains seek to control the Heartless, but the Heartless grow far too powerful for them and as Maleficent said, "The Heartless consume the careless.."
3:40 I mean if you think about it. When someone loses their heart they become a heartless, and the body left behind becomes a nobody. Weve seen sora come back from being a heartless, so why not other people too right? Maybe this was actually a hint toward the end of the game where sora becomes a heartless and roxas is born. This guy now exists at the same time as his nobody.
So, how did the guys heart escape the soldier heartless? Was it a random heartless sora beat? Wouldn't the heart go to xemnas then?
I remember when I first saw the secret super boss fight against Xemnas (then known as "The Enigmatic Man" or "Unknown") and heard the music called "Disappeared" was super extra creepy.
Funny story. When I first fought Mysterious Figure in KH1, I was playing the PS3 version, which was and is a little dodgy, mechanically. The moment he walked through Sora, the volume glitched out, and the entire fight was basically on mute. I thought that was normal until he started his second phase, and then the sound would come in occasionally and was crackly. I won, but spent the rest of the day thinking that my game was haunted, and that I somehow managed to exercise the disk by battling some sort of data ghost.
@Repo man I'm 80% certain I found the modern day Godzilla: Red
Xemnas needs to chill out. He cannot just haunt ones PS3
I wish Kingdom Hearts would go back to being more creepy/unsettling and less “My fRiEnDs ArE mY PoWeR!”
Something like "My friends are dead..." and then Sora just pulls out his keyblade, slashes whoever is in his way, and slowly gains some black accents in his character's color palette?
HideSeekDie
358/2 days should get a remaster, next best game at atmospheric stuff next to kh1, even despite the crappy mission system
Wtf since the first game the series has been cheesy as hell.
Its like people who say "Kirby its not a game for kids!!!!!" Yet it is you fucking moron
To be fair, he is literally dead in kh3/ReMind
Except kh has literally always been like this.
Many other creepy things in KH:
1) KH2: in ansems study in hollow bastion/radiant garden there’s a human diagram and the diagram just looks creepy to me. I don’t know if it’s really disturbing or not but I’m pointing it out anyway.
2) KH3: xehanort kills Kairi which is sad and disturbing bc he basically killed a Kid. I honestly don’t know how old she is I’m assuming she’s either 14 or 15.
3) KH 0.2 BBS a fragmentary passage the realm of darkness: you visit worlds that are completely lifeless and are completely in ruins and are completely distorted. which gives you the fear of uneasiness and loneliness. their are three worlds in the game which are the castle of dreams, dwarf woodlands, and enchanted dominion and the music that accompany the worlds creep you out and disturb you even more as the music matches and fits the lifelessness, the uneasiness, and loneliness of the worlds and the appearance of the worlds. I especially find the dwarf woodlands the creepiest out of the three due to the many rooms you visit in the mirrors and with phantom Aqua occasionally taunting you.
4) KH3 secret reports: in KH3 not all the reports but some of the reports are unsettling and creepy to read. Secret Reports 1,3, and 4 are creepy and especially secret reports 11,12,and 13 bc you don’t know who it could be which is creepy and suspenseful and there is probably a few other secret reports that are unsettling.this is just my opinion it’s possible I’m not the only one who finds the secret reports unsettling to read.
5) KH3 the final world:
The final world is practically a purgatory for people who can’t pass on bc something or someone is stopping them from doing so. All the unvoiced stars have very sad and tragic stories. The world despite being beautiful is unsettling due to its purpose. And due to the many stars that reside there.
The fact that Kingdom Hearts III's reports mention the haunting wails and screams of pain coming from the test subjects could be heard in the night is horrifying. You do realize that kids, most likely Kairi as well, had their hearts painfully tested on in the Ark and that some of these kids didn't survive and were killed in these experiments. That sounds like something out of a bodily horror film! Is this Kingdom Hearts or fucking Hostel (2005)!?
Mauricio Garcia oh god the haunting wails and screams I’m not lying I got a chill just reading that I can just picture and visualize the screams and wails of children I get a feeling we might see the experiments and hear the wails and screams of the test subjects in melody of memory
Sora and Kairi are 14 in KH1. KH2 happens almost a year later, so she would be 15 there. I would say Kairi in KH3 is 16 or 17(not sure because we get no clear timestatements anymore after 2.)
When that cloak heartless sidles up next to you, it reminds me of fast and furious. lol Like when racers look at each other in their cars, windows rolled down, taunting one another. xD
I didnt know that there was a guy or girl in the hotel also the scariest thing for me from this series was Cherbourg since I first play kingdom heart It was around 2009 I believe that is basically satan and even the word satan scared me since I got scared over the littlest things
There's this place in an alleyway in the second district behind the Dress and Suit shop that looks like a creepy goth club with purple windows and black wiry bars covering them. I imagine that the people who go there actually *_like the Heartless_* and share all their poetry about darkness with each other while drinking weird tea. In game though, Heartless actually spawn right next to the building's front door, so it makes sense that all the patron's negative emotions would draw the Heartless to the club. This is my head canon. _Change my mind._
Sounds so creepy and weird
I never realized that the Doom Counter mechanic started in KH1 until like a couple weeks ago
KH1 was definitely creepy in terms of the small things. I remember being obsessed with the painting lobby guy and trying to find a way to get to him lol.
In the fire door, I thought there was gonna be a scary boss fight cause I went there before the actual story called for it
All of the pureblood heartless were creepy looking....especially the darkballs...
Oh I always thought the accessory shop guy had the dialogue for chatting because before he takes over, you can "chat" with Cid and he says something, and so it's kinda like.. they didn't wanna take away the menu option, just altered the response to a more "oh you think you know me? weird" joke that some rpgs just let you casually chat with npcs even when they should have no idea who you are
Those 3 hallways under Chernabog are odd to me since... there is nothing there BUT those hallways.. no heartless, just.. 3 empty hallways.. oh did not know they were meant to be Cinderella, Snow White, and Aurora (Sleeping Beauty) worlds... those are like.. at the time I would think were big 3 and they weren't given full worlds.. just... hallways leading to final swarm of enemies and final boss.. yo wait... those 3 were like first 3 worlds in BBS.. so development side they probably were like "we can now do these justice" but lore-wise.. maybe those were first few to go since... were in same "space" as Radiant Garden at the time.. if that makes any sense...
Destroying Ooogies Manor felt also bit awe-inspiring since it was one of few things that.. isn't just magically back when you come back for funsies or grinding, like it was left to be unexplored (plus in FM if any chests are unopened they wind up at the deepest part, under a guillotine so that's creepy too)
Oh ya Ursula's lair... knowing that all those.. things were shriveled up merpeople because of Ursula.. they just... stare...
Ya the Hollow Bastion room was offputting when i first came across since.. obviously up until then you're just revisiting worlds/rooms you've seen before but suddenly new place with a theme you recognize, but it's still not even normal with the giant logo and the portals, and then iirc activating whatever making the Heartless pop up in the small room just was like.. so creepy
Sniperwild was not creepy it was more annoying and scary in terms of "oh now your health go bye bye" to inexperienced player when first playing... just thought was normal monkey thing from Deep Jungle... so didn't realize it was special..until got gangbanged.. and it being in Traverse Town, the "safest" world since sorta was a hub of sorts with shops and the FF gang just made it worse since I was in Second District a lot just because
I hope you make more of these countdown Kingdom hearts list I've learned few new things just from the two you've already put out alone... I don't know maybe it's just cuz I love the first a lot 🥰
The good news is I have one coming tomorrow, was certainly a fun one to make
@@NovayonKH awesome!!! Can't wait man! ❤️
Omg I was about to comment and joke that it’s the master of masters and you popped that in there lol
When I was younger, I’d always get creeped out when xehanort would show up in the cave. I’d leave the room until the cutscene finished
No mention of King Triton and the fact he both knew what a Keyblade was, and seemed to have had some bad experiences with them?
There used to be a running theme of the Keyblade being...dangerous.
What I've always wondered about is the Hollow Bastion picture slide in Deep Jungle. How did it get there? Were Jane, her father, and Clayton just hoping around in different worlds and take a picture of the place? Did Ansem visit this place at some point?
I think the most fucked up thing about kingdom hearts is the kayblade war was fought by children. And the deaths of those Children was what summoned kingdom hearts.
That final world one makes sense when looking towards BBS where in the secret episode and in 0.2 you see Sleeping Beauties, Snow Whites, and Cinderellas worlds in the World of Darkness.
Actually, it makes less sense because the end of the world is in the realm of light.
@@lpfan4491 no, the end of the world is home to the remnants of the worlds taken by darkness. The worlds fell the End of The World is just where the few piece's of a world that isn't destroyed goes.
This channel is so chill
Robed Ansem always gave me the willies, especially during THAT scene in DDD...
many worlds in KH1, esp hollow bastion gave a very creepy or odd vibe, i liked it though. as a kid first time playing i was scared going through them 😂
When you first see Ansem in the hidden place it freaked me out when I was little.
I was always creeped out by the door in the cave on Destiny Island, because you see it at the very beginning and of course there’s no knob or anything and you think “hmm I guess that’s there for a reason but idk why yet” and then if I remember correctly it leads to the end of the game right? So it’s like, was it that way all along?
Sephiroth is pretty creepy in KH1. Selecting the mysterious ??? match and then entering the spooky dark version of the coliseum, the weird summoning glyph suddenly appearing and beaming the guy down, the eerie slow build up as he stands before the intimidating One-Winged Angel music kicks in and then of course the startling moment when you most likely instantly die the second the match starts. It's possible that it's creepier if you're like me and you didn't know anything about Final Fantasy or Sephiroth when you first played KH, I get the feeling that the excitement over Sephiroth's presence in the game cancels out the creepy factor for people who knew him already.