7 Terrifying Times Video Games Broke The 4th Wall

4. Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem - Real Insanity

As you might have guessed from the game's title, Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem plays with the concept of a sanity meter, with many of the game’s mechanics making you feel like the player is approaching insanity themselves.

When the player's sanity bar falls too low, strange events begin to occur not only within the game, but also in "reality" itself. There are several insanity effects that mess with your TV display, turning the screen off, making insects crawl over it, or even making it look as if it’s lowering your volume. The game could even be as cruel as to give you a blue screen of death, falsely tell you your controller needs to be plugged in, or even congratulate you on finishing the game’s demo.

Occasionally, you’ll will attempt to save your game and be met with a prompt asking 'Would you like to delete all your saved files?', with the answers being either 'yes', or 'continue without saving'. While neither answer causes any actual data to be deleted, it’s still unexpected enough to give you a heck of a fright.