10 Video Games Hiding Sinister Secrets

Here’s another of Nintendo’s most wholesome and family-friendly properties ever. The Super Mario games have been providing accessible, charming fun for the whole family for decades. Surely there could be nothing horrifying here?

Oh, that’s right. Let’s meet the so-called ‘Hell Valley Sky Trees’ of Super Mario Galaxy 2, perhaps one of the most unsettling mysteries in recent gaming memory.

In the “Shiverburn Galaxy,” players can take a closer look at the top of the landscape in the background in first-person mode. Way up there lurk three towering, shadowy figures, seemingly gazing down at our hero for no reason at all.

There’s no way to interact with them, no story-based reason for their existence. They’re just… there. HellValleySkyTree is the title of these figures in the game’s files, hence their popular name, but beyond that, nothing is known for sure about them.