One anime fan decided to test Nvidia’s new DLSS 5 AI technology on characters from their favorite game, hoping for a more realistic makeover. What they got instead looked less like an upgrade and more like something out of a horror movie.
DLSS 5 uses generative AI to enhance in-game characters and environments, improving elements like lighting, skin, hair, clothing, and overall texture detail. In theory, that should mean sharper, more lifelike visuals.
When AI Enhancement Goes Horribly Wrong
But for an X user going by the name Jo, the results were anything but beautiful. According to Jo, the AI-enhanced characters from their beloved anime game looked more like something straight out of a nightmare.
Jo shared one of the images generated by Nvidia DLSS 5 after running it on the game Danganronpa. In the altered image, the game’s protagonist, Makoto Naegi, ended up looking eerily similar to Chucky, the killer doll from horror films.
Other shared images showed Naegi’s classmates transformed into similarly unsettling versions of themselves, one character resembling Junko appeared to have morphed into a worn-out, decaying doll. Even the hallways of Hope’s Peak Academy took on an unsettling look, appearing as though they’d been pulled straight from The Backrooms, the internet’s infamous liminal-space horror phenomenon.
“I’m trapped in an endless nightmare, please please please,” Jo wrote on X, as reported by Dexerto on Sunday, September 6, 2026.
Why Is This Even Happening? DLSS 5 Isn’t Officially Supported Yet
Here’s where things get interesting: as of now, NBA 2K27 is the only game that officially supports Nvidia DLSS 5, according to Nvidia itself, with the feature set to become available on September 3, 2026.
So how are games like Danganronpa, Trails, and Shin Megami Tensei V running this technology at all?
The answer traces back to a file leak from NBA 2K27’s early access build, which reportedly included new DLSS-NR files. Modders apparently managed to extract these files and force them to run on other games that weren’t officially built to support DLSS 5.
The result? When forced onto games with distinctly anime-style visuals, a look the AI clearly wasn’t trained or optimized for, the system essentially “hallucinated,” producing wildly unpredictable and unsettling results rather than the polished enhancement players were hoping for.
This mishap is a good reminder that generative AI upscaling tools are trained on specific visual styles, and forcing them onto content they weren’t designed for can produce genuinely bizarre, and in this case, unintentionally horrifying, results.
Until DLSS 5 sees official support expand beyond NBA 2K27, anime and stylized game fans experimenting with leaked files should probably brace themselves for more nightmare fuel before they get anything resembling a proper glow-up.