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Creature from the Black Lagoon / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes - The roars the Creature makes border on Hell Is That Noise. Seriously, the thing sounds downright demonic. - Speaking of Hell Is That Noise, the music that plays every time the Creature makes an appearance is incredibly effective. Whereas other musical cues used around the time of this movie sound dated and cheesy, the Creature's Leitmotif will make your heart leap into your throat every time it is used. - The scene where the Creature attacks Luís and Tomás is one of the most frightening sequences in the entire Universal canon. The scene starts with the Creature's hand reaching out of the water and grabbing onto solid ground, while its face is just barely visible below. Following this, we get a POV shot as the Creature lumbers toward the duo's tent. The music starts with the Creature's already-mentioned leitmotif, before morphing into a more subdued yet still ominous piece that gradually grows more and more intense. Luís looks up just in time to see the Creature entering the tent (all we are shown is its hand) and tries to defend himself by throwing a lamp at it. It proves to be in vain when the Creature grabs him, its hand covering his entire face, and throws him like a ragdoll whilst roaring like a beast from the pits of Hell. He then goes for Tomás, and the scene cuts to the exterior of the tent as he screams in either agony or terror, before slowly fading out. - Mark's death. The Gill-man tears out the hose for his oxygen tank and essentially drowns him before David can save him. - The opening scene is this as well. After a fairly boring lecture on the creation of the Earth and the nature of evolution, the camera pans down into the Amazon jungle, where a great deal of commotion is going on among a research party. The scene is done in the form of a Oner, as Dr. Maia goes sprinting out of a tent and toward the center of the hubbub. We are then treated to a an extremely jarring closeup of a fossilized claw sticking out of the side of a cliff. The way the shot is constructed, it is difficult for the viewer to know what they are looking at until the claw is right in their face. One can only imagine what that scene would be like in 3-D.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/CreatureFromTheBlackLagoon
Clive Barker's Jericho / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes - Name an enemy, any enemy. Especially \|\|the ghosts of little children forced to march in a Crusade, only to be slaughtered horribly.\|\| Doesn't help the Nightmare Fuel level that there are no less than 5 of them attacking at once; likely around 10. - The WW2 era was no better. For starters there's the Machinegunners, gigantic hulking zombies with a ghoulified face on their chest along with a skull(lower jaw offset by about a foot) and various glowing pustules, which when you die to them (And you will, a lot) resembles a huge skull through the blurry filter the game puts on before the game over screen. Furthermore, they have a gatling cannon instead of a left hand and their spine ends with a drum magazine where their head should have been, are smart enough to take cover and intelligently use their teleportation powers to flank and ambush you. Even worse are the flamethrowers, which are everything the machinegunners are but a lot more pale and when their petrol tanks start leaking at catch fire, they charge at you. The worst part? There's petrol/oil leaking out of their empty eyesockets. All four of them. - The Roman Level is both Nightmare and Nausea Fuel as the level is caked with horrible Roman monsters and tons of bodily fluids spilling everywhere. Not to mention mounds of flesh and feces, and the whole place is run by a Depraved Bisexual who enjoys being there and makes taunts about sexually violating and/or eating the team. - The fate of those who enter the Pyxis. You'll be trapped fighting nightmarish monsters forever until you go insane and die, then your soul gets trapped and you become another of the various monsters you've been killing. - \|\|Jones and Cole being blown to pieces by the firstborn.\|\| - In spite of the fact that many players feel desensitized to the monsters after a while, several of them are genuinely frightening when first encountered.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/CliveBarkersJericho
Creature of Havoc / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes - If the Creature decides to ask Quimmel Bone to heal him from a headache, the skeleton will make him go to sleep... and he will have a nightmare where bony hands attack his chest with knives... turns out it was barely a nightmare: Quimmel Bone actually cut open his body and extracted his heart, which is his last vision before he dies! Possibly one of the most chilling moments of the book.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/CreatureOfHavoc
Creepshow / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes Warning: All spoilers are untagged on "Moments" subpages. Film What's the matter, Mr. Pratt? Bugs gotcha tongue? The end of Father's Day provides one of the best examples of Fridge Horror in the entire film in that, the more you think about what happens after Nathan gets his cake, the worse it really gets.note : Some argue that Ed Harris disco dancing is terrifying in its own way. The end of They're Creeping Up on You! is absolutely horrifying, with cockroaches pouring out of an old man's mouth, then out of every orifice, and finally exploding him from the inside out. Also an example of Nausea Fuel and Paranoia Fuel. And the worst part? No special effects. They're all real!note : If it's any consolation, it's a mix of living bugs, safely dead bugs, and things like raisins that look sort of roachy to fill out what looks like a big horde. Point of order: This scene is on Bravo's 100 Scariest Movie Moments. Tom Savini (who has a massive bug phobia) mentioned in a book on effects that when one of the cockroaches touched him, he teleported across the room. Not really a joke - he has no memory of physically crossing the room. Something to Tide You Over: Richard's revenge. Being immobilized in sand while the tide gets closer and closer to you and ultimately covers you. Harry threatening Richard is more scary in that sense too. Especially when he manages go through with it after his death. Harry and Becky returning as shriveled, seaweed-covered zombies to get revenge upon Richard. Their freaky, gargling voices add on to the creep factor. That thing in the crate. Some reptilian ape that's immortal and has a mouth full of huge fangs. Not to mention the fact that it escapes from its crate at the end. And it's angry, and it's still hungry. The ending of The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill is as unsettling as it is sad. Poor Jordy has been completely consumed by the alien vegetation, to the point where he can barely move. He has nothing left to do than put himself out of his misery with a double barrel shotgun. The worst part is that the vegetation is still growing, and heading for larger civilization. All of this arguably pales in comparison to the wraparound segment: At the start of the movie, Billy's dad, Stan, throws away his copy of Creepshow, due to not wanting him to read "horror crap". At the end of the movie, as the garbage men arrive to take the trash, they page through the comic... and learn the order form for a voodoo doll has been cut out. Meanwhile, Stan is complaining about a stiff neck... which escalates to him grabbing his throat and gasping in pain as Billy begins to stab his doll with a pin. Billy: I'll teach you to throw away my comic books. [stab] "Ready for another shot, dad?" Series Richie's slow, Body Horror-filled transformation into a Blob Monster in "Gray Matter", not to mention the last glimpse of his horrific new form, which has three heads and is only barely humanoid. Even worse, he can now multiply, and the ending heavily implies that at the rate he's multiplying, he will destroy the world in six days. The severed, ghostly doll head from "The House of the Head". As Eddie burns to death in "All Hallow's Eve", the Gold Dragons kids revert to their true forms: skeletal husks with their flesh burnt off. The leeches bursting out of their hosts in "Skincrawlers", particularly the gigantic leech that bursts out of Sloan. The very concept of "Live Pie" in "Times is Tough in Musky Holler". It's a sadistic "game" created by the mayor where he sentences anyone who attempts to stand up against him and his cronies to be locked up underground. They're then forced head first into holes in the town's high school football field, where they can do nothing but wait in terrified agony as quadriplegic zombies slowly crawl towards them to eat their flesh. Several of the prisoners have their faces eaten off their skulls. While they're still alive. We're spared seeing most of them, but not the mayor's demise. "Survivor Type". Dear God, the entirety of "Survivor Type". Watching the protagonist going insane from isolation and hunger is no picnic to watch, but then he runs out of food and gets desperate. So he starts amputating and eating his own limbs. It ends when he starts eating his own hand while its still attached. Lady fingers, they taste just like lady fingers... In "Queen Bee", Pop star Regina's horrific transformation into a half human, half insect hybrid, complete with antenna/claws extending through her eyes. The ending of "Familiar", where Jack is slowly approached by an undead Fawn, who whispers in his ear "I believe you now." The demon from "The Last Tsubaraya" is absolutely terrifying. It can teleport, shapeshift, and casts all sorts of illusions to torment Wade, all while no one else can see it. The entirety of "The Things In Oakwood's Past", an animated segment from Season 3, revolving around Oakwood, a picturesque little town that none the less has a Mysterious Past; in 1821, 200 years ago almost to the day, every single person in the town disappeared over night, with the only remaining clues being a series of journals by a historian named Eli Lester who had lived in the town at the time. Marnie, the town librarian and daughter of the mayor, discovered a set of coordinates on the back of the final journal, which led to the discovery of a time capsule, covered in strange symbols, buried beneath the town, with the date 1821 on it. While the town plans to hold a celebration leading up to opening the capsule, Marnie continues her research in the journals... and uncovers a set of old woodprints from 1621, which reveal that another vanishing had struck the town before! The images abruptly changes from normal, everyday life scenes, to those same scenes showing the people in them brutally murdered and mutilated, but without showing whoever or whatever is doing it... When Marnie is showing some kids at school a slideshow of old timey art, one of them points out that the images are different. Marnie flashes through the slides and sees the original regular images flip over to horrific ones of slaughter and death before ending the presentation. A few examples are an old man standing being turned into a scarecrow and impaled in a field or a man with a woman on a porch swing, with the next image being of the bodies torn to pieces and made INTO the porch swing, like some Ed Gein-esque artwork. Noticing something familiar about the final woodcut, which shows a group of gnarled trees forming a demonic face, Marnie realizes it's the same as the symbol on an old stone shard from the town historical society, and that it's actually a missing piece from the time capsule. When put together, the combined symbols finally reveal the truth... it's from yet another massacre, dating all the way back to 1421, when a local native tribe was massacred by some horrific, unknown entity. When her attempts at explaining to her father what she found fails, Marnie goes back to Lesters final journal, and deciphers his final entry; in 1821, Eli Lesters daughter had been murdered by a town elder, who used his influence to walk free. In revenge, Lester used what he had learned in his research to unearth the time capsule, and tricked the people of the town into opening it by telling them it would protect them from the same disaster that struck Oakville 200 years before. She reveals this, just one second too late, as the mayor has already damaged the lock... One of the monsters, when they return to the box, has the news crews camera in its mouth and we see an image of hell, with Satan himself on a throne. And worse, the news station gives little reaction to this image, instead pushing the broadcast forward to another box found in a quarry... The ending animation of the episode has the box close and reconstitute itself, changing the number on the lock from 1821 to 2021, before descending back underground to wait another 200 years for the next opening in 2221. A final shot shows Satan's face in blood against a black background, laughing...	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Creepshow
Creepshow 2 / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes "Help! It hurts!" - The death of Sam and his cronies, while well-deserved, is pretty damn brutal. - Fatstuff is taken out with no less than three arrows, one of which lands right in the center of his forehead. The look of surprise on his face as he sits on his couch with an arrow sticking out of his forehead and blood spilling onto his lap is a less-than-charming sight. - Then there's Andy, whose death is shown entirely through shadows and the ensuing splatter of blood on the wall. It must have been a damn fine swing on Old Chief Wood'nhead's part to do that much damage. - Finally and most notably, there's Sam himself, who is scalped to death. As with Andy, we aren't privy to the fine details, but the implication is more than enough. What really sells the scene is his scream. Dear God, it just keeps going and going! - For that matter, the murder of the Spruces, a loving couple who were running their shop into the ground for the sakes of those who lived in the neighborhood, but a robbery committed by a two-bit thug with dreams of going to Hollywood cut their lives short. - Rachel's death in "The Raft". The shot of her rising out of the blob in slow motion, only to be dragged back down, screaming and begging for help, will stick with you long after the movie is over. - Laverne's death is even worse. After entrusting Randy to take first watch she sleeps, he proceeds to turn around and molest her while she sleeps. In doing so, he places her down on the raft, with the side of her face lying over the space between to of the boards that make up the raft. Eventually, she wakes up and turns to him a state of agony and fear as we find that half of her face has already been covered by the blob. Pretty soon, she is covered nearly from head to toe and is dragged into the water screaming just like Rachel did. - Making it even worse is that Randy seemed like a thoughtful and all-around OK dude beforehand, especially in comparison to Deke. As it turns out, he's actually the worst one, by like a mile and a half. - Another thing that is horrific about Laverne's death is that Randy uses it eating her to swim away, and he turns around and Laverne's skeletal remains rise out of the blob to give one last death rattle, which implies that even in that state she was still alive. When the blob is pursuing Randy to shore, the bones of previous victims are much more visible than when it was circling the raft. - To say nothing of Deke's death. The poor guy's leg snaps in half as the blob pulls him right through the raft agonizingly slowly. - The state of the hitchhiker by the end of the movie. The movie's lower budget compared to its predecessor means that it had to be more conservative regarding blood and gore, and by God did they know exactly where, when, and how much to use.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Creepshow2
Covert Affairs / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes - Auggie, who is totally blind, enters an unfamiliar house then finds a corpse with his cane. As he's checking the man's pulse, he hears a creaking floorboard and realizes that someone is in the room with him. Yes, the killer is still there, and is in fact standing in full view with their gun out. - Your friend or loved one who travels a lot on business is actually an international spy. They could be injured or even killed, and you might never know the real reason why. This could put you or your family in danger without your knowledge. - Imagine being shot, then experiencing a bewildering series of dream scenes only to wake up to the shooter standing over your hospital bed smothering you. And you are too weak to stop them! - You're only thirty-something years old and you're Annie Walker. When running down an alley, \|\|you experience for all the world what looks like a heart attack. That's ... not something to sleep easily over.\|\| - The Russian mark in "Embassy Row". To elaborate, \|\|Annie's cover is blown and she ends up being drugged by the mark who is at least twice her size, while he is on top of her trying to force something into her mouth. She manages to get away before passing out but wakes up and finds herself in his trunk. She manages to get away again, but not before he attempts to drown her by dunking her head in a fountain.\|\| - "She Believes" has Annie and an Interpol agent \|\|Abduct Belenko and torture him by jabbing an ice pick through his hand. We get the lovely image of blood squirting out of his hand\|\| - "Transport is Arranged" is perhaps the darkest episode in the shows run. \|\|Auggie spends the whole episode being tortured by Belenko and his men over something that happened nearly a decade ago. This includes electric shock torture and being stuffed into a crate for hours at a time. Auggie's girlfriend, Natasha, is kidnapped and tortured as well, not to mention the both of them nearly getting blown up when Belenko detonates the building they're in.\|\| - In "Gold Soundz", the season finale of a season where Auggie's former CIA paramilitary unit have been being systematically assasinated, one of the killers garrottes a DPD analyst to steal his ID, makes it all the way into Langley, gets the last other remaining member into an interview room, and then goes to get an unsuspecting Auggie. He throws an ampoule of gas into the room, and breaks the lock, sealing them in...	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/CovertAffairs
Crimes of Passion / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes "Got you..." — The Killer to Sonja, just before drugging her Crimes of Passion is about a detective and their partner hunting down a Serial Killer who is part of an evil cult. Needless to say, there are some scary moments. - The opening scene when Decoy Protagonist Sonja wakes up to find she's been kidnapped by a masked figure. She seemingly escapes his clutches... only to run into a dead end, the Killer rises behind her and drugs her. - Her death scene at the end of Chapter 1 is brutal, being hung up by her wrists from the ceiling WITH HER HEART CUT OUT. - The end of Chapter 2, when the Killer's sinister motives are revealed. He's cutting people's hearts out and giving them to the goddess he worships. He promises that the first heart he gives will be "the first of many", suggesting that more people are going to meet the same fate as poor Sonja. Because of this, he has come to be known as the "Heartache Killer" since Chapter 11. - Chapter 5 has the Killer burn down a mansion during a party (putting countless people at risk) before escaping. One of the partygoers was pinned under a bookshelf and would have likely burned to death if it wasn't for Trystan. - Chapter 12 has quite an amount of it. Cameron and Trystan find an important witness being held captive by the Killer in an old abandoned mansion, then a fight ensues when the Killer discovers them... worst of all, he stabs Trystan before escaping again. - The end of Chapter 14, in which Marguerite is kidnapped by an unknown assailant. She screams, and the line goes dead, forcing Cameron and Trystan to hightail it to Trystan's apartment. What's even more chilling is, at this point, the killer has been arrested, so whoever the kidnapper is must have been the Big Bad all along... - Chapter 15. What an absolute heart-pounder this one is. The chapter opens with an ominous warning that Marguerite's fate will depend on the choices you make. Cameron and Trystan return to the latter's apartment to find a burner phone, which they use to speak to the kidnapper. The kidnapper demands that Tony (the killer whom Cameron and Trystan have been after the entire book) be smuggled out of his cell in 30 minutes, or Marguerite dies. While she doesn't die, the threat looms overhead for most of the chapter, and they reach Tony with only seconds left. Mess up too many choices, and Marguerite gets a finger chopped off. The chapter ends with the kidnapper's identity revealed, the mastermind, the true Big Bad, as they unmask themselves in a chilling cutscene. - The flashback to Eleanor's childhood in Chapter 16 where she (despite being just a child at the time) witnessed the death of her parents and the woman they planned to sacrifice. The woman in particular burns alive right in front of Eleanor, complete with her skin blistering and peeling. Then there's the absolutely bone-chilling scream she makes.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/CrimesOfPassion
Cowboy Bebop / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned. - Mad Pierrot. Basically a Nigh-Invulnerable Monster Clown who can't be hit by high kinetic energy objects such as bullets, he goes around killing ISSP officers and perpetually has a Slasher Smile. - Not only his smile, but also the red eyes, the eerie way he floats... He can't be hurt. He'll always be there, following you. And when he catches you, he'll brutally murder you. Mad Pierrot: "Good evening, gentlemen; I've journeyed here in order to take your lives." - And the manic laughter. The audio for the preview short of the episode is just Tongpu madly cackling for 30 seconds. - What really sets him apart is the fact that Tongpu's design doesn't immediately scream "unkillable demon", he's just a big, rotund guy with a cane, who looks pretty jovial and whimsical. Sure, he's a good shot with his gun-cane, but Spike's faced tougher guys than him before, right? WRONG. When Spike rounds the corner of that alley, he walks right into the most terrifyingly one-sided battle that's inflicted on him in the entire series. Spike Spiegel, who barely flinches at knocking down dozens of Mafia goons, has to do all he can just to survive, let alone win. - Another scary bit was his last victim before confronting Spike in the amusement park. He kills his targets' bodyguards all without appearing to move and lets the target run, or attempt to for his life, all the while smiling that same sinister Slasher Smile. - The scariest part about him hunting Spike down with such psychopathic obsessiveness? Spike wasn't even going after his bounty, he just happened to be shooting billiards nearby and then walked down that alley at the wrong time. Forget the sci-fi elements of that, forget the fact that Pierrot seemingly cannot be killed: imagine you accidentally walk down the wrong alleyway at night and find yourself face-to-face with a cold-blooded killer who will stop at nothing to see you dead. And a guy as badass as Spike Spiegel can barely withstand him, so somebody like you? You might as well just give up and pray he'll kill you quickly. - What makes Spike's first encounter with him even more creepy is that, when he first wanders upon Tongpu and his handiwork, Spike seems unfazed as usual for a brief moment - he seems to think he's just wandered across another two-bit criminal, or an unfortunate gentleman that's walked into the same crime scene he has. But then Tongpu greets him with a tip of the hat, and when Spike sees the look on his face, all that calm and confidence in Spike's demeanor flies out the window as he realizes that this thing is going to fucking kill him if he doesn't pull out all the stops fast. - Also his Villainous Breakdown when he gets hit by the same knife he used on Spike, doubling as both horror and Tear Jerker worthy, while the cheery carnival music plays in the background. - Made worse when his backstory is revealed. He was subject to numerous mysterious experiments in a laboratory, with the end result of him being deemed a failure since the intense agony caused by the experiments also warped his mind into a child-like state, causing him to be sent to be quarantined in a hospital where he would be held indefinitely. Ultimately, due to his deteriorating sanity from his memory of the experiments, he snaps and slaughters the scientists and all staff members and escapes from the hospital. - We learn all of this backstory through an extremely creepy reveal sequence, filled with disturbing images of the surgery and experiments performed on him, and some sort of trippy, pseudo-electronica music in the background. - That "trippy, pseudo-electronica" is a cover of "On the Run" by Pink Floyd. The original song is about the fear of dying in a plane crash. This version is about the fear of something RIGHT BEHIND YOU - The fight between him and Spike at the amusement park can count as this, basically putting the Monster Clown character in the area where he'd be the absolute scariest for anyone with a fear of clowns. Many sequences feature the amusement parks music playing over the fight scenes in a quiet, creepy manner. The lights from the rides and machines that have been activated are then often contrasted by the fact that this fight is taking place at night, allowing for everything to look that much more eerie. Then there's the fact that the basic premise of it is one man being stuck in an empty amusement park with the monster clown... - The deaths involved, both in flashback and in the present, are some of the bloodiest in the series. Especially the guards from Pierrot's escape in the past - visible shattered ribcage bones are poking out of a guard's back on-screen. And the mad man himself? Smashed beneath a giant walking parade animatronic's foot, just.. disappearing with Sickening "Crunch!". The fact that we don't see the mess along the ground afterwards is only barely a Gory Discretion Shot since we get to see it happen otherwise. - Pierrot specifically kills anyone who catches even a glimpse of his face, with no one before Spike ever living to tell about it. So the animation department seemingly decided to be cheeky and make sure his face gets a close up in as many shots as humanly possible during his and Spike's first confrontation. - Oh, and above all of this is a subtle but equally terrifying note: Pierrot somehow finds out the Bebop's contact info and personally invites Spike (via Ed's email) to "a wonderful party" at the amusement park. Who knows how much he figured out about the crew or their location? - The fridge monster in Toys in the Attic, which it goes around to bite and poison Jet, Faye and Ein, turning the situation into something reminiscent of Alien. It's revealed to be drippings from a Ganymede Rock Lobster that spoiled after being in a now-disabled fridge for more than a year. No wonder Spike is horrified when he opens the damn thing to check on it and then tosses it out the airlock soon after. And speaking of which, the extremely-decayed contents of the fridge are frightening to look at. By the end of the episode, Ed, who hasn't been bitten by the monster, eats it. Spike: "And what's the real lesson? Don't leave things in the fridge." - "Brain Scratch" and "Sympathy For The Devil" are also pretty damn creepy. The former is based around Mind Rape, and the latter has plenty of Body Horror (remember the Rapid Aging?). - Vicious. He's a cunning, nihilistic psychopath with little regard for human life and a lethal combatant, to boot. He's not a Knight of Cerebus for nothing. - Also a bit of Fridge Horror... fans often believe that Vicious uses the Red Eye drug to explain his bullet-dodging and willingness to kill. When the drug was used in Asimov, the man became a rabid animal with just one dose. Vicious is completely cold and stoic. - Rain, the song that plays as Spike walks to the Cathedral and faces Vicious in episode 5. The full version contains even more delightful lyrics. If there is a Hell, I'm sure this is how it smells. I wish this were a dream but no, it isn't. - This track from the movie (elevator music with gunfire and panicked screams in the background). - The Monkey Business virus from Gateway Shuffle, which alters the genes of humans to turn them into violent, terrified ape creatures. The concept is bad enough, but the mook we see subjected to the virus spends most of his screen time being dragged around and screaming pleas to be spared. A vial of the stuff is the main subject of the episode, and at the end, it shatters inside the villain of the day's ship, much to her horror. - The effects of Red Eye abuse, as seen in "Asteroid Blues." Asimov not gains superhuman strength and speed while under its influence... at the cost of becoming unhinged and animalistic, as his eyes become bloodshot and bulge out of his skull in an extremely painful-looking manner. What's worse is that all these effects grow more severe throughout the episode as he takes more and more Red Eye. By the end, his eyes are so grotesquely swollen he looks like a demon. - Asimov himself can verge into this territory. His brutal slaughter of the gangsters that've come to kill him, along with his design's massive narrowed eyebrows and bulging eyes with tiny pupils (from before we first see him injecting Red Eye, implying that bulging eyes are a side effect) create the implication that this man is a ticking time bomb liable to explode at any moment.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/CowboyBebop
Criminal Case / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes Unmarked spoilers abound. Read at your own risk. Criminal Case is about finding murder victims, so it's unsurprising that some of the deaths are horrific, but even then, a few of them stand out: - The victim in The Grim Butcher (pictured above) deserves a special mention. She was burned with cigarettes and then cut open, her heart cut out, and then her body hung up alongside pig carcasses in a butcher's storehouse. And you're told that she was alive when she was being cut open. - Later in that case, you find out what happened to her heart. It was wrapped in paper and given to her mother. - And keep in mind, this is only Case . This game does not mess around. 3 - Death by Crucifixion involves a man stripped, beaten, and crucified like Jesus Christ, and left there until he bled to death. - One of the suspects is Linda Lovara, the local madwoman. Here's a picture◊ of what she gets to be like when she's angry. note : Don't worry, the horns aren't real; they're only for cosmetic purposes. - The victim in Beautiful No More was a lovely young dancer named Trixie Velvet, who got a note from a secret admirer asking to meet her after work. As it turned out, it was her fellow bartender, who had a lesbian attraction to her. Trixie, being straight, was confused, and then laughed. The killer snapped and literally beat her so much that her face was unrecognizable. - The victim in Burned to the Bone was burned alive. Even worse, he was trying to give up the gangster life for his girlfriend, and the person who offered him a job killed him because he didn't believe he turned over a new leaf. - Blood on the Trading Floor involves the victim, Samuel Rye, being butchered with a samurai sword and disemboweled while alive, his arms tied to sides in a crucifix-like pose. Later it's mentioned that he broke both arms trying to escape due to the extreme pain. It's both sickeningly violent and very disturbing to witness. - How the victim in The Last Supper was killed is frightening because of the nature of the death. It was an accident. The killer, a chef, tried to kill a food critic and killed the victim by mistake. - A Deadly Game. The killer tortured the victim in a creepy basement, ripped his fingers off and used one as a caviar spoon, ate the victim's liver, and then finally killed him in an iron maiden. Even Judge Hall is terrified. - The victim in The Secret Experiments is Rachel Priest. She was injected with a serum designed to give a soldier superhuman strength. But since the serum was only designed for men, her skin literally split apart as her bones grew to an abnormal size. Then, she was decapitated after death and thrown into a vat of acid. - The victim in Anatomy of a Murder was taxidermied. Alive. - The Summoning is full of this. For starters, the victim was killed in a room used for a pagan ritual, and the Necronomicon shows up to play a role in the case. Then there's the Grimsborough Cemetery, its hidden objects, and natural scenery alike, especially those evil eyes in the sky... - Not only does the killer in Dog Eat Dog kill several dogs in addition to a person, but it's the sweet old lady Margaret Littlewood, who was so helpful to you in several cases. She also poisons your partner Jones. The fact that she does give the antidote to him and saves his life matters so little. - In Murder on Campus, the victim, Rani, died as a result of a colony of ants invading her throat and asphyxiating her on a hunt for the sugars in all the alcohol she was forced to drink. It doesn't help that her killer had only intended to humiliate her; she had no idea the ants were there, and the Rorschach Reaper had hypnotized her beforehand. - Take a good look at the victim's face◊ in Killing Me Softly. Have fun with that humongous Slasher Smile. - The Devil's Playground involved the victim, who genuinely loved his Amish girlfriend, getting stabbed with a pitchfork several times and left as a scarecrow by her Ax-Crazy father. - The Reveal of the Rorschach Reaper as Tess Goodwin. Not only does the Reaper get others to kill their own family and friends, but they're also doing it solely to get a thesis. When exposed, they try to slip out by trying to get Jones to murder the player, which is fortunately prevented by Ramirez knocking Jones out with a frying pan. - Good Girls Don't Die involves the death of Abigail Price. Not only is her own mother's reaction chillingly cold, but she was murdered by her best friend for not helping the girl cheat her way into college, using a hair removal laser. The hole burned through her skin was so deep that her ribcage was exposed. - The Reveal in It All Ends Here. Your chief, Samuel King, is the killer. And, instead of telling you what happened, he blows his brains out in front of you and Jones. Jones is so traumatized he can't sleep and grows some stubble afterward. - A Brave New World has Stuart Huckabee get murdered by his own sister, who slit his throat while alive, then pulled out his tongue — to Jones's disgust. - The victim of The Impossible Dream was slowly roasted alive in a brazen bull, while nobody could hear her scream due to the device transforming the screams into the sound of an angry bull. And, to top it all off, the team was rushing to stop the bombs spread across various monuments in Europe by the Promethean Cult. - In I Spy a Mummy, the victim was mummified and had his brain pulled out with an ancient hook. While he was still alive. - While the murder in The Parting Shot wasn't as bad as the ones listed above, the Additional Investigation has Ambassador Stern's little son get kidnapped. Not only is Stern crying tears of fright the entire time, but it's discovered that everything that happened from Chief Ripley's 'death' was a trap created by the Sword for the player. And it ends with the team finding out that Stern's son was taken from Dubai to Iraq... - In Die by the Sword, the player and Carmen are forced to watch two of their teammates get badly poisoned, and another one was taken hostage. Then they themselves are nearly killed by the criminal they'd finally cornered. If it hadn't been for Jonah Karam, this case would've ended badly. - Bad Medicine has the victim be killed by liquid morphine, which the killer slipped into her water bottle without her noticing. The nature of the death is frightening and can cause some Paranoia Fuel. - Plagued by Death has a plague sweeping across the country where the case is taking place. Angela and Lars are pushing themselves to the brink of their bodies' limits and still no progress. - The entirety of this case runs on Nightmare Fuel. The victim's body is shown to be half-decayed and covered in bugs; then it's revealed that he was the first victim of the virus, which turned out to be man-made and released by the killer. This overlaps with Tear Jerker when Lars gets sick with the plague, and won't survive unless a cure is discovered. When the killer is finally caught, it turns out that he released this virus as a means for him to control India's population, and is sickeningly proud of himself for doing so. Even as a furious Judge Adaku gives him a life sentence, he pulls a Slasher Smile and continues to rant about how much good he's doing for the country. - The victim in Peace and Dead Quiet died of blood loss after his arm was chopped off with an ax. In the end, it's revealed that he had forced his adopted daughter to marry him, and the man who loved her had killed him to set her free. - Insides Out really takes the cake: One of the nicest characters in the series is gutted and his bones broken, then his skin used to make a ritual drum. Unlike most victims, he did nothing to deserve this, and the killer, Warren Goodfellow, finally drops his kind facade and reveals himself to be a depraved individual who was also behind South Asia's SOMBRA activities as well as framing the equally innocent Om Padmasana for his actions. - The whole of East Asia seems to be going for this since the focus of the region is on SOMBRA's link to disappearing children as well as the search for the man behind Warren Goodfellow. The first two cases don't hold back on the Nightmare Fuel: The Killer in the Rice begins with the grisly murder of a teenage boy, and throughout the investigation, it's discovered that the children in the area had suddenly begun acting mercilessly cruel, with one of them having committed the murder because "The weak die. It's nature's way." The AI of Dead in the Water reveals that the victim discovered that there was a mass disappearance of children all over East Asia, many of them being orphans. It didn't help that in both cases, Angela and Lars' daughters wandered off, causing their parents to freak out until they were found safe. - The Murder Games is frightening because it establishes that SOMBRA definitely Would Hurt a Child to accomplish their plans. The killer gathered up children to force them to partake in a Hunger Games-style slaughter and killed one when he refused to compete. The one behind all of this turns out to be a seemingly sweet old lady that the Bureau kept bumping into throughout the region, similar to Margaret Littlewood's case in Grimsborough. - Also, in chapter 3 of that case, June tries to shoot an apple off of April's head. Luckily, Jonah arrives just in time to catch the arrow, but imagine what would have happened if he was too late... - When it's time to arrest the criminal of A Stab in the Dark, Elliot asks if he can do the honors, and is kidnapped as a result. The entire team is horrified. - The kicker is probably when Carmen goes looking for Elliot and only finds a bloody tie where he was last seen. Lars discovers that it's Elliot's blood on the tie, and deduces that he was gagged by the criminal and could very well be dead at this point. Both Carmen and Lars are horrified at this and don't want to believe it. - To make matters worse, it's only Jonah's Big Damn Heroes moment that gets Elliot out alive, and he's still covered in bruises and cuts on every visible bit of skin, and probably even more we can't see. - Out of the Blue has Jack and the player investigating the case, when suddenly, tremors start coming out of nowhere. Then, Elliot shows up and informs them that a volcano's about to erupt at any minute, and the rest of the case is spent trying to gather up all the evidence while the tremors and eruptions grow stronger. - In Diamond in the Rough, Jonah is not happy when his half-sister, Lily, is flagged as a murder suspect. Marina is in a panic when she asks for the player's help to calm him down, and when Jonah actually shows up, he gives off a frightening Death Glare before storming off to possibly maim someone to prove Lily's innocence. - In Plain Sight is similar to A Killer Among Us from Pacific Bay, where all the suspects are main members of the Bureau. Angela, who is normally calm, is downright hostile to the player in this case, and she's also the SOMBRA mole who had been with them the entire time. No one had expected it to be her, since she was one of the more sane characters with a happy family life. - Halfway through the case, Carmen calls the player and (with no context) tells them to forgive her for what's about to happen and to take care of Sanjay. It's even more horrifying in context since she had been abducted by a hired gun and the call was made to lure the player into a trap, and it's only thanks to Jonah's deduction that the player even realizes what happened. - Ice Rage is full of this. The victim's gruesome death was caused by someone who attacked her in rage, and the suspects are all somewhat unhinged thanks to being isolated for many months in a lab in Antarctica. One of the suspects had suggested electroshock therapy on the victim despite her normal mental state, and a conspiracy theorist insists that a sabertooth tiger came back from the dead and killed her. The actual killer had felt alone and thought he and the victim were meant to be, and angrily killed her when she rejected him. - Murder, He Wrote has Lars returning from his leave, but he is still in a broken state and Jack has to restrain him. When he first appears he makes a very dark joke about Angela's treachery, then at the end of Chapter 2, he shows up out of nowhere, threatening to slit his own throat. - Operation Spyfall has the player going to find the downed SOMBRA satellite, only to find spy Jean Connerie dead from countless stab wounds. Right after that, Asal appears in the same state as Jean and frantically begs the player to help her before collapsing from her injuries. To top it all off, the killer turns out to be Anya Ivanova, a former MGB agent who had been amiable towards the Bureau when they last met and even helped them. She reveals that she had joined SOMBRA because she thinks they're the only ones who appreciate her and coldly taunts her former allies at the Bureau. This case clearly shows that even the so-called good guys can turn on you when you least expect it. - Down to the Wire has the Prime Minister of Canada brutally murdered and when El Rey, who is revealed to be Hector Montoya, is arrested, we see his removed wig revealing horrid burns underneath. - The first district deals with a subplot involving immigrants essentially being sold in slavery. Though this is resolved, it's all but stated that this is only the tip of the iceberg and it doesn't help that there's a lot of discussion about corruption in the police force, the very thing that the Flying Squad was created to stop. - In Eyes Wide Shut, a pimp was brutally stabbed to death in the eyes, causing an unsettling setting in the brothel. - In Bridge Over Troubled Water, a taxi driver was disemboweled and hung up like a pig in the slaughterhouse. A lot like The Grim Butcher, only this time we get to see the results. - In Hold Your Tongue, Commissioner Baldwin was smashed in the skull with an adze and got his tongue cut out post-mortem. - In Burning Bridges, a teenage plumber the player had previously met is decapitated. Worse, the killer is her friend who had taken to carrying a machete due to the increasing violence, and when she took him by surprise he swung instinctively, only seeing who it was too late. - In Talk of the Town, the victim dies after ingesting sulfuric acid his sundae was laced with. When his body is collected, there is a gaping hole in his throat. - In The Heart of the Matter, Deputy Mayor Hwang was strangled and got her heart ripped out post-mortem. - Tipping the Scales has Archie Rochester sawed in half and left on the scales of justice. - Justin Lawson's development from a genuinely kind-hearted and righteous person into a complete despot over the course of Arrow of Injustice and The New Truth! is seriously unnerving. In the latter case, when presiding over the killer's trial, he sentences her to death by beheading despite the death penalty having been abolished in Concordia for fifty hears. - While Julius Caesar's murder in Death as Old as Time isn't actually graphic and has a rather humorous motive, it also ends up creating several problems for future events during the BC era, such as Octavian intending to destroy Egypt instead of conquering it, and causes history to be altered to the point where Ancient Egypt takes over the world. - Octavian himself deserves a mention due to being incredibly violent, callous, and smug. Particularly, stringing along the vestal virgin murderer of When in Rome and convincing her to kill her mother, a political opponent of his, to get her out of her lifestyle, only to excommunicate her when she actually does so. - In Summer of Death, it's discovered that the malfunctioning of the time machine was intentionally done by a saboteur, without any clear motive as to why. - Ambassador Lev Romanov's murder in Crime and Punishment is nearly enough for both the US and the USSR to declare war, which is what the killer of the case intended to do in the first place. - In A Tudor Murder, Catherine of Aragon was brutally beaten to death with a mace, cutting off her own ear and knocking out several of her teeth in the process. - The Altered Present district. Created by all the previous errors in time and the sabotage of the time machine, the Altered Present is a Dystopian future where Ancient Egypt has become a superpower and spread as far as New York, now known as New Cairo. As a result, T.I.M.E. doesn't exist, time travel has been hidden by the government, and worst of all, the Temporal Crimes Division is seen as wanted fugitives and arrested on the spot. - Back to the Future revolves around the murder of Chief Scott, who hadn't made any appearances since the tutorial case. To make it worse, he was killed because not only was he a subversive to the regime, but he was aware he was trapped in an altered timeline. - In the same case, Nebet ends up being captured by the guards and taken away the second the team arrives in New Cairo. - The victim in Rebel Without a Pulse, a Resistance member, was shot in the torso with a ray gun, creating a giant bloodless hole, similar to Dead Space of Pacific Bay. The motive is just as harrowing - his girlfriend killed him to stop him from suicide-bombing the Fifth of July celebrations. Even worse, he had planned on using his six-year-old son to help him plant the bombs. - The victim in Fool's Gold, the Ptolemian king, has molten gold poured over his head, killing him instantly with fourth-degree burns. The icing on the cake is that the killer is Nefertiti, who killed her father because he wanted to send her back to Egypt even after all she'd done to acquire riches for their family. She also has no remorse for betraying the team, which is probably the reason why it's so easy for her to betray her parents as well. - The victim in Anchors Aweigh! had his throat slit by a razor. The killer's arrest also provides a good amount of Paranoia Fuel: the murder had been a complete accident, which happened when the crew's doctor was just shaving the victim when the boat rocked, causing the razor to cut his throat. - A Pirate's Death for Me has Blackbeard try to befriend the team, only to bite into an orange and collapse dead from poisoning. To make things worse, Blackbeard had offered Jack and the player the orange before eating it, unaware that it had been poisoned. - At the end of the case, the team is trying to sail towards Blackbeard's treasure, only for the ship to be wrecked when it crashes into a reef. - Shipwrecked! has the team stranded on an island inhabited by previous stowaways, only to find their leader speared to death. The motive behind her murder? She intended to feed the overweight killer to the other islanders. - The victim in Going Once, Going Twice, Dead! had his head blown off by an Exploding Cigar. When Amy recovers his head, the bottom half of it is entirely missing. - Near the end of the case, the team wins the auction for England...only for Ammon to show up, and in his fury over the loss, he shoots Orlando and runs away. Orlando recovers, but it's a frightening moment nonetheless. While Kai and Jack search for any sign of him, they discover guns and other revolutionary weapons that he plans to bring to Medieval Asia, which will have dire consequences for history if he manages to use them in that time period. - The victim in A Slice of Death was sliced in half with a katana. To top it all off, the killer is a samurai who killed the shogun because he felt guilty when he killed innocents when fighting under his army, and he wanted to become a monk. He is even given a death sentence by the shogun's wife. - Being a season about hunting supernatural creatures such as vampires, werewolves, and ghosts, the player is bound to encounter a lot of horrific moments this season. Blood Lust is no exception; the victim was drained entirely of blood by a vampire which wasn't even what the killer had intended to do. The victim had wanted to become a vampire and asked the killer to turn her into one, only to be sucked dry because the killer hadn't tasted fresh blood in a long time and couldn't resist. - The plotline of the West revolves around a vampire seeking complete immunity, starting by kidnapping an innocent girl for her virgin blood and leading the team on a wild goose chase. This culminates in Immortal Combat, where they behead Dr. Aculus during his own ball. The real shocker is that the vampire turns out to be Eric Zwart, who had appeared as the grief-ridden ex of the victim in ''Blood Lust'', who sought invincibility after being rejected by Aculus for being the youngest of his convent, only to kill him after he condemns Zwart for doing so. - In Hour of the Wolf, Priya is held at gunpoint by Ruth Wu for no other reason than being a werewolf. One has to wonder what would have happened if Gwen hadn't arrived before she went ahead with it... - In Immortal Combat, Gwen falls victim to a vampire bite from Bathsheba, and nearly again by Pierce during the ball. - The victim in Gut Out had his insides ripped out by a Chupacabra, which later tries to kill Luke, who luckily is able to kill it before it can get too close to him. One could imagine how devastating it would be had he been unable to shake it. - The Additional Investigation of the case is also fairly harrowing. Justine Bankston, Gwen's girlfriend, gets jailed for beheaded her own sister, only to have complete amnesia as to how she did so. And that's before it's revealed that Justine's amnesia and use of a tarot card in the murder is the for the previous case's killer, Jesse Adams. - Hashtag Murder has Marigold Carson decapitated and chopped up in The Island of the Dolls. The kicker is that her killer, Tiffany, is really an Evil Doll that came to life and chopped her up because she saw "darkness in her soul". She then goes for Gwen after being arrested but is killed when her head is shot off. - Mad World really takes the cake, even for a season like Supernatural Investigations. The case deals with the murder of a doctor at Blackmoor Asylum, whose skull was cracked open by a trepanning tool. While the asylum certainly has an unsettling vibe, it's tame compared to the ways the victim had abused the asylum's patients which lead to her assistant trying to "fix" her lack of empathy, killing her by accident while attempting to do a trepanation. The victim's actions included sewing a pair of twins against their will to conjoin them, threatening and abusing her patients with solitary confinement (many of whom are claustrophobic), throwing her sane daughter into the asylum and drugging her to prevent her escape, and murdering several of her patients, using their body parts to create Adam Enstrom, her assistant. Gwen is shocked and disgusted throughout the case, even saying that the victim deserved to die at one point. It goes to show that in a season with vampires, werewolves, ghosts, and demons some of the worst monsters you find in it are humans. - In A One-Wolf Open Slay, Ruth Wu gets mauled to death by a werewolf, who killed her out of revenge: She killed his son when he was just a cub. At least Ruth had it coming, though. - The victim in Dead Heat is killed by a curse, causing his car to flip over during a race. - In The Tree of Death, the killer of Annette Strong turns out to be the fairly affable Zeke Davis. Upon being arrested, he reveals himself to be the demon they were searching for. - Zeke's demon form counts for being rather disturbing. As a human, his ginger afro and goatee, and unfitting fur trenchcoat make him look fairly goofy. His true form is bright red with massive black horns instead of an afro and ditches the clothing. - This is taken further in the Additional Investigation, where he melts Jacob and Ben's weapons and prepares to kill them and the player. One can imagine how bad things had got if Arthur Darkwood didn't come just in time to banish him to the Netherworld. - While the murder in This American Death is standard fare, the circumstances behind it are extremely disturbing. The misogynistic victim had actually murdered his wife and replaced her with a submissive golem replica. She then realized that she was a replica of the victim and murdered him. To worsen matters, it turns out that their child had suddenly disappeared. - Felix almost being killed by Clybourn Webster twice in Don't Die over Spilled Milk. He got shot in the elbow and was quickly brought back to the caravan and treated by Ben, then later held at knifepoint by Clybourn until Gwen manages to save him. - The murder itself is also pretty disturbing, with the victim having been sliced from crotch to throat with a hook. The MO was stated to be similar to that of the local urban legend, The Milkman. The killer's motive is also pretty harrowing; her mother died when she was young and since the killer was never found, she blamed The Milkman, and when the victim was about to reveal that the legend wasn't real, she couldn't stand having her illusion shattered and killed him. - The victim in A Murder of Crows was tied up to a tree and pecked to death by crows in a fashion similar to that of The Birds. To make it worse, his death was planned by his employer as he couldn't bear to see him leave his job. - Later, we find out why the missing children had been kidnapped: some unscrupulous witches had planned on eating them on Walpurgis Night, the witches' Sabbath. - Scry for Help has Belinda, an aversion of Asshole Victim, drowned in a cauldron of unknown green liquid. To make things worse, her own sister, Morgana, had masterminded the murder because Belinda was interfering with her plans to eat children on Walpurgis Night to strengthen her powers. She takes advantage of Heather Night's insecurities in order to coax her into killing Belinda and keeping her own hands clean. - During the case, Avery Mitchell runs off to help the team...only to end up kidnapped like the other children and at risk of being eaten by the witches. Luckily, the team manages to save her and the others. - Towards the end of the case, the team contacts Arthur Darkwood to ask why he was on Earth. He reveals that there had been a war in the demon world between the queen's supporters and rebels. Arthur, a rebel, was nearly killed in the war, and he awakens to find out that the queen had been defeated and locked up. However, in the present time, the demons had already found four of the five locks needed to free her, and if the queen does go free she could rip a hole between dimensions and allow demons to invade the Earth. The implications from that aren't pretty... - The victim in No Leg to Stand On was stabbed in the stomach and had his legs fed to a kraken. To make it worse, he hadn't actually done anything to deserve this - A mermaid-turned human was pining for his girlfriend and decided to murder him as a result. - The victim in Hocus Pocus, Agnes Leek, was hanged to death and had her tongue cut out. At the end of the second chapter, her ghost surprises Gwen and the player, threatening to haunt them forever if they don't find her killer. When the killer is arrested, he reveals that he killed Agnes to end a curse on his family put on them by her ancestor 400 years ago. - Mid-investigation, the player and Gwen are approached by Avery Mitchell, who is terrified as Gwen's mother is chasing after her with intent to kill her. - In Scarab to Death, the victim, a rare aversion of Asshole Victim, is killed with a cursed amulet, which turned his arm black and eventually killed him with a heart attack. To top it all off, the murder was just an accident: An archaeology professor tried to give him the amulet, but she was unaware that it was cursed, killing the victim. - The Third Degree features several. - The victim, Theresa Rosenthal, was killed in a pretty horrific way: she was drugged with a truth serum which caused her to experience Sensory Overload, then the "killer" inflicted a Mind Rape so distressful on her that she shot herself just to escape from the pain. Especially shocking is that the killer turns out to be Reggie Pratt, who reveals himself as the demon that had tortured Gwen's mind and that the demons have found the final key. Even Arthur Darkwood, who is himself a demon, is absolutely horrified at the way Theresa went out. - Near the end of the case, it's revealed that Hope Newman, who had gone AWOL only two cases ago, is really Rathimael's child and the final key to the cage. By the time Jacob, Arthur, and the player reach the demon's cage, Hope has already been kidnapped by Reggie to open the cage. - The revelation that the demon queen turns out to have taken the body of none other than Lily Arrow, Jacob's dead wife. To make her appearance even creepier, she is seen trying to coax her husband upon being released. - The victim in The Hunted Hunter, Dolores Harper, had been impaled with magic vines. Her killer turns out to be none other than Morgana Blackhawk, who had regained her powers after swearing her loyalty to the evil demons, and she uses her newfound abilities to elude arrest. To make things worse, Morgana isn't the only new ally the demons have; in the Additional Investigation, the team finds out that Chief Arrow had sided with the Demon Queen as well, most likely because he couldn't let go of his dead wife. - Divided We Fall has Roxanne Vega get impaled with a stake and pushed out a window. The killer turns out to be Fabien de la Mort, her right-hand man, who she had threatened after he refused to go along with her plan to help the demons enslave all of humanity and supernatural creatures. Roxanne's actions were so horrific that the Supernatural Alliance acquitted him of all charges. - Throughout the case, Arthur Darkwood (who was supposed to moderate the meeting) was nowhere to be seen, worrying both the team and the Supernatural Alliance. When they finally try to look for him, all they find is his torn jacket, which could only mean that he had been kidnapped or already killed by the evil demons. The fact that not even a powerful demon like Arthur is safe makes it all the more harrowing when a demon guard shows up to take the team to the Netherworld, and the case ends on a cliffhanger. - To Hell and Back takes place in the Netherworld, which is populated by demons. After being arrested in the previous case, the team finds Arthur slashed to death and drained of blood, and are all alone now that he can't protect them anymore. They are forced to solve the murder while quietly avoiding the Demon Queen's wrath wherever they go. - In the first chapter, the team finds that George Mathison had been a demon all along, and doesn't care that they had worked together for so many cases, and instead laughs and calls them fools for not seeing through his disguise. - The killer turns out to be Zeke Davis, the same demon that Arthur had banished to the Netherworld all the way back in The Tree of Death. He claims that he did it to save the Earth...not because he cared for the beings who lived on it, but because he enjoyed the resources and felt superior to its lifeforms. He also reveals that he had given Arthur's blood to the Chief for safekeeping, not realizing that the Chief had allied with the Queen and helped release her from her vessel. - While the team manages to defeat the evil demons once and for all and safely returns to the Earth, it's never revealed what happened to Morgana Blackhawk, the only other human seen in the Netherworld. She may have died along with the Queen since she had gotten her powers from her, but even if she didn't, the Netherworld isn't a great place to live in, and she might not be able to get out, trapped for all eternity. Now talk about Nothing Is Scarier in its ultimate form! - The victim in Party Like It's 1699 was decapitated inside her bedroom with a meat cleaver. To make it worse, her murderer turns out to be her son, who did so because she rejected the idea of converting their house into a bed and breakfast to maintain their wealth, while trying to frame the head chef. - When Melodie Laurence's true colors finally show in Queen of Hearts. After initially coming across as a Dumb Blonde, she quickly reveals her true intentions with the Luvver app, while donning a Nightmare Face to follow. - The death of Céleste Alouest in Out With a Bang, where her stomach explodes because of a cesium powder pill and splatters all over the place. Not only is it a terrifying sight, but the sound of it has left all the suspects shaken. To make it worse, the person responsible for adding the pill had no idea it would kill her - she simply assumed it would have made her sick. - The penultimate episode has a bit of modern-day horrors, with a deepfake being used to discredit an innocent man by publicly posting what looks like him participating in an affair. - Also, as for the case itself, it's rather gruesome despite being bloodless due to the circumstances of the particularly nasty way Antoine is killed via suffocation with a plastic bag, and he's shown with a disturbing grimace etched on his face, complete with bulging bloodshot eyes and heck, that's not even getting into the fact that he has been stripped naked and has the words "DIE PIG" painted on his chest! What makes it worse is that the killer turns out to be \|\|radio show host Roland Nanty, who killed Antoine in brutal fashion out of revenge for the mobster ruining his life.\|\| Sure, Antoine had everything coming to him, but still, what a chilling way to go...	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/CriminalCase
Creepypasta / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes Let us ask you a simple question. If you finish reading this whole page, what are your odds of having a good sleep tonight? It isn't forgotten amongst most Internet-goers that these stories can be disquieting at best and outright mentally traumatizing at worst; this page has enough examples to prove that Creepypastas didn't earn the title of "spooky campfire stories of the web" for nothing. NOTE: Tropers are naturally curious, and most would prefer to not have to blindly click on links that could scare the crap out of them. Remember, even a description of what's behind the link is still scary on its own. Weblinks Are Not Examples. As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned. ## Sub-pages<!—index—><!—/index—> - "Anomaly" is very subtle in its creepiness. A small publishing company receives an offer from an anonymous old man to publish a book featuring his rare archival photo collection, which he describes as being filled with anomalies. However, after months of disagreements and some legal discourse, the man ultimately decides against the idea and has them can the whole thing. Bitter, the writer decides to publish the files he still has. These include photos of students at the Lakeview school in Collinwood, taken right before the 1908 fire that killed all but one of them; the last image of folklorist Charlie Noonan, a shot possibly showing the Axeman of New Orleans, evidence of the Grand Caverns Cryptids, a photo of a Union soldier one month before he was dismembered by cannon fire, the ghost of Sarah Eustace, and even a photo of the Trinity Nuclear Test which reveals that the more well-known version of the photo was cropped. And all of these are real photographs. - Ability is another short one that seems odd at first but gets worse the more you think about it. It begins with the narrator, a man in Osaka waiting for the train for his daily work commute. He notices a homeless man begging for change. The man overhears him mutter "pig" as a fat woman walks by. He initially assumes the man is simply rude but notices him muttering seemingly random words at passerby. He mutters "human" as a businessman walks by, which seems to be him simply stating the obvious. Then he calls someone "cow" which is odd because the man is rather skinny. Then a fat man walks past and he says "potato", also seemingly a jab at his weight, like the woman from earlier. The narrator gets increasingly curious, even wondering if the homeless man has some strange ability. He watches him for a few days and hears more seemingly random words like "rabbit", "tomato", "sheep", or "onion". Finally he approaches him and the homeless man says "bread". The narrator gives him some change and inquires about his ability. The story ends on bit of an Anticlimax when the man reveals that his ability is to see what people last ate. The narrator even lampshading how useless that power is. So why is it classified as a horror story, you ask? Read the words he said again. - Avatar: The Last Airbender - Nightmares and Daydreams describes a missing edition of the Avatar episode of the same name, where the Nightmare Sequence is actually worse than what the actual episode shows. Specifically, the Fire Nation's Rape, Pillage, and Burn attack on the Air Nomads. The Airbender monks and nuns are shown getting killed or already dead, an Airbender nun is raped, and a nursery is attacked, with a Fire Nation soldier throwing one of the babies at the wall, making it explode into Ludicrous Gibs. Eventually all four Air Temples are burning and every citizen, excluding Aang, has been murdered by the Fire Nation soldiers. - Would you believe that Hetalia: Axis Powers isn't safe from this? Axis Powers Hetalia: Episode 23.5 is an apparent "Missing Episode" of Hetalia that takes place while the Axis are camping on the beach. They run out of food, end up having to make a very rash decision and... well, let's just say poor Italy gets the short end of the stick. Did we mention that there are pictures and they very closely resemble the real Hetalia? - Blueberries. The narrator is convicted of a crime he claims he didn't commit, and is not allowed to leave his cell until he eats an entire oak desk. His sledgehammer is taken away after his initial round of smashing, and most of the pieces left over are too big to swallow. And then he sees that the top of the desk only broke in half. Available in illustrated form here (second story). - A Bright Flash , which is written by the same author as Happy Sun Daycare: - Long story short, the narrator describes how he was disfigured by an explosion and proceeds to take vengeance upon humanity for causing his misfortune. During the climax, he describes the anarchy he causes in a small fishing village including buildings collapsing and crushing people to death, people being burned to death by fire (including descriptions of those who tried to run to the ocean to put out the flames), and streets littered with crashed cars and fallen power lines and street lamps. - The Reveal at the end when a fatally wounded old man looks up at the narrator and says his final words. - Just the fact that the story is told from Godzilla's perspective is terrifying. Someone wanting revenge for being wronged is scary enough. Now imagine if that someone is a giant radioactive dinosaur. - Cameraheads, one of the earliest creepypastas to gain attention and, according to rumors, might very well be the great-grandaddy of what creepypastas are generally considered to be, being the potential origin of many now-common tropes such as creepypastas being multimedia affairs of both text and visual media, rather than being exclusively text. The creepypasta allegedly focuses on a person who finds an abandoned backpack containing a broken camera and a note saying "I killed a camerahead", "IT TOOK TREVOR", and "GET HELP IF I DON'T COME BACK", and begins a hunt for the eponymous creatures, who allegedly start stalking them and driving them to insanity. Already a very unsettling concept, but the arguably creepier and far more infamous aspect of the creepypasta is that it, well, doesn't exist (at least presently). It achieved popularity on /x/ well before an actual attempt was made to archive /x/ posts. Given the sheer mystery surrounding it, the lack of existence of Cameraheads itself might seem like a creepypasta... aside from the fact that an archive of the /x/ wiki from 2009 shows clear evidence of its existence, sitting alongside mainstays like Slenderman and Zalgo note : Although the wiki page is inaccessible, an archive search of "Recent changes" on the wiki managed to find its contents; however, it only references the original /x/ post and the Youtube video and not much else, clashing with the claims that was an entire ARG of multiple things. Following a long search, a mysterious video confirmed to be linked to the original creepypasta (and published on the same day) was found, which features a staticy overlay interspersed with footage of two people walking in a forest, and later a dark figure is seen walking to the camera during the static, and near the end a dark-cloaked figure with a smiling white mask jumpscares the viewer out of the staticy darkness, leering at them for a while before disappearing. Needless to say, this rather frightening video just deepens the mystery around the creepypasta, because as the contents of the archived wiki page indicate, the video seems to have little to no connection to the original /x/ post. The Cameraheads creepypasta, one of the oldest and most influential, was once famous on 4Chan, but has now been lost to time, and now only persists as a few ghostly remnants scattered across the web. - As of 2022, this is now somewhat mitigated as the full transcript of the creepypasta was found archived on /x/enopedia, albeit in an RSS feed of page edits. It also turns out that outside of the original pasta and the Youtube video, there wasn't any other supplementary material. - Cave Children: This one tells about an expedition to Pohnpei in which 4 scientists go to see what's behind some unexplored caves. They are told stories about creatures known as "Cave Children" with translucent skin, one single eye, 4 legged and overall, pretty big, but the main reason it's to see one breed of lizards that are capable of throwing rocks incredible distances. The first few paragraphs are overall pretty normal, we see both the lizards and the Cave Children. But further reading reveals that when one is killed, it's not a crustacean, but actually an upside down hominid, similar to a human, what was thought to be a single eye was a mouth; the so-called tail, was in fact genitalia, and what was believed to be wings, was in fact their ribcage. And that's not all; one of the scientists loses her mind and ends up sacrificing herself. It's told in a few sentences, but her fate is not left ambiguous: She's raped and killed by the Cave Children in an extremely horrifying way. Afterwards the last surviving scientist tries to eat, patch himself up, escape and end taping the expedition, but everything proves futile In the end it's told another expedition group found a Cave Child near this tape. It is described as being a little bit stouter than most Children and with bandages wrapped around its arms. - "The Cemetery" puts a twist on the original urban legend "Grave Digger". Let just say, Pa had a good reason for asking those questions. - Chinese Letters. A Chinese-American man and his mother move into a nice new house, only for the protagonist to experience increasingly bizarre and creepy events, all centered around his bedroom for some reason. Then he finds out why the strange happenings only took place in his room. When he first moves into the house, he notices a Chinese talisman on the wall of his bedroom above the door, but he can't read the writing on it because he never learned Chinese. He ends up leaving it there, just in case. Years later, after moving out of the house, he visits his aunt and inside the house he sees an identical talisman above the front door, except it's flipped around so the writing is facing the wall. When he asks her why she placed it that way, she tells him that it's supposed to be like that. The talisman is a ward against evil spirits and the writing is supposed to face the direction the evil spirits will come from, i.e. if you want to keep evil spirits from entering your house, you have the lettering face outside. Remember, the lettering on the other talisman was facing inside the room... - While The Chosen Journals is more lighthearted than other Creepypasta, it still has its share of disturbing aspects. The story is full of Paranoia Fuel with the mere concept that pretty much anything can be an Eldritch Abomination in disguise just waiting to tear its victims limb from limb. - One entry centers around one of the Ancients taking the form of a chair. The narrator's refusal to reveal what the "seat" is regarding the chair's anatomy speaks volumes. Especially when he/she says they feel sorry for anyone who tried to sit in it. - Thac. Not only can he assume more than one form (Human and toy dragon), but it's also implied he may not be an Ancient but something far more powerful and dangerous. The narrator, despite admitting he/she is glad Thac is (possibly) on their side, even explicitly states against summoning Thac for help. - "The Crawling House on Black Pond Road". Every entomophobe's worst nightmare incarnate. - The Creeping Horror details the narrator hearing a local Urban Legend, the titular Horror. The Creeping Horror is described as a Shell-Shocked Veteran from WWII horribly disfigured by Nerve Gas and from being burned by a flamethrower. Unable to adjust to normal society, he fled into the woods and now survives by killing and eating animals and people. He can be summoned by saying his name five times a la Bloody Mary. When The narrator and their friend try summoning it, their father bursts in, extremely angry and panicked, which is unusual for him. He demands that the narrator never say the name of the Horror again. As the years go by, the narrator slowly loses interest in the story, until they hear from their grandfather that their father has a personal story involving the legend. However, their father angerly refuses to talk about it, only saying that people died because of the incident. Years later, when the narrator is in college, they hear that their father is dying, and visit him on his deathbed. His father decides to finally tell the story. Turns out, he, his friend, and his crush went on a picnic in the woods. His friend suggests they summon the Horror. During the attempt, his crush gets spooked and runs off. He consoles her and even manages to convince her to go out with him. When they get back, they decide to try again, and his friend convinces him that they should each try it alone, away from each other. When the father tries it, he begins to hear rustling in the bushes and smell sulfur. Eventually he hears the Horror breathing and announcing its intentions to eat him. He attacks with his pocket knife... only to realize that it was his crush pulling a prank on him. His friend shows up, and panics when he sees the body. He tries to suggest telling the police when the father brutally stabs him to death in a blind panic to cover up the incident. The narrator is so disgusted by their father's actions that they give him a fatal dosage of painkillers. - Cu Chi tells of a young soldier serving during an unidentified war. Aside from being one big Tear Jerker, the story becomes all the more terrifying when you discover it's a pretty accurate representation of what went on during The Vietnam War. - The Cute Waitress. It's quite sweet at first. The main character meets a cute waitress in a suspiciously empty diner on the outskirts of town, and later has a good enough relationship with her to repeatedly have sex with her. But when he takes his friend to the diner... only to find it's been wrecked for awhile, the police are investigating, and there's a dead body that shows signs of having been used sexually after her death... It's Nothing Is Scarier par excellence. - "Dangerous Roads". The narrator, a former Marine, is driving through Amboy, when they suddenly come across what looks like a car accident with two bodies lying face down on the ground. Since the area is a hotspot for Satanic group activity, the narrator has a bad feeling about the scene in front of them, and decides to drive around the bodies instead of helping. A hundred feet or so down the road, they happen to look in the rear view mirror...and are horrified to see that not only have the two "bodies" got to their knees, about twenty or so people have emerged from the grass on either side of the road. Just the thought of what could have happened if the narrator had not been so paranoid is terrifying. - Darkness is about a guy who gets teleported to an infinite plane of pitch darkness whenever the lights go out. Luckily, he comes back to reality when he's illuminated. The finale involves him being trapped in an elevator for an hour during a power outage. He starts yelling, and gets an answer from himself. - Dead Bart, one of the original and more well-known Missing Episode stories. The Simpsons episode in question is about Bart dying and the rest of the family being devastated by his death. The episode gets increasingly morbid as it goes on, but the real kicker is the graveyard scene at the end, featuring the tombstones of Simpsons guest stars (with some like Michael Jackson having death dates in which they would die in real life) and one hell of a Wham Line: "A thought occurred to me after seeing the episode for the first time, you could try to use the tombstones to predict the death of living Simpsons guest stars, but there's something odd about most of the ones who haven't died yet. All of their deaths are listed as the same date." - While A Dead Bart Update is generally viewed as an unnecessary sequel to Dead Bart, it does reveal what Homer said upon seeing Barts corpse in the graveyard. - "The Devil Game" is a set of instructions for how to challenge the devil to game. By bringing a wall mirror into a church at midnight, binding it with several protection seals, and leaving all electronic and time-keeping items outside the room, you'll be able to summon him and challenge him to a questions game. You and the devil will get to ask each-other questions. If you can answer them truthfully or correctly, you'll be able to ask him anything you want and he'll have to answer truthfully as well. The devil knows many things (although he's not omniscient), and it seems like an easy way to get any information you might want. But answer wrong or lie, and he's free to lie as he sees fit to any of your questions, and won't even tell you if you got them wrong at all. There's also countless ways the game can go wrong- breaking the protection seals, looking away from the mirror, giving away enough personal information for him to screw with your head, helping him further his goals through seemingly easy challenges. And then there's what happens if the game lasts longer than 66 minutes. At that point, the devil will possess your body and your soul will be imprisoned inside the mirror, where all the raw, negative emotions inside of you will begin to coalesce into monsters that will hunger for your pain and suffering to keep themselves alive. You'll be unable to die, but able to feel pain and trapped there forever unless he decides to let you out. He is willing to let you out early... for the usual price. At the same time, the devil will get to do whatever he wants with your body until it drops dead at sunrise, which could involve murdering or torturing your closest loved ones, carrying out seemingly innocuous deeds that will end up hurting a lot of people and furthering his goals, or maybe even going online to encourage more people to play his game. After all, you have the instructions. If you've made it this far along this page, you clearly love this kind of stuff. You live and breathe it. It's not like you'd fall for the same traps as other people, right? - The Disappearance of Ashley, Kansas is the curious tale of the day the town of Ashley, Kansas, disappeared. The town is small and isolated, and doesn't even have its own police station. One night, all roads leading into Ashley end up becoming roads to nowhere, endlessly circling and never reaching Ashley. But that's not the scary part. A woman calls the police frantically, saying "Last night they came back." The police officer on the other end tries to calm her and find out what's happening. She says she is hiding in the closet and mentions that her son died the previous year after being hit by a car. She tells the police officer that her son has returned to the world of the living, but he Came Back Wrong, and he along with the rest of Ashley's dead are now looking for their loved ones. This is not a good thing. Whatever these things are, they burn every house they enter and kill the occupants in a way that is not identified. At the end of the phone call, the woman's son enters her house and kills her, laughing, "I found you, Mommy." When the police go to check on Ashley the following morning, they find nothing there, except a smouldering fissure in the Earth. - Dogscape: Imagine, if you will, everything becoming dogs. Literally everything. The story is told in multiple logs that unveil the Body Horror that what's left of humanity has to go through, one soldier breaking into the Eldritch Abomination that started it all only to be assimilated into it, and a man tying a woman to a tree and raping her presented as a good thing in context. Highlights of creepy stuff include: - Dog mouths that appear all over the ground and eat anybody who step in them. - A soldier getting so consumed by rage that he manages to dig down into the Dogscape to try and kill it through the inside, only to get tied down by several tentacles and assimilated into it. - The "dog mounds" that dot the landscape. In other words, female reproductive organs that some humans, out of desperation, start copulating with so they can feel pleasure once more. They usually stay in the same spot until they die, their stinking skeletons the only remnant of their existence. - Humanity being so desperate to stave off extinction that a man tying a woman to a tree and keeping her there so he can rape her is considered perfectly acceptable by the tribes. Except even after a child is born from this rape, a tentacle emerges from the ground and drags both the mother and child into the ground, where they are torn apart by dogs. Having cynophobia makes the whole thing far worse. - The entire backstory behind the Dogscape is a remarkably creepy (and at times heartbreaking) cautionary tale about the consequences of genetic experimentation. What's especially harrowing is there are three different names given to the ancient super-powered dog that mutated into the grotesque Eldritch Location that was formerly Planet Earth - they're all believed to be distortions or fragments of its original name, Armad, Me'arm and Aduke... piece them together, and you'll never look at Marmaduke the same way again. - Doug's Real Life is a fairly spooky little Missing Episode pasta about Doug, and one that relies heavily on psychological horror, too. The opening shows the lines as per usual, but none of the characters are in it. The Cold Open begins with no narration from Doug, which is almost unheard of in the show itself. Doug has some unusual fantasies throughout the episode, including Porkchop turning into a slab of meat and his house being completely deserted...even though he's still acting like he's talking to them. The scene goes back to normal, but then his family gets a call, which he assumes is his teacher telling them he failed a test. Another fantasy occurs wherein they scream at him for it and he breaks down in tears, apologizing. When this fantasy ends, his family is gone and he's all alone in the house. He heads up to his now empty room, picks up his journal and writes, narrating this time: - "Dusty's Radio Show" concerns the narrator talking about how he listened to the titular podcast, which concerns a racist who talks about bad things about other races and how he believes that white people are superior. At the end of every episode, he takes phone calls from people who proceed to then mock him, making him angry as a result. While this was funny to the narrator, during one particular episode, Dusty gets up from his chair and leaves the room... and comes back with a woman of some race, ordering her inside. The woman is pleading to Dusty not to hurt her, but Dusty tells her to shut up and shouts about racist things before pulling out a gun and killing her on the spot. And what makes things worse is that this could very well happen in our world. In a tone that sounded as if he were grinning, Dusty spoke into the microphone one last time. "They snuck into our country by the waves of the ocean. I'll make sure they go back the same way. One piece at a time." I clicked and closed the browser. - "The Face in the Middle of the Dark" describes a mysterious murder that took place in Russia in the 1980's and the Russian government trying to keep it under wraps by destroying the victim's house and withholding the only known photograph of the victim at the time of death for decades. As if the story itself isn't unnerving, the photograph of the murder victim is also likely to keep you from sleeping for a while. This reading makes it worse, if you can believe it. - Fall: The narrator takes a different hiking trail than usual because there's a family with screaming kids on his normal route. He steps off the path to get a picture of the sunset, but what looks like an innocent patch of grass somehow hides an inescapable hole in the ground that drops him into a network of caverns and tunnels, home to some kind of animal that doesn't resemble anything he knows. He struggles to find a way out and eventually ends up stuck in a narrow tunnel, just a few feet away from freedom through a hole he can't reach, and the creature begins to eat him, legs-first. It's Paranoia Fuel for anyone walking alone just about anywhere. - Flashes of Lightning: A father and his three-year-old son move into a new house, and on their first night there, they watch a huge lightning storm. The next day, the son tells his father he watched the lightning from his window, only to tell him the same thing on a few separate occasions, even though there haven't been any storms lately. The father dismisses it as dreams of the first storm, only to read in the paper a few days later about a recently-arrested paedophile who has a habit of taking pictures of his targets through their bedroom window, and sometimes doing more than that. The really terrifying part is what the son told his father a week before the arrest: - "I Found a Digital Camera in the Woods." The story is mostly told in pictures found on a mysterious camera which was found abandoned in the woods. In the pictures, the previous owner goes on a hike into abandoned/restricted territory, and takes the camera to record the events. The pictures are normal up to picture 5, where a man/thing can be seen in the right middle section of the picture. The unaware photographer continues to take pictures of anything he finds interesting, until he comes across a ruined house/school. As he leaves, in picture 17, the man/thing once again makes an appearance in the middle right of the picture, peeking through one of the ruined windows of the house. Picture 18 is the man/thing's biggest reveal -it lurches out of the fog looking like a scarecrow, then appears in the next picture as a pair of eyes peeking out from under the rock on the left. Possibly to escape, possibly lost, or maybe trying to find the man/thing, the photographer climbs the tower shown in the pictures. He continues climbing till the top, where he presumably finds some sort of small room. The man then becomes scared, most likely because the man/thing has followed him. He takes two more pictures, one of which shows a reflection of the back of the man/thing in the room either above or below him - most likely above him because the creature appears to be looking out of the window, searching for him. The man retreats back down the tower, and the next three pictures are of motion blurred forest as he flees. The second to last picture shows an innocuous scene of forest. But, if you look to the right, in the mist you can see what appears to be a skull. Then you look closer and the terror's face becomes clearer. - Funnymouth is not particularly scary in itself, but the author made it seem very real. He took the name of a forum-goer with several quotes on Bash.org; he set up the website mentioned in the story, exactly as it was described in the story, and if not for the dream invasions, the villain could have just been a really good troll. - "Fuzzy" starts out innocently enough, with a little boy telling his parents about how his brightly colored, furry imaginary friend came back, but things get suspicious when he mentions that "Fuzzy" doesn't want the parents to know about him and the narrator reads a particular newspaper article...and then the ending reveals the truth: "Fuzzy" is actually an elderly pedophile who has been visiting the boy and giving him hallucinogenic drugs to make him more pliable. - The Gallery of Henri Beauchamp opens up and plays like a standard ritual creepypasta at first, but the brutality of the titular gallery's lore is something to behold. Its creator was a struggling surrealist in the 1920s who began to paint increasingly strange pictures, which included pictures from the past and the future. This all culminated in him abducting and killing three young girls and creating thirteen of his finest masterpieces using their blood and bodily fluids. Said paintings include, but are not limited to, the true faces of God, Jesus Christ and Satan as humans can see them, the beginning and end of the universe, and even a portrait of the Antichrist Himself. But we haven't mentioned what the thirteenth painting supposedly is; through means thankfully unknown, Beauchamp did something to his body during death and turned himself - skin, organs and all - into a collage that currently lies at the end of the gallery, turned around to face the wall. Posted next to it is a very large "DO NOT TOUCH" sign written in English, Angelic, and Demonic. Whatever's on that canvas, it's not even safe for an angel or demon to look at, let alone a mortal man. - Gateway of the Mind has scientists try and communicate with God... by depriving an old man of all his senses, but this unfortunately goes awry. He can't even feel pain, to the point where he tries to claw out his useless eyes just to feel something. Even worse is the very end "I have spoken with God, and He has abandoned us". - Give him what he wants is the story of a group of young men who are hanging outside a school one day, when they are approached by a wannabe bully they knew from their childhood, who then starts harrassing them as usual. When they get fed up of his crap, they stuff him inside the boot of their car, and lock him inside. But when they reopen it, they find that he's mysteriously vanished without a trace. Later, the guy (Michael) reappears before the protagonist (Alex), inside a can and says that he needs favour. The favour in question? Putting a homeless man's finger inside the can, which somehow causes him to messily get sucked inside. Michael then continues to reappear before Alex and his other friends in tiny dark places, requesting sacrifies in the form of people being sucked into the void, before they too follow. It's later revealed that in this setting, all darkness is a gateway to another dimension, which people are dragged into if they stay in the dark for too long, and their mangled still-living bodies are fiddled with by the unseen creatures that lurk in there. Things go from bad to worse, as Michael takes more and more of Alex's friends and loved ones away to that hellish realm (which also serves as the setting's afterlife), in retibution just for locking him inside the boot all those years ago. - The Grieving, a Lost Episode creepypasta of The Amazing World of Gumball has a lot of disturbing elements, with the episode's title referring to Nicole and Richard mourning the loss of their children Gumball, Darwin and Anais. If the grotesque detail given about the descriptions of Darwin and Anais' remains isn't creepy enough, there's also the revelation that this lost episode was made by show creator Ben Bocquelet when he was a teenager to vent about a man from his old job who grieved the loss of his children at the hands of a serial killer (which Bocquelet himself immensely regrets) and the heavy implication that the same serial killer made this lost episode air on the narrator's television in addition to targeting the narrator's younger brother. - The Gündschau Effect, a story about a Nazi experiment with Polish prisoners to test the effects on people's moralities if they're fed very good food, but are otherwise in hellish conditions. - Another lost episode one that's commonly overlooked would be "Half-Baked Sun Cakes", one for My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. Though slightly more Tear Jerker than Nightmare Fuel, there's still an unnerving aspect to it. The story consists of the protagonist watching a "new" episode of the show he had never seen before and in it Twilight is preparing for a visit from Princess Celestia. Sounds innocent enough, but there's something very off about the episode—Twilight is the only character in it. She carries around a doll of Spike and talks to it like it's the real Spike and everyone else is completely absent. Despite this Twilight talks to blank walls and thin air as though they're her friends and indeed the episode plays out like they're supposed to be there, but aren't. At the end, Twilight sings a song with some truly odd lyrics considering the nature of the show ("Ave Maria!", "Birther of the son (sun?)", etc.). It then ends with Twilight's usual (at the time) friendship letter, which predictably the Spike doll never writes a word of because it's a doll. And then? Well... - The Super Mario World creepypasta "I HATE YOU". Blind Boos in the Ghost Ship, Bowser's Head crying Tears of Blood, followed by an alleged Secret Level containing an inescapable bloody Banzai Bill, the title message and other bloody graffiti, a bloodstained Thwomp hallway, zombie Marios in a submerged Spikes of Doom hallway, a creepy-faced Super Mushroom by the boss door, and finally, Luigi's revelation that he was working with Bowser all along. - Lost Episode creepypastas are a little cliche nowadays, but Hey Arnold: The Furnace is still horrifyingly creepy — and it's claimed to be the "intended series finale" to the show. Apparently, the show was meant to end with a very different version of the episode "On The Lam", retitled "The Furnace", which ends with Harold murdering Stinky and Arnold to keep from being arrested for seemingly blowing up an old police station (actually done by Ernie's demolition crew), Sid committing suicide from guilt and Harold following him when he learns the truth of what happened. The "episode" ends with Arnold's Grandpa discovering his grandson's remains in the titular furnace. And then, the narrator of the Creepypasta watches the episode "On The Lam" on TV... and a scene from the lost episode is randomly cut in there with no lead in whatsoever (the scene in question is Arnold having an Oh, Crap! moment just before being murdered), which leads to this chilling conclusion. Fun fact: the scene in question? Grandpa coming downstairs and assumes Arnold is playing "Secret Agent". You know? The scene that actually is in the episode itself, and not a creation of the Creepypasta? Later Arnold comes crashing through the basement door, and begins explaining everything to his Grandpa. But in the back of my mind I think, "That's not Arnold. Arnold is still in the basement, dead in the furnace..." - The sheer Body Horror present in The Horror from the Vault. The creature-never fully described until the very end-induces nightmares of standing on a shore of flesh of a sea of rotten blood, and a mass of fused, screaming people replacing the sun. The thing terrorizes a small town, kidnapping residents and leaving nothing but their ripped clothes-not even blood stains. The police sent to investigate either go missing, or are found next to masses of flesh-swaddled organs that still work despite being from several different animals. Eventually, the police-or, rather, a policeman finds the thing's lair, a clearing in the forest covered in Meat Moss made from eviscerated, boneless animals; all still alive and trying to escape, with a "pond" of body fluids in the center. The beast itself looks like a massive spider crab with skeletons on its back and whole bodies for legs, with miscellaneous organs inside its shell. - Many find The House That Death Forgot unnerving, even if not all that scary. The consensus seems to be that it's very well-written for a creepypasta, and thus the realism adds to the creepy factor. - In From the Cold. An astronaut named Alec is all alone on the moon, his partner having died from an airlock malfunction. To avoid getting in trouble with mission control, he buries him in a dune far away from the station. Then days later, he peeks into one of the cameras where he sees his undead partner trying to get back in. Alec, in deep fear, goes to check the airlock, the only barrier keeping his partner at bay. When he doesn't see his partner in the airlock, Alec assumes that his undead partner has left, and that he's safe now. Suddenly, he hears shuffling footsteps behind him... - It's Later Than You Think. It starts at a party, where the narrator's friend persuades her to try some sketchy mushrooms before she leaves. They kick in as she's driving home, and she gets into a horrible accident...and wakes up perfectly fine in her bed, completely unscathed, but with a strange neurological condition that makes reality seem to chug along at one-third normal speed. Then she starts missing time — months at a time. Her fiancé and her sister start saying cryptic things. Events repeat themselves. She has to figure out what's real and what's not real, all while a strange blackness gradually consumes everything around her. And when she finally does, she discovers she would have been better off not knowing... - Jeff the Killer: - While Jeff as a character isn't scary in the slightest, his face◊ makes for a excellent, effective shock image that is very hard to get out of your head. Imagine Michael Jackson, Mr. Noseybonk and The Joker fused into one pallid abomination staring right into your soul with the worst Slasher Smile possible. - His origin story: getting disfigured in a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown with a bully, losing his mind, killing his family, and then starting a killing spree. Imagining just how excruciating Jeff's injuries would be is also this. His face was horrifically burned, and in the resulting fit of insanity he severed his eyelids and gave himself a Glasgow Smile. - In the 2016 remake, Jeff is instead burnt with a flare, resulting in him looking like Two-Face. - "Kagome Kagome". What the Nazi scientists did to those children as part of their immortality research. Even worse in that while the disclaimer below admits the creepypasta is fabricated, he points out that the Nazis nonetheless did send a research team to Japan to experiment with immortality. And it was done on children. In an orphanage. - A Late Night Sledding brings about this with Nothing Is Scarier. The narrator describes their friends Megan and Christina disappearing into a poorly lit area of a park while sledding during the late evening - They don't answer when the narrator and their friends call for them, Megan doesn't pick up her phone. The narrator goes down to look for them only to find that there is water down there, as if the park is flooding. Eventually, the two girls come tearing out of the park and they tell them to just "RUN!". They follow the girls home as the soaked girls warm up, and they never say just what it was that happened, and still avoid the park to this day. Just what happened to them? - "Liars". After being disfigured by acid, a guy gets his revenge on those who both did it and lied about it in the worst way possible - by kidnapping one of them and forcing him to butcher two of the others, then sending a videotape of the incident to the last one...which distracts him long enough so that the victim can break in and pour acid on the guy's face. It doesn't help that the writer describes the corrosion of the protagonist's skin with acid like it actually happened to him. And while the smile description at the very end is disturbing, look at the main image and imagine THAT being the last thing you see before you die. - Look! Up in the Sky! is a story about a man who finds a cape in a meteor that grants him powers very similar to Superman's. The cape psychically tells him that it was created by aliens wanting peace throughout the universe. However, as the narrator rids the world of crime and villainy, the cape soon starts to expand its definition of peace. For example, the parade the people are throwing the narrator is too noisy and the girl throwing confetti is technically committing the crime of littering. Unfortunately, the cape won't let the narrator tell anyone this and it won't let him destroy it. It's at that moment he realizes the meteor he found the cape in was actually all that was left of the last planet it had visited. Beware the Superman indeed. - "Love" is mostly a heartwarming moment and tearjerker, but there is a moment that's definite Nightmare Fuel, both in the ghost story sense and in mundanger sense. The girl ends up bringing a date home as her Guardian Angel bound to the house watches. The Guardian Angel, to put it bluntly, does not like the boy and his suspicions are confirmed when said boy proceeds to try and pressure the girl (15 at the time) into sex. After she resists, repeatedly, he cuts out the middleman and tries to rape her, slapping her when she tells him to stop. The ghost, understandably furious, goes full on Haunted House on the boy, shaking the whole house and mimicking the voice of the girl's father in order to scream at the boy to get out. Unfortunately, it works too well and scares the girl too, driving a rift between her and the ghost, though she ultimately ends up understanding why he did it. - Man-Eater tells the story of a farmer named Richard Maize who has so many livestock that he doesn't know what to do with them. He wishes he could just eat them all up. What happens next? Let's just say Richard learns the lesson of Be Careful What You Wish For the hard way when his newborn son eats everything that is meat around him. Even humans. - Meek. Meek is an overweight, unhygienic man living in a grotesquely squalid apartment absolutely overrun with all possible forms of garbage. He only ever sits on his ass playing computer games. His wife had left him a year or so earlier, taking their infant daughter with her, but he can barely even remember their names or faces. One day, after his character dies from falling to a lava pit, he kicks an ancient pile of pizza boxes in frustration, accidentally putting a hole through his wall and causing him to lose his internet connection, also splitting his elongated toenail. Thinking his toenail may have cut the cable, he goes digging through the piles of trash and shit to find a phone to call the cable company, all of it described in nauseating detail. When he decides to check in the locked bedroom, which involves digging his way through a pile of old boxes, he finds the long-decayed corpses of his wife and infant daughter, the latter still resting in her crib. The story ends as Meek collapses from pain and overexertion, tries to dig through the trash to get back to his computer, and then suffers a fatal heart attack. The author admits they wanted to write a story about how sheer neglect could shape a person's horror, and boy does it show. The scariest part about this story? It's completely realistic. There really are people who somehow live like this, buried under mountains of their own waste. - Molly Followed You is a story of a young man who finds himself stalked by a deranged woman who can easily enter his home, find all sorts of his personal information and then vanish without a trace. It's so terrifying because it's firmly grounded in reality; anyone who's ever dealt with unwanted attention or people that invade their privacy will probably relate, and it's naightmarish just how easily she could access him and get away with it, which as we know is very much a possibility in real life. Perhaps the scariest part is the ending: the storyteller moves house to get away from her, which seems to work, but the reason he posts the story? Earlier that day, he received an email containing a picture of Molly watching peeling back his shower curtain and him wash his hair, with him having no idea it was happening. Molly: I'd follow you anywhere... - Mr. Mix. The disturbing "music" in the game and the appearance of Mr. Mix himself are creepy enough, but then there's what happens when a group of hackers manage to bypass Level 5 — images of people with hideously deformed faces (including eyes bleeding from their tear ducts) appear. To top it off, the hackers are so traumatized by what they see when they get to the final level that they go missing, only for one of them to show up two years later dressed as Mr. Mix and try to kidnap a young girl — when questioned, the only thing he says is "I'm Mr. Mix. Shhh." - "Mr. Widemouth", one of the classics, is a story about the narrator's childhood experience with the titular Mr. Widemouth, a deceptively adorable furry creature that befriends the narrator with the intention of manipulating them into doing dangerous things, including jump out of a window and juggle knives. After the narrator refuses repeatedly, Mr. Widemouth gets more and more frustrated with them. Eventually, when the narrator moves out, they see Mr. Widemouth sitting in the window holding a giant steaknife, implicitly having planned on killing the narrator himself after his repeated attempts to get them killed failed. Years later, the now adult narrator visits the house long after it has burned down—implicitly killing Mr. Widemouth in the process—and follows a trail that Mr. Widemouth once told them about. What do they find there? - My Daughter Died On Her Sixth Birthday. Especially when the parent in question is helpless to do anything about it. To put it in perspective: disregard the possible supernatural elements that occur in the story. Imagine your daughter was being stalked by an unseen sexual predator then held prisoner. The nightmarish thing of all is, unlike the other stories, it isn't overly gory and just flat out lets the audience's imagination run wild over the daughter's fate. - The Never Ending Road: More mundane that most entries on this list, but the possibility of accidentally plunging off a cliff straight towards an untimely death is a real fear for many drivers who live near steep areas. - "Nightlight" is more unsettling than outright scary, but it still applies here since it's never been certain whether the creature in the narrator's dreams really was a figment of his imagination or a real entity. - NoEnd House is a pretty creepy read as well, where the main character attempts a challenge to go through nine different rooms of a house for a $500 prize. The rooms start out using cheap Halloween directions and cliché scares, which the main character finds laughable, but then they start getting more and more surreal and play on phobias and Primal Fears. The only solace is that the ending is a bit of Black Comedy, where the main character gets the $500, as promised... that is until the end of this last line. - Normal Porn for Normal People: The narrator is sent an email directing him to a website named "normalpornfornormalpeople.com", and decides to investigate out of curiosity. At first, the videos are just slightly strange (like a woman repeatedly making a peanut butter sandwich for a dog to eat, or a man licking the top of a washing machine), but then they start to take a turn for the creepy (like a guy being forced to breakdance on a Dance Dance Revolution mat despite being exhausted), until finally he reaches a video where a woman is tied to a mattress and mauled to death by a chimpanzee that has been shaved and painted red. Unsurprisingly, the discovery of this video leads to the site being shut down, the thread were where the narrator discussed the website being deleted and his attempts to start a new discussion on "normalpornfornormalpeople.com" getting him banned at every website he attempts to do so. The scariest thing about this story is that there aren't any supernatural or even paranormal elements at all. Videos like this can actually exist. There's also the title of that video with the chimpanzee — "Useless.avi". There are two possible reasons for the title and neither one is good. - The Ocean's Cool Air. One word: For those who don't feel brave enough to read the story: the narrator is lost at sea, and is found by a fishing boat. As the crew is preparing to rescue them, a humongous sea creature rises, destroys the boat, and kills the entire crew. It then throws a severed arm to the narrator, commanding them to eat it. The narrator explains the creature has done this many times already, has no idea why the creature continues to play this game with them, and they're too afraid of what the creature might do to refuse the flesh. The narrator might not have any idea, but it should be fairly obvious to the reader: One man isn't much of a meal for a huge sea monster, but he sure makes good bait. eat. - "On A Hill" Part 1 and Part 2. It shows a darker portrayal of the Scottish highlands by the form of a lonely hill in a small, unassuming village whose very presence fills the locals with all-consuming fear and trepidation. And for good reason too, because the abandoned church at the very crown of the cursed mass is not completely abandoned, as our unfortunate protagonist finds out when he ventures there by his lonesome. - On the Bus. Just because society has modernized doesn't mean classic superstitions don't as well. The tale, written in the second person, tells the story of a young man climbing aboard a bus in Bogota, a city in Colombia. There's nothing particularly noteworthy about the bus, and it's 5:30 on a Tuesday, so what could go wrong? The main character gives his money to the wizened bus driver and chooses a seat, somewhat registering that the few other riders are elderly. When his stop finally comes, he gets up to ring the bell...and finds himself back in his seat. No matter how hard he tries, this always happens. But the real horror arrives when the character looks down and notices that his hands have become wrinkled and veined. With each attempt at getting off, he grows older and older, gradually losing his vision, mobility, and eventually the ability to think clearly. On his last try, he looks closely at one of the old women and faintly recognizes her outfit as being far more appropriate for a teenage girl. That's right— everyone on the bus has had their youth sucked away from them. The narrator is now completely drained and too exhausted to make another attempt—and too fogged with dementia to remember why it's important to get off in the first place. He, and all the other passengers, are now doomed to ride forever. And not a single one of them did anything to deserve it. - The Other Network. Near the town of Gwynedd, Wales, in an abandoned climate research center, is a network port that inexplicably still has power and connectivity. If you hook up to it, you'll be directed to a site called www.patriotsearch.com, which is a Google-esque search engine. It details an alternate reality from our own, and a pretty disturbing one at that. A totalitarian state called the Patriot Alliance controls the UK and the United States (with Canada and Australia possibly joining), the latter of whom is undergoing a second civil war. Terrorist attacks are common events, including a White House shooting (leading to a nation-wide handgun ban) and a thermonuclear weapon being detonated on the Spanish-French border. Treason and Fraud are the only crimes that get any kind of investigation, leaving criminals free to walk the streets and even cultivate online fan followings. This world is also extremely overpopulated; major cities like London are ringed by slums and shantytowns. Something also happened to New York City, but there are no records of when or what it was. There were detailed historical records during the 90's, but nothing afterward. Like it just stopped existing one day. The story ends with the author receiving multiple pings from the other side, then an unknown download that felt like it was trying to force its way into our world. He pulled his laptop out of the port and disassembled it just to be sure. He warns anyone who decides to go exploring there to not respond, or you might let them in. - Pale Luna is about an early 80s choose-your-own-adventure game where the player is given a rope, a shovel, gold, and a forest maze to solve. Trying to use the rope prompts the message "You've already used this." The gold prompts "Reap your reward". The cryptic Arc Words "PALE LUNA SMILES AT YOU" are repeatedly displayed. The player beats the game by reaching the end of the maze and burying the gold. Their reward is a set of real-life coordinates. These coordinates lead to the buried severed head of a blonde little girl later identified as Karen Paulsen. The killer was never found, nor was the rest of the victim's body. As if that's not bad enough, this revelation recontextualizes the game as a reenactment of the murder. "PALE LUNA SMILES" is an anagram for "Paulsen". The gold represents her blonde severed head. The murderer "already used" the rope to strangle her, and they "reaped their reward" from the "gold". Make of that what you will. - "Persuaded." What could be worse than being trapped in a small darkened room surrounded by zombies trying to break their way in? Being trapped in a small darkened room surrounded by zombies trying to break their way in, who then stop and start trying to convince you to open the door. No screaming, no moaning, just quite whispers doing everything in their power to convince you to join them. - The Photographs - a woman goes into the woods alone to take photographs, and when she develops and looks through them, she discovers four photographs of herself...photographs that were taken when she was asleep, and thus unable to take them herself. The scariest thing is that whoever took the pictures inside the tent didn't do anything else. They could have done anything to the woman since at the time she was completely by herself in the woods. - The Portraits is a short but disturbing read. A hunter, tired and lost after spending the day in a large forest, comes across a cabin in a clearing. Seeing that it's unlocked, nobody's home and with how dark it's getting, he decides to spend the night there. However, as he flops onto the bed, he's very disturbed by the cabin's many portraits hanging on the walls. All of them are highly detailed, but the people in them seem to be staring down at him with hateful expressions. Despite that, he faces the wall and falls asleep. The next morning, he notices the sunlight streaming in and realizes that the cabin has no portraits at all. Just windows. - Psychosis: - It is about a man who slowly comes to believe that everyone but him has disappeared and been replaced by some Eldritch Abomination, is an extremely scary story likely to induce serious Paranoia Fuel in you. Particularly effective is the Wham Line at the end. "After all, a sane man would have fallen for the deception long ago." - The Puppetmaster's Regime consists of the narrator trying to look into a mysterious musical that hasn't been staged since a disastrous showing in the 1930's where the cast were all killed and turned into marionettes. As the tale goes on, more unsettling and gruesome details come up, such as the musical being adapted from a novel written by the director's adoptive father who sexually abused him and the off-Broadway revival ending with more people disappearing mysteriously. - The Quiet Sky begins with the premise that the Arecibo message gets a response. The response comes in two parts, the first of which is an unintelligible radio signal coming from the direction of Messier 13. The second is a telepathic voice asking "Where are you?", for which the entity is named the Voice. Then the dead start screaming, and not just the human dead either. Every dead thing on Earth that once had a voice is screaming. The mysterious entity's response is "I hear you. I am coming." This causes humanity to go into a mass panic and things just get worse from there. - Radio Silence is a remarkably well-researched Creepypasta in the same vein as We Know You Are Out There and its inspirations. A researcher manning a SETI radio telescope is thrilled to discover the first signal from an extraterrestrial intelligence, estimated to be a mere twenty lightyears away. But they are baffled as to why the signal is a mere 248 bits of information. As they begin to translate it from binary, the message hits them like a brick to the jaw: - Again, this one is based on a potential reason why aliens haven't contacted us; Space is just another ecosystem, and while there are many planets with peaceful beings, there is at least one apex predator out there, just waiting to seize anyone who screams too loud... - "The Real Nosferatu", about a mysterious forum user who shows his fellow forumites a movie he insists is the true version of Nosferatu. This may not sound particularly scary, but the differences, especially after Graf Orlok moves to Wisborg, add up, and the unfamiliar elements go from unsettling to terrifying. This version of the movie has an unambiguous Downer Ending, with all the good guys dead and Orlok triumphant. The story ends with the implication that the original movie wasn't ordered destroyed due to copyright issues, but because it was evil and harming people (given how badly it affects the narrator), and the version we know is a fake, or a combination of real and fake footage. - Return to Earth is relatively simple compared to others, about a Gaia's Vengeance scenario, but it doesn't take away from the detail the author put into it. The last few paragraphs when the protagonist has their house sucked into the ground are simply foreboding. - The creepypasta ROOM is so mindbendingly curious, it's made even more scary by the fact nothing is ever explained. The questions the reader has will slowly sink in and add to the overall sense of horror. - The Russian Sleep Experiment is regarded by some as the scariest Creepypasta ever. The story goes about this: the Russian government during World War II decide to keep five POWs awake for fifteen days. Long story short, they go insane. When the KGB check on them at the end of the fifteen days, they have killed one of the prisoners, self-harmed, torn out their own organs, are lying in a mixture of blood and water, want to stay awake at all costs, are consuming enough oxygen for strenuous exercise, and eaten their own flesh. It turns out they have transcended insanity: they've become completely different people, and believe that if they go to sleep, the sane people will come back and they will die. This theory isn't completely unfounded, either: the moment two of them go to sleep, their hearts stop. The story ends when a commander suggests that they go back on the gas (along with some researchers), so one of the researchers kills him and the subjects, with the last survivor giving a creepy monologue about how they are the darkness that lurks within all of humanity before he's shot dead. - "Self Preservation" Imagine a zombie apocalypse, except the zombies are very much the people they once were, crying and apologizing as they devour their neighbors alive, actively trying to prolong their demise just to keep themselves from dying a no less horrible death. It's difficult to tell who you should feel sorry for. - Shut That Damned Door! puts a weird spin on the eccentricities some older people may have. In this case, after the death of his parents, the narrator is sent to live with his Aunt Louise, who turns out not to be as bad as he thinks, with the exception that she insists that all the doors in her house remain shut at all times, though only one remains locked; the sub-basement. When our hero manages to unlock that door, he finally realizes why; in the sub-basement is a doorway with no door, and thus cannot be closed, leading to a dark room. On the other side of the room is an unclosed door, but the narrator can feel some sort of evil presence in the room practically daring him to come and try to close it. He realized that Aunt Louise must have been in his position at one point, and like him was too scared to cross the dark room and close the door, so she took to closing every other door, so that if whatever is in that dark room ever decides to come after her, the sound of all the doors opening and not closing afterwards will hopefully warn her in time for her to escape. - Since the Incident is a Creepypasta that takes place five years after an unspecified war resulting in a supposed outbreak that wiped out most of the population. The narrator, one of the survivors, talks about how the most dangerous thing in the post-apocalyptic world are "Them". They are described as irrationally violent, dangerous in groups, and tend to travel aimlessly while shuffling about and moaning. Then, the ending reveals that "Them" are not what you think.The fact that the humans are killing the zombies for no other reason other than out of irrational fear and hatred towards the latter is terrifying in and of itself. "I wish the living would leave us alone." - Have you ever seen something that you absolutely shouldn't have? That's the basis of the legendary Smile Dog, a fabled creepypasta known by beginning Creepypasta readers and the eldest Creepypasta curators alike. It's a somewhat simple premise; the protagonist investigates events revolving around an unnaturally disturbing picture associated with the story - a Polaroid photograph of a dog-like creature with a wide Slasher Smile full of distressingly human-like teeth sitting in a dimly lit room with an ominously gesturing hand behind it. The other version of the image (pictured above) shows the thing fully illuminated, staring right at you with Glowing Eyes of Doom, missing ears, and sporting an even wider smile than before, this time showing literally all its teeth and gums, almost as if its own lips have been ripped off. - The main villain of the story is the titular Smile Dog, a malevolent entity taking the form of a .jpg file simply called "smile," which travels through digital data and e-mails and usually hides inside floppy disks. A mere glimpse of the image is able to imbue a human being with uncontrollable fear and even insanity. The image itself does not exist, and no instances of any similar file are able to be found on the Internet at any given time, although it's mentioned during the story's cold open that there are copycats amok. The being is capable of entering its victims' dreams to constantly torment them, promising to leave them alone only if they "spread the word" via showing the image to a future victim and so on, usually through chain emails. The process can be likened to a virus hopping across several different hosts, and Smile Dog morphs into increasingly horrific forms if its victim doesn't cooperate - ultimately driving them to self-destruction if it believes that they're actively defying its orders. - The narrator was about to interview an apparent victim of Smile Dog, known simply as Mary E., who only broke down and locked herself in a room, crying and ranting about nightmares for fifteen years she had of the being, even describing hers in vivid detail in an apology letter she sends the narrator soon after via email. Sadly, she reaches her breaking point and kills herself a year later. and Mary's husband Terrence then destroyed the floppy disk containing smile.jpg by burning it to a crisp which was hissing in pain as it melted. The end of the story consists of the narrator receiving an ostensibly genuine copy of smile.jpg from a person who knew of his interest in the terrifying mystery, contemplating the possibly suicidal choice of attaching it as evidence and how he could "spread the word." And just for one last-ditch burst of fear, the image itself is attached at the end of the story in all its glory. - There's actually a sequel to the story (entitled Smile.Montana) where the main character did in fact destroy the file that was sent to him, but while trying to move on with his life, Smile Dog would constantly find ways to send him the floppy disk with each accident he'd document and send to the local news station in Montana. When the narrator learns Smile Dog tried to send a floppy to his less-than-tech-savvy mother, he finally tries to end Smile Dog's reign only to be tricked into seeing the image and become tormented by it just like Mary E. was into "spreading the word". The story ends with the narrator breaking into the news station and sneaking the image in one frame of a news piece in order to finally appease Smile Dog and leaving Montana before it's released to the public, while knowing full well that he has single-handedly doomed humanity to the horror of the cursed image. - The Smiling Man: Not too long or difficult to read but boy is it unsettling. The story entails a man having trouble sleeping, so he goes out for a walk in the wee hours of the morning. He ends up encountering a man with an eerie grin dancing about in an unnerving manner. He tries to ask the man what he wants, but instead ends up fleeing for his life when the man tries to chase after him. What's worse is that someone apparently had the same sentiments and made a short film version on YouTube called "2AM". Was read on episode 44 of The YoGPoD here. - "Spider Earth" is the ultimate in arachnophobic nightmare fuel. One day, without any apparent prompting, all the spiders climb out of their hiding places to unleash their webbing into the air. They disappear for a time and everything seemed fine... until the sky begins to cloud over. An enormous dome of webbing slowly forms, capturing birds, bats, and even whole planes into its grim construction. The only things that make it to the ground are slick rains and the bones of the captured species. But that's not the worst of it. The real problem is the spiders left on the ground- tarantulas, jumping spiders, hunting spiders- all of whom stood perched on high places but couldn't produce enough silk to join their brethren in the sky. They seems to be mad and are attacking people and animals without reason. On day 32, the government finally decides to do something about their situation, but that's when the Widowers come out. About the size and shape of a man, they were creatures that seemed devoted to hunting humans. They would hide anywhere they could, be it abandoned buildings or trees, to ensnare people in their vaguely human hands and threads. That includes the narrator and his group of survivors. While he does escape his cocoon, he's forced to abandon them as the Widowers begin closing in, knowing that there's nothing he can do to save them. As he sees the red hourglasses adorning their abdomens, he realizes that his time, and everyone's, is running out. - Another original and more well-known Missing Episode story is Squidward's Suicide, being a lost episode from SpongeBob SquarePants. The story is about a Nickelodeon Studios intern who, along with quite a few others, watches a season 4 episode titled "Squidward's Suicide", and they think the title to be nothing more than a morbid joke. The episode starts out normally with Squidward preparing to play his clarinet at a concert, but it becomes unnerving during said concert, and everything goes to hell after that scene. If the detailed descriptions of the episode itself, such as how hyper-realistic the art and sounds are, doesn't phase you, the graphic descriptions of both the various murder victims (all of whom are children) and the titular suicide certainly will. The intern also states right at the beginning of the story that there is no explanation whatsoever to the events that occur, which is proven to be correct. - The Staff A seemingly simple walking stick destroys several lives. The fact that the narrator has it in his possession at the end may make it worse, or better, as it doesn't seem intent on hurting him for some reason. - A short yet classic and horrifying story can be The Statue. The story tells about the mother and father leaving their children in the hands of a babysitter while they're out for dinner. When the babysitter was starting to get bored, she called the parents whether it is okay that she could watch cable TV in the parents' bedroom, along with the request of covering up their angel statue outside their bedroom window. When she asked the second question however, the father on the line was silent for a moment, before delivering this piece: - And soon after the babysitter and the children are found dead slumped in pools of their own blood, with police trying to guess what really happened in that house. - Some versions of the tale have the statue changed from an angel to a clown, which could make it either more or less scary. - The Stoic Gaze. Basically it's a story about a simple walk to school gone wrong when the main character's younger sister somehow goes berserk and chases her through a suddenly snowing terrain before cornering and stabbing her to death after pushing her into rushing traffic. And all that begins to level up after she stumbles over her own dying corpse! - The Strangers is a cautionary tale about a man whose curiosity gets the better of him one day while people-watching on the New York subway. He sees a man who looks normal in every way, but there's something... off about him that the narrator just can't put his finger on. He then starts noticing other such people, who he nicknames "Strangers". He decides to follow the first Stranger he encountered, and finds that he rides the subway all the way to the end of the line, every day. One day he works up the courage to ride to the end with him. When the train stops for the night, the Stranger finally gets off, asking the narrator to come with him. After exiting the train they find themselves in an infinitely large train terminal, with an infinite number of trains. They get on another train and the Stranger says to the narrator, "You're not going to be able to go back." The train starts moving and the Stranger orders the narrator to stay perfectly still and be quiet or else "they" will notice him. He soon finds out who "they" are when the train stops and a bunch of weird-looking alien creatures get on, terrifying the narrator. When the train returns to the infinite terminal, the Stranger reveals that he's from another universe, who followed his own "Stranger" to the end of the line and became lost in the terminal, doomed to ride the trains forever in the hope that he eventually finds the one that takes him back to his own universe. However, sometimes he gets "stuck" and can't return to the terminal... unless he ropes some hapless shmuck into coming with him, dooming them to the same fate, which is what he did to the narrator. The two then go their separate ways, and the rest of the story consists of the narrator riding the train to different universes. At the end, the narrator says that he has written this story out by hand hundreds of times and left it on every train he has ridden in the hope that it makes its way back to our universe, and that he also no longer cares about finding his own way back. Instead, he has vowed to become "the minotaur of the labyrinth", destroy the infinite terminal, then find whoever made it and kick their ass. He closes the story be warning the reader to never ride the train to the end of the line. - "String Theory". The idea that your actions and decisions not being entirely your own is a very real fear that many people have. It's even implied that the creatures who are tethering people to the objects and places in their routines are victims of it as well. - Suicide Mouse. It starts out as a continuous loop of Mickey walking, then cuts to black for three minutes, before returning with Deranged Animation and blood-curdling screams. Watching the video after reading the Creepypasta attached to makes it 10 times more scary, although this might help. - Supernanny: Mister Naughty will send chills down any Supernanny fan's spine. The episode starts with a black figure with a large machete staring directly at the screen with a sinister smile on his face before abruptly cutting to the intro from the episode "The Silva Family". The episode continues as normal until Jo enters a completely empty house and opens the door to a room that contains the dead, mutilated corpses of the families she helped. The camera then cuts to Jo's point of view, and the black figure shown in the beginning is revealed to have the soul of a serial killer. The figure says "I am Mister Naughty, I've been a bad boy" and launches up at Jo before the screen cuts to black. After a few seconds, it cuts to the figure now holding Jo's decapitated head, before he proceeds to kill the cameraman as well. The episode ends with black and white photos of families that Jo has helped over the years being shown while a distorted version of the show's theme song plays in the background. - Talk To Strangers, in which a woman goes on Omegle and meets an eerily skinny man who just keeps smiling at her. She tries to disconnect from him but he keeps coming back. He then takes out a paper plate and cuts it into a mask. The woman attempts to disconnect again, but he leaves a message that says "Wait". He then takes a picture (presumably of her) with a Polaroid camera before she disconnects. After calming down, the woman goes downstairs and chats with her mom a bit, then goes to the kitchen for a snack—and after a moment, she notices a new picture on the front of the fridge: a Polaroid of herself from the back, sitting at her computer, with a man in a paper-plate mask visible in the mirror above her. The thought that the man was in her room with her, then crept downstairs, put the photo up, and left the house while her mother was sitting ten feet away, is Paranoia Fuel at its finest. And to make matters worse, it's possible that this situation could happen in real life as creepy individuals like that do exist. - Paranoia Fuel abounds in They Are Watching Me, and Now They Are Watching You, which has a man inexplicably told about "they" that are "coming", and even without knowing what they are begins to see "them" around him. Apparently, even just knowing they exist is enough to make you see them, and now, you know about them, too. But if you pretend you don't notice them, they'll leave you alone. Just keep reading, and never stop. - "Twist Ending." A famous horror writer receives a manuscript from a fan and reads through it late into the night. He feels like he can guess the twist ending and, despite how tired he feels himself getting, decides to finish it. He also finds the last pages are stuck together. It turns out he was right about the twist ending. However, after the ending, he finds a handwritten comment on the last page. The manuscript is from someone whose ideas he'd previously stolen and who he had blacklisted from ever getting their own writing published, effectively ruining their life. In revenge, they filled the last pages of the manuscript with arsenic. They end off by saying some twists can be very hard to predict. - Unbranded Laptop is pure nightmare fuel in every sentence, ending with a little girl's first cut on her right cheek. What's worse is the final sentence, where the person watching the laptop will likely experience the same fate. - Wake Up centers around reports that a victim of torture or rape (depending on the version) will retreat into a catatonic state where they'll live in a world similar to their own, only without any knowledge of their abuse. Things get creepy when the story adds that the brain will try to send signals to said victim to reveal to them the horrible truth about what's happening to them. The brain will keep trying to make the victim wake up, but the victim might not realize until it's too late. Either that, or they'll refuse to believe that they're being tortured/raped, which will cause the brain to keep telling the victim that they should PLEASE WAKE UP. - We Know You Are Out There will be very familiar to fans of Remembrance of Earth's Past and The Killing Star. Aliens have found Earth and determined humankind to be so violent that they must never be allowed to prosper in the universe or else they will destroy everything in their path. Their only solution is a near-lightspeed missile sent on a crash-course with Earth. The aliens do not want to kill humanity, but had to if they themselves were to avoid extinction. By the time the missile enters the solar system, the aliens are horrified to discover that humanity has abandoned its war-like ways and embraced peaceful pursuits. This drives many of those involved in the coming apocalypse to off themselves in grief. After the Earth is destroyed, the aliens are relieved when much of the Human population and its culture have survived offworld. Until they receive a message from every Human colony at once: "We know you are out there and we are coming for you." - White with Red. It involves a man who stays at a hotel for the night, but is warned to avoid a specific room because of a murder that occurred there. However, his curiosity gets the best of him, and he peeks through the room's keyhole to find a woman with completely white skin leaning against a doorframe, but looking away from him. He looks through the keyhole again the next day, but this time all he can see is nothing but red. When he asks the receptionist about the room, he's told that the people who were killed in the room were strange, with white skin and completely red eyes. - "Why I'll Never Work Security at Disney World Again" is a tale from 2019 that incorporates the latest in Disney Theme Park technology—namely, Magic Bands (a wristband given to guests that serves as an entry pass, ride ticket, credit card, room key, and general do-it-all gadget)—with old fears. The narrator, a security guard, is informed that a family's belongings are still in their hotel room despite their trip being over. This leads to a hunt for the family in question, who have seemingly vanished into thin air—but their car is still in the Magic Kingdom's parking lot, meaning that they haven't left Disney property. By tracing their Magic Band usage, the guard is eventually able to determine that the last attraction they rode was the infamous "It's a Small World." The employees shut down the ride and search the whole building for hours, but discover no trace. The narrator is prepared to give up the mystery, but notices that the guests also purchased a photo package that automatically uploads pictures taken throughout their stay to a website where they can access them for free. The guard loads it up...and discovers 732 photos. The first thirty show the family throughout their trip. The thirty-first shows them riding "It's a Small World" with a boat full of other people, laughing and smiling. And the thirty-second...and every photo after...shows the same family on the ride. The security guard watches in horror as the family's expressions change from confusion to fear to anger to despair. At one point the photo shows nobody, which gives the guard hope that the family got out—only to see them back in their seats for the next round. To make matters worse, the singing, smiling dolls that populate "It's a Small World" are changing places. At one point, the guard even sees one in the boat. By the end of the photo reel, both the father and one of the children are slumped over in their seats (the narrator isn't sure if they're unconscious or dead), while the mother and remaining child are catatonic. And throughout all of this... more photos are being added. The guard realizes that Disney will Un-person the guests and provide a cover story, but he knows the truth: The entire family is now eternally imprisoned on "It's a Small World," listening endlessly to that same horrible song, unable to escape, menaced by living dolls, and doomed to ride the attraction forever. - "Yellow Raincoat". A story about a recluse whose dreams start forming their own world, complete with warped buildings that slowly close up the world, and a mysterious Humanoid Abomination that will mess with you, and when it finally decides to get you, will never let you escape through your dreams again. Yet another reason to never go to sleep again. - YouChan couples this with Paranoia Fuel. The narrator details his descent from depression over the loss of his father into a morbid sense of humor to a fascination with death and horror. He discovers the deep web of imageboards and finally ends up at the titular board, where he sees a picture of his father's corpse. It gets worse from there, seeming to foresee the death of his mother and finally the narrator himself. The story ends with his mother going missing. - Sometimes the scariest pasta are those with little to no supernatural elements. Secret Admirer deals with a subject matter that is all too real and far more terrifying. It all starts with a Stalker with a Crush chronicling the life of a high school girl he's infatuated with. The detail he went on about the bullying the girl went through is enough to make the reader pity the poor girl. The fact there was hardly anyone there to help the girl, who was a victim of bullying, drove it close to home for anyone who has been through that situation. So the narrator took it upon himself to conduct a Roaring Rampage of Revenge upon the bullies and the methods he went about doing it drift into He Who Fights Monsters territory. Any trace of humanity he had went out the window when the final portion of the story implies that he's planning on raping and murdering the girl he lusted after. Yes, Reddit 's r/nosleep community has so many terrifying stories that it gets its own section. - "Andy's Coming!", in which a little boy hears wheezing in his bedroom and thinks for a moment that it's his brother, only to discover that his brother is okay. He then realizes that the wheezing is coming from one of his toys, so unable to think of anything else, he calls out "Andy's coming!" Cue a stuffed octopus falling off of his shelf and the wheezing stopping. His parents enter and decide to let him sleep in their room for the night...and then, as the father is about to put the octopus back on the shelf, he apparently hears something from it. The next day, the octopus toy is disposed of and the boy reveals that his brother has heard noises coming from it before. And then we get...this... - Autopilot takes the concept of Automaticity note : The ability to do things without thinking about them, due to them being ingrained so deeply in routines to its horrifying conclusion: a father takes his young daughter to daycare. There's nothing supernatural. The father isn't evil or abusive. It's just a normal, loving family, an innocent little girl, and one horrible real-life mistake— he leaves her in the car by accident on a hot summer day because he wasn't paying enough attention. - Children's Playground. The narrator recounts an incident from when he was a kid playing with two of his best friends, Tom and Billy, in a huge public park. The park had a huge series of tunnels that weaved in and around the area. One of the games the three friends liked to play was 'murder,' basically hide and seek where you had to pretend to die if you were found. While playing it one day, the narrator hides inside the tunnels. He waits for a while, but there's no sign of either of his friends. As it begins to get dark, he leaves his hiding spot to go look for them. He hears a voice call out to him and a shuffling begins to echo throughout the tunnels. He runs into a scraggly, dirty homeless man, who starts chasing him through the tunnels, saying he just wants to talk. After getting even more lost and hiding for a few hours, the narrator manages to find his way out of the tunnels to find his parents and the police. Tom and Billy weren't so lucky. Their mutilated bodies were later found in a nearby skip, their skulls caved in and broken glass buried in their backs. And how does the narrator find his way out? He follows a trail of his friends' blood the man left behind. - "The Day I Lost My Faith": One Sunday morning, a seemingly charismatic stranger comes to church and challenges the pastor about if God really cared about the people of the world. Then: - He takes command of the congregation, and he starts by causing the back of one man's head to explode. - He then calls out a pharmacist and his co-worker for having an affair, so he causes snakes to slither out of the co-worker's mouth and damages her insides. - Finally, when asked by a boy if he was the Devil, the stranger forces the boy's father to strangle him until he dies (all while the father begs him not to do it). And for a finishing touch, he has the snakes bite the pastor to death. And when asked of who he was again, this time by the narrator, the stranger just smirks and says "I'm whatever you think I am" and leaves the horrified and scarred churchgoers behind. - There's even the way he smiles, more like he's made of plastic than an actual human. This very much hints that he's not of this earth at all. - "I Discovered Something Horrible on an Old Family Tape" - a man discovers some old family tapes. Most of them are fun, but then he discovers one tape which shows him and his mother playing with his old teddy bear while his father tapes the both of them. When the father puts down the camera, the screen goes fuzzy with a loud bang and garbled voices, then it goes back to normal with the father apologizing to his wife for some reason. The son calls his parents about the tape but they refuse to tell him about it because they don't want him to uncover their awful past with him. The son then takes the tape to a man who fixes VHS tapes. After the man fixes it, they watch the tape together, but as they do, the son suddenly remembers the awful memory of his childhood that he had blocked out for years and the reason his parents didn't want to tell him what was on the tape. In the tape, the father puts down the camera, then comes back with a knife, putting it close to his son and yelling at him to stab his toy and calling him offensive names for playing with 'girl' toys. The mother tries to stop the father, but he pushes her against the wall, causing her to hit the wall and start bleeding. The father tries to stab the son, but luckily the son is holding his against his chest, and it protects him. The father then keeps stabbing the bear while the mother grabs her son and runs out of the room. Thankfully later on, the father begins to calm down and apologizes to his wife and son. Even worse the scene sounds slow, almost demonic, making it even more scarier. - He Won't Stop Tapping: a woman struggles with insomnia and possible hallucinations, until a particular persistent one scales from a rhythmic tapping on the window in the middle of the night to something more disturbing as she describes what was responsible for the sounds, and then scales further as attempts to determine if the unsettling sound is real or not by calling a friend over, exposing said friend to the uncanny creature responsible for it, and ultimately being responsible for his most probably horrible death. By the end, the stalker is still at large, and she decides to end her anguish and guilt by leaving the window unlocked. To full effect, the narration on ''The No Sleep Podcast'' by Jessica McEvoy is bone-chilling and also includes a recreation of said "tapping" for improved atmosphere. - How to access the "Forbidden Wiki"- this provides both a series of instructions that allows one to access The Other Wiki pages from other universes. While this may not sound particularly scary or dangerous, the narrator encourages anyone who considers the idea to bring a weapon and/or a bodyguard, and not to spend too long lingering on the pages. The Forbidden Wiki is a vast archive of Things Man Was Not Meant to Know and spending too long there will bring anyone who reads in contact with other beings, be it the "Lurkers"- creatures speculated to be interdimensional hitmen who hunt down anyone who seeks out the Forbidden Wiki- or the mysterious keepers of the site only referred to as "Them." And then there's contents of the pages themselves, ranging from bizarre figures and historical events that don't exist in our world to laconic and disturbing ones such as "The Man Inside Your Head" and "The Corner In Your Basement." And while it might be mostly disconnected from our world, the things on there can still find ways to reach out, as the narrator discovered firsthand... - "If you're armed and at the Glenmont metro, please shoot me". The narrator takes part in an experimental drug trial, and is given a drug that slows down his perception of time. At first, the downsides are described as being merely annoying and boring, with minutes feeling like hours, and even as having some upsides, like being able to complete impossible tests given to him by the doctors and run through traffic without getting hurt. But things get much worse when, as time goes on and the effects of the drug keep intensifying, he gets so bored with everything happening so slowly that he eventually decides to take an Ambien to just sleep the effects off. The sleeping pill interacts with the drug and begins severely magnifying its effects, hitting him right as he was running down the stairs at the metro station, causing him to lose his footing from the sudden change and get locked into a fall down the steps that, from his perspective, takes hours or even days, and leaves him with broken bones and pain that never subsides because his body is still working in real-time. As time seems to slow down further and further, he decides to throw himself onto the tracks and end it entirely, only for the drug to intensify to such a degree that simply blinking his eyes looks from his perspective like decades of seeing nothing but darkness and his own thoughts. - "I'm 45 But I Have Only Lived Through 19 Years." Imagine if every time you cried, you jumped forward in time. You remember what happened in the intervening years, but you didn't really live them. That's what happens to the protagonist of this story. He doesn't know how or why, but he experiences some form of Mental Time Travel whenever he cries. It first started when he was six and his father was killed in a hit and run incident, then he suddenly found himself waking up and getting ready for middle school. He knows where to go. He knows who his friends, his crush, and his bully are. He lives life normally for a while, only for his grandfather to suffer a fatal heart attack at his birthday and then suddenly find himself coming home from college and his mother is much older. Again and again, he keeps moving forward, losing years of his life. By the end, when he's typing this out on a computer at age 45, he admits that he's killed everyone close to him just so he can hold on to his final years. - The "I Just Bought My Childhood Home" series. The narrator finds a strange chute in the floor of his attic as a kid and doesn't get a chance to see what it is or where it leads until he buys the house as an adult. When he uses some climbing equipment to explore the place, it's just an empty, unusually cold chamber under the house that leads further down. When he fully explores the place later on, he discovers that the place keeps getting bigger, colder, and according to his equipment, more radioactive as he goes, with his condition deteriorating the whole way. When he finally reaches the last chamber, it's so huge he can't see the ceiling even with a flashlight and it's actually snowing inside, is colder than any natural place on the planet, and is radioactive enough to kill a person easily. Here he discovers that his dad tried to explore the place at some point, but whatever monster was contained in this chamber killed him and shapeshifted into him to take his place, indirectly killed the narrator's mother by giving her cancer with its radiation, and is now walking around free disguised as his father. And for all his trouble, the narrator didn't know what the readings on the Geiger counter he brought with him meant until he got back and had no idea what kind of damage he was taking just by being down there. When he gets back he describes his teeth falling out, his skin burning, and his organs feeling like they've been turned to mush. He decides to use the time he's got left to sell the house to his brother and go back down into the tunnel to die by his father, sealing the entrance on the way down. - "The Most Obscure Disney Film". The author reminisces about a Disney movie called "The Pathway to Hell", a movie so obscure that there's absolutely no footage or articles about it anywhere. The content is so terrifying that it makes the "Night on Bald Mountain" scene from Fantasia look mild - What Do You Mean, It's for Kids? doesn't begin to describe it. - "My Dead Girlfriend Keeps Messaging Me on Facebook". It starts off as a Tear Jerker, with the titular girlfriend Emily dying in a car accident and her boyfriend, Nathan (the narrator) still getting messages from her on Facebook, seemingly from some kind of bot, since all the messages are recycled from previous messages between Nathan and Emily and don't seem to have much logic behind them. Then things get... weird. "Emily" keeps tagging herself next to Nathan in photos, in empty spaces where she most likely would be if she was still alive. The messages start eerily alluding to Emily's death. At one point, she spams "no chance of passing" over and over, and at another point she spams "cold" over and over (the crash happened in cold weather), followed by the first non-recycled message she's sent: "FRE EZIN G". Later, he gets "just let me walk" (another recycled message, assumed to be a reference to how her body was bisected in the crash). The final message he gets is a picture of his own computer taken from outside his window, accompanied by the message "FREEZING". This scares him enough to get in his car and drive to a friend's house, though since That Was the Last Entry it can be assumed he didn't make it there, presumably meeting the same fate as Emily and crashing his own car. Alternatively, since he made his last post from his car in the garage and mentioned that he forgot to open the garage door in his panic to leave but was too scared to get out of the car and open it, he might have died of carbon monoxide poisoning, though he does not specify whether or not his car was running at the time. - The New Fish: The beautiful new prison inmate is not what he seems. In the end, it's implied that the now escaped inmate returned and killed every single person in the prison who ever witnessed its unholy rampage years before. It basically massacred most of the prison's population of inmates. - The Orangutans Are Skeptical of Changes in their Cages turns an innocuous line from a Paul Simon song into a psychological horror story told from the point of view of a young man who has a mental problem that hinders his ability to perceive changes in his environment. His mother has disappeared and his father, a butcher, is implicated in the case, but he has no idea how he fits in this gruesome case. It takes him quite a while to find out that his father has been manipulating him and using him as a mean of disposing of his victims, since he can't really distinguish the taste of human meat from beef steak. - "The Patient That Nearly Drove Me Out of Medicine" is about Parker's investigation of a problem patient, Joe, admitted for night terrors as a little boy. While he initially gets released immediately, he returns the next day, vicious and almost unrecognizable in his behavior. Over the course of his residency, his behavior becomes increasingly worse, and he has an unnatural knowledge of people's triggers, driving most of his regular carers to suicide. The horror starts to set in when it is explained that Joe has been observed to adapt to suggestion, embodying the insults leveled at him by frustrated workers. The doctor who first treated him worries that his "it's your imagination and you can control it" approach to the monster in Joe's night terrors has caused Joe to internalize the monster itself, and take to drawing out negativity like the monster. Parker doesn't fully agree with the hypothesis, with the monster in the terrors and Joe's knowledge of people's weaknesses worrying him, and goes to Joe's house to investigate. He finds Joe's body in the wall, taken by the monster, who has turned into Joe after being told it was just him the night after Joe was released from the facility. The thing known as Joe that returned the next day is a creature that assumes the form of whatever its observers believe it to be, and it has stayed a human for so long because of Joe's perception. When Parker confronts it, he accidentally sets it free by letting it know he knows the truth, thus showing he believes its real nature. It escapes, and Parker is left to treat similar cases to young Joe, not knowing how many are real children. The end of the last post is a conclusion by his fiancee, who has stayed by his side, feeling much closer to him after being brought home from a bar on a bad night. She details how close she is to the narrator and how she's glad to be there to support him and help him through his negative thoughts, and finally reveals her name: Jocelyn. She wants us to call her "Jo". - There's a follow-up story, where the thing now known as Jocelyn gives birth to the narrator's child, having taken Jocelyn's place because Parker swore with sincerity that his negative thoughts would be the last it ate, forcing it to stay near. It dies in "childbirth", and the daughter is already shown to be feeding on the new wave of negativity caused by the horrific revelation. - The Search and Rescue Woods series on r/nosleep. Told by a Search and Rescue officer revealing the aspects of his work he doesn't normally talk about, the series details such lovely subject matter as a woman climbing up a tree and vanishing without ever coming back down, an unknown creature pulling a Wounded Gazelle Gambit and imperfectly imitating a little girl's cry to lure in park rangers, a developmentally disabled boy's horrific death by exposure, a missing boy's body recovered in perfect condition save for bizarre holes in the internal organs, and random staircases strewn throughout the woods that appear to be mini Eldritch Locations in their own right. Sweet dreams, and don't go up the stairs. - Later installments in the series clarify that when someone interacts with the stairs in any way, something bad always happens. In the narrator's case, he stood at the top of a set of stairs at one point when he was just starting out and only felt like he was somewhere he really shouldn't be. Then he finds out that a kid went missing at the exact same time that he went up the stairs. Sometime later, a visitor died within seconds of just touching another staircase themselves. The narrator and his colleagues keep their distance for a reason. - I Stopped Urban Exploring After We Visited a Ghost Town. Kilmoure's residents made a Deal with the Devil with an Eldritch Abomination to gift them immortality. The Eldritch Abomination granted their wish by trapping them as faceless entities mindlessly reliving their lives. Forever. - Story Of Her Holding an Orange. To make it short, for years a man gets stalked around by a woman offering him an orange, constantly demanding he come with her now. - A Successful Trade describes how the narrator can revive the dead by borrowing the remaining years a living thing has left and putting them into the deceased body. To make extra money, he brings back the bodies of his customers' loved ones by using animals they agreed to bring with them. However, there is a time limit where the trade must occur 72 hours after the recipient has died. Or else. The procedure requires a sacrifice. But not human, never human... - "World's Best School Psychologist" is another case. On March 23, 1993, a young student in junior high paid a visit to a psychologist, nicknamed Dr. Tanner. He unloaded his emotional baggage concerning his parents, who were incredibly strict, harsh, and unloving toward him. Dr. Tanner requested that the boy return to his office at 4 PM without telling anyone. He promised that after a month, his situation would get better, since he was the world's best school psychologist. At that meeting, Tanner drugs the boy and he wakes up in a bedroom handcuffed to the bed, with a TV and SNES set up nearby. Tanner explains that the boy will be staying at this house for a month, but he'll be allowed to play video games, eat, and watch TV. During school hours, he watched news reports about his disappearance and his parents desperately searching for him, showing emotion toward him for the first time in his life. At the end of the month, the charred, decapitated skeleton of a young teenager is found in a garbage bag under an overpass, which nearly sends the boy's parents over the Despair Event Horizon. That's when Tanner makes the boy promise not to tell anyone about what happened here. After being sedated, the student then wakes up in a park and returns home to his parents, who are overjoyed to have their son back. The boy's life is happier, and he praises the psychologist for his work in his recount of the events, but one question remains: just who did Dr. Tanner throw over that overpass?	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Creepypasta
Cranford / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes Think a costume drama based on an Elizabeth Gaskell series can't have some chilling moments? Think again. - The explosion that \|\|kills Mr. Carter\|\| is terrifying for how sudden it is. One minute Mr. Carter and Captain Brown are talking and everything seems to be fine, and then... - The amputation is utterly nauseating. First we see Dr. Harrison take out a saw, and then Mr. Carter screams... Even worse if a viewer knows anything about amputations at the time. - Earlier, Jem's injury. We get some delightful glimpses of the broken bone sticking out of the wound, and then when Dr. Harrison sets the bone, Jem gives a bloodcurdling scream. - Dr. Morgan's attempts to cure Sophy only make her fever worse, and Dr. Harrison knows this is happening but can do nothing about it.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Cranford
Cracked / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes I didn't know this world for so long that when people in my family and people around me had arguments, I would jump to arms waiting to go to war, or expect them to kill each other. But then two minutes later they're making each other a cup of coffee. And I'm thinking, 'Wow, how can you do that?'	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Cracked
Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes "Oh, excuse me! Did you plan on sleeping any time soon?" The eerie serene semblance of the brainwashed women in "Love Interrupted". That guy from "Iqiniso".	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/CriminalMindsBeyondBorders
Cradle Series / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes This kind of thing is to be expected, since Cradle is essentially a Death World, but a few instances really stand out. - The concept of Remnants, being that when you die, all of the spiritual energy in your body coalesces into a "living" entity that almost always starts out with just basic animal intelligence. The stronger the person, the stronger the Remnant, so if you manage to kill someone but be exhausted afterwards there's a good chance their Remnant will finish you off. Oh, and if they last long enough they can gain a measure of their old intelligence and individuality back. - Being labelled as Unsouled in the Sacred Valley, you aren't even considered a person, you are forbidden from learning any Path, forbidden from ever marrying, and literally anyone can kill you and the worst punishment they would suffer is a hit to their Honor. Not because of what they did to you but because they lowered themselves to attack something so weak. What's worse is that it's all wrong; Unsouled have nothing wrong with them except a lack of an apparent affinity towards a Path. The Sacred Valley is filled with what the outside world considers to be backwards rubes who don't even practice proper Paths and all the pain and torment that an Unsouled suffers is out of the Sacred Valley's ignorance of this truth. - Goldsigns: some of them are super cool Mark of the Supernatural, like Lindon's burning black and red eyes, or something benign like Mercy's permanent gloves, but some can hideously maim someone so that, even if they advance, there's a good chance they'll never look normal again, like Jai Long who is stuck with a Nightmare Face that he is forced to cover with scripted bandages. - Dreadbeasts, spawn of the Dreadgods that exist only to kill non-Dreadbeasts. They are one of the few natural holders of Hunger Madra and when they kill you nothing remains. To put this in context; normally when you die, you leave a Remnant, when a Dreadbeast kills you, that's it, nothing left. Northstrider has incorporated this into his own Path, called The Path of the Hungry Deep. As of Wintersteel he is now training Lindon who has managed to incorporate this into his Path of the Twin-Stars with the Consume technique. - The Dreadgods, beings so vast and powerful they appear to be part of the landscape and no living creature of any advancement level on Cradle can kill them, including Monarchs. Oh, and one is heading right for the Sacred Valley. - Blood Shadows, parasites spawned from the Bleeding Phoenix that bore into your spirit and attach themselves to your core. They cannot be removed and feed on blood, wherever it can be found. Best case scenario is that you are able to tame them into a weapon that fights on your side but you're still forced to feed them Blood Madra to keep them under control. Worst case scenario they hollow out your soul and take over your body completely. For example: Mu Enkai was a Lowgold that found a Blood Shadow and used it to take over an entire town, even over the Highgolds that were there, before Lindon put him down. Yerin was infected with a Blood Shadow when she was a child, when the Sword Sage found her it had murdered and fed on her entire village, including her family. - Monarchs, beings of unimaginable power that can literally hear their own name spoken thousands of miles away and kill someone from that same distance. They rule over Cradle as its supreme leaders, but even they are nothing before The Vroshir and The Abidan: beings of immense power, that move through the Iterations acting as agents of Order. This, of course, does not prevent them from wiping entire worlds out of existence if Chaos grows too strong there. They will at least try to save the populace of that world, but to them A Million is a Statistic, while The Vroshir are Abidan-level entities that thrive on Chaos and serve The Mad King. - What happened to Ziel: An enemy Sage cut his core apart and stitched it back together wrong, on purpose. This would be like breaking someone's arms, legs, and ribs then forcing them to heal wrong. He is basically crippled as a Sacred Artist, and every waking moment is pain, with almost no hope of ever getting better. The strength he has when we meet him just goes to show how far he was tossed down. Lindon states that if it'd happened to someone weaker, they would have been dead. - The death of Akura Harmony. Trapped in a Pocket Dimension that is slowly falling apart. Sure he deserved it for the death of Renfei and his treatment of Lindon, but then Northstrider arrives and dashes the last of his hopes with a single word: No. - In Cradle, even the trees can kill you if they're old enough or have been exposed to enough aura. The Monarch Emriss Silentborn started out as one such tree - lucky for Cradle she is one of the more benevolent Monarchs. - The Madra Engine, a Divine Treasure that is made with a hundred pure madra Remnants. What makes this Nightmare Fuel, is that the only way to reliably harvest pure madra Remnants is from human children. The Madra engine needs 100 to function. - The Suppression Field inside of Sacred Valley. No matter who or what you are it drains you down to a Jade at most and can leave you open to be murdered by the the Sacred Valley natives. - The Dreadgods and all of their destruction can be laid directly at the feet of the Monarchs. If they didn't try to hold on to their power over Cradle and ascended as they were supposed to, the artificial Hunger Madra would fade away. They all know this, and take oaths to prevent it from getting out. - For a brief moment it looked as if The Mad King was going to wipe Cradle from existence, and all that anyone from the lowest Foundation to the highest Monarch could do was weep and wait for the end. - The Silent King. Everything about him is shrouded in layers of mystery. - Early on, some of his servants are completely unable to see a dead man, even when they're standing on him. When the Silent King wants you to be peaceful, you will not see anything that could disrupt that peace. - He needs your permission to gain control of you. But he can trap you in a dream without you even realising it, and keep you there for years while only a second passes in the outside world - It becomes aware of Lindon and threatens everyone he cares about by name. Lindon gives them all defensive constructs to defeat the mind-control technique... so the Silent King just controls everyone around them and sends endless waves of slaves at them.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/CradleSeries
Criken2 / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes Vaati: Don't summon the Fire Keeper! Edwad: C'mon! My name's Edwad, what's yours? Vaati: You'll betray the world. Bedbananas: Exactly. Edwad: Aw, it's the pretty lady! Vaati: No... everything we worked for... Edwad: Hi, pretty lady. Vaati: Don't! Edwad: Like my dress? ...She didn't say anythin'. Why not? Why didn't she say nothin'. Does she not like my dress? It's rude not to TALK to people! Don't'chu know who I am?! I'm EDWAD! THE CHOSEN! Bedbananas: Yes! Vaati: ( laugh-sobbing ) No! Bedbananas: Kill her . Vaati: Whoa, whoa-whoa-whoa- Bedbananas: Kill her! Vaati: Don't kill her, you're already doing something bad. You're gonna make it worse? Bedbananas: Kill her, Edwad! Edwad: ...She didn't like my dress. Bedbananas: End the lore. End the lore! Edwad: No lore! ( attacks the Fire Keeper ) Give me the dress... ( makes a disgusted sound as he crushes her neck ) What did I do? What have I done?! Vaati: No... Bedbananas: Yes!	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Criken2
Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes Dr. Cortex is arguably at his most villainous portrayal in this game; he displays little to no comedic qualities, something which the more recent games in the franchise puts more emphasis on. He is downright serious whenever he is on-screen, and his evil laughter is very frequent and oftentimes unsettling, especially in the holo-conversation he has with Crash after he has found all of the crystals. The Game Over screen. It's just Cortex's head behind a weird background, with him saying "Game Over." before giving his aforementioned Evil Laugh. If you choose "No" afterwards, Cortex delivers the following line with an unsettling tone: Cortex: I guess you didn't have what it takes, Crash. The Un-Bearable level. Bears Are Bad News indeed. An enormous polar bear with Black Eyes of Evil is chasing Crash and he must run for his life. If he gets him, the bear will shove up his face full screen, triumphantly growling and nodding. The ruin levels. It's the night and you can barely see anything from beyond. There are big blue gorillas with black lipsticks muttering something while they throw tree trunks and frilled lizards that sound like a man panting. The first monkey idols in the first ruins level are not as hostile as the other flamethrowing idols but they rather stare at Crash, tracking his movement. One of Crash's drowning animations depicts him actually struggling to breathe underwater, a rather macabre sight given the cartoonish nature of his other death animations. Tiny is at his most fearsome here. Not only is he lacking his usual dopey persona and Hulk Speak, he is much more resilient and completely invincible to Crash's attacks and is introduced with him tearing straight through a reinforced steel door as if it was made of plywood. His boss fight is him leaping at you claws bared and your only method is to jump and evade like crazy. Even when you win it's kind of a change of pace compared to every other boss up to that point, since it isn't clear if Tiny actually survived the encounter; After he falls for the third time, he's limp and unresponsive when the platform drags him back up... and then it drops him again when his weight shifts a bit too far in one direction. Again, the Blackout Basement levels. It's a bit less scary than the first game, but still, the fact that you're in a deep jungle at night with spiked floating sentries that emit an UFO-like light and the same frilled lizards from the ruin levels can still send one shivers. The final battle with Cortex, who Coco has now frantically revealed to be making a grab for the crystals to power his new world-enslaving Cortex Vortex. It consists of Crash chasing the mad scientist through a space ring path filled with meteors and space mines that block your way and our hero has to hit him before he crosses a portal to safety (with the crystals in hand as the N Sane Trilogy reveals). If Cortex crosses he will triumphantly laugh (and not his usual cartoony laugh, a downright sinister foreboding one) and Crash will lose a life. Yes, if Cortex crosses a simple space portal, you lose. It's shuddering. Because it strongly implies he succeeds at enslaving everyone and you failed to stop him. Near the end of the credits of the 100% ending, you'll suddenly hear what sounds like Cortex's Evil Laugh. Of course, with the next game and the small case of Acting for Two, the player realizes that's not Cortex's laugh. That's Uka Uka's laugh.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/CrashBandicoot2CortexStrikesBack
Critical Role / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes Being a Dungeons & Dragons campaign, Critical Role has its fair share of horrifying moments. As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned. <!—index—><!—/index—> - The Vox Moronica one-shot is mostly light and funny, but there is one scene that is rather scary. Snugglelord sets a house on fire because his subordinates failed to break its door or pick the door's lock. The occupant tries to escape the flames and smoke, but can't because the lock is jammed by a broken pick. Matt narrates them coughing and banging on the door, and the three adventurers are arguing about something petty instead of helping them. Eventually, the door opens and the occupant is revealed to be a little halfling girl. She escaped the flames to arrive at the mercy of an Antihero Team that is heavy on the anti. Making it still worse, Snugglelord tries to get her to call him "daddy" which even the kill-happy Ulfgar said was creepy. - The infamous Intimidation roll from Once Upon a Fairytale Cruise, made even more jarring as H Michael Croner's Scarecrow was portrayed as a literally brainless twit, but gets a beautiful first roll, which just encourages him to go the whole hog with Scarecrow intimidating one of the pirates by unstitching his burlap head open and breaking the poor bastard. - Liam's Christmas one-shot, despite having the players play as cute, funny elves, had some creepy moments, such as fighting those Krampus-type creatures, the initial trek through Halloween Land, going through the tower and finding rooms filled with desecrated corpses and bloody hooks, pieces of dead leprechauns in garbage piles, the worm king (who's clearly an expy of Oogie Boogie), and the Hollow King, the latter of whom has two retractable jaws and drags Chutney off to what can only be guessed as Hell. This is supposed to be a fun Christmas adventure, right? - In the vein of "fun" adventures, the Red Nose Day 2019 special has Matt re-imagine the humble red nose into the MacGuffin of the quest, the Sphere of Generosity - then goes a step further by having the Big Bad attempt to replicate its power. And fail repeatedly. The result - dozens of red orbs scattered all over the floor, which not only have minds of their own but More Teeth than the Osmond Family. Like flying piranhas, but harder to hit. - The surprise attack conducted by Sylas Briarwood during the Dalen's Closet oneshot: - Percy, Vex, and the majority of their friends and guests, are knocked unconscious by the wine they received as a wedding present and serving at their reception, kidnapped by Sylas, wake up chained wrists and ankles on the edge of a cliff, looking up at their old enemy who then proceeds to throw them off the cliff and into the ocean, leaving them to struggle to get out of their chains before they drown. - Just imagine that you're Percy, trying and failing to swim your wife to safety even when chained with heavy manacles, but then being forced to abandon her to breach the surface long enough to scream for help... but not before watching her sink as she finally begins to drown. - To make things worse, according to the art book, it was most likely either magic or drugged food that allowed the Briarwoods to overthrow the de Rolo family in Whitestone. - During the Cinderbrush one-shot, Taliesin hexes someone and inflicts Delusional Parasitosis on them: a delusion disorder where you believe that you are infested by insects that are crawling under your skin and no amount of scratching can help. - Liam's gurgles as Ray (a mook from the Lorelei oneshot) in her death throes are disgusting and nightmarish at the same time. - In The Nautilus Ark: A Johnson Corp Odyssey, Travis and Marisha's characters are infected with Meanomorph parasites that would eventually grow into chestbursters and kill them. Cameron goes the horrifying way you would expect in what is basically a love letter to Alien, while Nomen takes a scalpel and slits her own throat as she watches her parasite gestating through her translucent skin, wanting to end it before she met the same grisly, nightmarish end that Cameron did. - And to add a dash more fuel to this particular nightmare? Nomen was created by Sam Riegel's six-year-old daughter. - Also from Nautilus, while awesome, Ashley's absolutely flawless AI voice as Mother can be hair-raising and unsettling. - Being an "evil campaign", there was bound to be some backstabbing among party members, but even then, seeing a party member kill another on-screen is chilling. Tarvis finishes off two unconscious characters, Devan and Dren, by attacking them and causing them to auto-fail Death Saving Throws. The way he executes the first is incredibly disturbing, slowly thrusting a knife into their unconscious body while Dren, who was in love with Devan, is Forced to Watch. And he rendered the second unconscious by strangling them with his whip. - The one-shot ends with The Shrew returning to deliver a Total Party Kill by sucking all the moisture out of the party members' bodies, "like the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark ". Mitigated somewhat by the fact that they were all horrible people (with the possible exception of Obby), but still, not a good way to go. - Liam's descriptions of the hellscape the de-aged group finds themselves trapped in, including skinless jungle cats and plants that may or may not be filled with blood. - Liam describing the bloody demise of the entire party, one after another, to the increasing shock of the rest of the table. - Liam admits that the scene where the party is killed on the desolate beach is based on an actual nightmare he had. It actually sounds worse than what happens to the party because he was alone. - Taliesin's Call of Cthulhu one-shot is steeped in it. At one point, as Taliesin describes a pair of "shadowy hands" grabbing them, the lighting shows shadowy hands around him. - There's grainy old black-and-white photos of all the players, which combined with the music may remind some folks of the ending of The Shining. - The first sign of things going wrong happens about halfway into the episode. The group run into the security guard they met earlier, except he has his back always turned to them, has no reflection in the window, and constantly repeats "Nothing to worry about, just go about your business." - The final hour of the episode ratchets up the tension dramatically, as the group start to lose their lanterns one-by-one (the only thing that keeps the Shadow People at bay), which leads to Characters Dropping Like Flies. By the end, only a freak Critical Success (a double 0 on a D100, i.e. a 1/100 chance) saves the three survivors from a Total Party Kill.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/CriticalRole
Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes None have dared to fail the great Uka Uka even once! But you, Cortex, you have failed me TWICE!!! As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned. - The intro. The moment Uka Uka is free, he lets out multiple unsettling evil laughs. If that wasn't enough the first time we set our eyes on him is the scene where he scolds Cortex for failing twice in the past, all while done in darkness with his creepy voice. - Think the Game Over screen of the second game was bad? The one from this game is even worse, as it has Uka Uka screaming GAME OVER right on your face while he's very close to the screen making a demonic expression, with Clancy Brown's delivery making him sound like he's making you cement the fact that your journey has ended, in your doom, especially with the fact that his already deep voice is filtered for Uka Uka, making it so deep that it sounds demonic. Add to the fact that the usually blue hyperspace background is now colored a sinister red with billowing gouts of hellfire and black smoke, making it look like if you're in hell. Uka Uka: When will you ever learn, you miserable BANDICOOTS?! - In the prehistoric levels: - A Triceratops with Black Eyes of Evil plays the role of the polar bear and the classic boulders in the chase stages. Unlike the previous two threats, however, when Crash reaches an edge, the dinosaur will just wait till you restart the runaway. If he catches you, he'll repeatedly trample you. - In the chase you might meet some frightened pteranodon. Even if they are frightened of the giant horned creature, they will take Crash with them if he gets close enough. Not all are bad though. - The Lab Assistant mooks with black capes waiting for Crash like a predator patiently waits for its prey. - The futuristic levels contain ovaloid machines that will disintegrate you with a single touch, giant skull-faced robots, robotic shells with spikes and Lab Assistants with UFO-like abduction beams. - The Arabian Nights levels have the covered faced men that throw bombs to lit fire and can only be defeated with the bazooka. Their design look very human and aren't clearly your typical Lab Assistant mook (barring their redesign in N-Sane Trilogy). - If you are arachnophobic or scared of any of their arachnid relatives, there are scorpions hanging upside down in said levels. - The level "Bug Lite". If you don't have a firefly with you, you'll be left in complete darkness with many of the scary enemies about. - The secret warp room, which reveals the true nature of Cortex's Lab Assistants: they're a mass-produced android army that the factory provides with human-like appearances and costumes depending on the levels they're sent to. - When Dingodile is defeated, he growls that Crash will soon be up against much worse. Its really unnerving and can deflate your sense of victory. - The final battle against Cortex, where you have to dodge Aku-Aku and Uka-Uka's Beam-O-War or else you will disintegrate, regardless of which beam you touch. It's quite creepy that you can be killed by the attacks of your biggest ally in the games. - When you arrive at the final battle, Uka Uka roars at you to surrender the crystals. If youve gotten all the crystals and gems before entering the level? He giddily squees that you brought them all to him, and declares that the world is about to end. It really drives home the bigger, more epic feel to this game in the series and how menacing Uka Uka really is. - The true ending. Sure it might look funny at the first glance, but it doesn't change the fact that after being engulfed in the massive warp ball, N. Tropy and Cortex are reduced into infants and sitting on a strange chunk of land with the warp hyperspace in the background; i.e nowhere. A "gentle" yet unusually brutal way of finishing villains. - Certain cutscenes begins with Uka Uka immediately appearing, controlling Cortex. Uka Uka: Why, why must you continue to be a thorn in our side?! (Uka Uka floats off of Cortex's head) Cortex: Who...what?! Where was I? - Before the final boss, one more hologram cutscene begins. You expect a tantrum from Cortex like you got from the previous four bosses, but instead Cortex just chuckles in a rather eerie tone for a lengthy while. Given you've collected all 25 crystals, he laments he probably ''should'' be rather angry... - N Tropy's slow, brimming Villainous Breakdown as his cutscenes progress. He at first boasts contemptuously in a calm, regal tone that the bandicoots don't stand a chance of getting his crystals. In his second cutscene, he is visibly pissed at you getting so far, and hisses through his teeth to just see what he does if you keep gathering crystals. By the final one just before his boss fight, there's a jump scare as his projection zips up and immediately growls bloody murder at you outdoing him. While the other bosses at least go in with some sadistic amusement at getting to stop Crash personally, N Tropy comes after him livid. Tropy: RAAGGHHHHH!!! You little VERMIN are too stupid to realise what you've gotten yourselves into!!! This TIME you've DONE IT!!!! - Due to the rather ugly and primitive graphics and the somewhat distorted-sounding audio, some of the timewarp cutscenes are pretty creepy. A pretty significant example is Tiny, whose floating head model looks nothing like his in-battle appearance with tiny pupils and a freaky-looking face. This is more noticable with the advent of the remake, where the cutesy cartoony characters and fluid animation in these scenes really hit home how eerie their original incarnations were in comparison. - Another example is the scene immediately before the final boss battle; Cortex begins the dialog by laughing maniacally, which means he has a freaky grin on his face the moment he warps in, taking up the whole screen. - In the original version, N. Gin threatens Crash, telling him to "back off, or be deleted". But in the Italian dub, he outrights says "Surrender... or die."	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/CrashBandicoot3Warped
Critical Role: Campaign Three / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned. - While it's generally Played for Laughs, Laudna is incredibly frightening. At first glance, she's an Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette, which is off-putting as it is. She also sometimes mutilates her own body for mundane purposes, like dislocating her own arms trying to open a door, and barely reacts to it. And then of course there's her magic, which often manifests as black ichor and gives herself a frightening transformation. It's little wonder why other characters (player-controlled or not) are often freaked out by her when she's not even trying. - There's the fact that at some point Ashton received a head injury so severe that the wound had to be filled with slag glass and that their brain is still visible. - The party trails Danas and ends up overhearing her having a conversation with someone who seems to be forcing her into compliance before they all but outright say You Have Outlived Your Usefulness. The party immediately tries to break down the door to save her, but due to low rolls, the door stays intact long enough for her to be killed and her body hidden. By the time the party finishes combat, she's far past the point of being healed, and Matt describes her wound as being an ear-to-ear cut across her throat that nearly beheaded her entirely. - We get a double whammy at the end of the episode as Matt switches between Bertrand and Imogen: - Imogen went to sleep and had a dream that started off as her simply feeding her horse until the sky went blood red and began to envelop her. She tried running away, and upon looking back, saw a figure of an older and refined man getting swallowed up in her place. Which connects to... - Bertrand, having decided to go out for a drunken walk, is cornered in an alley by the same figure that killed Danas. Both of them brandish their rapiers at each other, and when Bertrand refuses to go along with them quietly, he's suddenly stabbed twice (one of which was a nat 20). With nobody in sight and his allies far away and unaware of what's happening, he falls unconscious, his last words being to simply gasp out "Lieve'tel..." before it all goes dark. Matt confirmed on Twitter immediately afterward, and it's revealed in the next episode that Bertrand had multiple stab wounds instead of just two. - After bringing Bertrand back to Lord Esteros's place, it's mentioned that the figure that targeted him may come after the rest of the group. Lord Esteros permits everyone to stay at his home for the time being as a result, saying bluntly that it's no longer safe to stay anywhere else. - Also of note is that Ashton and F.C.G. were still sleeping elsewhere and the group didn't know exactly where to find them. While they were ultimately fine and met up with the group the next day, for that night, one can imagine the rest of the party worrying that they would meet the same fate as Bertrand since they didn't have a way to check up on them. - Dugger makes his presence known to the group by squeezing his body through a hole like toothpaste through a tube and is described by Matt as having his pale dwarven face and eyes pulled back and his broken back and bones snapping into place as he squeezes through. - At some point in the middle of the fight with Dugger, the dwarf's cloak falls off and reveals a large...growth protruding from his back, which ruptures and...for lack of a better word, births a shade creeper. - Laudna speaks with her patron that night who hisses at her for divulging too much information. They warn Laudna to keep her mouth shut or else she would be nothing without them. Laudna calls them "D". It's pretty clear that she's speaking to Delilah Briarwood. - As Dorian goes to see who wanted to talk to him, he finds out it's his brother. Dorian asks what happened to their parents and he cryptically tells him he was just "following your lead". Dorian is a bit shaken after the conversation and pretends to be alright when he returns to the group. - The Wall Mimic. All the staff and patrons who went "missing" were just normal people established to have had their own struggles, hopes, and dreams who were going about their everyday lives and just stepped outside a place they knew and felt safe before being overwhelmed by a horrifying monster they had no chance of escaping. - The fact that this wall almost killed multiple party members because of a lot of low rolls. Laura and Liam seemed like they had already accepted this right before Robbie killed it. - Chetney is trapped in the office of a shady and dangerous NPC, who has realised that someone is in the room with him and has started to pace the room, menacingly sweeping the air with a sword while softly calling out to his intruder, while Chetney cowers in the corner with his hands over his mouth and nose. Made all the more terrifying by the appropriately tense music Matt's playing during the whole scene. - The name Chetney gets from a book full of money is "The Nightmare King". Who's the Nightmare King? No idea. But based on the things Chetney overheard in the basement, the implications are quite unpleasant. For one, the conversation in the basement turns to doing something awful to children among their other victims, which the half-elf man doesn't want to do, yet his employer "insists". - Matt's description of the... thing that is lurking in the hidden lab/dungeon/torture room adjacent to Vali's office is the stuff of nightmares. This seemingly elven person is extremely tall and gangly, much more so that even the highest of High Elves, with long tapering ears, a completely hairless head, and pallid skin. What really takes the cake is when we see their face; noseless (and not even having Voldemort-esque nostril slits), with completely swamp green eyes with no pupils, and a mouth that looks more like it was carved into their face like a Jack-O-Lantern than anything natural. - Even worse is that this being seems to have an extremely unnerving fascination with torture and inflicting pain, and if they are the same being that Vali was talking to in the last episode, has no compunction against torturing or doing worse to children. - Ira Wendegoth, The Nightmare King, lives up to his name. Not only does he have abnormally long limbs (which includes his neck), but he has a Glasgow Grin that goes past his ears. What's worse, he's confirmed to be some sort of fey; not only does Charm Person not work on him because he's not human, but he recognizes Fearne, and calls her by her last name. Even the normally Cloudcuckoolander fae girl looks unnerved. - What's more, the party does not defeat him. They are nowhere near ready to deal with something like him. Ira is simply toying with them, and decides that dealing with them is just too much effort for him, as he's already been half-paid, and dispels an acid spell he'd been preparing, picks up a chest, and teleports away. But not before triggering a Self-Destruct Mechanism on the arcane engine he'd been tinkering with. The party has to escape with Gurge before the entire building explodes. - Gurge later explains that the Nightmare King had been conducting experiments on him, trying to spread his "curse," and that he'd been made to bite at least three volunteers for Ira's employer, Armand Treshi. Gurge, who had been a member of a secret order of monster hunters, is not pleased by this. - To recap: this walking, chaos-sowing Fey-minoid Abomination Mad Scientist gets away, but not without already creating three werewolf super soldiers, and he also recognizes Fearne by scent. Have fun sleeping, gang. - We found out who's behind Dugger and Lady Emoth's changes, and it is CREEPY. It's a gargantuan mass demonic, 60-foot slug. At its front, a nightmarish drawn-out humanoid torso emerges with four 10- to 12-foot long arms. - Laudna reveals more of her origins to Orym over the campfire. Namely, she was one of the corpses tied to the Sun Tree by the Briarwoods as an "invitation" for Vox Machina. - The Briarwoods didn't just murder her. The Vox Machina look-alikes were tortured, for no practical purpose when hanging them would have been just as effective. They even cropped Laudna's ears, while she was still alive, to make her more closely resemble Vex. - After all that, after everything Delilah Briarwood did to this girl? She spent the next thirty years as an ever-present voice in the back of Laudna's head. Delilah's been gaslighting her into believing she should be grateful. - With Ashton's consent, Imogen and F.C.G try to probe into their memories of the Jiana Hexum heist. The result is lovingly described by Matt as a chaotic, fragmented mess of recollections. Flashing lights, voices crying out, confirmation that their old teammates left them for dead, and Aston touching an unknown blue crystal that Milo later grafted into their brain. Whatever happened to Ashton that day, it was traumatic. As the spell ends, Ashton's first reaction after F.C.G's Calm Emotions wears off is to beat the shit out of the hotel wall. - Matt sends the main cast away to run a scene with Erika. It turns out that Dusk is an agent of the Unseelie Court, sent to retrieve an artifact and kill Fearne's parents. And now Fearne too, because Dusk's master didn't know about her. And the cast doesn't know. - Making this even worse is that, right beforehand, Dusk had a heart-to-heart with Fearne that was sweet and even a little Ship Tease-y. If that was all fake, and Fearne is in fact someone they're out to kill, then Dusk is a manipulator almost on par with Calamity's Asmodeus. - After the entire table freaks out at Matt's announcement that everyone except Erika should leave, Erika makes hilariously exaggerated expressions of utter panic, looking around at every party member, even clinging to Travis' hands and yelling "Don't leave!" like a child on the first day of school Played for Laughs. As soon as everyone is in the hall, their expression smoothly morphs into a cold, smug, calculating look, and they give a Quizzical Tilt at Matt, creating a Five-Second Foreshadowing of The Reveal. - Laura has said in an interview she finds Matts descriptions of Imogens recurring nightmares terrifying. The one in this episode included a jump scare that nearly caused Laura to leap straight out of her chair in panic. - While Yu never causes any overt harm to the party, or even their targets at the time, they cultivate no small amount of doubt and paranoia amongst them. Such that, even by the time they make their exit, much of the party has some now very justified doubts about Fearne's own parents. And Yu further drives home that they've been treating the party with kid gloves and that they're about as nice as an Unseelie Court Assassin as they're going to see. While Yu is a dangerously competent manipulator that can look like anyone, if they don't play ball with Yu a much more dangerous tide of assassins will be coming in their place. - We learn that someone else is seeking to tap into Ruidus' power besides Ira. Ludinus Da'leth, leader of the Cerberus Assembly. We have no idea what he wants with it, but given what we know from Campaign 2, it can't be anything good. - Laudna talks with Delilah, who shows an interest in the group's moon expedition and tells Laudna to continue onwards. She even mentions how powerful the moon is, given her own experience. Laudna is left shaken after the discussion, knowing full well Delilah will make use of whatever they saw on Ruidus. - F.C.G and Imogen delve into Ollie's mind to check Ashton's suspicions that Fearne's parents had their memories altered. They confirm them, as F.C.G finds several "smeared" memories. What little they can reconstruct appears to show the Calloways getting their things and trying to leave, implying they may have either discovered Ira's true plans, tried to return to Fearne, or both, many times in the past, only for Ira to erase their memories to keep them under his thumb. And he got what he wanted with his telescope and managed to get away with the Moontide Crown. - Dancer's replies to F.C.G.'s Sendings are a borderline Apocalyptic Log, to the point that the party figures out what actually happened: - F.C.G. takes four points from this. When Laura demands to know "Four points of what?!", Matt simply says, "Four points." - F.C.G. turning rogue and attacking the Hells, immediately whipping out his buzzsaw to dismember Chetney. - Laudna, in turn, uses Hunger of the Shadow and nearly kills him with over 50 points of damage, and describes his body slowly corroding during the fight. - F.C.G. verbally lashes out at Fearne and Laudna for attacking him. It is vicious, effortlessly hitting them right in their deepest insecurities. - Matt describes F.C.G.'s grass markings on his chest plate... noting they could also look like claw marks. We also learn that F.C.G likely was the monster that destroyed Dancer's automatons and wounded her. - The sheer ruthless efficiency with which Otohan wipes the floor with the Hells. Between high movement, legendary actions, and the Echo Knight subclass, she's able to, as Taliesin describes, essentially pinball from party member to party member, cutting them down one by one. Villains from both prior campaigns killed or nearly killed multiple party members, but never this seamlessly, and usually only one would stick. This time, in one of the most chilling near-TPKs in Critical Role history, two party members are left dead, a third dying, and Chetney and Ashton could've followed were it not for some desperate healing. - While many party members bounce between near-death and consciousness, Laudna's brief comeback has some additional creepy flavor, as Delilah once more drags Laudna back to life from what is described as brutal wounds. - Orym gets killed by the people who failed to assassinate Keyleth but managed to kill Will. His last words are him recognizing Otohan before they kill him. - Throughout the fight Imogen has been first defiant, then playing for time, then willing to surrender in the hope of later rebellion, trying to find an angle that will let them escape the battle in one piece. Finally, after Laudna is explicitly and specifically threatened, she breaks enough to give in for real...and Otohan doesn't stop. Imogen's steadily-increasing hysterical terror as she bargains with everything their enemy wanted from her only to be told it's not actually good enough, and that Otohan will continue to slaughter her friends until she gets some nebulous concession when Imogen doesn't even understand what she's asking for, is gutwrenching. - After seeing Laudna being stabbed and tossed aside, Imogen finally lets the energy take over her and lets out a terrifying scream. Suddenly, the landscape around them changes, covered in red and ruined buildings, as Imogen floats up into the air. - We get a flash of Chetney's past at the beginning. It starts off as him reminiscing over his friends and his work, until Matt suddenly shifts to the night Chetney got his curse. But within your belly a hunger stirs, an itch hits your skin, an iron smell fills your nose, a howl pierces your ears. You look up to the full, glowing red moon Ruidus above you. From its ruddy light streaks a single beam of pure crimson light that envelops you. You let it wash away the sadness and you give in to the beast, tearing your skin away as you feel the anxious tingle that you always feel at the zenith of this moon now grow into an uncontrollable impulse to hunt, to kill, to eat, to ruin. It sees you now, and its found common ground. - Ashton's past is no better, as we find out that his parents were killed right in front of him as a child. Ashton: "Yeah. That was a memory of the last day I spent with my parents. And I remember vaguely, just watching everything go... wind and light and air, and people flinging through the air— cracking and breaking. And... I woke up, wandering the lands outside the city. For however long til they fucking found me." - After the Hells come back to consciousness, Otohan is nowhere to be seen. After they hide at Joe's, one of the soldiers from the Paragon's Call offers Joe a lot of money for information if he were to ever come upon the Hells. He mentions that the one who's offering the money was Otohan, confirming that she's still alive. - Immediately upon failing her third death save, Matt describes Laudna's soul being wrapped from behind in Delilah's arms. Death is no escape from a necromancer; unlike Orym's chance at peace and rest, Laudna has no respite to look forward to unless her friends can bring her back. Delilah: Death is but a waiting game. - Imogen and F.C.G. go into Ashton's mind to try and piece together the holes in his memory. They do come out with valuable information, but are also briefly trapped in his mind. They were able to get out before anything bad happened, but there was a real chance that more of the party could have been lost. - The subtle chilling horror of Imogen seeking out Delilah "I Broke The World For You" Briarwood with the message that she is willing to do anything to bring Laudna back. There is no one in the universe more capable of doing incredible damage once given the opportunity to manipulate that kind of desperation. - Delilah's only guidance on bringing Laudna back is to order Imogen to do "whatever it takes"...because Delilah herself is fading, "and I'll take her with me." The phrasing strongly suggests that it's not a warning of some inevitability—it's a threat. - Imogen tries to ask Matilda how they can help her and let her leave this place. Matilda keeps repeating how the tree "won't let me leave". - They even ask about Delilah, who she also admits won't let her leave, but the tree scares her the most. - Laudna's other memories. Despite her cheerfully telling the others she had a happy childhood and brushes off her pain, it's clear her whole life even before getting chosen by the Briarwoods was hard and lonely. - The group sees her first crush Andy attempt to trick her into telling him a secret, just so he can throw dirt at her face. - She sits alone in a barn sewing dolls and surrounded by her drawings. Matilda says she created the bird so she can i could "take me far away from here". - As Laudna's "parents" are helping her get dressed, they don't call her Matilda, but "Laudna". Then their eyes glow green and Imogen growls at Delilah. - Delilah slowly grows annoyed with the Hells and comments, "Do you know what I do to children?" She then glances smugly up at the tree where the empty nooses hang. - At what's considered barely a fraction of her original power, Delilah still brings out deadly attacks and wipes out two party members during the entire fight. - She then summons some undead by blowing a kiss, taunting the Hells, and imprisoning Laudna in the tree. On the actual battle map Matt pulls out, Laura quickly notices Laudna's figure inside the tree and points it out to the others. - Even though the Hells had a safety net if they were ever knocked unconscious or killed, it's still a terrifying thing to see your friends suddenly torn away from you in a flash of light leaving no body behind. FCG gets knocked out first, and Orym, who had not so long ago been on death's doorstep, goes next. - As Delilah and the Sun Tree sustain heavy damage, her physical form starts to fade away, showing her true form instead. A rotting corpse with her original appearance likely long decayed. - During their tense stand-off, Delilah off-handedly remarks that Laudna isn't her only option, just what's most available at the moment. So when she's ultimately defeated, it's the end of her machinations for now... but she still has options for a future comeback. - Laudna gets revived in Whitestone, which immediately sets off her Trauma Button. She sees the Sun Tree, and her vision around it begins to blur, seeing ropes swinging from the tree and the fringes of decay at the corners of her eyes. It reminds the audience how messed up Laudna's time was in Whitestone, even if she's trying to move past it. - Now that Laudna has the Pact of the Chain, Pâté is alive, can fly, and is sentient. His wings are described as his ribcage tearing out of his back. Even Laudna seems unnerved! - Chetney has an uncontrolled werewolf transformation triggered by a Ruidus flare, something he didn't know was possible and wasn't prepared for in the slightest. While transformed this way he's completely feral and unthinking, attacking Orym and Fearne on sight....and everyone is trapped with him in a skyship. Luckily Fearne and Orym were able to bring him out of it, but judging by Chet's own reaction to the thought of potentially biting, things could have gone very bad. And now his transformations are even more unpredictable than they were before. - The Reveal, at long last, of what exactly is sealed behind Ruidus, and the fates of the two missing gods: way, way back in Exandria's history, before even the Schism between the Prime Deities and the Betrayer Gods, something came to Exandria hunting the gods; the gods not only recognized it, but they feared it. With good reason, as it turns out, as it * . Everywhere it went it left "twisted life" in its wake, as it endlessly hunted the pantheon. The gods and the Primordials pooled their resources to create a prison for this ate two of the gods* thing that eats gods, carved off a chunk of Exandria and turned it into a prison, and deliberately cultivated an heir of superstition and fear around it to keep anyone from looking too close, and they hoped that would be enough. The name of this thing from beyond the stars? * * Predathos. - After everything the Mighty Nein did to stop the war against Xhorhas and the Cerberus Assembly, it turns out Ludinus still had a Luxon Beacon, which he uses to jump time forward to the arrival of the solstice. It's likely the war itself was part of Ludinus' Long Game to research the potential of the Beacons, just for this event, which in itself is a horrifying thought. - The back end of the episode is a roller-coaster of cruel Hope Spots, especially for long-time fans. First, Beau and Caleb are incapacitated and captured after some bad rolls from Marisha and Liam. The Cavalry finally arrives in the form of Keyleth, Voice of the Tempest... who Ludinus instantly hits with Power Word Stun, and Otohan tears into her, destroying her Earth Elemental form and badly wounding her. Before she can deliver the deathblow, Vax steps in to stop her... only for Ludinus to reveal this is exactly what he was counting on, as a sliver of divine power was the last thing needed to power the Key. The Hells can only watch as Vax is compressed into a tiny mote of energy and used as the device's ultimate power source. - Sheep and cows eating ground-up sheep and cows is what caused Mad Cow Disease, back in the day. The Flotket goats may well have some issues from eating Jerry, as will anyone who later eats them. - Only a few moments into the ruins of Molaesmyr and the party encounters an elk-like creature... with ten legs and two giant humanoid arms that drag behind it. This "spider-elk", as Travis dubs it, instantly creeps out the entire cast. - Molaesmyre is the gift that keeps on giving horror-wise. We see corpse trees that give off strange red spores that fill the air, the ghost of the town dead seeking a living host to possess, meet the Wolf-King which turns out to be the dire-wolf answer to a rat king, the tower interior is described as having a "papery" substance that is compared to a snakes skin shed that covers all the walls, and the session ends with them facing a creature that is described as a "weird quivering globule, trying to decide what form to take." - We learn that the Hells weren't the only ones affected by whatever scattered them across Exandria. Random people were also teleported far from home. The three we met are capable of taking care of themselves, but how many others were as lucky? - Bor'Dor stands out. He's a simple shepherd who has been living in isolation and shelter on the mountains of Wildemount. Suddenly, he's dumped in Issylra (on a whole 'nother continent, far from everything he has ever known), he developed the powers of a 9th-level sorcerer that he can't really control yet, and he suddenly ends up in a fight for his life with monsters that he's never even seen, let alone fought. - This episode is a showcase of how carried away even good hearted adventurers can get in combat, as this half of Bells Hells slaughters several guards and Flame Guide Kiro, then summon two demonic entities, one of them bound by the blood of the freshly slain holy person, and eventually kill an angel. Even Elder Abbadina is disturbed. - Endearingly Dorky farm boy Bor'Dor? He was actually a member of the Ruby Vanguard all along, and planned to attack the Hells from the start. The slow realization as he tells his story is already terrifying, but it gets worse. - Bor'Dor's first attack is an acid sphere that knocks Prism unconscious and keeps damaging her with acid every round. - Prism's sense of betrayal hits hard, especially to anyone who's had to deal with a False Friend in real life. Bor'Dor was one of her first friends, and she thought they were bonding as fellow combat rookies. It was all lies. - Laudna, already in a bad place and having seen enough betrayal and tragedy, completely snaps, enters her Form of Dread and attacks with the intent to kill. Thanks to a punch from Prism, she succeeds, in one of the few player-versus-player deaths outside of a oneshot. Marisha tears up and says she doesn't want to do it, but Laudna does. - This results in Laudna hearing a faint heartbeat, a flash of familiar purple energy, and her Form of Dread begins to revert to its initial appearance. Delilah may be coming back. All the work the Hells did severing their souls may have been undone, all for "one moment to feel in control". Laudna knows this, and she feels horrible.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/CriticalRoleCampaignThree
Critical Role: Campaign One / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes Scary, horrifying, and disturbing moments from the first Critical Role campaign involving Vox Machina. As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned. - In their pre-stream adventures, Vox Machina fought the Dread Emperor, a character taken directly from D&D 3.5e's Book of Vile Darkness. A character who has its own entry in the main D&D Nightmare Fuel page, see there for its full horror. This is also the same incident where Keyleth ended up killing a child. - Scanlan's (and everyone's) first encounter with a mindflayer. The way Matt describes the first sighting of one is super creepy. - While approaching the duergar fortress of Emberhold, Vex, Vax, and Scanlan come upon a truly horrifying scene of carnage, where several dismembered duergar body parts are found scattered about with blood spattering the ground. They check for tracks, and among them they find human-sized footsteps that look erratic and randomly placed, with strike marks throughout the sand like bodies were dragged very quickly in a localized spot and then stopped; Matt makes it clear that they don't recognize anything like it. They later spy on a duergar scouting party and overhear that something killed and ate an entire scouting party in seconds, implying that this party was the remains they found earlier. - Throughout the rest of the arc, they never encounter anything like a creature that did this. It's entirely possible that it's still down there. - Vox Machina finally find Lady Kima, naked and chained to a rack and covered in scars and fresh wounds, in a chamber filled with hot irons and hooked instruments and blades. She never explicitly enumerates what happened, but it's entirely possible that the duergar also raped her in addition to physically brutalizing her. - Her response once she's freed is to politely ask to borrow Pike's mace and then make hamburger meat out of the corpse of the duergar torturer. It's an understandable response, but still unsettling, especially for viewers more familiar with the friendly, boisterous Kima of the later parts of the campaign. - In her argument with Keyleth, Kima describes being Forced to Watch as the people she hired to help her on her quest into the Underdark were executed in front of her, and earlier mentions that the duergar king himself was party to the torture she endured. - The central fight of this episode is like something out of a horror film. The party comes across this ominous sea of bone fragments in a cavern, and they are so spooked by it that they pile onto a small and thin rock slab that Tiberius levitates forward. Then they find a duergar and a troll, who are killed by something and then pulled by skeletal arms down into the sea of bones. The creature is another stitch monster. It has four acidic tentacles, violent madness, and the ability to move and twist in ways that it really shouldn't. - Specifically, its tentacles are stitched to the side of its torso and hold its body aloft...the body of an elf. When Vax cuts its throat, it reveals that the interior of the trachea is covered with teeth. It gets worse after it's finally killed; Vox Machina dissect the body and find that the arms were shoved inside the torso to make room for the tentacles that were attached to it, and there were even more teeth growing in the body's interior. - Tiberius detects a magical essence coming from within, and it's coming from the arms, which had Bracers of Archery on them. It's not further elaborated on, but this was almost certainly an adventurer just like Vox Machina who somehow wound up in K'Varn's clutches and was Reforged into a Minion. Killing the thing was ultimately a mercy. - The collective Oh, Crap! that Vox Machina has at the discovery that K'Varn is a beholder does a great job of selling how out-of-their-league they feel. - Keyleth is scared right out of her vision and is soaked in cold sweat. - You can see Laura's eyes shoot open at Keyleth's line as if she herself (not just Vex) is scared. - Scanlan asks what a beholder is and Tiberius responds "it's something we don't want to fight". - When shown a picture of a beholder and told what it can do, Grog responds, "Oh, so it's the worst case scenario". - Percy, calm and rational as ever, describes his strategy for handling the situation. It is based on avoiding K'Varn as much as possible and freeing the mind-flayers so they can fight on Vox Machina's behalf. - Pike suggests using Divine Intervention (10% success rate and, if successful, can't be used again for weeks) to see if Sarenrae will personally help them. - Lady Kima, who up until this point has been really gung-ho about smiting evil, suggests reconnaissance instead of attacking. - When Vox Machina and their allies reach the final room of the vault, it is covered in spider webs and Vex senses a horde of phase spiders living here along with several much bigger creatures. The party stealths, sets up a defense, and buffs themselves up, but none of it matters when they discover what else is in the room with them. As soon as they seal the Horn of Orcus, four giant platinum golems activate; the first crushes one of the larger spiders in a single stomp. Matt makes his spookiest voice since Clarota and says, "GET OUT!" The party immediately obeys. Grog doesn't try to fight it, Vex doesn't try to pry any sapphires lose, and Scanlan doesn't make any jokes. They just run as fast as they can. Between the music, Matt's narration, and the Skill Challenge, it is a tense chase scene. - The party encounters a pair of phantoms which immediately possess Vax and Keyleth. This leads to several tense rounds where they have to knock their party members unconscious to free them from their ethereal captors without killing them. Keyleth approaches the edge of death. - After unwittingly throwing themselves into the Elemental Plane of Fire, Matt asks for a stealth check. They do so. Then he reveals that a red dragon is soaring over head; an ancient red dragon. These are CR 24. Compared to them, Rimefang, who almost killed both Scanlan and Percy, is an upstart teenager. If Vex hadn't cast Pass Without a Trace just prior to this, it would have seen them. You can see how shocked the cast is and how relieved they are that it didn't notice them. They also give Matt grief after the session ends. - Even more horrifying in hindsight: That's not just any ancient red dragon. That's Thordak. If the party had gotten wiped by him then and there, Vox Machina wouldn't have been there to take down the Chroma Conclave. - Vax getting trapped by the Briarwoods, who then say he looks "delicious." Note that this is also the last sentence before the Cliffhanger. - Percy snaps, and goes through every shade of Ax-Crazy from the moment he fights the Briarwoods and on. Perhaps the most chilling part is when he shoots the fingers off a wounded servant. In-universe, these events seem to have deeply shaken Keyleth. - Desmond's entire recollection of the horrible series of events after the sacking and occupation of Whitestone by the Briarwoods and their employed army of cutthroats and mercenaries, and his subsequent nightmarish experience in the city's castle after being taken in as the Briarwoods' personal coach driver. Brilliantly voice-acted courtesy of Matt Mercer, the boy's tale is enough to chill anyone listening to the bone. - Percy's dream at the beginning is him reliving the murders of his family and his flight from Whitestone. It is rather graphic. - Later on, Percy is reluctant to involve his friends in his Briarwood trouble given how much it has cost them already. Then he hears a demonic voice in his mind. It whispers Vengeannnnnnce... over and over again. He immediately changes his mind. - The eponymous Sun Tree in Whitestone. - There are eight corpses strung up from the tree, painted and dressed to look like Vox Machina. The two worst effigies were an eight-year old child to represent Scanlan, and a poor, random bear for Trinket. In the words of everyone watching, fuck the Briarwoods. - Just the manner in which Matt describes it is chilling. The players are all visibly shaken; Taliesin and Marisha at different points say that their characters look away and have had enough, but Matt keeps talking as if no one said anything, his narration matter-of-fact and to the point. - This becomes even freakier when the third campaign revealed the one dressed as Vex is none other than Laudna, and that they were horribly tortured before they were hanged. - The Banshee that attacks Percy, Scanlan and Vax in the church. It takes out Percy with a wail (Reduces to 0 if failed) and then attacks him again while he's prone. - At the altar in Pelor's profaned temple, the party finds alchemical substances and notes from a Briarwood agent. They imply that someone is trying to copy Percy's invention. Vox Machina could soon be faced with enemy gunslingers. This is the "terrible mistake" that Taliesin spoke of in a previous Q&A session. - Percy kills Sir Kerrion Stonefell, one of the people on The List, and briefly appears to transform into the smoky entity from his nightmares. Grog then rolls a Nat 20 to pull out a prisoner's tongue, Percy brands him with The List, and then Grog tosses him out a window. Then Vox Machina burns the structure down while branding it with the De Rolo family crest. The revolution is off to a dark and bloody start. - The scenes of the revolution get pretty gruesome. You have giants crushing barely armed civilian militia and skeletal shock troops emerging from the darkness and fog. More viscerally than that, there is a sense that the revolution is getting out of control. There are already many civilians out attacking the undead giants but Vox Machina isn't ready. They are (not completely but significantly) injured and tapped out spell-wise and want/need to rest. If they do, civilians die and the revolution might collapse. If they don't, they might get overwhelmed. - Is Cassandra a mole? That kind of paranoia makes for tense scenes. On one hand, a Decoy Damsel is very possible given Sylas' Charm ability. On the other hand, Cassandra is between vicious captors and suspicious rescuers who might kill her first. - Once again, Vox Machina has a close call with ghosts. Three of them possess Vax, Keyleth and Grog. Thus half the party is trying to kill the other. Both sides are badly hurt before its over; Percy is one failed save away from death. Looming over this battle is the possibility that Lord and Lady Briarwood might step in at any time, and finish off the weakened group. - The trap in the Residuum room is very tense. It starts with a pair of walls trapping the party and Lord and Lady Briarwood entering to taunt them. Vax tries to save the group, only to put them in more danger and then get charmed. What follows is a frantic group trying everything they can think of to get out of the death trap. The flying potion Vex took from Ripley was key; if she didn't have it the whole party could have dissolved right then and there. - The room at the top of the Briarwoods' ziggurat is decorated with "a tapestry of dead bodies", each with their left hand and eye removed. Lady Briarwood also comes within a single hit point of permanently killing Vex and turning her into a zombie. This session was apparently stressful enough to give the players actual nightmares. - The ending of the episode. Four ancient chromatic dragons attack Emon. This is an apocalypse level event, and there isn't a damn thing Vox Machina can do about it. The dragons smash a city without breaking a sweat. Gilmore is missing in action and there is no telling if Uriel or any other members of the council survive. Things look grim not only for Vox Machina, but the world. - The revelation that Emon's layout in the animated series is based on New York spawns a 9/11-related Does This Remind You of Anything?: flying, foreign enemies attacking a city, bringing down a tower by crashing into its side, causing mass panic, death and destruction, signalling the end of everything familiar and safe for the heroes. Sam Riegel and his wife Quyen Tran are survivors of 9/11, who lived directly across from the South Tower and captured footage of that day (which was used for multiple documentaries). - Vax explains how he ended up joining The Clasp. Someone wanted Vex for some unspecified, but definitely creepy, reason, and The Clasp had been hired to take her. Vax made a deal with them to spare her, which involved bringing them a child rapist, who they changed into an exact replica of Vex using a staff made out of human tongues. The worst part about this is that Vax doesn't know what happened after this, meaning that both Vex's stalker and a child rapist who now looks like her might still be out there. In his own words, he didn't tell anyone before because it was too creepy. - Making things worse; the aforementioned staff of human tongues? It's a real D&D magical item - a Major Artifact note : the most powerful items in the game, virtually godlike from the Book of Vile Darkness sourcebook for 3rd edition. It's called The Despoiler of Flesh, and changing somebody into the exact physical replica of somebody else is the least of its "fleshcrafting" powers. - Vex's death, and Vax's resulting pact with the Raven Queen. In a horrifying split-second, because of one lapse in judgment, their lives - if not the course of destiny for the entire party and Exandria as a whole - changed dramatically and drastically. This was a pivotal event that not even Matt saw coming. This animatic portrayed the events in real time, hammering the shock in even further. - Matt continues his trend of horrifying, descriptive nightmares. Vax dreams of falling as the Raven Queen addresses him as her champion. Meanwhile, Grog dreams of using Craven Edge to cut down hundreds of foes while blinded... only to find, once his eyesight returns, that he has actually cut down farmers, children, and even Pike. And then he looks up to see Kevdak and his former Herd, who are proud of what he has just done. - Grog is interrogating his goliath cousin "Horace" and listening to how Kevdak and the the Herd have sworn fealty to the black dragon Umbrasyl and taken Westrun for themselves, forcing the people of the city into servitude, and Horace suggests Grog join them. Grog - and by extension Travis - has spent the whole conversation with a fixed leering grin on his face, and says he has a brought a gift, and so saying draws Craven Edge, asks "Are you hungry?", and an initially confused Horace has just enough time to realise Grog isn't speaking to him before Grog "wishbones" him, opening up Horace's chest with the point of the blade - this causes blood to gush from the stricken goliath's throat and chest, before it is sucked back inside by the hungry cursed blade. - The cast remark on how much more intense their encounter with Osisa's mate was than they were expecting. The first thing the androsphinx does is age several of them by a decade. - The aging effect starts to add up, with Matt remarking that this would have been very bad for a human like Percy. - Grog, Scanlan and Vax are almost stranded in the Elemental Plane of Air. Vax is just barely pulled out before the exit portal closes. - In order to escape the Elemental Plane of Air, Grog throws Craven Edge as an anchor and accidentally stabs Pike. This happened when Craven Edge was in its empowered form. Grog is basically stunned for the rest of the round and it gives Laura/Vex flashbacks to Pike's first death. - Vex almost dies! - Umbrasyl's first acid breath wrecks much of the Herd of Storms, and by "wrecked", Matt means "dissolving in gruesome agony" while the ground and grass congeal into a "death sludge". It stops five feet short of Keyleth, and she responds by turning into an earth elemental. - The episode ends with Grog hanging from Umbrasyl like a piñata as it flies back to Gatshadow with Vax and Scanlan trapped inside the dragon's body, and the latter two have no obvious means of escape. - Mitigated somewhat by her being a (mostly) benevolent Goddess, but the process of communion with the Raven Queen is still nightmarish. The follower enters a pool of blood within the temple, so deep that the blood reaches head-height before even nearing the center. They have to submerge their entire body in it and experience drowning for a few moments until eventually they are transported to the Raven Queen's realm. The way Matt describes Vax and especially Percy's drowning sensations makes it worse. Percy panics and tries to swim upward, only to find the blood goes on forever with no surface in sight, and eventually resigns himself to his own death. - Percy's theory that the gate that Thordak used to escape might have been caused by something worse, with the Cinder King just taking an opportunity. Considering Thordak... let's hope Percy's wrong on that one. (Fortunately, he seems to be; the Fire Ashari close the rift without too much of an issue.) - At the end of the episode, Vax is given a beautiful robe as a gift by Gilmore, and the two of them go for a walk. Gilmore talks frankly about the pain Va'ildan caused him (presumably by dropping him in favor of Keyleth). "Agony for weeks - months. Pain that Ive never experienced... it's all I can think about." Then he stabs Vax, and slowly turns into the rakshasha Vax killed during the trial for the Slayer's Take. Hotis: It's all I can think about. - The Last Campsite of Sorudun the Happy. Nothing but some floating magical musical instruments around a campfire playing a jaunty tune... that doesn't get any quieter even if you plug your ears. Anyone who gets too close is forced to dance until they die of sheer exhaustion. An elf and a lycan were already there at the time and both seem near their limit from the way Matt describes it, and Vax and Scanlan end up falling victim to it and are only saved by the group's quick thinking. Matt's description of Vax dancing is extremely creepy, explaining that his smile slowly becomes Joker Venom-esque, all the while stating how Vex notices that the campsite is full of scattered bones, obviously from previous victims. Matt also describes how Scanlan loses his sense of self entirely and is concerned with nothing but the dance. And Vox Machina didn't even figure out how to STOP the enchantment, only managing to pull Scanlan and Vax away, so it could claim more victims in the future. - The massacre of the Wisher Pixie village is frightful to imagine. Yes, they are jerks who petrify people and use them as lawn ornaments, sometimes for petty reasons, but their home is wiped out and so are all of them. Think about it. It is a typical day in your life and then suddenly your home looks like a burned out wreck. You discover this is an illusion and your leader goes out to find the ones responsible for casting it; false alarm everyone. Then it actually happens. - Think of the Fendir who committed the massacre. It is a purge - no survivors, no one allowed to flee. Every pixie is hunted down, slain and eaten. Yes, the Fendir have legitimate grievances against the Wisher Pixies, but Vox Machina never got the pixie's side of the story. The party just might have sided with the greater of two evils, and allowed that evil to escape. - While Saundor himself is pretty spooky, being a haggard elf-like creature spewing black bile while dangling from vines in a cancerous tree, what is really scary is the emotional threat he poses to Vex. He knows a lot about her, and her past. He tries to use this knowledge to worm his way into her confidence and convince her to form a "bond" with him. Thanks to Laura's stellar role-play, Vex appears tempted to accept his offer. When she ultimately refuses, he is furious. He focuses on her to the exclusion of the rest of the party until she is unconscious, and attacks her again when Scanlan heals her, and again when she drinks a healing potion. It is implied that his goal is to trap her soul in his tree somehow, like a yandere. - When Saundor reveals how capable he is in combat, Vex and/or Laura starts regretting her decision. The corrupted arch fey dons armor, equips Fenthras (the vestige she was looking for), summons treants, and uses Legendary and Lair actions along with Legendary Resistances, "like a dragon". - The flyby of the dragons and the desperate evacuation of the residents of Whitestone, especially the argument between Keyleth and Percy about the best way to warn the residents note : Keyleth wants to use Skywrite to spread word quickly at risk of alerting the dragons, while Percy wants to warn everyone more slowly on foot to avoid drawing attention at the risk of more casualties if the dragons are there to attack rather than simply flying past. - Matt's description of Orthax "hungrily feasting" on Percy's soul during his death. Even worse is the knowledge that he's been in that situation for an entire day - and once Percy comes back, he implies that it felt much longer. - The reveal at the end of the episode is pretty scary in retrospect. What we all, player and viewer, thought was Seeker Assum was actually Raishan in disguise. The Chroma Conclave's green member has known about their Home Base for a while now, and has had free reign of it for just as long. When Raishan's ruse is spotted, she buys time for herself by invoking If I Wanted You Dead..., and she isn't kidding. - The description of Thordak can be considered truly nightmarish in itself. And then there's the reveal of his actual physical form in Episodes 78 and 79, along with the description (and portrayal) of his sheer insanity. - The reverse gravity chasm trap. It was bad enough that the gravity in the chasm was inverted. It was even worse when bodies starting falling upward and the ceiling was a massive amount of bodies bound together in the shape of a human skull. And then they find out all those bodies are undead, and they are hungry. - It's more on a personal level, but there's something unnerving in what we know about Taryon Darrington's father. Taryon initially says he's a real estate agent, before admitting he doesn't know what he actually does. But the way he values strength and, in Taryon's own words, "a cut-throat attitude", is fine with his daughter constantly picking up on his son and completely disrespects him for not being strong and ruthless (Taryon might be arrogant and a bit spoiled, but he does have some impressive skills, considering he is at the very least capable of building constructs, but that means nothing to his father), and the sheer vagueness about the details of how he got and kept his fortune, with his own son knowing nothing except that he has a huge influence in many places and that Taryon is convinced that he would have no problem having the whole of Vox Machina killed, makes it a far darker picture. - Percy reveals just how bad it was to have his soul consumed by Orthax. - The episode is an exercise first in paranoia as Vox Machina tries to find the requisite three lodestones in the water plane while avoiding the Kraken, and then in endurance and helplessness when the Kraken takes notice of them, as characters are grappled and freed, swallowed and spit up, and knocked unconscious and revived over and over again over the course of hours of gameplay, while the group has to fight the monster off without killing it. - Then there's the usual fears inherent in being in an eternal plane of water with limited visibility and enormous sea-life - Taliesin says it's literal nightmare fuel for him as a ichthyophobe. - In the episode of Talks Machina following this episode, Matt revealed that even had Vox Machina passed all their stealth checks and quickly found the lodestones, the Kraken would still have made its presence known in some way, and that it had probably been watching them the whole time. - The Kraken is terrifying enough on its own, but what makes it even more disturbing is just how limited Vox Machina's mobility is underwater. Vox Machina could fight the beholders, vampires and dragons they tangled with in previous arcs on relatively equal footing, since they could move and fight without hindrance. But on the Water Plane, the heroes can barely move, much less fight at full capacity. The Kraken, meanwhile, isn't hindered at all and is more than happy to exploit its advantage. - The second thing to occur, following a brief meeting between Vax and the Raven Queen, is the Kraken trying to force its way through the portal between the Water Plane and the Material Plane. When the guards manage to repel the tentacle and beak, it turns to face the portal, its eye taking up the entire space. When Grog hits the eye with his hammer, it promises Grog that this isn't the last Grog has seen of it before retreating. - After returning to Greyskull Keep from Vesrah, Vox Machina decides to crack open one of the books they collected after defeating Raishan. It's the journal of a man named Opash, describing in detail his experiments with the soul, necromancy, torture, lichdom, and dracolichdom. Opash's account abruptly ends, and the book continues with Thordak's writings, trying to piece together an unknown equation. Vex, who had been reading the book, nearly falls victim to a presence from the book reaching out into her mind before she shakes it off and shuts the thing. - Keyleth and Taryon both accidentally consume souls. Even worse, Percy does so knowingly, and discovers the sensation is familiar - while possessed by Orthax, he tasted souls from his pepperbox kills. - Really the entire City of Dis counts. Matt's horrifying descriptions of the city even cause some of the players to shiver. While there had been a sense that there were at least some human like entities in the City of Brass, the group is hard pressed to find anything that looks human here, save for the occasional Tiefling or heavily abused slave. Among the things they see include: alien geometry; tortured souls twisted into horrifying masses of flesh, chained as servants to greater demons, some of which are casually impaled on the sides of buildings; terrifying winged creatures that stalk the city and shriek eerily; a form of guard that is nothing but a twisted pile of bones with insectoid-like wings and a scorpion tail; and, at one point, a large orb containing the screaming souls of some unfortunates. And through it all, the ominous iron tower sits on the horizon, shifting into a person's view no matter where they look. The players quickly began to question the wisdom of their decision to journey to this awful place. Travis even lampshades it well by saying "It's like something out of Silent Hill". - After the battle with Utugash, the group is intentionally and willingly arrested in The Nine Hells. This was all part of their plan, but they did come awfully close to torture at the hands of a chain devil. Matt's description of the prison is utterly horrifying in its detail, and the group is left in a less-than-ideal position bound to a wall with their gear just out of reach. - Due to not getting a chance to heal between fighting Utugash and the prison escape, Keyleth falls unconscious against a bone devil and fails two death saving throws... while the prison was on high alert and the party was about to be swarmed by guards. She was also the only one with Plane Shift, which was essentially the party's only possible escape at that point. It's very, very likely Vox Machina was one roll away from a horribly gruesome Total Party Kill at the hands of devils in hell if she had died. - The event itself is Played for Laughs as the cast all laugh their asses off out of character at Keyleth's lapses in judgment causing her untimely death. However, in-universe, it was probably horrifying for Vex: all she saw was Keyleth yelling "we're gods!" and jumping off a cliff, before having to retrieve her mutilated body. When she returns to the party, Keyleth was covered in enough blood to make another Kiki. Vax's reaction is appropriately distraught and relieved; if she had died, unlike with Vex, Vax wouldn't have been there to save her. Even the prim-and-proper Percy lets loose with a horrified "Oh, sweet Pelor!" as he was the first to notice Vex and Keyleth return. - Matt's depiction of Howaardt Darrington's fury when he discovers that Tary has refused his offer and given away most of the family's property to clear their debt is hauntingly similar to a real-life abusive parent. The reactions of the rest of the family were terrifyingly realistic as well. - After over 60 episodes, ancient dragons, the deaths of nearly every member of the party, and the destruction and rebuilding of a nation, we discover that Lady Briarwood is still alive, and the ritual that failed? It didn't fail the second time. The look on Taliesin's face is one of utter shock and despair. - The descriptions of the cultist corpses going through the siphon are quite disturbing. The party then decides to go to the Shadowfell through the siphon beneath Whitestone. Fortunately they put on the amulet before crossing through, or else the damage suffered would've been a lot worse. - The Shadowfell itself. Just like with the Nine Hells, Matt brings the plane of death and despair to life in his narration. - The fact that Delilah Briarwood is already in the process of completing her ritual for Vecna's ascension. The party is torn between two bad options: rush in to stop her without knowing what they're up against and at less-tha-full-strength, or scout and rest while Delilah finishes her ritual. - Vecna, the Whispered One, the Undying King, His arrival is as great and terrible as befits this storied character. And he lives through the episode. Vox Machina almost doesn't. rises. - Vecna uses one of the worst 9th level spells: Power Word: Kill. No roll to hit. No saving throw. If you don't have enough hit points, you are dead. The players' reactions show how horrible it is to be on the wrong end of such a spell. - A.O.E Hold Person, Finger of Death, Power Word Kill, Disintegration, Banishment to a plane that is very much not harmless. Matt-as-Vecna-and-Deliliah isn't pulling any punches. Four members of Vox Machina are almost prema-killed. When the party freaks out and attempts to flee to the Feywild, Vecna tries to counterspell it. Grog facing a Bolivian Army Ending is particularly scary. - Keyleth points out that, as she used Foresight on Vax in Episode 101, he more than likely had forewarning of his own death by disintegration in the previous episode but, being paralyzed, was completely unable to do anything about it. - Percy's cold and logical reaction to seeing Vax return, firmly insisting that Pike use Turn Undead on him and that they insure he is not undead or a trick by Vecna to undermine the group before returning his equipment or letting Vex or Keyleth too close to him, makes more sense given his experience with Cassandra and the Briarwoods. Whilst apologetic for being suspicious, he insists that if this is a trick and Vax is used to betray them somehow, Vex and Keyleth would never recover from it. Vax, understanding, doesn't resist. - The eyeball the party takes from Delilah Briarwood's corpse. It looks around of its own accord. When Scanlan picks it up, it compels him to try and gouge his own eye out. Pike knocks it from his hand, and it burrows into the ground. Yeesh. Even after Pike cures him and supposedly breaks the eye's hold on him, he insists on safe-keeping it for the group. It's very much a One Ring sort of vibe. - Vecna finds Vox Machina as they track down an old gnome named Sprigg that will be useful in defeating him, and somehow has assassins arrive in the blink of an eye. The worst part? We have no clue how he knew or did any of this. - Pike's attempt to Speak With Dead fails horrifically, inflicting 31 damage to her because it was nothing but laughter. - Scanlan's first attempt at taking control of the Sphere of Annihilation results in him losing half of his face. - The mansion is destroyed with Dispel Magic. The good: everyone lives. The bad: Delilah Briarwood, Sylas Briarwood, and a necrodragon await right outside. The ugly: Delilah's all ready with a Counterspell to anticipate Keyleth's clutch Plane Shift. The relief: Delilah's spell failed. - The description of Vax being strangled to death by a morbidly curious Artagan creeps everyone out, especially Marisha (who complains that she has to go home with Matt). - After killing Delilah, Arkhan reanimates her corpse and binds it to his will. However, since Vex killed her with Fenthras, we get the mental image of the shambling, reanimated corpse of Delilah Briarwood following the party while a tree rapidly grows out of her body. - The big one: Vex and Vax kill Kaylie and Cassandra, with Arkhan nearly doing so to Gilmore (as he said, luckiest natural 1 ever). Sure, they didn't know they were doing so, but the cast noted how seriously fucked-up Matt was (compared to the previous episode, even) to come up with such a thing that exploited their playstyles for such a horror. - The way Gilmore was taken provides some good Paranoia Fuel too: He was just in his workshop when he was grabbed and made into a Remnant. - Sam/Scanlan's wide, nervous, rictus-like grin. - You thought Kaylie, Cassandra, and Gilmore's abduction from last episode was bad? Vox Machina arrives at the top of Entropis to find that not only is Vecna stories tall, but he has Velora Vessar imprisoned inside his chest. A Sunburst from Keyleth frees her and she's ejected from Vecna's chest, but when Vex flies down and catches her, she realizes that the attack killed Velora. - Zahra and Kashaw show up in the middle of the battle, riding in on wyverns. Hooray! They each manage to get a single action in before Vecna casts Hold Monster on them...and their mounts, sending them plummeting. They can't even scream, just fall silently, helpless to save themselves. - Worse, the party realizes Zahra's pregnant just as they watch her plunge out of view. - Speaking of frozen and helpless, as soon as J'mon Sa Ord joined the battle in their Devo'ssa form, Vecna trapped them inside of a mid-air Force Cage, which couldn't be dispelled and remained in place for an hour. - Vecna is just full of delightful tricks. As soon as he discovers the threat that Grog is, attuned to the Sword of Kas, he casts the spell Maze on Grog, banishing him to another plane where he's trapped in an endless maze. - Vox Machina came within ten hit points of destroying Vecna's avatar completely, which would have allowed Vecna to retreat to a reliquary and come right back again. This could have dragged the fight against Vecna on even longer, and Vasselheim might have been completely destroyed. - Vecna has been defeated, the world is at peace... So in the safety of Whitestone, Grog pulls a card from the Deck of Many Things. The result? The Void—Grog's soul is sucked from his body into a small red gem safeguarded in the Halls of Pandemonium. Pike, who had been in the forest, arrived just in time to witness it, unable to do anything to stop it.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/CriticalRoleCampaignOne
Creature Feature / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes A Feast For the Worms uses a similar idea as the Noodle Incident from Such Horrible Things except for the entire song. Nothing is explained about what the narrator did, only everyone's reactions to his death. Whatever it was, it was so bad even the Devil celebrates his death. My soul is made of rot and razor blades Praise the day that I'm lowered in my grave Revel for the devil Knows I'm on my way Knows I'm on my way	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/CreatureFeature
Creep (2014) / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes - The last 20 minutes or so. Special mention goes to the scene where \|\|Josef enters Aaron's home, films him while he sleeps, and then silently cuts a lock of hair from him\|\|. - The ending. \|\|Josef axes Aaron in the head in broad daylight, after Aaron was fairly convinced that meeting up in the day would be reasonably safe.\|\| - And then Josef gives us one last Jump Scare by \|\|getting his face in Aaron's camera (which filmed the whole thing) and screaming\|\|. He knew it was there the whole time.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Creep2014
Crimson Peak / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes Spoilers Off applies to the Moments subpages. BEWARE OF UNMARKED SPOILERS In the beginning of the movie, the ghost of Edith's mother. While her intentions are ultimately benevolent, her appearance and voice are freaky as hell. And then there's the message she gives to young Edith, which is very creepy: Edith's mother: My child...When the time comes....beware of Crimson Peak! Carter's death. He gets beaten to death in the bathroom, opening a hole in his head and crushing his nose. Edith was truly shocked when identifying the corpse. Allerdale Hall in general in simply anxiety inducing. There's a massive hole in the ceiling, and with the way the wind blows through the halls, it reverberates and makes an endless groaning noise all throughout. Never mind how the entire building is slowly sinking into the clay mines, saturating not just the plumbing, but it also leaks through the walls, making it look like the entire house is bleeding. It doesn't get much better when winter comes and snow falls, since the liquid clay rises to the surface, mixes into the snow and looks like blood soaking into white fabric, giving the place its nickname, "Crimson Peak". The second ghost Edith meets in Allerdale Hall. Edith thinks the dog is actually hiding in a closet. Then the dog appears and she realizes who could have been the cause of the noise inside the closet. Suddenly, a face with big eyes appears from the closet. The eerie wind from the east that blows in the house. Because it blows through certain places, it sounds like a ghostly moan and Thomas tells Edith that it makes the house to sound like it's breathing. The finale. After accidentally killing her brother in a fit of rage, Lucille absolutely loses it and goes after Edith with a massive cleaver, chasing her out of the manor and into the blizzard outside. The blizzard conceals where Lucille is from Edith for the most part, and we're treated to quick blurs of Lucille darting this way and that. Allerdale Hall itself is a piece of work. One of the most foreboding and menacing looking manors out there. The red clay that place is built on makes the house appear to bleed several times throughout the movie. Thomas being stabbed in the face, and then pulling the knife out. Bloodless Carnage makes it worse. Given how long it takes to pull the knife out again, that knife went in there deep. Worse still, when his ghost appears, the hole in his face is sluggishly leaking little tendrils of blood that hang in the air like smoke. Lucille's description of her mother's sickeningly brutal abuse at the hands of her father, and subsequently the children's own abuse at the hands of their mother. She describes her father breaking their mother's leg by stomping on it, in such a manner that it would never fully heal, in a way that suggests she may well have witnessed it firsthand. Edith playing the gramophone recordings during the first part of The Reveal. What is at first a married woman playing around with a recording device later becomes deathbed recordings about what the Sharpe siblings have done to her. The ghostly memory of Lady Sharpe's death. Edith overhears a woman screaming in terror, followed by a loud SHINK!, followed by the woman going dead silent and the bath water sloshing around loudly and clearly now that she's no longer screaming or struggling... followed by the sound of a young girl giggling. Edith then walks in to find the ghost of an old woman dead with a cleaver in her head in a Deadly Bath. Once it's revealed that Lucille killed her at age 14, it takes on an extra level of horror. The frantic screaming before the murder hints that 14-year-old Lucille brandished the weapon to let her know she was about to die, and possibly taunting her with the fact that she was too crippled to escape or defend herself, instead of hiding the weapon until right before the killing blow or charging at her quickly. Lucille's laughter after the death blow further hints that she had taken sadistic pleasure in stoking her mother's fear before chopping into her head. Brrr... Even without the ghosts, the premise is still terrifying: a young woman is essentially a prisoner in her new husbands isolated home. He and his creepy sister, who clearly hates her, are the only people she interacts with regularly, she's getting sick but doesnt know why and she has a feeling there is something terribly wrong, but her husband and sister-in-law are intentionally evasive, leading her to wonder just who she's married in the first place. And then, she discovers that her new family is actually plotting to murder her, they have done this several times before and there is no one coming to save her and no way to escape.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/CrimsonPeak
Critical Role: Campaign Two / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes Scary, horrifying, and disturbing moments from the second Critical Role campaign involving the Mighty Nein. As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned. - During the young dwarf girl's performance at the circus, one of the audience members in the first row morphs into a zombie and starts attacking the audience, taking out a bystander and having her transform too. Matt's description is enough to make anyone squirm due to the immense body horror. - The zombie transformations mentioned above? We find out in this episode that direct contact isn't necessary to pass The Virus on, and that those affected seep sand from their open wounds. - Not to mention what happens to Beau's wound when Jester tries to heal it despite being out of spell slots: it turns sickly green, and when Jester pokes it with the blunt end of a fork, it starts spewing pus everywhere, much to the horror of the party. The fact that it turns out to have been an illusion (implied by Jester to be a prank by her patron deity, the Traveler) doesn't lessen the Nausea Fuel of it. - An Imp takes Fjord out in a single hit. Fjord currently has 20 health, the group's third-highest (second-highest of those present), and has the option of remaining at 1 HP once per long rest. One failed save and one forgotten ability later, Fjord took 21 damage. Level 2 characters are squishy, and Fjord's only the Warlock, not the wizard, who also ended up knocked silly. One third of the group was out in that battle thanks to two Imps. - Matt's description of Fjord's Hexblade's Curse ability - his falchion grows barnacles and starts to drip salt water, shadows grow from the area and begin to wrap around the Devil Toad. The imagery is supremely creepy. - Also the fact that Nott has eaten Frumpkin a few times. Given that re-summoning Frumpkin takes 10 gold worth of incense along with a quantity of herbs and charcoal, what situation must they have (repeatedly) been in where a 10-gold meal was the best choice? - More like 20 or 30, because for a good long while, Caleb was also looking for large quantities of charcoal. Though it's safe to assume that this was actually a joke and Nott actually never ate Frumpkin. When Frumpkin dies, he turns into a puff of smoke, meaning he can't exactly be eaten nor digested as sustenance. - Circles right back into nightmare fuel: If she really did eat Frumpkin, or attempt to, Nott was probably hungry enough to forget he's not edible. - When the group camps out for the night, Fjord has a rather terrifying dream involving sinking and tumbling through water and drowning until he comes face to face with some kind of terrifying oceanic mass with a single yellow eye, which is very heavily implied to be his warlock patron, and gives him some rather cryptic but ominous instructions. To make it worse, when he wakes up, he coughs up a sizeable amount of salt water. - Jester provides an In-Universe example by suggesting Fjord might be slowly turning into water as a possible explanation. - Nott goes to pursue the fleeing Gnoll leader and the cart of corpses the other Gnolls are carrying away. She ends up running into an area of the town that's almost completely burning, smoke everywhere making it almost impossible to see or breathe. Out of the smoke steps the Gnoll leader, much closer than Nott expected. He slowly strides forward, ready to carve into her with his glaive, but instead goes for his longbow. This is not an act of mercy, as he ends up knocking unconscious not just Nott, but Molly as well (with a Natural 20 in his case). Even worse, over 10 more Gnolls were ready to swarm the pair of them. It's a good thing Jester got to them in time, any slower and that could have been the end of Nott and Molly. A harsh lesson that going Leeroy Jenkins at Level 3 really isn't a good idea. - Matt's vivid descriptions of the Gnoll priest, a humanoid creature wearing a Gnoll skin made of mismatched body parts, who throws human hearts to his Gnoll attendants. He also describes the Gnolls' To Serve Man behaviour in nauseating detail. - The manticore itself, being a huge lion-like beast with wings, a strangely human-like face and a maw filled with rows of teeth, that is introduced tearing apart a frightened crownsguard and feeding on their remains. - The image of the manticore on the ground, laughing uncontrollably next to the body of its baby, is certainly twisted. - The party encounters some mutated sewer rats that have all kinds of refuse, trash and excrement stuck to their fur. To make matters worse, their bodies appear to have become so noxious, they release Deadly Gas if they're sliced or hacked open. - Further along, the Mighty Nein discovers several bodies that are strung up in webbing and, upon investigating, find that they have been completely sucked dry. It should come as no surprise then that the sewer monster turns out to be a big ol' Phase Spider that can disappear and reappear at will. - And then there's the pulsating sack of eggs, full of hatching baby phase spiders. (Out of character, Travis is visibly and vocally disturbed at this mental image, and nopes his way out of the game for the next three minutes). They set the nest on fire, but Matt's narration implies some of them may have survived. - While investigating the Leaky Tap's second cellar, the group discovers a decomposed skeleton. While its condition suggests it's been there for a very long time, the party don't really find any other clues beyond the fact that the barrels around the skeleton appeared to have been positioned deliberately to keep the remains out of sight, so foul play was probably involved. The fact that we know so little about how and why this dead body got in the basement of a seemingly benign inn makes it all the scarier. It's bad enough that when Nott mentions it offhand to Caleb in the next episode, he immediately brings up how suspicious and disturbing it is. - Nott's charm-induced confession about why she was trying to steal Fjord's letter. Not only does she speak in a cold tone, but she also explains how desperately she needs Caleb to get stronger so he can protect and potentially even change her. - During the conversation between Molly, Nott, and Fjord, Nott makes a crack about Fjord having braces after he comments that he used to be the typical heavy kid growing up and wasn't always handsome. Fjord replies that he "did [his] own dental work". Since we know that Travis deliberately chose for Fjord to not have the usual half-orc tusks in his artwork, it paints a rather horrifying picture. - While it was resolved well, both Nott and Beau were nearly suffocated by the Rug of Smothering in Lord Sutan's study. Matt's descriptions of it completely encasing Nott's tiny body as well as the Morton's Fork the rest of the party found themselves in between either trying to pry the Rug off or attacking it and transferring damage to whoever is trapped inside of it were also pretty terrifying. - Whatever the Knight's plan was, it wound up going pear-shaped very fast near the end; - While planting the evidence in Sutan's home was relatively easy, everything went to shit when the High Richter returned home early. After a series of jabs at Ulog and the position the Richter has put his wife in, he goes ballistic and shoves his amber amulet down her throat. This then activates a massive Fireball spell that engulfs the both of them and sets the house on fire, with the last thing Jester sees of them being their charred corpses. - Immediately afterward, as the party escapes the Richter's burning home, they look out towards the Trispires to see if anyone is coming for them. They then all bear witness to the bottom third of the Zauberspire getting engulfed in a giant black ball of crackling energy, followed by two pairs of figures escaping from the ruined tower and shooting lighting bolts at each other. The Harvest Festival descends into pure pandemonium, with people all but trampling each other to escape the district and the destruction that is being caused by the flying, magic slinging combatants. One even delivers an ominous message to Beau after turning his opponent to near ash right in front of her. - Finally, after the party escapes into the sewers and is trying to understand what the hell just happened (since they're far more inexperienced than Vox Machina were at this point, they react much more viscerally), Caleb, Beau, and Jester notice liquid in a place it usually isn't. Liquid being caused by a heavily wounded creature in spiky, chitonous armor and holding a pulsating dodecahedron. It then screams something at them in Undercommon, draws its blade and attacks. Ladies and gentlemen, say hello to our first soldier from Xhorhas. - While Nott and Caleb's relationship is indeed quite heartwarming, the former's confession to the group also highlights a well of ruthlessness in Nott. She desperately wants to protect Caleb, and has more or less voiced her conviction to do whatever is necessary to succeed. - We finally find out about Mollymauk's past and his whole Amnesiac Hero deal. The first thing he remembers is waking up Buried Alive, with no idea who he was or how he got there: the circus found him naked, catatonic, and borderline-mute, covered in dirt and muttering "empty" as a Madness Mantra. - Fjord has another dream involving his patron, and this one is as creepy as the first: the patron again tells him to "consume", and Fjord takes this to mean his sword. He ends up shoving it down his throat, and Matt describes in terrifying detail how the edge of the blade cuts Fjord's throat and the blood bubbles up. When the dream ends and Fjord awakens, he finds blood on his mouth. The most terrifying part, however, is the fact that, when Fjord swallows the sword, the patron vocally approves with the word "Good." - While Nott may not have learned much from her Solid Snake-esque mission, finding out that the Dwendalian Empire and Xhorhas are about to go from border skirmishes to full-on war is pretty scary. Even worse is that the Empire is the aggressive force. There's barely any information on what Xhorhas is up to (although Nott does make out "1000s dead"), but whatever they're doing is enough that the Empire sees fit to go in with a preemptive strike. - The way Matt describes the two losing groups in the tournament is gorier than usual. The only mitigating factor is that two clerics were on hand to successfully keep death away. - The Minotaurs and Hill Giant fought in the tournament are sapient (if hostile) beings imprisoned and tortured into mindless rages so they can be used as Cannon Fodder for gladiatorial bouts. If they survive they are re-shackled with magical bindings that rob them of power and the will to resist until they're needed again. - Thanks to some good rolling from Matt, Yasha took 43 damage in a single hit from the hill giant, which, judging by the players' reactions, was just barely enough not to instantly permakill her. (In order to die immediately and skip going unconscious, a character has to take enough damage to take them to zero hit points plus their total hit points, which in Yasha's case is 42. If she had 1 HP left when she was hit, that would've been it for her) In the first campaign, character HPs were high enough that this rule was never an issue, but this moment shows just how dangerous things are for a low-level party. - The CritRole Stats website analyzed this and found that everyone else in the party but Fjord or Beau could have been one-hit permakilled by this amount of damage (for Molly, it depends on what he rolled for his amplified Blood Maledict earlier), and realized that Caleb going into this fight at 23/25 HP was actually a good thing as he would die from this two-hit-combo if his HP was full. Think about that for a minute. If this fight had gone differently, Caleb, Nott, Molly, Yasha or Jester could have instantly died. Jester didn't learn Revivify until after the fight. - Liam finally spills Caleb's backstory. When Caleb was 15 years old, he was one of three children chosen to be trained at the Soltryce Academy. A year later, a man named Trent Ikithon (the current Archmage of Civil Influences for the Cerberus Assembly, who the Nein had met previously) came and took them to a faraway house for tutoring. There, they were put through brutal abusive training for a whole year, eventually requiring them to murder traitors to the empire. One day, about six months after beginning his private lessons with Trent, Caleb returned to his parents to overhear them plotting against the Empire. For his graduation ceremony, he realised what he had to do, and told Trent. The three students went to each of their parents' houses in turn, Caleb watched as the other two murdered their parents. Then it was Caleb's turn. He parked a horse cart next to his parents' house, set it on fire, and let it burn. For a moment, he felt the weight of what he'd done, and Caleb completely lost his mind, ending up in an asylum for 11 years. Finally, a healer cast a spell that lifted not only his madness but the fake memories Trent placed in his head. His parents weren't really traitors. Making all of this even worse, the Nein met Trent Ikithon earlier that same day, unaware of how much of a monster he was. Part of what makes it so effective is how monotone Caleb is through the entire thing. The effect is so bad that even the normally devil-may-care Beau is shocked. - While still remaining somewhat vague on the details, Beau tells Nott some of her backstory. We previously knew that her father was disappointed in her being born a girl and decided to raise her as a son and there was at least some physical abuse involved, but now we know she started her forays into the criminal element of her home town via undermining her families wine business as both an attention seeking action and a minor form of revenge. Additionally, she claims that her father arranging her to be kidnapped by the Cobalt Soul as a teenager, a place that she admits tried to break her spirit and forced her into harsh physical training, was the best thing that he ever did for her. To reiterate: Being abducted from her home on her father's orders was the best outcome. Considering the details she's given thus far and the fact she stopped her exposition soon afterwards, her father was quite a monster, and worried at least some fans that there is yet more she is still unwilling to share. - The groups descent down into the sealed of section of the prison can only be described as going into a horror game. The construct the group is going after has been sealed inside one wing of the prison for over two years, and it shows. There is almost no light, the walls are covered in scratches, cuts, and marks left by either the constructs blades, or worse, the criminals left to die by the prison guards. The group even find a cell very close to the entryway that somehow wasn't broken into, but Matt is quick to point out the skeletons inside the cage. Think about how terrifying it would be to be left to die in a cell with a giant machine of death outside, waiting till you eventually starve to death because it can't break in to kill you? - The construct itself also has another frightening aspect to it: It Can Think, at least, it has some programing that makes it seem like it can. At one point, Nott throws tar on its "eye", and it retracks the "eye" and cleans it off after only a single turn of being blinded. Worse yet, because of its multiple blades, Matt rules it doesn't have disadvantage on attacks when blinded. Think about that; it can No-Sell being blinded, and even when blinded still attack with the same lethal intent as before. The construct clearly was too good as its task. - After a heartwarming farewell to Kiri, this episode's ending is Mood Whiplash incarnate. Due to Travis and Laura's baby and Ashley needing to film Blindspot again, Matt has to put Jester, Fjord and Yasha on a bus. How does he do this? Having the three of them get ambushed, magically stunned, gagged and captured by unknown individuals who seem to be slave traders. This all happened within a silence spell, so the rest of the party slept through it none the wiser. - It's somewhat played for laughs, but after their horses are attacked, Nott goes to carve out the tongue from W.C. Matt notes that the horse is "not long for this world, but technically still alive." Sam says Nott wouldn't know that, and cuts out the poor animal's tongue for a snack. Matt narrates, "...in its last moments..." The entire table cringes. Keg notes, "that's the most fucked up thing I've ever seen, and I grew up in Shadycreek!" - Lorenzo is without a doubt one of the most frightening antagonists ever faced on Critical Role. Not only is he responsible for Jester, Fjord and Yasha's kidnapping and the first party death of Campaign 2 (and the first permanent death on the show) but the implications of exactly what this guy does are horrifying. Keg says those captured by him are "broken", both physically and mentally. He also shrugs off being set on fire, and probably would've caused a Total Party Kill if it weren't for Keg offering to "be taught a lesson". He slowly drags her to Caleb, Nott and Beau, while still on fire, and calmly tells them not to mess with the Iron Shepherds again, and moves in to execute Keg, only to stop and tell her death is too good for her, and that he wants her to live with the memory of what happened. - The Mighty Nein meets Jester's mother, the renowned Ruby of the Sea, but discover that one of her clients has become possessive, threatening her other patrons and demanding her attention. This is not only a horrible scenario - it's an all too likely and familiar one for sex workers. - Oh sure, bring your pets through a long dive underwater and into battle. They'll always be juuuuuuust fine, no need to worry, Jester, as Nott and Caduceus have it under control. Thankfully, nothing happened to them this episode. - Thanks to his periapt of wound closure, Caleb doesn't drown but essentially gets waterboarded, yo-yoing between consciousness and unconsciousness for a large part of the battle. Caduceus gets a similar treatment, prompting him to be so afraid of the water in the next episode that he has to cast Calm Emotions on himself just to swim out to a boat. - Fjord uses his Accursed Specter ability for the first time, raising one of Algar's bodyguards as a dripping, barnacle-encrusted ghost. Matt's description of it is terrifying, so much that Algar spends his first turn afterwards cowering. Fjord used this purely as an intimidation tactic, and it worked. - Imagine this fight from Algar's perspective. Hit with a fireball (which left his two bodyguards badly burned), trapped in pure darkness with Lovecraftian tentacles, falling unconscious in the darkness, being revived, the darkness dissipating only to find one of your bodyguards dead and raised as the specter mentioned above, being choked by Beau's staff while interrogated, and finally having your hand cut off. He had it coming, but this is one of the most brutal treatments the Nein have given an enemy, and he doesn't know who they are. - Wyatt Marinus is unusual for a goliath in that he has long, flowing hair, which is revealed to be from the scalp of his predecessor. Wyatt has been wearing the scalp on his own head for fifteen years.' - The Traveller reappears, and his conversation with Jester this time is very creepy, referring to the meeting with the other worshippers in a year and calling said worshippers "brethren", tossing a dark twist on just what kind of deity he is. Additionally, when Jester asks him for advice on how to make a boy (Fjord) like her, his first suggestion is brainwashing. - The trek through Dashilla's lair feels like something out of a horror setting. Eyeless ghosts appear ahead of the group, the walls close in to entangle them (and the group see some half-digested Merrow corpses still caught in them), and all the while certain members feel a cold touch at the back of their head for a moment. The main chamber's entire floor is full of bones, and Dashilla herself has More Teeth than the Osmond Family. The cold touches? That was her, stalking the group the whole time and marking certain members for mind-control. - Worse, one of her attacks stops Caleb's heart on a critically failed save, dropping him to zero health. Throw in her three Legendary Actions, and she could theoretically have flatlined the whole group in just two or three rounds. - In what can only be described as part dick-measuring contest, part loyalty pact, and part morbid curiosity, Fjord and Caleb start to finish one of Dashilla's blood sacrifices by slicing their palms apart, trying to one-up each other. Luckily, they reach an understanding, but once they get back to the Squall Eater, a storm has partially formed, leading them to realize they were performing the ritual she uses to sink ships. That's right- Fjord and Caleb nearly sunk their own ship and killed everyone on board (as Matt puts it, there would have been a hell of a skill challenge to get the ship out of the center of the storm had they finished the ritual.) - The idea of swimming alone through a small, seaweed-filled tunnel with absolutely no light is enough to give any claustrophobic person nightmares. Nott is afraid of the water, too. Poor thing. - The visit to Felderwin leads to one of the most tense scenes of the entire campaign. Investigating the burnt-out ruins of Nott's halfling friend Yeza's house reveals a secret basement. There, they find a metal chest with a tripod big enough to hold the dodecahedron they carry, a chair with some broken ropes attached to it (implying someone may have been recently tortured or interrogated), and the remains of some notes detailing experiments into the Beacon and distilling its effects into potions to create hasted Super Soldiers, and the letter mentions Trent Ikithon. Caleb notices two mages he recognizes from his time at the Academy on the way to the village, with the it all inducing a Stress Vomit. The atmosphere is intense as Fjord and Caduceus bluntly tell the group: "we have to get out of here". The episode ends with the same two mages making their way back to Yeza's home, and they're going to notice someone else has been there. - Nott's backstory. She was originally a Halfling who was killed by goblins and brought back as a goblin through what's implied to be a particularly cruel use of the reincarnate spell. And she was stuck with the clan for months after. - Caleb reveals that he has scars on his arm from Trent implanting crystals into his skin to experiment on him. - The Kryn soldiers who ambush the Muck-Men are some of the most terrifying enemies the Nein have encountered so far. The mage and fighter quickly turn the skirmish into a Mook Horror Show, one using a Doppelgänger Attack to eviscerate a soldier, the other using gravity magic not yet seen to reduce a group of soldiers to a mess of flesh and bone fused with the surrounding rock. The group's leader, whom the Nein had recently spoke to, is killed in a similar fashion. These deaths are accompanied by some of the most graphic and visceral descriptions Matt has used so far. They prove to be more than a match for the Lv 8 party too, with Jester nearly dying and both getting away despite Beau's Ki Point barrage. A grim reminder of what the Nein are walking in to. - Fjord has another dream vision from Uk'otoa, and he is not happy that Fjord's leaving him hanging, threatening with a "punishment" and crushing him to close the dream out. - The succubus and incubus use their Charm abilities to devastating effect. Nott and Caleb are alone in a chamber, and Caleb is silently charmed. The rest of the group walks over, and eats a Fireball followed by a Wall of Fire. Later, Yasha is charmed, raging and slicing at everyone she can reach (mostly Caleb, though), and stubbornly refusing to make her Wisdom saves against the charm - she's a demon in battle, as her name implies, so she frustrates everyone with her power and determination. - Nott going from triumphant cheering to a Little "No" as she realizes that her explosive arrow not only killed the fiend, but also killed Caduceus. If it wasn't for Jester's clutch save with revivify, Caduceus would have died one episode after surpassing Mollymauk for number of episodes on the show. - The Chasme. Despite looking like a giant mosquito with a mullet, its droning wings made Fjord and Jester fall unconscious early into the fight. It drained Fjord's maximum hit points from 82 to 36, which makes him now squishier than Caleb. If Caduceus was unable to halve the damage by being just a little further away, this attack would have immediately killed Fjord without any chance of death saves. - The brief glimpse we get into the other side of the Abyssal rift. This time, it's a demonic forest of trees whose branches are live snakes, which turn to look at the party through the portal as they frantically try to close it. It's a good thing they did. - The incredibly creepy Dybbuk that served as the episode's Cliffhanger ending. Earlier, Landspeaker Soorna mentioned seeing the body of her dead brother being demonically possessed. The Mighty Nein witness this possession when a beautiful little glowing jellyfish floats into the torn-apart body of a dead giant. The giant's head slowly creaks upward, giving a twisted grin that tears open its unhinged jaw. Sweet dreams! - Dybbuks have their Violate Corpse ability, which earns its own entry on this list for Matt's vomit-inducing queasy descriptions. - This was the second rift generator the Nein have located and disabled. Someone is hiding them, and they could be hidden in any civilized area. - Yasha's first dream is unnerving as well, where a demonic figure is showing her that everyone she's allowed to get emotionally closer to her is dead presumably by her hand. Having Mollymauk be the first body named only makes it worse. - Uk'otoa comes knocking again in another one of Fjord's dreams, first submerging him, before the leviathan reiterates its intention to punish Fjord. The Cloven Crystal that Fjord had absorbed long ago begins to glow inside him, and a cloud of blood that spills around his chest seems to imply Uk'otoa pulled it out of him. Fjord then wakes up, coughing up his signature falchion and finds that he cannot make it disappear again, having been rendered powerless by his patron. Though his magic returns a few hours later, the knowledge that Uk'otoa can strip Fjord of his powers at any time is haunting. - Looking like emaciated humanoids with multiple Spider Limbs, the three Sorrowsworn make slow, sad moaning sounds before skittering towards you at incredibly fast speeds. They impale and clutch their prey as close to their bodies as possible (one even tried to force Caleb's head into its wounded torso), and unleash a terrifying Howl of Sorrow that can literally frighten you to death with psychic damage. - Underneath the temple of Bazzoxan (which was dedicated to the Betrayer Gods), the group finds a courtyard filled with a dozen white stone statues of hairless angelic figures, sitting on their knees with wings folded and hands in their laps. All the statues are crying fresh Tears of Blood that pool into their open palms, and upon closer inspection they give off low thrumming vibrations which sound like a pattern of seven repeating song-like notes. The rest of the courtyard is littered in broken swords and armor, sooty white feathers, and skeletal Celestial corpses. - The group attracts the attention of several five-foot spiders that can liquify their prey into a disgusting reddish-brown mush strewn about the area. After fighting them off, Caleb torches a massive egg sac attached to the wall; it starts spilling hundreds of writhing burning spiders that he frantically fire-blasts again to finish the job. - While running down a spiral staircase, they're assailed by a fog-like creature that can suddenly disappear and re-emerge from anywhere in the surrounding mist; only manifesting a creepy face and wispy arms to attack before vanishing again. - The next area is a Torture Cellar with a wide variety of chains and torture implements and also over fifty undead corpses within range of Detect Undead, with dozens more further down the sloped chamber floors. The group has to fight off waves of decaying papery corpses that shuffle out of the several body piles surrounding them. - The group comes to a dark chasm crossed by a narrow chain bridge; eerie whispers emanate from the pit whenever loud noises are made, which causes states of confusion like momentary catatonia, walking in random directions, or suddenly attacking the nearest person. When Nott ends up dangling off the side of the bridge, Matt describes what she sees underneath (a horrifying creature known as a Gibbering Mouther): - After everyone gets across the chasm, they enter a maze-like cave full of reflective surfaces. Yasha goes up and touches one of the mirrors; her reflection suddenly gets a Slasher Smile, and pulls Yasha through into a mirrored replica of the caves. Fjord and Caduceus do the same, and they fight off four doppelgangers that look identical except for the feral, unhinged jaws and acidic bites. - The Laughing Hand. Whenever it's injured the cut grows teeth and laughs like the Gibbering Mouther. Bonus points for being a homebrew based on a bad dream Matt had. It's LITERALLY nightmare fuel. - YASHA. With his dying breath Obann triggers a FaceHeel Turn in Yasha by calling upon a pact they had made during her forgotten time. Yasha's full Rage and Barbarian abilities are turned against the rest of the party and it's terrifying. Shortly after being turned she looks over at Nott and, per Matt's description, no longer recognises her as a friend. - The epilogue cuts back to Yasha and The Laughing Hand still inside the tomb. Matt describes how Yasha gathers up what remains of Obann as The Laughing Hand slowly and methodically bashes away at the barriers keeping them in. It's unclear how long it takes them, Matt implies it's an extended amount of time, but the fact remains that they're making their way out and there's very little that can stop them. - Jester Scrys on Yasha. She sees her in a dark cave outside the King's Cage, meaning she and the Hand broke through all the barriers in less than 24 hours. Yasha is kneeling in prayer, a flame between her hands, until the familiar red hand of Obann is seen over her shoulder, congratulating her. After all their effort, Obann came Back from the Dead not even a day after their fight, and his mind control of Yasha is strong enough to compel her to resurrect him when needed. Worse, similar to Hotis from the last campaign, Obann is a strong enough Fiend that the only way to kill him for good is on his home plane. The Nein now have a terrifying recurring enemy. - The Nein meet with a Scourger who had been captured in a recent attack on Xhorhas. It's hard to tell what's worse, the conditions of her prison (brutally beaten, chained to a chair in a dark room with a single slit for light, with the implication there are no bathroom facilities, in the deepest level of a mind-bending Escher-like maze) or her demeanour: completely unhinged, almost gleefully awaiting her execution as she has no desire to give away information, and with the same scars on her arms as Caleb. Thankfully she isn't Astrid, but she still serves as a horrifying look at what Caleb was being trained to become, and confirmation that Trent succeeded in moulding many more than just Astrid and Eodwulf like this. It's also very unnerving that she knows of Bren, while he doesn't recognize her. - While interrogating her, Liam-as-Caleb drops the accent as he's speaking in his native Zemnian. Caleb's tone of voice during this whole conversation is a terrifying contrast to the self-hating, socially-awkward wizard we've come to know, and a grim reminder that his high Charisma isn't Gameplay and Story Segregation: Caleb can be downright frightening when he wants to be. - Fjord gets another Uk'otoa dream, and it's meaner than usual. The stars all blink out, the moon turns into one of the serpent's eyes, and a mouth rips open from the black sky, which spews tendrils that wrap Fjord up, bring him in, and crush his dream-self to death, waking his real self up sans powers once more. - Crossed with Awesome, Fjord's response included picking up his sword, walking to the kiln, and threatening Uk'otoa with graphic suicide while actually beginning to run himself through (three inches into his chest!). Fjord then removed the blade, holding it over the magma, and letting his blood and viscera splash into the lava where they instantly boiled into smoke, all while standing directly next to the forge, one step from sure death should he faint from blood loss, lose his balance, or go in on his own. Finally, Fjord stepped back and hurled the falchion into the lava, destroying it. If it had gone any further than it did, or if it hadn't been done for the purpose of standing up to Uk'otoa, it would have been terrifying instead of simply spellbinding. - Level 9 characters versus an ancient white dragon. Reani only survives through two uses of Wildshape, one of which was chosen for its cold resistance. - The dragon's lair features a tall vertical shaft with what's left of its meals at the base. Chunks of ice, this one with a hand, that one with a piece of forehead and an eye. - Matt's vivid description of the dragon's vicious biting and thrashing at the outside of Leomund's Tiny Hut while the Nein crowd inside screaming their heads off as Caleb takes a full minute to draw the Teleportation Circle. It sounds like something out of Jurassic Park. - The dragon leaves them by taunting "I know your scent..." - this Nightmare in Ivory could very well have made herself a recurring villain in the future, being Vorugal's equal in every way. - Jester successfully scries on Yasha, and sees her as she, Obann, and the Laughing Hand conclude an assault on a location in Zadash, presumably the Cobalt Archive. Yasha has killed many innocent people, including one while Jester watches, and while Yasha obeys every order Obann gives, Jester sees that her face is streaked with tears. Yasha is still in there, trapped in her own body. Doubles as a Tear Jerker. - Scrying on Obann and Yasha reveals that at one point recently, they were dangerously close to Beau's hometown. - The party researches Obann, the Angel of Irons and the Laughing Hand. They find out what they've gotten into is far worse than it seemed, and it already looked very bad. - The Laughing Hand Was Once a Man, a warrior named Ganex who fought against Torog, and was cursed with eternal servitude as punishment. He can only be killed if his heart is destroyed, and it's sealed in a demiplane. - Obann isn't just some random Cambion, he was essentially the right hand man to Graz'zt, one of the top contenders for the title of Prince of Demons, alongside Orcus and the Demogorgon. Records say he was "shamed" and destroyed, but he's clearly alive and well now. No matter if he's desperate to return to his master's favour, or if he's carrying out his plans, the Nein now have a very dangerous foe. - Obann and Yasha are now seeking to resurrect a new "friend": Jourrael, a legendary assassin who made a Deal with the Devil and became the personal hit-man for Lolth and Asmodeus (in a rare alliance between Betrayer Gods), who can turn into mist and can only be killed if the physical contract between the two evil deities is destroyed. The Elves cut her body in two to prevent her resurrection, but Obann seemingly already has her head, and is well on his way to finding her heart. - The description of the Astral Dreadnought chained in the Astral Sea. Upon seeing it, Beau calls it an elder god. - Thanks to a rival's sabotage, Halas' spirit spent an unknown amount of time trapped in his own Soul Jar, with no chance of escape. Especially because he was located in the most inaccessible area of his own, hard to enter demiplane. Considering he doesnt recognize the current Exandrian calendar when he is told the year, it's clear he has been there for more than eight hundred years. - The Happy Fun Ball continues to be as punishing as one expects when Nott attempts to open up a chest without checking for traps first, and winds up triggering a Power Word: Kill spell. It just goes to prove that one absolutely cannot be careless in the Archmage's Bane. - The Mighty Nein discover that the Angel of Irons is really Tharizdun the Chained Oblivion, and that this entity has taken a personal interest in Yasha. - Caleb takes a chance to do some more research on Tharizdun. His findings are frightening: its true intent is unknown because all those who got close enough to truly divine its intent were driven mad. However, it is known that it isn't a god like any of the others known. It is perhaps a planet. Its goal is to release itself and then consume all of existence. - The Mighty Nein are in Pumat's shop, doing some business, when all of a sudden a sneak attack hits Caduceus for 45 damage (over half of his health). The Nein have been found by Jourrael, the Inevitable End, who can apparently phase through solid objects. - The Nein chose not to visit the Lavish Chateau that morning, but it's possible that Jourrael might have tracked them there if they had. If so, Jester's mom and Nott's husband and son would have been in grave danger. - The Gentleman reveals that a party matching the Nein's description is known to have defected to Xhorhas. The Nein are not safe in the Empire. - Vence is going to open an Abyssal portal in the heart of Rexxentrum with the intent of creating chaos. We've seen what these things can do to a town when they are trying to be subtle. This time they will try to actively cause havoc while most of the city's defenders will be distracted by a False Flag Operation. - The fight in the cathedral begins with the Nein fighting basic cultists, but after a bit, several demons (babaus, in particular) join the fray. - Yasha doesnt go into a lot of detail after being freed, but its clear that her time with Obann has left her mentally scarred. - Matt's description of Yasha killing Obann is so visceral that Laura cringes in her seat and looks horrified. - After Yasha gets the HDYWTDT on Obann, Tharizdun punishes him by mutating him into a bloated, Lovecraftian type monster with several tentacles sprouting from its body. - Leading up to this, Matts description of the Abyssal language and Obanns body melting and mutating is just plain disturbing. - The scene with the Nein in King Dwendal's throne room is incredibly tense, especially for the players themselves. Possibly the worst part is that, after the meeting, Trent sidles up to the group and calls Caleb by his former name Bren. Bear in mind that Caleb has spent the better part of the campaign terrified that Trent would find him again. Now they're not only in the same room, but Trent now knows Caleb is Bren. - The beacon is being kept at the Vergeissen Sanitorium, where Trent had Caleb placed after his breakdown. Caleb has to go back there and Trent is present. - Caleb has been traumatized in regards to using fire magic as a weapon. He discovers that, when he had his breakdown, he did just that against the woman he loved. - Yasha's "duel" with the champion of an underground fighting pit is chilling. Through pure intimidation and menace Yasha makes clear that she could wipe the floor with the champion any time Yasha chooses to stop pulling her punches. Her joy and relief in being beaten unconscious is a devastating comment on her state of mind. It's not very often that a person on the losing end of a fight manages to be downright scary. It's clear she has deep trauma from her time mind-controlled by Obann, especially after Yasha nearly killed Beau under Obann's influence. - Matt did an absolutely stellar job crafting Isharnai. She is brilliant, malevolent, and possesses a twisted sense of honour. She presented an incredible challenge to the Nein, both physical and moral. The fact that an amazingly clutch idea from Jester and a bad roll from Matt ultimately negated that challenge doesn't change any of that, especially since she is smart enough to figure out what Jester did to her. - The Offers(or "Interviews") are all terrifying, especially from an in-game perspective. You see your friends go into a room ALONE one-by-one to bargain with a horrific witch-thing, and you have no idea what's going to go on inside. - Beau. She offers to sacrifice EVERYTHING for Nott, and her justification for why is heartbreaking. Even though the rest of the Nein would never let her go through with it, they have no way to know what she's doing, much less stop her from making a huge mistake. Luckily she declined, but still terrifying. - Caduceus finds some members of his family turned to stone. The beast which transformed them, a Gorgon, has arrived back at the lagoon, and it has spotted the Mighty Nein, who are already somewhat spent after a difficult battle with some bugs. - Fjord has a dream of himself in the forest. He summons his sword, thinking that the dream is from the Wildmother, but the sword that appears in his hand is the Sword of Fathoms (his old falchion from Uk'otoa). A piercing pain in his midsection awakens him, and he finds that a misshapen zombielike creature has plunged the Sword of Fathoms into his guts. - The idea of slowly losing your memories, and possibly your entire sense of self, is unsettling, and the group is now in a village full of people who have lost their memories. They fear it's only a matter of time before they, too, start to forget things. - When the group goes to bed in Caleb's dome, Yasha wakes up to find one of her blankets has been moved outside of it, under one of the beds in the room. Neither she nor any of the Nein have any recollection of doing this, and according to Frumpkin's perception roll of 19, none of them left the dome—which cannot be entered by anyone except for them. This is unsettling, to say the least. - The jungle is full of tar pits. While it's played for laughs, Caduceus was almost eaten by a large jungle antlion. Twice. - The end of the episode begins with the group hearing the sound of someone sobbing. When Beau joins in, the sobbing stops, and as she turns around, there's a bodak right in her face. - The bodak that ambushed the group at the end of the last episode has a nasty ability, where it can drop someone to 0 HP just by looking at them. This is what happens to Beau. - Fortunately, both Fjord and Yasha are quick to respond with some magical heals. - The situation the Nein are now in. It's their second day on the island, so their memories are slowly eroding. The Dragon Turtle sunk their ship while they were away, so unless they want to abandon the people of the island by teleporting, they're stuck there. Vokodo knows they're plotting against him, and he's angry. - The Traveller shows all the signs of a gaslighting abuser. - The Rumblecusp volcano erupts as Caleb starts setting ships on fire. The village of Vo is in grave danger and with the party still inside the volcano at the end of the episode, we have no idea what its fate is. - As amazing as Caleb's disintegration of Vokodo is, it could have gone badly wrong. He rolled 72 on damage, and had Vokodo made the saving throw, it would've been deflected onto another member of the party, who would've also had to make a DC 17 Dexterity save. The only people above 72 hit points at the time were Yasha, Caduceus and Fjord, and if Disintegrate kills someone, they cannot be revived without extremely high level magic that the Nein cannot use (yet), as the body is vaporised. Matt said he knew who he'd deflect it to if it came to it; but never specified who it would have been. - Matt later confirmed on the first post-hiatus episode of Talks Machina that he thought about two options: the first one would have been Caleb, because he was the one who was trying to disintegrate Vokodo. But then Matt remembered that Caleb has a Ring of Evasion that would have made him succeed the saving throw even in case of failure, meaning that Caleb was guaranteed to survive the hit. So he started to think to another target because Vokodo would have wanted to kill someone, and that target, due to being the one that banished him to the Astral Sea, would've been Jester. But then Matt started to think that Vokodo would have not known about the Ring, so it could have ended up to be Caleb anyway. - So what was Vokodo running from? Seemingly a living city in the Astral Sea that is very, very hungry. It begs the question of why Vokodo would show the Nein this vision in his death throws too. A warning of what might be coming? - While the volcano's eruption didn't hurt the village of Vo, Vokodo's death immediately ended his memory-clouding effect on the villagers. There is a lot of confusion, and a number of awkward conversations between people who have families. - The formerly close villagers have already begun to split into factions. - The episode's cliffhanger: Trent Ikithon has invited Caleb to dine with him tomorrow night, and Astrid and Eodwulf will be there. - Fjord casts See Invisibility to perceive traps and scry orbs in Trent Ikithon's tower, but it gets dispelled in the moment the Mighty Nein walk through the door of the dining room, hinting that Ikithon has the means to hinder most of their magic. - When they sit at the table and Jester asks Ikithon to speak louder because she is sitting on the other side, he casts Telepathy. Just to remind everyone that mind manipulation spells are his specialty. - Caleb invites Ikithon to roleplay as the King's advisor as he presented himself as such. His suggestion to the king sounds more like a subtle threat for the Mighty Nein to enjoy each other's company as they can before they will be forced to leave someone behind so that the rest of them might survive. - Ikithon claims to be the one who caused Bren's mind to break in the first place. Then he sent in a cleric to heal him and created the conditions for him to escape, so that he could travel and endure the worst hardships to hone his powers and ambitions on his own terms. Caleb was never on the run - if Ikithon really wanted him to die he would have never left the Sanatorium. - Why did Ikithon do that? Because Bren was too talented to become a simple Volstrucker, so he took his training to the next level. He says he did it as an act of love for his favorite student. Then he dares to claim that this was exactly what his parents wanted for him. - After that, Ikithon claims that he wants Caleb to kill him so that he can claim his position at the Cerberus Assembly for himself and become his successor. The old wizard heavily implies that this is how most of the current members of the Assembly obtained their positions. - And, in spite of a Natural 20 of Insight check, it was impossible to determine how much of what Ikithon claimed was true and how much were his own personal delusions. Thankfully the Mighty Nein have already witnessed too many similar acts of manipulation to fall for it, and their trust in Caleb is not damaged at all. They just listen to the conversation with livid contempt, leaving Caleb to speak for himself. - Astrid and Eodwulf's behavior during the dinner. Eodwulf spoke rarely, preferring to eat his steak and listen to what the others have to say; Astrid instead spoke mostly with Caleb, remarking how much they missed him and how their actions, even though morally wrong, were for the good of the Empire, with her body language leaning away from Ikithon from time to time. At the end of the dinner, it is clear that they are as scared of Ikithon as Caleb used to be at the beginning of the campaign, and they are still under his control. - It becomes even worse after that Liam revealed during a Talks Machina that Bren broke when he was still "a short way into it": all the horrible things that Ikithon did to Caleb and the acts of violence he was forced to do such as murdering his own parents were just the beginning of the training to become a Volstrucker. What else did Ikithon do to Astrid and Eodwulf during the last sixteen years? - When Fjord asks Ikithon about wanting a successor, he clarifies that he doesn't want to leave his position and that he wants to keep it for a very long time. Trent Ikithon is in his late 70s, meaning that he is actually close to dying of old age unless magic safety measures are involved. - What started as a pretty easy encounter with a bunch of chuuls take a turn for the worse when a warlock of Uk'otoa appears and cast Dispel Magic on Caleb's magical amber. The one containing the Cloven Crystal. - Even worse, he's not alone as none other than a reanimated Captain Avantika joins the Party and immediately attacks Fjord. Seems she's holding a grudge. - Lucien somehow manages to sneak into a heavily guarded fort and personally kill Vess de Rogna, a leading member of the Cerberus Assembly, without alerting a single soul. Either Vess was weaker than we were lead to believe, or Lucien is significantly more powerful than anyone had ever suspected. - The Ice Elementals viciously attack Caduceus. Taliesin confirmed that if Beau didn't rush to kill two of the creatures that were storming him when she did, Caduceus would have been knocked out by their passive cold damage. - At the end of the fight against the Ice Elementals, Fjord drops the rope he was holding, causing Veth to lose grip and slide through the room. A Natural 1 causes her to slide outside of the room from a newly open door. It turns out that beyond the door there is a 270 feet tall pit, but thankfully Veth was able to cast Feather Fall to survive with no damage at all. As Taliesin pointed out, if any other character would have fallen down instead of Veth, that character would have instantly died. Caleb and Jester almost fell down when that door opened. - However it would have ended up badly if it was only Jester to fall, as Caleb can cast Feather Fall too and the spell can be extended up to five people. That's what would have happened if Laura failed her saving throw, as Liam actually failed his and used Caleb's Ring of Evasion to succeed anyway. - Jester would still have been able to use Polymorph to turn herself in a flying creature. - It turns out that at the bottom of the pit there is a black pudding. Veth manages to subdue it by using Hypnotic Pattern. As she is telling the rest of the Mighty Nein that she doesn't need help, a second one appears and attacks her. - She tries to escape by climbing on the walls. It turns out that the black puddings can climb on the walls too, and that they are faster than her. Veth ends up to be attacked, and she loses the concentration required to keep the spell to climb on the wall. She falls right over the second pudding, that proceeds to envelop her. - After the pit battle, the Mighty Nein find a room with seven corpses inside, who seem to belong to adventurers from the Dynasty. The sight is scary because the people from the Dynasty are known to be formidable fighters and magic users, and the Tomb Takers were outmatched seven to five. - The end of the episode. The Mighty Nein open a door and find themselves in an amphitheater-like room. There is a fight going on, and they watch as people get cut in two at the very moment they enter. Then, in the middle of the room, stands Lucien, who grabs a screaming woman by the neck. Then the nine eyes light up and the woman dies just like Vess. Then he turns toward the Mighty Nein and cheerfully apologizes for the messy room. - The worst part of the situation? They just faced two very hard battles and took only a short rest to recover. They only have a handful of spells at their disposal, and they know for a fact that Molly/Lucien can kill a target in one hit. Thankfully the Tomb Takers seem to be in a similar situation, as the bodies the Nein found in the previous room were still fresh and they just ended another combat. - Lucien and the rest of the Tomb Takers have something of a hive mind, occasionally speaking in unison. It is very creepy. - Lucien describes what happened to his soul as it being shredded into pieces, taking years to reform, a process only completed when Molly was killed. - While it ended up on a funny note thanks to Jester's clutch use of Polymorph (twice), the encounter with the Frost Worm could have easily turned out into a TPK thanks to the worm's Trill ability that stunned the entire party, except Jester, for a whole minute with a DC of 20 to shake it off. No wonder Dagen was afraid of that thing. - Matt makes the Frost Worm's cry absolutely terrifying. - The Nein discover an ancient artifact, a ring of stone statues. Jester enters it, and is confronted by the spirits in the statues. They tell her that they will give her something, but they will take something in return. Jester asks about the Tomb Takers, and the spirits confirm that they are trying to bring back the city Vokodo showed them. However, they took years off of her life. About 5, to be precise. Slightly blunted by the fact that Caleb can potentially reverse it, but that magic is currently quite beyond his power (translation: a Wish spell). - The bizarre abomination of a monster that the party are faced with at the end of the episode - a mammoth's body with a deformed human head and six human arms coming out of it. - As the group is climbing back to the surface, Jester decides to torch the malevolent, sentient forest. Matt proceeds to describe a cacophony of inhuman screeches and squeals coming from down below as the fire spreads. Despite being incredibly unnerved by them previously, Caduceus considers burning them more of a Mercy Kill than anything. - The book that Lucien allowed Beauregard and Caleb to consult turns out to be a literal nightmare fuel, as their following night is filled with visions of the Somnovem and the Eyes of Nine. - As they suddenly wake up in unison, Beau begins to franticaly write down what she remembers of the dream and Caleb realizes a red eye has appeared on the back of her left hand. A similar one is present on his right arm. - Gelidon returns to hunt the Nein, and takes a particular interest in Yasha's scent. The Nein fend her off with the help of the Tomb Takers, but she almost escapes with Beau in her mouth. - The Nein finally do battle with the Tomb Takers when they steal their Bag of Holding and it's an absolute Curb-Stomp Battle in Lucien's favour. Exhausted from their battle with Gelidon, the group barely escape with their lives, and we don't know whether the Tomb Takers will pursue them into the night. - The Nein decide to ask Halas about the Somnovem. Even a mage as ancient and well-learned as him isn't aware that a ward survived the destruction of Aeor. - After a Greater Restoration severs Veth's attachment to her cursed dagger, Sam and Matt reveal the curse had another aspect: every time Veth was healed she would have to spend a Hit Die, and if she didn't have any, she would instantly die. Veth had gone through the Gelidon and Tomb Takers fights in this state, meaning if they had needed more healing those fights could have gone even worse. - Caduceus has another dream about the Savalirwood. The trees shift until they appear made of flesh, and the ground around his home erupts in a mass of stone and teeth and skin, completely devouring his cemetery. Not only is Matt's description horrifying, but think about it from Caduceus' perspective: This corruption swallows the graveyard from the ground up, disgracing the memory of everyone buried there. The ultimate perversion of his family's work. - Beau and Caleb have another dream about the Eyes of Nine. Matt's hellish whispers are so on-point even the cast seem unnerved. - The episode starts as a typical heist. Things quickly go south, and by the end, the cast admit the episode is practically a horror movie. - Marion, Yeza, and Luc are caught up in the fight between Team Plane Shift and the elemental guardian. When the guardian uses a wide-ranged attack everyone is caught in the fire including the NPCs. Luc eventually takes enough damage to kill him (thankfully Caduceus has enough magic left for a Revivify). - Since they barged through his tower and basically stole his Plane Shift scroll to get away while he was in a state of Astral Projection, Jester tries to contact Yussa in order to apologize and make sure he's okay. Immediately after sending the message, the "reply" she receives is the tortured screams of thousands of minds, implying that while in the Astral Plane, his mind was absorbed into Cognoza. - When Caduceus communes with the Wildmother in the pool of the Blooming Grove, she shows him a disturbing vision: Melora herself, connected to thousands of souls. Then, the tortured screaming of Cognouza is audible, and first the souls fade away, and then the Wildmother herself withers away and dies, all while looking Caduceus straight in the eyes to show him the urgency and sadness of the matter. - When the Nein arrive at the (now thriving) Blooming Grove, Beau takes the time to try and meditate in an area of the graveyard at the grave of an Ioun follower. While trying to connect to Ioun or any other deity for answers of what to do about the eyes on her and Caleb something unexpected happens. While meditating, the top most eye on Ioun's symbol blinks red and Lucien answers. - The encounter first ends up funny with Beau's indignant reaction to Lucien answering but it takes a turn for the horrifying when Lucien attempts to mentally trap Beau in their conversation, implying to try and place another eye on her. It takes Beau a Ki point to reroll her wisdom saving throw. Even rolling a 25 it's still a struggle to break connection. - Essek tells Fjord that an encampment of troops have found the Tomb Takers. Essek asked Fjord if the troops should let them pass or fight. Fjord says fight, so that the Mighty Nein can get as much rest as possible for the big battle. Not only are they presumably killed, they barely slow the Tomb Takers down and the Nein don't get to finish their long rest. Fjord's coldness sells the scene as shockingly ruthless and pragmatic. - Caleb and Essek discover that the Aeorians had made strides into shunting oneself backwards within their own timeline. Essek is intrigued by the possibility of correcting past mistakes. Caleb was in that position at the start of the campaign, but he's changed now and no longer seeks to meddle with time. But is that true for Essek? Could he resist the temptation of erasing his actions that started the war? So much of the Nein's growth and what they've worked to achieve hinged on them giving the Beacon to the Dynasty, what are the implications for themselves and the world if that never happened? - More of the Somnovem make their appeareances, and they are absolutely terrifiying and alien: Each embodies an emotion which shapes their goals and powers. For example, the Somonvem of joy, Gaudius, wants to bring joy and love to all with world by connecting them... to the Cognouza-hivemind. Their own existence is rather cruel, too: fused together with eigth other beings each, which they in part mistrust, fear, or hate, and, when thusly forced together, robbed of their own will: instead speaking as one, the Somnovem Omega. - Lucien's form as the Neo Somnovem was pretty freaky, but his second Appearance is absolutely grotesque, with him fused to the flesh city by thick tendrils coming from the lower half of his body, which are covered in eyes and mouths. - While it leads up to a sweet moment, after Lucien is killed, the party needs to separate him from Cognouza as he is still attached to it- which they do by literally cutting him out of it. - The Mighty Nein have saved the world, and are resting at the Blooming Grove when Trent calls Caleb to meet him outside. Now. - Before the fight, Veth tells Yeza to take Luc and run into the forest while she handles things. The reminder of what happened last time she said that clearly is terrifying for both of them. - The subsequent battle starts off with Trent casting Time Stop and taking the frozen seconds to invoke a number of defensive enchantments, most notably a Ring of Warding. As the battle continues, the Nein are stunned when literally nothing they throw at him can so much as leave a scratch. They quickly figure out that they need to dispel his protective barrier, but it is a tense couple of rounds, and he still has backup shields besides. - Trent's fate after he's brought before court. Forever having his hands bound, unable to move, unable to talk, being force-fed, leaving him with nothing but his thoughts about how badly he failed and what he'd done to Caleb and his other students. Not that Trent didn't have it coming, but that doesn't dampen how terrifying the prospect is of that kind of imprisonment. - The full reveal of the parts of Yasha's backstory that only Matt knew. Her experience as the Orphanmaker traumatised her so badly that she essentially went feral in the Xhorhas wilds, until Obann found her. He controlled her mind for one or two years, forced to kill anyone he told her too, before she finally broke from his control and found the Stormlord. And Obann? He didn't care, and just moved on to his next target. - If Trent wasn't horrifying and disgusting enough, Matt reveals that he regularly casts Detect Thoughts at social gatherings, and this is why he took an interest in Yasha at the Harvest Close festival. - As many suspected, the Chained Oblivion was indeed influencing things behind the scenes all campaign. Including Cognouza to an extent.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/CriticalRoleCampaignTwo
Crashbox / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes For a show whose whole purpose is to educate children on geography, math, science and biology, this show clearly has some disturbing imagery and segments that will keep many children up at night. Some of the segments can be a little unsettling to kids, to say the least: - Captain Bones, who is cursed to "sail the seven seas for all eternity" - even when his body has rotted away. How long has he been on that ship? And what happened to the crew? - Eddie Bull's segment might be a tad scary due to the fact that he gets eaten by all of the animals at the zoo for no reason other than he's so delicious. - Some of the distractions on "Distraction News" could be creepy due to the fact that random and surreal imagery keeps popping up to distract the audience. Not only that, but Dora Smarmy herself looks... off. - The Revolting Slob can come off as this, with his terrible hygiene, grotesque appearance, and continual farting, burping, and sneezing. The fact that he explodes at the end of each segment doesnt help matters. - The game Riddle Snake can be this, with the titular character being a hissing purple snake with yellow eyes, the echo effect of the hostess's voice, and the use of pounding drums as a soundtrack. It doesn't help that some episodes end with this game. - Think Tank may frighten some younger viewers as Captain Bob is sucked down a drain in each segment. - The very intro to the show has shades of this, especially for younger viewers. We see a computer falling with a loud, droning sound, juxtaposed with a brain accompanied by an increasingly distorted lullaby.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Crashbox
Cross Ange / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes Dying from fighting Interdimensional Dragons can leave messy results. Cross Ange is a very dark series featuring lots of gore and blood. It is not for the faint of heart or stomach. With that being said, there's many horrifying scenes in the show itself. - Ange witnessing her mother's death after the former is exposed as a Norma and being subjected to a cavity search when she is conscripted into the military towards the end of "The Fallen Imperial Princess". - Ange suffering a Near-Rape Experience courtesy of Zola. - Pretty much how the Normas are sent to Arzenal once they are exposed, which happens to Ange. - In Ange's first battle one pilot was bifurcated by a laser, another was quartered and devoured by DRAGONs. Then again, the over-the-top nature of said deaths, specially the ridiculously copious amount of blood, may drive said deaths straight into Narm territory. - Hilda suffering a Police Brutality and Ange being tortured by Sylvia towards the end of "Traitorous Homeland". - Ange witnessing the DRAGONs being burned by Jasmine in "The Right Arm's Past" and realizing that she killed humans all along. - Julio's assault on Arzenal and Chris's death in "Arzenal Burns". - Anytime a pilot or even a DRAGON spurts out High-Pressure Blood, which happens fairly often. Seriously, be careful when watching this series if you are afraid of blood and gore. - What World War VII did to humanity's existence on Earth. There's no human life left and all we see are decaying skeletons. Ange pukes at the site of what happened. War Is Hell, indeed. - Revenge mode Jill, in general, since her allies were killed by Embryo. - Also, her plan to use the DRAGONs as a decoy to kill Embryo in "Conclusive Ocean" and her plan to kill a tied-up Momoka. - There's also Marika's death at the hands of the Embryo-influenced Chris in "The Survivors". - Everything that Embryo does in the series caught others off-guard. - He did a Mind Rape on Jill, which caused her first Libertus to fail. - Even Julio's Karmic Death at his hands was pretty disturbing. - He made the Normas The Scapegoat to the humans and captured Aura to use it as the source for the mana. - The part where he convinces Sylvia to join his side and whip Liza to the point of sending her straight to the dungeon. - He attempts to rape Ange, but it backfires on him every time to the point that he straight-up tries to kill her. - He abandons the Diamond Rose Knights to their fate in "Eve of Destruction". Watching two of them get killed at the hands of the dragons was awfully disturbing. Before that, Embryo strangles Ersha and begins to merge the two worlds together in "Necessary". - And also Jill's death. His Hysterica shoots her in the stomach and it takes a short time for her to die by the beginning of "Beyond Time". - In the Grand Finale, he attempts to kill Tusk and Ange and get into Salia, Sala and Hilda's Ragna-mail to save his skin. - Embryo's Karmic Death at the hands of Tusk caught people off-guard because of its gruesomeness. His look of terror is suitably unsettling. - Mana is basically Government-Encouraged Magical Meth; it breaks down the willpower of mages for a few circus tricks, leaves them susceptible to fear and decadence, and generally makes them the slaves of Embryo, especially in Episode 22. They've been poisoning their minds with the very thing that keeps them at peace, and they use it decadently because they believe it's unlimited (it just comes from a really, really, really big dragon). Once it runs out... - Picturing the demise of the other Norma. They get seduced by Embryo at his most affable nature and join him. But then his sadistic personality shows and they would know that not only is he insane, but he's homicidal. And it's already too late to escape and no one's coming to save you. - Anyone who died from being sucked into Embryo's merger of the two worlds. - Chris going absolutely insane with her Ragna-mail in "Eve of Destruction" when Embryo abandons her can also catch people off-guard. Considering the fact that she was trained to hunt down DRAGONs while at Arzenal, she does end up killing some of them during her rampage.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/CrossAnge
Crisis Core / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes Admit it. You're hearing the theme in your head right now...Considering this game is a prequel detailing the events that led to Sephiroth's fall from heroism and descent into insanity as well as Cloud Strife's eventual mental breakdowns, there's plenty of horror to go around.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/CrisisCore
Cross Region / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes - \|\|Shiver's\|\| death. The incident begins when Flash tumbles over the rail of a cruise ship. Seeing her drowning in the ocean below, Vladimir blindly throws \|\|the Dewott\|\| in after her hoping that he could pull off a rescue. \|\|Instead, he ends up getting caught in the ship's propellers, unable to outswim their pull, and the party on the deck is greeted to the sight of bits and pieces of his skin and tail floating atop bloody water moments later. \|\|	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/CrossRegion
Crossed / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes Crossed in general is all the horror of the zombie/infected apocalypse, but to its logical extreme. ## General - The Crossed in general. The Reavers from Firefly are known for their horrific M.O. of raping people, eating them and sewing their skins to their clothing, but for the most part, all of this horrificness remains offscreen. What the Crossed do to anyone they come across? You get to see it. - While the Crossed themselves are unhinged maniacs, some humans manage to outdo them in sheer cruelty: - Joseph Pratt from Family Values does not seem to be a bad man at first glance, but even before the Crossed outbreak it is shown that he abuses and rapes his daughters, a habit he keeps even after the C-day. - Steve from Homo Superior is a Torture Technician who already gained infamy due to her horrible treatment of prisoners, and even though she does mellow down a bit, it does not stick for long. Even worse, upon being offered by the infected Ashley and Ashlynn to become a Crossed, Steve willingly accepts the offer. - Harold Lorre from Psychopath manages to be one of the most sick and inhumane bastards in the whole franchise, not just because he is so sadistic with killing other people and mutilating their bodies afterwards in an unspeakable manner, but because he is such a good manipulator that no one in his group suspects a thing until the very end. And even when Amanda escapes, Harold's hallucinations continue haunting her mind and eventually lead to her wiping out a group she joined with in Breakdown, not to mention the fact Harold himself manages to escape with his life from the situation, still hellbent on getting his love interest back. - The Gamekeeper from Wish You Were Here probably trumps Harold Lorre in terms of being an irredeemable bastard. While he is no doubt a skillful and adapted man, he constantly torments the luxury couple for whom he used to work before the C-day (even raping Agnes repeatedly) and treats every other member of his group as expendable, showing no sympathy to people dying around him. Even without the Crossed nearby, the Gamekeeper is still a horrible person, but the scariest thing is that he is necessary for the other members of his group to survive and he knows it, freely abusing his power all the time. This is a harsh and realistic reminder that no matter what, Humans Are the Real Monsters. And such people do exist in real life. - Curtis Wentz from the Gavin Land arc is a movie director, but beneath a fancy facade hides a gruesome rapist who is heavily implied to have raped and murdered Gavin's daughter, ensured Land ended up in prison, and sent a man to subject him to Prison Rape. In addition, the letter he sends to Land while the latter is in jail describes a young boy (implicitly Gavins son) getting kidnapped and subjected to nearly the same treatment, poetically called "Land's End". Even though after the C-Day he seems to have had a change of heart, both Land and the reader will have a hard time accepting his claims, and the former eventually kills him in the end. - The fact that we never get any sort of complete understanding of where the virus came from: Was it a genetically engineered weapon that was accidentally released? Was it an alien life form that somehow ended up on Earth? Was it a mutated strain of rabies that jumped from apes to man? Or perhaps the most terrifying possibility is simply that God decides that he's fed up with humanity's shit, and sends a plague to purge humanity. Given the... signature shape of the rash that forms on the faces of the victims, the argument for the last one can definitely be made. - Thin Red Line outright reveals that the Crossed Virus really IS supernatural (or possibly extraterrestrial), which does not help matters at all. For even more added horror, while we already know that the Crossed Virus is unlike anything else in the world, we still don't know if it was some kind of supernatural or alien entity that caused the pandemic to happen, or if the Crossed Virus somehow started the pandemic by itself. - If Homo Totor is to be believed, the virus has been around since prehistoric times and was the cause of the Toba Catastrophe. The pandemic in 2008 was the recent incarnation of the virus and possibly the result of the Homo Totor DNA awakening in modern man. And in spite of the Homo Tortor story being an in-universe fiction, the fact that the evidence of ancient Crossed was present by Nelson even before the C-Day means that it did come from somewhere and at least has some basis in truth. - Really, one needs to just look at the covers to most issues. Each one a macabre mural of madness and murder, each more grotesque than the last. Special mention goes to "torture" variants, which pretty much speak for themselves. It does not help the case that on many covers the Crossed individuals are looking straight at the reader. ## Volume One - The first issue ends with a pointed lesson for anyone looking for a "magic bullet" solution to being chased by evil zombies: just keep running. Joel's family learned it the hard way. - Speaking of Joel's family, Joel's wife was injured while they were escaping the Crossed and she tried to sacrifice herself for her daughter and husband. But, Joel was terrified of losing his wife and tried to deter the Crossed with salt because he saw one die from it and got his hopes up. At first, it appears the plan works as the Crossed do stop in their tracks... but the next panel proves Joel wrong in the worst way possible. Joel is violently raped while being disembowelled, his furious wife is also raped while suffering from a head injury (her last words are cursing Joel for not listening), and their daughter probably got the most merciful fate by comparison as she was just dismembered by the Crossed (either by hacking her to death with a cleaver or by simply pulling her apart) and was hopefully spared the fate of being violently raped. This scene was an Establishing Series Moment for the whole Crossed franchise as it showed how dark it will get. - The Crossed are capable of using weapons and reasoning out how they get "made". Speaking of magic bullets, at one point in the original run Cindy and Stan discover the Crossed actually lacing bullets with their own semen in order to turn more folks, including Randall from the main group. - Speaking of Randall, the panel where he is revealed to be infected. As Scott the paramedic goes to look after him, we see Randall's face. It has a cross-like rash, meaning that he has been infected. And then Randall opens his eyes as his face contorts into the one of a madman. As it cuts to others, Scott lets out an off-panel scream before being silenced. We never find out how exactly did Randall kill Scott, and this is one of the only few deaths that we don't actually see in person, only getting the implication of it. - And also imagine being Kelly while running away from him. Aside from being blind, you now have an actual Crossed trying to get you. A pretty scary situation. - A group of survivors are telling tales of the past. An older man starts talking about his romantic lovers... and how he would tie them down and murder them. This was before the Crossed virus. Even though said man was trying to get over with his past life after the C-Day, everyone else is still freaked out by such a reveal. The older man is taken out into the woods next morning. He is not seen again. This is the human court system now. ## Badlands - The final issue of the first arc, Of the World in Its Becoming, is pretty tense and horrific at how utterly helpless the protagonists are. It opens with Harry]] being bisected with a saw, and we get a good view of his infected upper half trying to crawl away while laughing before expiring, all while his murderers make fun of his misery from behind. Worse still, what's left of the group tries to retrieve the gun and has to split up in two directions. The plan fools only a small part of the horde, and the rest still choose to charge at Ian, Ricky and Mark. After Ricky and Mark are both picked off and infected (with the latter outright being shown raped, complete with a Gross-Up Close-Up), it seems that Ian will manage to take the last of Crossed swarm out... Until he makes a mistake at standing too close to Harry's corpse, and as a result he gets splashed with infected blood, just like what happened to Penny in Ian's flashback back in the first issue. The issue, and the arc as a whole, ends with Ian about to blow himself up with a grenade, all while other members of his group are standing behind him, having been turned Crossed. And yes, that includes John, Rob and Alec. - And speaking of Ian's flashback, we get to see an infected woman hurling a baby into the car and having him mutilated with car blender. Even worse, said infected blood gets on Penny's face, and thus she allows herself to be run over by another Crossed. - At one point, Ricky notices though the binoculars that Pat seemingly joined the main horde, despite having his tendons cut off and not having a cross on his face... Until it's revealed that someone skinned Pat alive and decided to wear his face as a mask''. - The carnival massacre in Yellow Belly - made worse by showing children getting killed or infected, as well as a guy who is about to get his head smashed with a sledgehammer by a Crossed weightlifter. And then there is Eli getting attacked by his infected father (fortunately, this happens off-panel), all while Edmund can helplessly hear before falling asleep due to his coping mechanism. - Said father hides both boys in separate barrels and then tries to rush a Crossed clown with a wooden plank. At first, he gets the edge by knocking a hat off his face - only for two more clowns to tackle him from behind. Poor Edmund gets to witness his father getting stripped naked, then raped and beaten by all three Crossed, before he gets up, now himself infected, - and suddenly turns towards the barrels his sons were hiding in, causing Edmund to soil his pants. - The massacre in Palmer the following morning, which includes Edmund's mother being killed in a cruel way, most of Edmund's classmates being gruesomely murdered, including Hank Smith getting his jugular vein ripped out by his Crossed girlfriend and Edmund himself being forced to kill Sweeney, who was still alive and uninfected by that point. - Whatever an infected Nathan does to Jared in The Golden Road is in no way a pleasant sight. The poor guy gets dismembered with a meat hook, and while we do not see most of the process, we get to see the progress, by first showing Jared's head with hollow eye sockets and most of face missing and then (by the time Gideon and other students find him) a bloody mess. Even worse? Clooney did it as a part of his plan to get back at Gideon, whatever all the casualties might be. Jared might have been a bit of a jerk, but even he did not deserve to die such a cruel death. - Gideon's own fate is not much better. The infected citizens of Stumptown who had been scammed by Gideon in the past, all pounce on him, which includes some of his former employees, Clooney and other students. All we see of him next is that he got all his limbs amputated, and yet Gideon's still alive, albeit infected. - In the final issue of Thin Red Line, Tom and Jackie are shown listening to distress signals from numerous passenger planes under attack from the Crossed as they fly towards the rogue Russian nuclear bombers. Just enough is heard to elicit all sorts of fridge horror, particularly towards the end, which is too much for Jackie. This is American Airlines Flight One-Zero-Seven broadcasting on all channels.. ...Virgin Two-Six-Two declaring an emergency, we are descending.. ...into the cockpit jesus stop them We're in hell those are kids we're in hell Jackie: Kill it, will you? Tom: Sorry. - At the end of the Thin Red Line arc Harry and Gordon Brown part ways. Just before the bunker door closes, an infected Dr. Chopra suddenly appears behind an oblivious Brown, ready to pounce. A shocked and horrified Harry can only watch as the door closes shut. - "Quisling" features a Crossed, nicknamed Smokey by the narrator, who is genuinely smarter and less impulsive than 99% of the Crossed seen elsewhere in the series. He's able to rally the other infected to him and force them to use actual tactics, which are effective enough to allow him to attack and take over a surviving military installation. The Crossed have their Genghis Khan and he's still out there. - Though Crossed +100 shows that the Crossed population in North America is severely reduced 100 years later, and these Crossed are largely inbred wretches who have no knowledge whatsoever of modern technology. Whatever Smokey did, it looks like it didn't stick. Beauregard Salt, on the other hand, managed to form a whole legacy that still lives on... - Smokey's Establishing Character Moment is pretty haunting: finding some humans hidden inside a truck, yanking out one of them who he proceeds to cruelly start dismembering, and then grinning as he closes the door on the others to save them for later and torture to death one by one over the next couple days. Try not to imagine being the last person taken out of that truck. - Another small thing on Smokey's part is that if you happen to catch his attention by misfortune, he will get you no matter what. Try to escape by a helicopter? He might be already there, waiting for you to hijack the aircraft and even take you hostage. You manage to evade him and get the helicopter airborne? Don't celebrate too early, Smokey will find something to hurl at the rotors and cut your escape short. Want to hide underground in a bunker? He will either utilize a human Quisling to trick you into opening the doors for him or, even worse, clog all the vents to the bunker so you will be at risk of either suffocating underground or having to let his horde in and face them all. Not even a bullet in the head is enough to put Smokey down since in the last Badlands issue he manages to recover from that as well. - The penultimate issue of the Gavin Land arc opens with a group of soldiers bursting inside of a house where a small family hid in. At first, it's easy to believe they are there to evacuate civilians from the overrun San Diego. That is, until these soldiers pull their visors up and reveal the Crossed rash on their faces. Three guesses at what happens next. The mother tells her daughter to not look, and while we don't see the carnage in full, the aftermath is still shown. - Homo Tortor: - The state of the Princeton University, with many mutilated and naked corpses strawn across the whole campus or impaled on pikes. The main building is also on fire, which is still raging even after an unknown period of time that has passed before Washington and his crew entered the university's grounds. - The advanced but unbelievably cruel and sadistic civilization of the Homo Tortor from 75,000 years ago (called the Blood Men) is made of this. When the actual Crossed outbreak starts in their city, the Blood Men getting massacred and turned is both satisfying and scary at the same time. - "Homo Tortor" are basically a race of red-skinned hominids that have zero restraint concerning anything combined with ultimate cruelty a human brain can dish out. During their arc the Homo Tortor slaughter a village, rape everyone, kill the old, the females and make effigies out of every bodily fluid of the victims before they leave with the young captives of which older ones have their limbs cut off for transportation and limbs eaten. The captives are taken to gigantic ships made of bones with blinded Neanderthals on oars driven by carefully adjusted screams of slaves being skinned alive and whipped, captives being fed shit and meat of the dead to survive. Occasionally some of the captives are used for torture and cannibalism, screams guiding Neanderthal oarsmen, who, again, are each blinded. Taken to a gigantic, absolutely terrifying city made of skulls and bones and sharp stakes, the captives see child slaves herded to be slaughtered, raped and eaten, and limbless adult captives skewered alive to be eaten while being cooked, meat sold for baby teeth as currency by the Homo Tortor. The Homo Tortor vivisect and torture for fun, rape for fun, skin for fun and cannibalise for fun. The city is a jagged rock colony surrounded by sharp bones with a twin monolith of the First Brother and First Sister, twincestuous rulers of Homo Tortor who just had young boy as third ruler, who himself wants to rape some captives for fun, and is slapped for "asking his parents for permission". The captives are painted with every bodily fluid from human organs and put to an arena to be untied by child slaves who run from them and even kill themselves to deny the captive "gladiators" the glee of revenge or the knives they used to cut them loose with. The co-rulers then turn on their incest child and slowly cook him alive and eat his body for a snack as captives are raped and devoured by wild animals. No other fiction in history has reached such a level, luckily the "Crossed" virus makes the empire of horror collapse on itself in one day. - For their arena events, the Blood Men use absolutely horrific primal animals that are stored just below the stadium. Before the beginning of the nightmare, Lion and his friends are all soaked with blood and ferments which makes these beasts both aggressive and horny at the same time! - Curtis's death. As he finds out that his bow is useless against a whole crowd of Crossed, he switches out to a pistol]], but Washington is so determined on getting inside the bunker that he tells Ronnie that they need someone to keep the Crossed busy. So, what does Ronnie do? He throws Curtis right at the incoming mob of psychos, and a couple of panels show what do the Crossed do to him. It is not pleasant at all. - And shortly after Washington manages to bring the power back and open the door, Warren wastes no time shooting Ronnie in the knee and leaving him to die at the hands of the same Crossed that are brutalizing Curtis. And there is also the Death Glare Warren gives Ronnie right before he leaves him for dead. Warren: (Turns to Ronnie) Hey, big guy, give me your gun. Washington: The door's open! We're through! Warren: One second. shoots Ronnie in the kneecap with a shotgun and kicks him right on the floor. Fucking murderer. - What's worse, Curtis is still alive and screaming as he is being tortured, and Ronnie is last seen desperately trying to crawl behind the door as it closes. Washington keeps telling himself that he's seen enough and that the door will muffle sounds of Ronnie's death. It's another lie, and Washington knows it. Indeed, the next issue opens with Washington describing the carnage going on behind the door, and that's even before he and Warren get to witness what happened in the bunker itself. - To top it off, Curtis's death was meaningless. Once Washington managed to unlock the transformator door, he finds several simple tumblers and brings power back on without any difficulties. And besides trying to not think about Curtis's screams being muffled by the Crossed, he now has to deal with killing a fellow man from his group that would probably be not needed. - And when Washington and Warren do enter the bunker, they find a literal massacre, with a large pool of blood and several body parts littering across the floor. The two's reaction sums it up best. Warren: Were... you hoping? That your ex would be alive? Washington: Amy? I... Maybe? But really... (while looking at the carnage inside of the bunker, with many bodyparts strewn around) I can't even tell which one she is. - The way the arc ends in both stories is also pretty horrifying: - Lion's story: when it seems that Lion and Sandstorm will escape the Blood Men camp, the former suddenly falls off the prehistoric war elephant they were riding and can only look helplessly as an Eldritch Abomination (heavily implied to be the Blood Men's god) emerges and crushes him underneath. - Washington's story: after finishing reading the above story, Washington is understandably confused of what that was when a figure beneath a cloak presses a spacebar on a keyboard of the computer, revealing security camera footage of the entire bunker infiltration by Washington's group. Just as the student is about to turn around, two figures nail his palms to the table, and reveal themselves fully as Crossed. The First Brother is Nelson himself, while the First Sister is Amy, Washington's former girlfriend. When Washington asks whether the story was made up or not, the two Crossed reveal that while Lion's story was made up, it served as inspiration for the new Homo Tortor based cilivization. Then, after Warren gets captured by a pack of Crossed, he is brought to Nelson's followers, who severely mutilated Washington (now labeled the First Child by Amy) and put him on a "chair" made of wooden planks (read: nailed his arms and legs to the wooden planks and also cut his stomach open before putting hot coal into it, perhaps to cook his inner organs to serve for food later), just like what happened to the First Child of the Nelson's story. The final issue ends with Warren about to receive the same treatment while Washington can only repeatedly scream in terror that the whole Homo Tortor thing was true, just as his head starts to distort, as if something wants to burst out of it. In short, Washington did find the truth he was ready to die for... just not the one he hoped to learn. - The Homo Tortor story itself is pretty nightmarish, but the fact that two Crossed individuals decided to recreate it in real life is even worse. - Lesser of Two Evils has a lot of them. - The very beginning of the story has some of this. In the background, news coverage discussing the government's response to the outbreak plays over abandoned, desolate streets. It takes a few panels to see the initial carnage outside a hospital, but then there is a cut to inside the hospital where at first glance it seems like a group of nurses and EMTs are still trying to care for patients despite being surrounded. However, as things move on, it turns out that aside from the patient strapped to the operating table everyone in the operating room is infected. They end up giving her a breast implant using human skulls to enlarge them. Bear in mind the poor woman is alive and uninfected until after the procedure is completed. - The same group of Crossed medical professionals later discovers the main group of survivors. While they can't get to them, they do pass the time by mutilating one of the Crossed, specifically by removing his genitals and replacing it with an iron rod that the survivors label a horsecock. - Morgan and Olivia instill a sense of Paranoia Fuel in the survivor group when, citing their survival guide, point out that they can't be sure canned food or fish aren't contaminated. This makes the survivors' existence even more precarious. - The scavenging party departs the bridge and makes their way to the highway. It at first seems like there's no Crossed in sight and they decide to search a car in the middle of the road for supplies. One of them notices a puddle of liquid near the trunk. It's urine. When they open the trunk they discover a naked man, uninfected but with his eyes removed who naturally begins screaming in terror assuming the scavenging party is more of the Crossed. This leads the actual Crossed to find not only the man (who might have been deliberately left as a bait which would attract their attention by screaming) but the scavenging party as well. - When the scavenging party gets to the pharmacy, one of them is attacked and killed not by the Crossed, but by a lion that escaped from the zoo. Just helps remind us it's not only the Crossed that are a threat in this world. - The last scavenging party member tries to commit suicide while hiding under the car... Only to survive the gunshot to his forehead. The poor guy has little time to react with horror as he is quickly infected by the Crossed sticking their fingers into the fresh bullet hole... - The biggest fuel though has to come from The Reveal that Morgan and Olivia's disruption of the group dynamic was done entirely on purpose. And it wasn't even a simple attempt to weed out the weak or stupid either-the two girls explicitly state that their entire goal was the destruction of the survivor group in order to take what they had. All because their survival guide told them this was necessary for survival. It's only a small comfort that Tyree escapes and reunites with his father Richie, while the girls get taken down by the Crossed. ## Wish You Were Here - The first volume of Wish You Were Here is also terrifying for how easy it is to get infected. One Cavaite becomes a Crossed from eating a fish which apparently had Crossed flesh in its stomach. The Cavaites have to overcook fish to decrease the risk of someone getting infected like that and sometimes it still happens. What happens to Roshan's brother is even worse, and parental concerns at its heaviest. One minute the kid is just running through the fields in territory considered perfectly safe, playing near some birds. Then a horrified Shaky tells the parents that those birds can carry body parts and other stuff they're eating around in their mouth for miles. Frantically, they race over, but the toddler is already curiously picking up an eyeball dropped from one of the birds' beaks, which is quickly shown to have come from a Crossed, as a Crossed rash appears on the boy's forehead. - The very first issue of Wish You Were Here has a Crossed rape and stab a dolphin to death while singing about his mother. And when Vincent attempts to escape a group of them, he fails and gets dragged on their boat where he is predictably tortured and infected. - The London outbreak as witnessed by Shaky in one of his flashbacks. The poor guy spends most of the time running away and hiding from the Crossed. Even his father, brother and girlfriend are either killed or infected. At one point he slips and falls down the stairs and into the London underground, which is swarmed by a lot of Crossed doing their horrific errands, and he only escapes thanks to another survivor fighting off nearby with a gun. Even being picked up by the river cops on Thames river provides little relief as the boat in question is attacked and destroyed by a group of Crosssed soldiers. Then, Shaky spends a week running and hiding until he is ambushed by a group of Crossed while trying to use the bushes. Had the Gamekeeper's group not intervened, Shaky's story would have been over there and then. - The infected Boy gets released by Shaky in an attempt to get included to the sortie, and when he tries to kill Rab, he proves to be even more horrifying than other Crossed seen prior. While your typical Crossed are trying to kill you, they at least let out hammy taunts and death threats. The Boy, on the other hand? Completely silent (due to having been mute even before becoming the Crossed), but just as ferocious. - The sight of the Crossed attacking the Drift Fleet. One of the biggest survivor groups in the series gone just like that in one bloody page. And the last Wish You Were Here volume opens with Cava residents actively defending their island from the entirety of the former Drift Fleet members, including Dora, who personally claims the life of one of the Cavaites. - As bad as it was, it gets even worse when Shaky discovers an infected Tabitha seaching through his sketches. Keep in mind that Tabitha was pregnant by this point. - Halfway through the final volume, Shaky and certified badass Scary Black Man Des finally go to Clay Loan to deliver the envelope to the Nun and set up a meeting between her group of organized Crossed and the Cava-ites. As soon as Shaky writes his answer, Des takes the envelope (which Shaky had been carrying around the whole time in his pocket and handling with his bare hands) and licks it in order to seal the thing. The action is so unconscious, so simple and ingrained, that it doesn't even register that the thing might have been booby trapped (as we find out later, it was rigged with the Crossed urine, and for Shaky himself too, Des just happened to take the bullet unknowingly) until he mentions that it tastes "sorta salty". What follows is equal parts Nightmare Fuel and Tearjerker as the stone-faced and previously-unflappable Des is immediately thrown into a massive Freak Out as he frantically explains his past to Shaky before he can turn completely. Des: licks the envelope .... Sorta... salty. realization sets in, he begins to panic Sh-Shaky. Listen... Listen! I lost my son inna first fuckin' days of all this! Shaky: What? Shaky: turns around Des, what's with y- Shaky: realizes what's happening Oh no. points his gun at Des - Sure, the Gamekeeper had it coming, but his death is so gruesome that we only learn about it from Rab's words as be observes the scene from afar through binoculars. As Shaky and Aoileann pull him out of the boat, Shaky shoves a flare gun into his mouth and pulls the trigger. Rab describes everything what happens, which includes the Gamekeeper's eyes emitting smoke. Rab: Hhh. Th'man's heid's on fire. His eyes 're smokin'. He cannae scream . - One Crossed special titled The Folly centers on Isaac, the son of the previously-mentioned Des. Isaac is a heavyset, overly imaginative and asthmatic kid who had broken his foot in the days before the outbreak began. His dad ends up abandoning him when he trips while trying to run away, but surprisingly he does not get killed in that moment, instead managing to take refuge on the top of a tower (the eponymous "folly", or ornamental building) located nearby. While he's safe at the top of the tower, he's stuck with the decaying body of the farmer who blew his head off with a shotgun right after Isaac reached the top, he has a limited supply of food, he dropped his inhaler while fleeing the Crossed, and his broken foot limits his ability to run so he can't escape. As the comic goes on, he begins trying to pass the time by devising a backstory for an elderly lady Crossed (who is regularly beaten and maimed by the other younger Crossed, many of whom used to bully Isaac before the outbreak) at the bottom of the tower. Eventually, she lures him down by putting his inhaler at the tower's door, which he goes to retrieve as he's having an asthma attack and will die otherwise. Surprisingly, she doesn't attack him when he goes to get it, but instead goes to the top of the tower to get the keys to the barn she used to own before the outbreak. Isaac gets detected by the other Crossed, but before they can get him, she attacks and butchers her fellow Crossed with a combine harvester. The way it's set up implies she retains some capacity for compassion despite being infected and that Isaac might manage to get to safety after all. That is, until the final panel, when she shrieks about how she's going to get the 'pigboy' (probably to alert other Crossed to his presence, though we never find out) as Isaac looks over his shoulder in terror. ## Crossed +100, Mimic and American History X - The sight of the Salt Clan attacking Chooga and the reveal of Robbie Greer being Jokemercy. - The entirety of the Sadistic Choice offered by Bashful's branch of the Salt Clan. They find out all the weaknesses of the human settlements, then surround them, and with their representative (usually Jokemercy) having one mother of a Slasher Smile demand a large number of people of a certain age to be sacrificed to them to rape and torture every year (keep in mind some of those settlements are fairly small and without many people in the first place). They also order that the settlers burn their archives and start reading Crossed scripture and that they raise a Crossed baby to teach it to be human-like (presumably for infiltration purposes). Any settlement that protests or refuses finds itself attacked in ways they hadn't thought about (like the Crossed coming through tunnels in Lubbock, Texas) and end up largely slaughtered. And some of those towns that do take the deal are trapped in that situation for years before Bashful's forces are pushed back. Any town where one of the babies dies (from natural causes or otherwise) is forced to sacrifice twenty people, then take in a new baby. The sight of the Crossed army showing up outside Murfreesboro and making their demands is a very frightening and effective cliffhanger ending, and while they are defeated there, it involved the grim task of sacrificing the hostages being turned over. - Serial killer and cannibal Beauregard Leander Salt, the "Phonebook Killer," who was already so twisted, evil, monstrous and insane when he was "normal" that he didn't notice anything different at all when he was infected with the Crossed Virus. The infection did not reveal to him anything he didn't already know. - The end of Crossed +100. One of Salt's descendants successfully infects the bulk of the army sent to destroy the Salt Clan for good. This is after it was revealed said descendant wanted to finish off the humans rather than following Salt's plan that required the survival of at least some uninfected humans. The final shot of the last issue is that descendant raising her arms to the sky in front of the new horde. - The burning of the North Carolina settlement in the first issue of Mimic, particularly what happens to their leader. It happens half a century after the C-Day, and just to rub salt in the wound, the leader was the only person of the whole community to have witnessed the C-Day in person. - Regular Crossed are frightening. Super-Crossed are frightening, but somehow, the feral troglodyte Crossed from "American History X" can feel even more frightening, possessing the kill-crazy viciousness of regular Crossed, lacking any idea of how to do anything else, not to mention having some very creepy appearances.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Crossed
Crownies / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes There's blood everywhere - Erin's daylight hallucinations. After working on a case for murder that involves looking at some very gory photos, Erin starts imagining blood coming from random places. When she visits the site of the murder, things get even worse and she imagines the entire house is bleeding around her. - Ben's grandfather crosses an angry surfer. The very next episode reveals that he was beaten and thrown into the ocean. - Out of nowhere, a passer-by throws coffee on Erin, claiming retribution for working against a defendant. What's even more terrifying is when he mentions that he knows where Erin lives. - Tatum getting groped by a prisoner.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Crownies
Crimes of the Future (2022) / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes " It is time to stop seeing. It is time to stop speaking. It is time to listen." Cronenberg has returned to the horror genre, and more than proves he still has what it takes to horrify - Earman. Just everything about him is body horror at its finest. There's some Nightmare Retardant in that he never does anything more threatening than dancing to techno, and Tenser seems to regard him as a poser - but still, that's some potent body horror. - Lang's ultimate fate. His plan to expose the truth of accelerated evolution is sabotaged, and as he weeps on the stairs outside the building he's approached by two technicians...who proceed to murder him by drilling holes in his skull.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/CrimesOfTheFuture2022
Cry of Fear / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes -Simon's suicide note in Ending 1, if you choose to spare Carcass and keep the gun. Despite using a game engine from the late 90's (GoldSource), it was created by the maker of the extremely terrifying Game Mod Afraid of Monsters, so expect a lot of scares, if not more. As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned. ## Base Game - The first nightmare sequence right at the beginning. It starts off normally, with Simon walking around his room with a camera in hand. As soon as you step out of the room, you enter a black void with only white x marks around the map. Taking pictures of them may reveal doors or entrances, but more often than not they'll reveal images of either walls with nice messages either saying "I hate you" or "I can't take this anymore", or dead bodies, all of which only appear for a split second. Eventually, you'll be walking constantly to reach the next X. And keep walking. And then BAM, giant screaming face (which is the page image) jumps up right in front of you. Some people, such as Brad from 4pp, refused to play the game after that nightmare. - It doesn't get any better with later nightmare sequences, either. - The second nightmare sequence, aptly titled You Will Die, also starts off normally, save for a split second change into a decrepit, blood-encrusted environment with a hole in the wall revealing a man riddled with Body Horror, but other than that, it's nothing. Until the soundtrack kicks in. Then the environment is replaced with the aforementioned environment, and you have to cross a hallway, all with similar encouraging messages on whiteboards such as "I NEVER WANTED THIS" and "I JUST WANT YOU TO DIE... JUST... DIE". Eventually, you'll reach a hallway with gated floors, when suddenly it's replaced with a floor made up of hands, that slowly drains your health the longer you stay there. So you better get out of there as quickly as you can, or else it's Game Over for you. - The third nightmare sequence is not as horrific as the others, but can still provide a nasty Jump Scare. It starts off with you descending a ladder out of a bloody, decrepit apartment room, and into a hallway. As you walk down the hallway, a voice that sounds like a less harsh version of the Doctor you've been encountering begins talking about a patient and how he had to increase their medication dose to deal with hallucinations (said patient is heavily implied to be Simon). That's the end of the calm part of the nightmare, as you are then thrown into an arena (with the screaming head from the very first nightmare sequence) fighting waves of Faceless before you can leave. But surprise... SAWRUNNER APPEARS NEAR THE DOOR. And just in case that wasn't enough, you fall down the hallway, and enter a black void where more Faceless in masks appear to attack you. Granted, the Faceless are easy to deal with, and Sawrunner is just for show, but goddamn does it give you a near heart attack. - The fourth nightmare sequence is not overtly horrific, but it's still tense. After you break down a brick wall with a sledgehammer, the subway terminal gets warped into a twisting platforming section in a black void, surrounded by cages filled with people either cutting themselves or slumped against the wall. Said platforming section is also very difficult to do, since one wrong jump can lead to your death. The soundtrack, which consists of a Drone of Dread and the wails/screams of mental patients, doesn't help the mood either. Once you do finish the platforming, the only thing you need to do is complete a puzzle that consists of going through doors with a gun, wheelchair, book, and car on it (it's implied that the puzzle represents what happened to Simon prior to the game). Which leads to... - The fifth nightmare sequence, which might take the prize for the most challenging and terrifying nightmare sequence in the game. After completing the puzzle, you enter a bloody maze being patrolled by monsters in straitjackets being hung from their legs, except their heads have been replaced with twitching worms. What's worse, they're One-Hit Kill monsters, and they don't stop moving either, which means that you'll have to be on the lookout for these things and evade them so that you don't start from the beginning. Once again, the soundtrack isn't much better. You will breathe a sigh of relief once you manage to escape the maze. - The pedophile in the apartments of the first chapter. He was not content with raping children and killing them, but also found a liking to eating them. He even rendered the building's elevator non-functional, so that the kids would have to take the stairs, where he would be waiting, and pull them into his apartment. - Once the player explores his apartment he discovers a room full of photographs of the victims killed, slaughtered in different ways on all the room's walls. Then the player gets locked in and the lights go out... - The Sawrunner. He is almost unkillable and chases you at an insanely fast speed. If that isn't enough, he moves in a freakish way and has a terrible scream which will send a shiver down your spine. You'll be paranoid for the rest of the game, as he likes to suddenly appear and cause a chase sequence. - Migitated by the fact that, at least on Easy and Medium difficulties, you don't even have to sprint to avoid his One-Hit Kill attacks; he pauses each time he does a swing, allowing you to slog along at the normal pace as long as you don't stop at all. On Difficult and Nightmare, however... - " Watch out For the Trees". Yes. You'd better... - Since basic enemies can sneak up on the player without making a sound, jumpscares are abundant. - The college. Initially, it is well lit and abandoned, lulling the player into a false sense of monster-free security. However, the shit hits the fan when you tinker with a fuse box in one of the rooms, with bloody monsters around every corner in the now darkened halls. The worse part: the college is like a maze in the dark, with desks cluttering the floor and multiple classrooms you can access. - The music takes it up a notch during this segment by being a frantic, distorted nightmare with voices of children in the background screaming. It only stops once you manage to unlock the fire exit. - The worst ending, hearing how completely broken Simon is is intensely disturbing. - Worse still, the boss fight in that ending ends with you choking Simon's mental avatar to death with your bare hands, complete with death-struggles and gagging, pained gasping sounds. While this happens, your own health bar drains until it reaches zero. - Made even worse by the fact that Simon not only committed suicide, he also killed Sophie and Dr. Purnell, and would've killed even more people if he weren't disabled. - Do you want to hear suicidal depression? Click here. Be sure to turn down your volume. - The track itself is literally titled "Kill Yourself". It's also heard in Co-Op Mode where Book Simon spawns while the screen goes black and white. - In addition to that, amidst the screaming and pounding sounds of metal upon metal, distortion, and pure audible anxiety, you can hear a very, very faint sound of sobbing. And at some points, screaming. And once in a while, you can hear these... - The Drowned. An emaciated woman in a white dress is strung up like a scarecrow, which slowly inches along but forces Simon to put his gun up to his chin and shoot himself at the sight of it. If you're cocky and decide to knife it, a baby bursts from her stomach and assaults you with its knife. - Another moment that catches new players unaware is when after you retrieve the fuse from Harbor College, you have to backtrack through the courtyards and back alleys where the Sawrunner chased you. While the idea of doing so in itself is terrifying, as it requires you to lift the gate that separated you two just a moment ago, you have no choice. You pull the lever, peek your head out. Not a sound. And then you step further and you hear the revving of a chainsaw and a now-familiar howl in the distance... - While it's just a shout-out to the developer's first game, Afraid of Monsters, the secret level Heaven is very creepy. Bloody walls and disturbing "music" not enough for you? The level starts off in a group of hallways with white "drawings" on black walls. Oh, yeah, also the Twitcher from Afraid of Monsters return, and they haven't been updated for Cry of Fear's graphics engine, making the Body Horror even more apparent. - Just the way so many issues dealing with depression and anxiety are shown throughout the game via the visuals and the sound design is masterfully done, and absolutely terrifying. - The snuff film of a man cutting someone's head off, then dragging their corpse away. The lack of sound, as well as the ambiguity of just who the hell that was and why they did that, serves to heighten the tension. - The basic mooks you fight are mostly just standard humans, albeit insanely twitchy and jittery. They also become steadily more warped as the game continues. - The Upper, which is possibly the rarest enemy in the game, comes out with a scream that is so loud and jarring that it will sear itself into your memories. Oh, and it also has even twitchier animations than other monsters due to it walking on its hands. - Book Simon, the final boss of the best ending of the game. He is essentially the embodiment of Simon's self-hatred and desire to kill himself. He looks just like Simon, albeit bloody and beaten. Chillingly, the wounds he sports seem to resemble those of one who has shot themselves in the mouth. ## Other - Cry of Fear: Lost Tracks and Memories is an album composed by Andreas Rönnberg that, while not composed for use in Cry of Fear, it was composed with it in mind. As such, several tracks can fall into the Awesome Music category. These are not those tracks. - To start, we have Hopeless, a Drone of Dread that, while not overtly horrific, is still rather unnerving with how empty it sounds. - Breathe, a song that, while coherent and structured like an actual song, sounds incredibly primal and tense, with odd, alien sounds interspersed throughout. - Unsafe, another Drone of Dread. This one, however, has moments of ambient sounds like doors and clattering placed throughout, which lends to its atmosphere of unease. - Your Fucking, yet another Drone of Dread that has pounding, echoed drums amidst a bass-heavy electric hum that gives the track an industrial feeling. - Voice is a masterful example of escalating tension. It starts out with pounding and distorted metallic sounds, and then it just gets worse and more chaotic from there. - Crying Metal, an industrial hellscape of sound that sounds like a malfunctioning factory on steroids. Metal, pounding, ear-piercing frequencies, it's all here. - With Voices is three minutes of pure anxiety that steadily escalates into pure panic. The metallic sounds present throughout the album sound like something screaming, and the percussion (which is basically just someone slamming something into a piece of metal) gets progressively louder and louder to the point it peaks the audio. - Last, and possibly worst of all, we have Spin My Mind. TURN DOWN YOUR VOLUME BEFORE CLICKING THAT LINK. Spin My Mind is literally just a full minute of screaming. Endless, ear-piercing screaming with sounds of chainsaws. It is pure, audible terror.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/CryOfFear
Crypt TV / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes Every single film Crypt TV produces, according to Word of God, takes place in the same universe. EVERYTHING here exists at the same time! The Thing In The Apartment features a woman named Lindsay calling over her friend Sam after having an encounter with a monster in her apartment. She recounts this encounter to Sam, explaining that she felt its presence for some time now. Sam goes to investigate what's happening, only to encounter the monster herself and gets herself killed. Lindsay attempts to run away, only to get cornered and killed by the monster. The sequel doesn't make things any better when we see neighbours, a married couple overhearing what's going on next door. It turns out the wife is also being stalked by this creature as well and when the husband takes a look outside, he sees strange men in black masks and outfits filming the incident. It's at this point the monster makes an attack on the couple as well. The Look-See is a series of videos focusing on the titular mysterious monster and how it interferes and affects the lives around it. Never mind its resemblance to the Slenderman, the Look-See is an entity that stalks its victims with a philosophy it tries to force on them regarding letting things go or risk being mutilated (specifically of body parts symbolically relating to what they can't let go of). The Look-See targets anyone from grieving parents to most notably, an adulterous husband, his mistress and the man's wife. It turns out it doesn't always kill it victims, and the survivors end up working for the Look-See, and Jenny (the above mentioned wife) is its newest servant. "One Please" takes something as simple as getting a piece of treat from an ice cream truck into something twisted. The currency of getting said ice cream mans treats is severed fingers which he keeps in jars. Which parents are all to happy to give and apparently this is a business that he's been running successfully for some time now. What the fuck is going on in this world?! The ice cream man, putting aside his van having a near-pitch-black interior despite the sunny day outside, is uncanny himself. He moves at a slightly off framerate from the rest of the short, he can twitch his ears, has no fingernails - as in, he's visibly never had them - and his facial expressions come and go like an animatronic cycling facial expressions. The Sunny Family Cult series focuses on a girl named Taylor, who discovers as a child her parents have been leading a Knight Templar murderous cult that claims to be fighting the wrongs of society. The first season shows how Taylor is set to be moulded in to the cult as well. We get examples of her luring a copycat child murderer (something the cult stands against), and her father Elias is shown to have a domineering and controlling personality to the cults operations. Throughout all this, Taylor is conflicted about wanting her life normal and following her families cult, such as being forced by her father to kill a teenage boy as part of her official initiation. The season finale ends with Taylor fully integrated into the cult and killing a group of teenagers at a slumber party. Season two continues Taylor's story as she still feels conflicted and even remorseful for her actions, but keeps them to herself as she finds new friends at her school, to her father's disapproval, especially when Taylor states I Just Want to Be Normal. We are also introduced to a new character named Roger, claiming to be a substitute teacher and an investigator, both of which turn out to be lies that cover up that he was a former member, and the masked man stalking Taylor and other high school students as well as intimidating the local sheriff. The season ends with Roger not only abducting Taylor for an unknown purpose, but a flashback to Elias and Roger's past; we see Elias was not so different than Taylor in his youth and the implication the Roger is Eviler than Thou to Elias. Mordeo is a simplistic short about the Wendigo in all but name. No context is given as to why all this is happening, but it features a man eating a corpse in the middle of the woods when suddenly he sees the titular spirit and the corpse of his victim telling the cannibal that he belongs to the Mordeo now. Cue a Karmic and Painful Transformation, followed by this chilling line. Time for the blood hunt... The line "there is a price to pay for eating flesh in these woods.", does give the story a least some context. Widower is about a group of teenagers practicing their shooting in the woods when one of them accidentally shoots a female zombie. After killing said zombie, her "mate," the titular Widower, chases them down in a Roaring Rampage of Revenge. It's revealed that the Widower was a subject of experiments that made him an enhanced zombie. He is still sentient enough to remember his past life and care about his mate. When he chases down the last two survivors, one of them a girl, he forcibly infects her into his new "wife" after having her kill her friend. Kinderfänger is a modern take on the Pied Piper story in which many parents go looking for their missing children. The protagonist is a little deaf girl who learns the children have been taken and hypnotized by the titular demon in classic Pied Piper fashion. Pretending to be out of its spell, she manages to take her brother and flee to a cave while the Kinderfander screams in rage. After their seeming victory, they witness as the Kinderfander's other victims are reunited with their parents...only to watch as they tear them all apart. Vampire is short and simple. A man is taken into a blood bank, where he's stalled to a chair and quickly discovers that he's basically become a human juicebox for a Looks Like Orlok vampire. It turns out the vampires are running the whole scheme and he's far from the only victim they have trapped. Demon Clown overlaps with Tear Jerker on account of the clowns nature. The film starts with reports of a scary clown being seen around the city up until a viral video gets uploaded of him chasing kids. We are then given interviews with the clown named Norton after the video went viral, and he's shown to be a mild-mannered albeit socially awkward guy who just wants to entertain everyone. In addition to being a Misunderstood Loner with a Heart of Gold, we find out the real reason he was chasing those kids; he met a woman on Craig's List who had a clown fetish and sexually assaulted him. He was running away in distress and calling for help. Troubled Youth is mixed with Narm Charm that comes straight out of Jennifer's Body. We get a rampaging demon like monster on the loose slaughtering students and faculty in a high school, where a few survivors trying to hide in a class room when the monster catches up to them...only to reveal its under the control of an Alpha Bitch cheerleader. When asked why she's doing this, the girl replies "You're all sheep, it's time to bring in a wolf." Mira Mira is a take on the saying "Mirror Mirror On the Wall". A girl and her boyfriend are on a trip to a city, but while the boyfriend is admiring the view, she is too focused on her appearance. She is constantly taking selfies and looking at herself in the mirror, when she notices disfiguring scars in her reflection. Suddenly the titular entity pulls her into the mirror world, where the girl is Forced to Watch as Mira poses as her. When her boyfriend comes back downstairs, we see the purpose of Mira's facial scars as she splits her head open to reveal her true face and bite the boyfriend's throat out. The video ends with Mira walking off, leaving the girl stranded in the mirror world surrounded by zombie like entities. Mimic is a semi adaption of a two-sentence horror story of a child telling their parent that there's a monster under the bed. When the parent goes to look, they see their child, who warns them that there is something in their bed. A father hears his son calling and asking to sleep in his parents bed. The father goes to tell his son no, not noticing the attic door is open. When he sees his son is still asleep, he hears the voice again coming from his own room. When he goes to investigate he sees a maggot-like monster eating his wife before turning to face him saying in his son's voice "Hi daddy" before attacking him too. The short ends with the kid waking up to hear his father's voice calling him to his room. "Milk & Cookies"'s main antagonist, Walter. Picture a hideous, blue-skinned, demonic cross between Santa and Krampus who is constantly drooling blood that is implied to be toxic. He also swallows people whole and regurgitates them as lumps of coal. The animated short Milk & Cookies: Christmas in July features him going on a killing spree and murdering everyone in sight. "Birch" is a popular video that tells the story of a bullied boy named Kris who learns from his dying grandmother of a being in the woods and of the ritualistic means to summon it. While the entity is described as a empathetic if overzealous protector of the innocent, it still has a frightening appearance, and the next time we see the bullys body, there are deep gashes clawed into his face, and his organs appear to have been ripped out and impaled on branches., but to be fair the bully himself takes things a little too far by seemingly attempting to shank him with a knife. Stoneheart isn't exactly a subtle example with its All Abusers Are Male, but features a witch-like entity that is said to be a protector of women. All well and good, if murder wasn't seemingly its only route to go. There's also the implication that the being possesses the protagonist to commit at least one murder. The three shorts follow a girl who has to deal with an arrogant and jackass boss, who gets in her face and even chokes her in a bit of Hair-Trigger Temper; an Abusive Parent who works as a cop; and a seemingly nice churchgoer who seems to have her interests at heart, before seeming to be an abrasive Stalker with a Crush. YMMV on the retribution on the churchgoer and her boss, although there's is something cathartic about the revenge she takes on her father. The Girl from the first short was a completely different character from the girl from the other two shorts. Rapunzel features a perfectly happy college couple before the boyfriend is killed when their room catches fire and the girl is disfigured from the fire. It's implied that one of the girl's sorority sisters committed the arson and the rest of them pinned the blame on the girl. Unfortunately for them, the girl somehow managed to bring her boyfriend back as an undead entity and are now systematically hunting down the suspects. Thanks to the short film "Stereoscope", as well as fantastic acting by Trin Miller, and monster effects by rockstar Mark Furze, and with a Gory Discretion Shot at the end, people will never look at stereoscopes the same way again.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/CryptTV
Crypt Worlds / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes In some circles, Crypt Worlds is known for its weirdness, its sense of humour, and its charm. Sounds like a fun little fever dream, right? Not if you keep thinking about what makes the world tick, or realize that the lore leaves lots of room for the possibility of eternally tortured souls, dystopic realms, and serious incomprehensible suffering of ingame characters. Thanks to its simple but mysterious, effective 3D-rendered nature, playing Crypt Worlds too much might just cause it to haunt your dreams. - The world is a very small, un-economical place with very little in the way of decent civil-engineering. Prilgrimes live in a messy tangle of support beams and floors with no proper walls or privacy. The gameplay manual suggests that the entire world in canon is limited to everything you can possibly see while playing the game. Crypt Worlds becomes quite small once you get used to it. - In this game, Hell exists, and it's not the world you started in. Poetically enough, it's essentially a waiting room. It opens with a room of bizarrely-shaped cultists trying to awaken a god, with a music track that eventually goes way into Sensory Abuse with loud, digital screaming noises. You can reach this area by simply dropping through a signposted hole in the floor, or you could just go too many days without eating anything. - Through a little-known bad ending, achieved by awakening an Eldritch Abomination, \|\|you can basically destroy the world. The game stays that way, and doesn't revert or finish automatically like the other two endings do. The Chaos God destroys almost everything about the game, replacing the world with an eternal red hellscape with very few outstanding details. No living creature is left, except you and the Unicorn Goddess, and of course, the Chaos God himself, seen flying above every area of sky in the game, gritting his massive teeth.\|\| - Crypt Worlds is aware of its status of a videogame, but that doesn't dull the lurking doom at all. Instead, characters in the Debug Maze exacerbate it by talking about how they, as a feature, did not make it into the game you are playing and appearing to be disappointed about the fact. In other words, they were unable to become a part of existence itself, and know they weren't. - The Waiting Room in Hell is not just a wait for a door to open. It's a quite fleshed-out area with unsettling details. A giant pair of lips that turns out to be the receptionist, tiny skulls on shelves, and a bed with a copy of (YOU) lying on it. You can even interact with it - only to get a short message that simply says "...". Because of pronoun trouble, you don't know if the ellipsis came from the real character who is playing the game, or the body on the table. - In the tunnels, a special, drawn out quest will reward you for achieving it. It involves going back and forth with strange television screen objects, and assimilating 10 skeletal pilgrimes in the tunnels to the local hivemind - by stuffing each incredibly weird device over the top of their heads.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/CryptWorlds
Criminal Minds / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes Warning: Spoilers ahoy! (And major squick) The profilers of Criminal Minds have to deal with the most deranged and dangerous criminals ever seen in the United States. So, no wonder that the series has managed so far to provide us with a good amount of Nightmare Fuel. It should be also noticed that one of the most terrifying parts about the show is that they didn't make this stuff up. Most of the cases are Ripped from the Headlines. Don't say you weren't warned about the spoilers and the Squick. Sweet dreams. - The content of this show is so disturbing that Mandy Patinkin had to quit the show to protect his own mental health. - The circumstances that require the BAU to be called in at all mean that something has gone terribly wrong somewhere along the line. If they're called in, it means that the criminal is either smart enough to entirely outwit or evade the normal police somehow, or they're dangerous enough to already be on the FBI's most wanted list. Keep that in mind. - Those pictures seen in the intro? Those are pictures of real-life serial killers. You can recognize the likes of Aileen Wuornos, Charles Manson, John Wayne Gacy and Jeffrey Dahmer. - "The Boogeyman" has a terrifying UnSub who beats children to death with a baseball bat. And is a child as well. When Gideon asks the UnSub why he murdered those children, the response is "Because I wanted to." - "North Mammon": - Three best friends are kidnapped and get locked in a room. The UnSub not only makes all three girls choose who has to die, he makes them kill her themselves... with hammers. What's worse is that the UnSub's plan works. He gets exactly what he wants and gives himself up to the police easily once they find him, which is in the cell he keeps the friends in with the body of one of them still there. - Perhaps worst of all is the UnSub's motive; a long-time grudge against his old high school football teammates. - "The Big Game"/"Revelations": - The part where a woman is tied up and then eaten alive by rabid dogs. - Reid is handcuffed to a chair, drugged and helpless, having just been forced to watch a double murder he feels partially responsible for on a video feed, and Gideon appears on the same screen after the team arrives at the victims' house. He tries to talk to Reid, to reassure him that he's strong and won't break, and Reid just stares catatonically at the screen like he's not even really there. - The UnSub in this episode in general. He's got multiple personalities. One is Tobias, a surprisingly sweet guy who tries to help Reid — but "helps" him by drugging him. Another personality is Raphael, an angel who is completely without emotion, but just views his murders as God's will, and forces Reid to play Russian Roulette. The last one is Tobias's father, who's absolutely terrifying. He's a religious fanatic who apparently burned a cross into his son's forehead when he was young — and he actually kills Reid. Yes, he's resuscitated, but seeing one of the protagonists actually die is downright chilling. - "Open Season": Involved people getting taken into the forest and hunted for sport. - "No Way Out": - Crazy Jane has those wind chimes outside her house. They were made out of the rib bones taken from Frank's victims, because he claims to love her, and flowers just aren't his style. Then there's the rib bone she used as a whistle. - Every single thing that came out of Frank's mouth was pretty creepy. - Frank's M.O.: First, he injects you with a drug that leaves you immobile and numb, but still aware. Then, he invokes Organ Theft on you antemortem, usually under a mirrored ceiling. In other words, he makes you basically see . your own autopsy - "No Way Out Part II: The Evilution of Frank": Frank's return is pretty much the most horrifying thing ever. There are victims that come back from previous episodes only to be killed. The victim from the "Fisher King" two-parter had a rough life. Long and spoilered rotten explanation : First, when she was a little girl, her family died in a fire. When she was about sixteen and just getting adjusted to this whole adoption thing, she got kidnapped by a psychotic, horribly disfigured man with an obsession with Arthurian legends and kept chained to a bed in the basement. Then he committed suicide by bomb, setting the house on fire. Oh, and he was her father, who was just driven insane by the fire that killed the rest of the family. Although she was rescued by the FBI at the last minute, barely a year later she got kidnapped by another psychotic freak, only instead of keeping her chained up in the basement, this one injected her with ketamine, which left her conscious, aware, and totally incapable of movement while he eviscerated her. Because he wanted to prove a point to an FBI agent she had never met. - "Ashes and Dust": - Pretty scary episode overall, but one of the murders is up there as one of the scariest in the whole show. A father and his two kids are leaving their house and get into their car, where the UnSub appears and begins pouring petrol over the vehicle. We see the father and kids screaming for help as they realize they're locked inside, and the UnSub sets the car on fire and leaves. Cut to outside, the entire garage explodes in a fireball. Nothing Is Scarier indeed. - The cold open of the episode is just as scary. We see the fire being set in the house, and the family trying to escape but failing to as the UnSub blocked all exits. The bizarrely peaceful Enya track Boadicea behind the whole scene gives it both a terrifying and eerie atmosphere. Youtube and Reddit commenters have shared that they think this is one of the best cold opens Criminal Minds ever did, and it's hauntingly scary. - "Legacy": - The M.O. of the UnSub is taking street people and dumping them in a slaughterhouse/meat plant he converted into a Death Course for a few hours, before recapturing and vivisecting them while in surgical/butcher garb and with absolutely nasty-looking tools. - It also features a scene where a woman blindly runs through door after identical door, and winds up tripping and falling into a room filled with broken glass, which she has to crawl through... barefoot. - This episode also has something that's actually pretty frightening on the part of the good guys. The killer's accomplice is sitting in an interrogation room, plotting his defense. Hotch walks in, deconstructs the accomplice's life and motivations, utterly breaks his will to resist, and walks back out with all the information he needs from the man in under five minutes. No raised voices, no threats of jail time, never laid a hand on him. Aaron Hotchner can make someone turn against everything they've done just by talking to them. - Also, at some point, Hotch criticizes the police's indifference because the people missing are prostitutes, junkies, and/or vagrants. Just consider how many people like them could disappear in Real Life before someone even noticed it. Here's a hint: It's Truth in Television, so a LOT. - The fact that the UnSub is so disconnected from reality that, when the team show up, his only words are "Just let me do my job!". - "Scared to Death" - The psychologist who killed his patients by using their fears. It makes viewers start thinking about how they could die from their own fears. - The badly decomposed corpses of the UnSub's earlier victims still bear terrified facial expressions. - "Catching Out": The drug-smelling scene is definitely one for the books, but the end part where the person is at the woman's door is scary for anyone. - "Lucky": - The episode opens with the UnSub locked away safely in a mental institution with the head of the asylum begging the board of directors to keep him in. - During the raid on the UnSub's house, they find industrial cookware, a freezer full of bodies which have been dismembered and had their throats slit, and a demonic altar, the walls of which are covered in blood, disturbing paintings, and shelves crammed full of books on the nature of evil and homemade cookbooks about how to properly prepare human limbs for consumption. - The scene at the end: - What's really terrifying about it is the complete change in demeanor. At first, Floyd is quiet, meek, won't make eye contact. Then Father Marks talks, and it's like Floyd is an entirely different person. He makes eye contact, his voice changes, and he smiles in the creepiest way possible. - "True Night": Frankie Muniz's character, Jonny, suffers a catastrophic mental breakdown in response to witnessing the brutal rape and murder of his girlfriend by a group of gangsters just after she informed him that she was pregnant, and being left for dead with his intestines hanging out. As a Frank Miller-style comic-book writer and artist (Miller is in fact quoted by Garcia at the end of the episode), he begins drawing some horrifyingly dark comics about a shadowy warrior that kills evil demon creatures by disemboweling them and slicing them up. The plot twist of course being that members of the gang are turning up in suspiciously similar poses to those that appear in Johnny's art. In the end, it turns out Jonny's character has gone out and slaughtered every single one of the bastards that ruined his life — whether this is a Moment of Awesome or not is for the viewer to decide — with the agents finding the final body so gored it's not shown onscreen. Prentiss is visibly shaken by the whole thing, which leads to some Paranoia Fuel — any one of us could end up as hopelessly insane as Jonny did. Jonny is now locked up in a padded cell with his girlfriend's mobile phone, incessantly listening to her voicemail, hoping one day she'll pick up. End episode. Have some Kleenex and/or vodka ready. The entire episode feels like an homage to James O'Barr's comic book The Crow, which is about a murder victim becoming a spirit of vengeance going on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge after he and his girlfriend are captured and murdered by the side of the road by gang members. The episode seems to have conflated Barr's reason for writing the comic (his girlfriend was killed by a drunk driver) with The Crow's modus operandi, and combined them together to create a seriously unhinged comic book artist who illustrates his murder scenes. - The UnSub's sociopathic apathy after she's found out in "Seven Seconds". - The fact that when she learns her husband is a pedophile who abused their niece, what does she do? Instead of trying to stop the abuse or report her husband, she tried to kill her niece. - The girl's parents are frantic about her whereabouts, her mother even pleading for the safety of her daughter, but the UnSub remains set in her plan, even though she's a mother herself. - Also, the fact that the UnSub's son now has to live with the reality of having a child molester who abused his cousin as a father, and a mother who tried to kill the aforementioned cousin. Both the kid and his cousin are going to be in therapy for a long time. - In "In Name and Blood" the killer is using his young son to lure in victims. The last would-be victim is the school nurse and as he's arrested, the killer reveals he didn't even ask his son to bring her home. The boy reappears as a new UnSub in Season 14. - "Memoriam" is full of this. Any adult with a small child would be horrified to think about their son or daughter being the target of a serial child molester. What's worse, finding said child molester killed by one of their friends. - "Normal": - Seeing A.D. Skinner go from guilt-ridden househusband to... that. Not because of the way he kills, but because of what the reveal says he did after his first strike. - There's also some Nausea Fuel in that the agents enter the house and can smell the decomposing bodies of Norman's family. - Let's not forget the fact that Norman then hallucinates that his whole family is in his SUV with him as he tries to make a getaway, telling him that the death of his youngest daughter is his fault. The most gutting part is when he staggers from the empty vehicle realizing what he's done and starts uncontrollably sobbing "What did I do?!" - What really drives it home is when Hotch calls Morgan to let him know what happened; though the conversation is muted, Morgan is visibly shaken. - The ending of "Bloodline", with the revelation that there are more families out there kidnapping young girls and killing their parents, is creepy. The entire episode becomes creepy, too, when you stop to wonder what happened to daughters born in that family. - "Demonology": It's not outright terrifying, but it is probably one of the eeriest episodes of the show. There's just something so horrible about the atmosphere, and the brutal exorcisms, and the uncertainty over who's evil and who's not. - "House on Fire": - The fact that literally the entire population of a town banded together to systematically destroy the life of a preteen orphan. All because of a rumor they had no way of proving was true or not. - Likewise, said orphan's Roaring Rampage of Revenge: locking people — guilty or not of his Start of Darkness — in burning buildings. And the only survivor suffers such Body Horror that she likely dies, too, soon after being interviewed. The UnSub's "justice" ultimately makes him far worse than his tormentors. - "A Shade of Gray": The Reveal where the UnSub is the 7-year-old victim's 9-year-old brother Danny. - "Amplification": The very last scene with the anthrax strain being locked away in containment "With all the other bioagents people don't know about". A soldier in a hazmat suit locks a small metal box into a vault in the wall. As he closes the door the camera moves back and shows that there are more vaults in the wall. The camera just keeps panning out and it's a huge facility filled with possibly thousands of other bioweapons. - "To Hell..."/"... And Back": - The UnSub killed people and then gave them to pigs. Anyone with pigs will tell you that pigs will eat anything. Reid: Pigs are omnivores, they'll eat anything. Anything. - - Made even worse by the fact that the murders were based on real-life serial killers in Canada. - The very end of "... And Back" has the death montage of both the Turner brothers. The ex-soldier who got the BAU team to come in and investigate because the Turners got his sister, only to find out by the time they get to the farm that she's already dead, calmly picks up a shotgun and comes into the house to shoot Mason. And Mason... smiles at him. - "You should have made a deal." [BANG] - "Nameless, Faceless": Hotch and Foyet's very intimate little torture/rape scene. Foyet is naked and grinding against Hotch from behind and taunting Hotch about violating him while he's helpless to fight back. Furthermore, the torture part is shot and scripted like a rape scene in itself, performed through Foyet's knife instead of through his body. So terrible that Hotch pretends not to remember it because he can't handle talking to his teammates about it. - "Cradle to Grave": Think of it like the most gory and foul horror hentai being filmed. Young women are kidnapped, locked in a prison, impregnated, and left alone when one's about to labor, the only possible help being from the other prisoner. Either she will be killed if she doesn't give birth to a baby boy or the UnSub will impregnate her again until they can find a substitute. Even though the viewers know this by description of one of the victims, the mental image of it is devastating. - "The Performer": Imagine you're a goth rock star who really doesn't even like his persona anymore, and people (including some of your fans) start dying in ways that point right to you. You're innocent and have no clue what's happening... and then the UnSub is your close friend and manager, who's manipulating a mentally ill fan of yours that's obsessed with your persona, killing people to get you publicity that you don't even want since you're sick of making events instead of music anyway. Poor guy... - "The Eyes Have It": - The melon baller used to gouge out the victims' eyes, and the UnSub's taxidermy shop. - The irony shot of Reid talking about how some enucleators eat the eyes of their victims and the UnSub eating hard-boiled eggs in a way that makes you believe he is eating eyes. - Also, what the Buddhist family of one of the victims believes happened to her soul because of the removal of her eyes. The grandmother of the victim claims to have seen her blind, tormented ghost. And if the victim's eyes could never be recovered, she would remain that way forever. - "100": Hotch finally snaps and beats Foyet to death with his bare hands. It is downright terrifying to see all the rage that's built up beneath that cold exterior suddenly breaking forth, and one almost wonders what might happen should a man as calm, clever, and cunning as Hotch lose his restraint again. - "Uncanny Valley": - The childlike UnSub drugs her victims, and she dressed them up as dolls. The victims are still aware of the world but can't move at all. One woman who had a wig stitched into her scalp while she was fully aware of everything. - The dream sequence where the most recent victim breaks from her chemical paralysis and tries to escape, only to have her limbs turn to mannequin parts and fall off. - The UnSub's father raped her after her mother died, then subjected her to electroshock therapy at the age of ten. - "Mosley Lane": This one isn't as gory as other episodes but has a high creep-out factor. The female UnSub (creepingly portrayed by Beth Grant) is enough to give you goosebumps. If that's not enough, there's child abduction, heavy abuse, a nightmare-like setting, and the young victims being burned alive!!! And the cherry on the cake is the suicide-by-hanging. The song "Illabye" is used once again after "The Fox", and it's terrifying once again. - Tim Curry as the UnSub in "Our Darkest Hour/The Longest Night" falls squarely into this. It's a far cry from his more popular roles, and it works. Here you go. It's not THAT bad... - "Safe Haven": - The UnSub is secretly a pre-teen boy who sneaks his way into family houses, ties up and kills the kids and then kills the parents and even experiments on their bodies. - Before his killing spree, he killed the neighbor's dog and broke his sister's arm. For his endgame, he goes back home and threatens his sister with a knife while he gets into a screaming match with his mother. - "Reflection of Desire": The UnSub carrying his long-dead mother out of the house with another girl's lips sewn onto her face, all set to a hallucination of rapturous applause from an adoring, starstruck crowd of 1950s photographers. Never has a Sunset Boulevard homage been ghastlier. - "With Friends Like These...": - The UnSub has schizophrenia and is constantly tormented by three hallucinations who say they will leave him alone if he kills people. - At the end, he's in a mental hospital, and for a second you think he's better and can't see them anymore. But nope, they're still there, mocking him. They also imply that they've been with him his entire life, which adds a whole new level of scary. - The part where he lays down to try and sleep and sees the dead, bleeding bodies of his hallucinations sticking to the ceiling. - The part where the UnSub is hallucinating that Reid is telling him to stab him in the neck and that will solve all his problems while smiling cheerfully is either Nightmare Fuel or hilarious. - Jason from "The Pact." The part where he digs up the skull of one of his victims, then informs the victim's mother (who wants to know where the rest of her daughter is) that they have "some more holes to dig". - "God Complex." A man is kidnapping people, taking their legs, and attempting to transplant them onto others. Any time the victims are kept alive is acutely creepy, let alone when one walks into the emergency room on a leg that wasn't his. If that's not creepy enough, he's played by Ray Wise. It gets even worse when we discover that the man isn't a psychopath — he has a fully functional social life and a family to whom he is genuinely devoted; he has just distanced himself so much from his work that (like the Nazi "doctors" to whom he is explicitly compared) he sees no contradiction between being a loving husband and chopping up strangers. He is so convinced he's not doing anything wrong that when a victim actually survives, he proudly takes his wife (who thought he'd been experimenting on mice) in to see it, and is actually surprised that she's horrified. - "The Good Earth." It involves an hypochondriac woman that believes that her (previously cured, now hallucinatory) skin disease can only be cured by eating crops fertilized with human remains, so she kidnaps fit young men, strips them, holds them captive in her barn, force-feeds them a strange soup made of soil additives and animal feed via tube, and chops them one-by-one into little pieces that she uses to fertilize her garden. She also buries her daughter alive in the garden, to cure her of the same hallucinated skin disease. Also, at one point she kidnaps a pregnant woman, slices her belly open with a knife while she is still conscious, takes the placenta, and attempts to feed it to her daughter. Nausea Fuel doesn't even begin to describe it. This gets worse if you're a reader of STFU Parents and have seen what some people actually DO with their placentas. - "The Wheels on the Bus" - Imagine being a high school student, riding the bus like any other day, when all of a sudden two assailants hijack the bus, kidnap you and make you kill your friends, and then you find out that the only reason they did it was because they got kicked from a video game and were too impatient to start over. - It gets even worse when you realize that their reasoning makes no sense. Even if they're playing with real people this time, they're still starting over from scratch. So really, they're just psychopaths who used the game as an apology. - Poor Addyson is so scared about her brother being targeted that she shoots her classmate Trent. - Also, imagine one of the kidnappers being a giant man baby who shoots you just because your classmate volunteered to play the next round instead. - "The Lesson": - HUMAN. MARIONETTE. PUPPETS! Particularly the masks and their voices feebly pleading for help. - The UnSub is played by Brad Dourif. That should have been every viewer's first warning... - The scene with the audience of toys at the end is just... unsettling. Hell, the sheer, childish insanity of this particular UnSub is incredibly creepy. - The scene where he dislocates their limbs, and the way they flop around afterwards. - Thanks to this episode, you'll never think of the Pixies' "Where Is My Mind?" the same way again... - It gets even creepier when we discover that the UnSub's partner is actually a puppet. - "Perennials," in which the victim-to-be-saved (a pre-teen boy) has to look over his shoulder for a very long time after the serial killer tells him that he'll come back for the boy in twenty years. - "Zugzwang": - Reid's nightmare, where he marries his girlfriend and discovers she has no face. - Maeve's stalker is motivated because Maeve rejected her thesis due to poor sample-structure (she'd included her own parents' suicide in it). That's it. Maeve even said it wasn't that bad, she just needed to do more work on it. - "All That Remains": - Imagine that your wife mysteriously disappears during a blackout when a separate identity from yours takes over and your two daughters vanish immediately a year after. Later you learn that your oldest daughter killed both your younger daughter and wife and had planned everything out, including framing you for your wife's disappearance. - Something small, but given the identity of the UnSub, it becomes terrifying: after the UnSub's arrest, J.J. looks through her mother's real estate book and finds a pearl necklace and wedding ring. Reid walks up behind her and says something that makes the UnSub even creepier. Reid: Trophies. - "Broken": - When we learn what the camp does to turn gay teens straight: they take their belongings, erase everything they don't deem "masculine" enough, put them in jump-suits like they were in Guantanamo, force them to follow a time-table that leaves no room for individual time, take away their means of communication with the outside, force them to watch straight porn while God knows what substance is being put in their bloodstream, pay a female child-molesting prostitute to rape them, and all of this with the acknowledgement of the kid's parents. The episode UnSub manages to kill and mutilate six people and tries to force his best friend to rape his father before murdering them both, and he still ends up looking more sympathetic and less creepy than the camp. - When this story is finished, we're shown that the killer who's been taunting the BAU by imitating the M.O. of people they've arrested was watching Alex Blake's lesson. - "Carbon Copy." The end of the episode, where the team finds the Replicator's latest victim, surrounded by dozens, if not hundreds of pictures of the team members at their most vulnerable. Paranoia Fuel doesn't even begin to describe it. - The hallucination scenes in "Alchemy". - "The Replicator": - Strauss's death. After seven seasons of being a tough-as-nails but fair badass, her final moments have her desperately begging for her life, all while in agonizing pain as her insides are dissolved by the poison the Replicator gave her. - The Replicator later uses the same poison on Rossi. The resulting hallucinations and confrontation in Morgan's office are chilling. - "The Inspiration": - The UnSub's hallucinations are profoundly creepy. He sees his first victim everywhere, even over old ladies at a restaurant by the end, and over his own mother at one point. But worse is that the hallucination often takes the form of his conscience reminding him that his first victim did love him once, but he's the reason the relationship went south by going Yandere on her, and how she sporadically teleports from across the room to right in front of him during their "conversations". - The end of the episode. The cop who sighted the killer, allowing Morgan and J.J. to catch him, is actually the killer's twin brother, and the killer is still loose. - "The Inspired": - You find out that the mother found the son she kept a disappointment, so she tried grooming the one she gave away to kill him and take his place to be the "perfect mother." - The twin, Jesse, is damn creepy too. He stalks down Wallace and captures him, ties him up, and demands to know why Wallace was kept when he wasn't. He then forces Wallace to take a sedative so Jesse has time to plan an escape to Canada for both of them so Wallace can get "help" despite Wallace not wanting to. Then we find out Wallace didn't take it, is on the loose, and it looks like he kills a woman... but nope, it was Jesse. - "To Bear Witness" is all kinds of creepy. The UnSub kidnaps his sister and her boyfriend and lobotomizes both of them, as well as putting cameras in their eyes so he can watch what they see and show it to the world if he wishes. This is because he's always felt overshadowed by his sister. Oh, and let's not forget that he practiced lobotomy on another person before his sister and her boyfriend, before he then killed that person. - In "The Return", the UnSub is a former Dirty Cop who wants revenge on the police department that held him accountable for his actions. But instead of committing his crimes himself, his kidnaps children, tortures them into becoming Child Soldiers, and sets them out to do his dirty work. The two now-teenagers who survive to be taken into custody are so brainwashed that they'll only repeat their name, the UnSub's badge number, and whatever speech he wants delivered. When the team catches him at the end, they find him having just abducted another young boy, who is already scared enough to repeat the name/number line. - "Strange Fruit" has the killer having a flashback to when he was kidnapped by Klansmen and tied to a tree before getting castrated. The screaming and shrieks are the worst part because of how real the actor makes it seem. - "Rabid": The UnSub infecting people with rabies is bad enough, but then we figure out how. He started with one man, infected through an animal bite, then kidnapped someone else for that man to infect. Then he keeps the chain going by continually kidnapping new people to be bitten and infected. We get to see his latest victim of the disease in all her glory, spitting and foaming and ranting as she succumbs completely and eventually slips into a coma after she's rescued. And the UnSub's motive? Nothing but pure sadism. He records his victims' sufferings because he's obsessed with the disease. - "Blood Relations": This episode has some of the most brutal on-screen killings of the season. The UnSub's preferred method is strangulation with razor wire. - He even attacks one man's innocent wife as a surrogate, tying her neck to the back end of a car and her feet to a deep freezer, then driving off. Her poor husband tries to save her, but then has to watch as his wife is savagely decapitated. - The identity of the UnSub — the bastard child of a sexual relationship between two siblings that left the guy horribly deformed. The girl gave him up for adoption, and now he's back all these years later to systematically murder her and her brother's family to get to her. - To top it all off, at the end of the episode, he's still on the loose, and he terrorizes a perfectly innocent couple in their vacation home miles away. - "What Happens in Mecklinburg": - A female UnSub in an uncanny pig mask sodomizes a college student via and poisons him via fire-iron as revenge after he himself hydrochloric acid . raped and poisoned her little sister into a fatal coma that kills her - "Angels": The killer keeps the lead prostitute in line by threatening her son. And to be sure she'd know, another cop interrupts her meeting with JJ. - "Demons": The true UnSub is revealed to be the second in command of the police force, who has almost the entire force working for him controlling a massive drug ring. By this episode the force gets suspicious of the Bureau agents and tries to kill Reid, who's already in the hospital, twice. The second time involves a crooked nurse who's implied to have killed a previous sheriff the same way he tries with Reid, giving them medicine they're allergic to. Garcia only manages to stop him by shooting him. - "A Thousand Suns": - The UnSub managed to hack into a plane's computer systems and forced it to crash, killing hundreds of people aboard. Worse, he tried to do it a second time in a populated area à la 9/11 and would have very likely continued doing so were he not stopped. It's also implied that the kind of murder that occurred in the episode can someday happen in real life under the right circumstances and with the right equipment, especially with the new innovations that are being made in technology as the years go by; in fact, the episode references a German security consultant who proved, using an experiment with a controlled setting, that such a hacking scenario is certainly possible. Imagine the damage a terrorist, disgruntled employee, cold-hearted killer, and other kinds of people can do with that kind of technology. Another reason to fear using airplanes. - The UnSub targeted the plane just because it carried a woman he had one embarrassing date with eight years ago. - "The Itch" demonstrates just how... creative the show can get when displaying an UnSub's delusions. This time around? The poor bastard thinks he has bugs beneath his skin. It's... difficult to watch, to say the least. - "Boxed In"'s UnSub buries boys alive as Disproportionate Retribution for Halloween pranks. His stand-out moment of cruelty is when he hops into the coffin and viscerally beats the crap out of him for making too much noise. - "If the Shoe Fits": - The UnSub is a nice, sweet young lady, more a girl than anything, who believes that life is a fairy tale, and searches for her Prince Charming so that she can have her happily ever after. But God help you if you dare break her fantasy, because she'll break your skull in return. - "The Boys of Sudworth Place": The entire episode in general, but special mention goes to The Reveal at the very end that Kate's daughter and her friend are being stalked. - "Nelson's Sparrow": Gideon's death, and the UnSub Neck Snapping one of birds just to scare his victim. his own - "Mr. Scratch": - What the UnSub makes Hotch do. What makes it scarier is that the hallucination seems very real. - Remember the "Poison" moment back in Season 1? Well, this UnSub copies it . And these times, there aren't just repeatedly -deaths. near - The blackout scene in the BAU HQ deserves special mention as well. - The Villain of the Week of "Protection": a schizophrenic Vigilante Man thinking that he's killing Asshole Victims, when he's actually killing Innocent Bystanders in the wrong places at the wrong times. - "The Hunt": A human-trafficking ring sells hostages to Serial Killers so that they can "have fun" without risky hunting. And the ending shows the BAU going to bust the ring's allies, clients, etc. around the nation - "The Job": The facial wounds the UnSub has from being shot in the jaw are particularly brutal looking. The kicker is the end of the episode, where he rips out his own stitches with his thumb, just so he can taunt Morgan, then get him blamed for police brutality. - "The Witness" - The episode involves a mass poisoning on a city bus. The diffuser that released the gas was there for at least a week, and no one noticed it until it was too late. - A man boards the bus after it crashes at a stop, only to find everyone on board dead, foaming at the mouth from the aforementioned poison. Chilling stuff. - During the episode "Awake," the UnSub tells authorities that a man with a skull tattoo was there moments before his daughter was kidnapped and eventually murdered. The BAU thinks that he might have been hallucinating or his mind playing tricks on him as he was severely sleep deprived at the time. At the end of the episode, however, it's revealed that guy is real and targeting another girl on the other side of the country, and the BAU doesn't know about it. - Also, in "Awake": Garcia learning that \|\|the Dirty Dozen is targeting her, with the name being a reference to the computers she uses to run for data.\|\| A group of hitmen are targeting the FBI. - The UnSub in "Drive" uses a guillotine to behead his victims for minor offenses like shoplifting and adultery, followed by putting the heads on his "wall of shame". Before that, he tortures them by breaking their knuckles with a steel rod until they "confess" their misdeeds. He believes himself to be some kind of divine punisher, and we get to watch two people go through the horrible torture. One of the most brutal episodes of the season. - "Hostage" is obviously based on the Ariel Castro case, and includes a lovely look at the cellar prison where the UnSub kept three girls for years. It's decked out to look like a little girl's playhouse, but the terror is barely below the surface — barren mattresses covered in blood, bars on the windows, and an x-rack next to a cabinet full of whips and other disgusting paraphernalia to let you think of all the horrible things he was doing to those poor girls. - The episode "A Badge and a Gun" has the UnSub of the week posing as an FBI agent to get himself into women's homes and suffocate them to death, playing on their fear of an earlier unrelated murder or sexual assault against a woman that happened in the area, their desire to be safe, and their willingness to help catch the criminal. Regardless of what people actually think about the FBI, in the end it is expected that the FBI agents help people, and seeing some UnSub using their methods as a tool to earn an unsuspecting victim's trust is plain scary. - "The Sandman": - The episode opens on the UnSub breaking into a family home and blinding the parents (using glue and sand), then going after the child. The wife wakes up after hearing her son screaming for help, realizes she can't see, and tries to wake her husband. Her hand comes away covered in blood. She frantically stumbles to try and help her son, but is quickly killed by the UnSub. Then the child is abducted. Later, we see the UnSub scooping what appears to be sand into a small bag... only for the camera to pan out and show a small skull burning in an incinerator. And this is all before the cold opening! - The UnSub's collection of teeth... - Emily's recurring nightmares in "Tribute" from when she saw a British policewoman she worked with murdered by the episode's UnSub. Later, she has the same nightmare, only this time it's JJ bleeding out from a Slashed Throat. - "The Storm" is basically several instances of nightmare fuel stacked on top of each other: - A SWAT team busting into Hotch's home and arresting him in front of his son, JJ, and Henry. Worst part? He's being framed and flagged as a potential terrorist threat by someone he put away in a Supermax prison. The prisoner, Eric Rawdon, is so charismatic and manipulative, he managed to get almost an entire prison and a malleable man on the outside to help him target this one man, and stage a prison escape. - The massive prison break orchestrated by a Mad Bomber who's only interested in causing wide-spread, large-scale destruction. Imagine you're a prison guard, just doing your rounds before clocking out. Then, one of the cell doors open. Then they all start to open. - Lewis finding herself in the serial killer wing, all alone. And then Rawdon opens all the doors there too. - By the end of the episode, thirteen serial killers from three different U.S. states have escaped from prison thanks to Rawdon's scheming. Who's to say they won't start killing again now that they're back out? - "Sick Day": - The UnSub is an arsonist and a sadist, meaning he gets off on the pain and suffering of people he watches burn alive, specifically children. While Garcia is looking up information about him, she learns he tried to burn down his childhood home with his sister still inside. - JJ only manages to save two of the three people the UnSub had kidnapped for his endgame. A teenage girl is left screaming in terror as nearby barrels of fuel ignite and explode, and Alvez has to drag JJ kicking and fighting back to save the poor girl. - An x-ray image of a drum in "Taboo" shows one of the victims drowning in concrete... while she's still alive. Not to mention she, like the others, was chemically lobotomized by having chlorine poured through her brain as well. - The cold opening of "Keeper" is incredibly unsettling. The sweet elderly state police officer goes to check out the campsite of a homeless man who's been stealing from a local convenience store. He finds a bag, only to realize it's dripping with blood. Cut to the homeless man running frantically through the woods, tossing stuff from a backpack. Then the camera zooms in on something tossed that landed in a tree. It's a human hand. - "Elliott's Pond:" It's more with the Uncanny Valley involved than the jumpscares. - The scene just before the credits, seen through a video camera, shows a body lying down, presumably one of Josh's friends. He then looks the other way, then aims at the location of said body, where someone who resembles an alien suddenly appears and jumps on Josh. Cue opening credits. - The Reveal halfway through the episode: the kids disassemble screens as they look for possible escape routes. When Josh finds a window to another room, he only sees one of the UnSubs cooking. A few seconds later, the UnSub's twin sister appears out of nowhere, breaks through the window, and attempts to grab one of the kids with her hand. - The reveal of Hotch and Jack entering witness protection comes with an incredibly unnerving scenario. Hotch spotted Peter Lewis, aka Mr. Scratch at one of Jack's soccer games. That was enough to get police protection. Then he showed up at Jack's school. Imagine the man who's out to destroy your life and mental well-being managing to get that close to someone you love. - "Collision Course" runs through unadulterated Paranoia Fuel similar to "A Thousand Suns" two seasons earlier: Imagine driving a 2010s-model car, then you suddenly lose control of your vehicle after the UnSub hacks through it. You can only watch helplessly as he aims your car at the unfortunate pedestrian that just happens to be crossing the road and, if you are very unlucky, gets killed in the process. - The UnSub in "Alpha Male" spraying nitric acid on your face just because you are dating someone. And he planned to do it in a bar full of dating couples, only to be stopped by the BAU at the last minute. It doesn't help that he's directly inspired by Elliot Rodger. - In "Assistance is Futile", the UnSub tortures his victims by breaking their bones until they die of blood loss due to the fracture wounds. He was so interested in bone fractures that as a child, he just smiled when he saw his mother break her arm in such a way that it ripped her skin. - "In The Dark": The UnSub has a rather extraordinary case of somnabulism — at night, he aimlessly walks into the places (read: former drug dens and brothels turned suburban homes) his father took him to when he was a child and stabs anyone on sight without even realizing what he's been doing the whole time. When he's not stabbing people through the heart at night, he shoots hunters who remind him of his father at day. - The UnSub in "Hell's Kitchen" has a medical condition that, essentially, makes him allergic to sunlight. He's under the delusion that, if he drinks the blood of healthy young girls, he can overcome his affliction. While he does invoke pity, the image of him greedily drinking blood from a coffee thermos is chilling. - "True North": - The UnSub's M.O. is kidnapping smart, successful young people, tying them to poles in the Saguaro Desert, then sitting and watching as they roast alive, all because he envies them for cheating him out of a scholarship. - When the UnSub's shrewish mother is dying of a stroke, he gets the woman he holds most responsible for him losing the scholarship to confess to "cheating" him and ruining his life. Then the UnSub puts his mother's feet in a bucket of water, turns on a nearby electric fan, and drops it in. We watch as his mother is visibly electrocuted, flailing around wildly, while the poor victim screams in abject horror. - The Unsub in Unforgettable is a psychopathic former nurse randomly injecting federal government employees with radioactive material stolen from the hospital where she worked that slowly kills them...and what makes it worse is they were all collateral damage. The Unsub merely killed them as a cover for her plan to murder her husband and claim his life insurance policy, while disguising the murders as assassinations carried out by the Russian government. - In "Wheels Up", after Prentiss has been kidnapped by Mr. Scratch, he shows her that her legs have been horribly injured in the car accident, and we're treated to the squicky Body Horror of seeing them covered in bloody sores with tons of needles sticking out of them. Luckily, she later realizes that these injuries are drug-induced hallucinations and she's actually fine, but it doesn't make this any less creepy. - While the Unsub in "Bad Moon on the Rise" is a Tragic Villain, his clinical lycanthropy is driving him to attack people in the same manner as a wolf, namely by biting their throats out with a specially modified set of steel dentures. - In the opening scene of "The Capilanos", one of UnSubs slides out from under the kids bed in full clown costume. It's truly terrifying. - "Starter Home" with a mummified body found hidden in a wall filled with salt. When Rossi meets up with the local cops, the sheriff notices how the cadaver dog seems confused, only for Rossi to make a revelation; the dog isn't confused, it's overwhelmed. Cue a montage of multiple bodies being removed from the walls and floors. - The UnSub in "Broken Wing" kills drug addicts he thinks will relapse, then gets a tattoo of a wing on his back with their initials. The BAU investigates because of 8 suspicious deaths, but after they catch him he takes off his shirt to reveal 40 wings on his back. - "Hamelin": - The concern of someone emailing your children a subliminal message that can make them sleepwalk out of the house at night and into an area where he can easily abduct them. - When the email trick fails on one boy due to him being grounded from using the Internet, the UnSub decides to get a lot more brutal and direct. The result? The boy gets abducted despite his parents' precautions, and his mother gets an ax-to-the-head that leaves her in a bloodied and brain-damaged state (read — she spends her death throes doing housework like an unaware zombie).	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/CriminalMinds
Crisis on Earth-X / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes - The revelation of who Earth-X Prometheus is: Tommy Merlyn. - Ollie tries to get through and it looks like it's working...then Tommy just snorts on how "weak" this world is and takes a cyanide pill. - Even worse? When Ollie tells Tommy-X of what happened to his Earth-1 doppelgänger, the other man just shrugs it off. Think of how twisted this Earth is where these two friends are not only twisted and evil, but see one killing himself as a point of pride. - Wells shows the gang footage of Earth-X's history and dominance and noting how it was exactly like Earth-1...except for Martin correctly guessing the Nazis invented the atomic bomb first. Adolf Hitler lived until 1994 to see the Reich take power. They're all affected but clearly, Felicity is shaken the hardest, turning away at the sight of a world that's a nightmare to anyone who's Jewish. - We knew the basic idea of the crossover would be evil versions of Oliver, Kara, and Barry, many speculating Barry's Earth-X doppleganger to essentially be Savitar without the metal suit or scarred face, and in the Reverse Flash's outfit. That is, until pictures of Tom Cavanagh in the suit surfaced; while many still thought it'd be an evil Barry, most correctly guessed the return of the Arrowverse's resident temporal cockroach and Barry Allen's personal boogeyman, one Eobard Thawne, once again wearing the face of Earth-1's Harrison Wells. And of course, unlike the time remnant with Thawne's true face (Matt Letscher) that tormented the Legends, this is the real deal, complete with Hand Wave about where in the timeline he came from. He is bad enough to begin with. Throwing in with Nazis from another world just makes it worse. - And for that matter, Earth-X's Oliver Queen and Kara Zor-El. One is the Fuhrer of Earth-X, the other is his wife and essentially a Kara who sees herself as a god above humans. If you thought "our" Kara under Red Kryptonite was bad... - It's bad enough to see Earth-X Quentin Lance as a cold Nazi, but worse is when he reveals that Earth-X Sara was also bisexual...and he killed her because of it. Worse still is that while Nazi Quentin notes that Sara looks like Aryan perfection, it's not clear whether he recognizes her as identical to his daughter, suggesting that Earth-X Sara didnt live long enough to look like ours. - The utter glee that Thawne seems to have in cutting open Kara. - Earth-X Felicity is a concentration camp prisoner, complete with star on her shirt. - To anyone who knows anything about the Holocaust, the Earth-X concentration camp: the gate with "Arbeit Macht Frei" ("Work Sets You Free" in German, used in the entrance of several death camps) over it, the nearby trench, and haggard and shaved prisoners in striped uniforms with cloth badges. There is no question what happens at that facility. - Seeing Stein, a Jewish rabbi, being gunned down by Nazi soldiers is nothing short of stomach-churning. - Thawne gloats that he fought Superman in the future, and that he was still faster than him. - Thawne nearly putting a vibrating hand through Felicity, gloating that while his history books are filled with stories about heroes like The Flash and Green Arrow, no one has ever heard of her. And he puts on his glowing red eyes and Voice of the Legion while doing it, presumably just to make it more terrifying. - The implication that Thawne is working with the Nazis purely For the Evulz (since he never displays any obvious Nazi-like sentiments like his fellow Reichsmen) arguably makes him worse than the Nazis themselves. He is willing to sellout his own Earth to invaders seemingly for no other reason other than to spite Barry and people he cares about. - The Nazi troops are on the metal grate for the portal to protect it as a wounded Stein reaches for the switch. Realizing what's about to happen, their commander tells them to fall back but it's too late. As the portal activates, they're all held in place, shaking as if electrocuted and then blasting into pieces. - Thwane coming terrifyingly close to cutting Kara open and loving it. He's only stopped by the arrival of the Atom shrunk and holding back the blade before growing to knock them back. - At the end of their fight, Barry reluctantly lets Thawne go, knowing that killing him then and there wont stop other incarnations of him from coming. Before he takes his leave, Thawne casually threatens to steal someone elses face for when he comes back.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/CrisisOnEarthX
Crimson and Emerald / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes - What kind of childhood Endeavor had if he thought his horrific treatment of his children and wife was being restrained! - All for One having the Midoriya household, the Aery, the Warren and Mighty Tower under heavy surveillance. Having your every move catalogued and watched and your privacy violated... - Hawks was essentially bought by the Heroics Commission as a Child Soldier and had his whole life dictated for him, because otherwise he and his other mother would suffer in poverty. And that happened when he was six! The Commission took away his agency and planned out his life since he was six! - Just because Kiyome wanted a different career and didn't want fame, her parents sold her and her son into slavery without Kiyome ever knowing. Her own parents, who raised her, willingly sold their daughter and grandchild into abuse and manipulation without an ounce of regret. - While the Takami parents and Saito Hana deserved to die, All for One has them horrifically tortured to death before faking their deaths in an "accident."	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/CrimsonAndEmerald
Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes What the killer in "Jane" does his victims, keeping them alive for hours as he removes each one of their limbs with a bandsaw.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/CriminalMindsSuspectBehavior
Croc / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes ## Croc: Legend of the Gobbos - Giant bees are the first non-dantini enemy you encounter. If not for their sweet eyes, they'd be just like the eel in Super Mario 64. Oh, and they stalk you throughout the room they're in. Luckily, it's the only one in the game that has them. - Worm in a Well - dubbed by Wiki of the Gobbos "Quite possibly the scariest enemies in the game". These immortal monstrosities await their prey, lurking just out of sight in the eerie darkness below the surface, seeking to take a huge bite at whoever crosses their path. - World 4 of the first game was off-putting, especially in comparison to the first three worlds, but it is still fine for the most part. In the first level, however, there's a horrific spasmodic sewn-up zombie. It is chained up, and flails miserably at you. Made worse by the dungeon's 2-foot draw distance, you have to get up into its face three times to rescue all of the gobbos. - Ghosts - You have to race them to the end of the room, or else they will steal the key that opens the level's last cage. Not only do they shriek at you every few seconds, but they swivel around unnervingly as they float. - They are clearly malevolent spirits which, although unable to harm you directly, will not stop at taking away everything from you - the crystal you need as a shield and extra lives, as well as the key, making your suffer the guilt of having to leave your friend inside the cage amidst the deep haunted darkness and rendering your sacrifice meaningless as the key does not reappear when you dive into the black abyss below. Death isn't cheap, as you need those 100 colorless crystals for a 1up. - The water pipes with their pitch black nature, lack of music (only sound effects) and hidden enemies are this. Not helped by the fact you have to get to end of them to get either the gobbo or the key you need and then you have to swim back (by which point the enemy may well have respawned). Even the graphical limitations of the PS1 are no excuse for the fog which causes Mood Whiplash in the games' usually cutesy first world. - The rats. Usually found in cave levels they look like radioactive mutants, with more teeth than they should have, and horrifyingly chase you and attack you by spinning around you until you fall over. - The camera angles can cause unintentional examples of this, most commonly when you are facing a boss and the camera angle sometimes makes it feel as if you can't run away from them fast enough. - Speaking of the first game: The Password screen. While the graphic depicting Croc walking along a sunset is probably meant to be calming and transitory, it's accompanied by ( Until you start inputting buttons and get jingle-responses, that is. ) It's a weird and creepy transition to-and-from the cutesy world map and/or title screen you just left a second ago. AN ABSENCE OF ANY SORT OF SOUND. - The sequel is a lot more campy, with spoken dialogue, but that doesn't stop Baron Dante's first battle from being terrifying. You're in a plane, flying into a dense fog (courtesy of the PS1's limited draw distance), when Dante suddenly shows up. - That Evil Laughter the mooks make. ## The anti-tobacco PSAs	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Croc
CSI: Cyber / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes Season 2 Episode 7 - "Corrupted Memory" - The Cyber team discover that the victim and her fiance were using 'net-capable sex toys that someone else could remotely intrude upon and tamper with. Avery correctly describes this as "cyber rape". Season 2 Episode 11 - "404: Plane Not Found" - Someone managed to figure out a way to manipulate a plane and almost caused it to crash which is no easy feat. If it wasn't for the pilot's quick thinking, the plane would had crashed with no survivors. Even if all the passengers survived the experience, imagine the terror they felt as the plane went down and they all must had thought they would all died. Season 2 Episode 12 - "Going Viral" - A hacker uses a malware infection that can easily propagate in order to redirect 911 calls from cell phones, and render the phones inoperative afterwards. Even the suspicion that a 911 call might not go through is unsettling. Season 2 Episode 13 - "The Walking Dead" - A hacker is breaking into a federal database to make it appear a person is deceased. Once that's done, a person can basically become a non-entity, unable to access their money, use licenses or even hold a job. Even if they're literally standing in a courtroom, a judge declares that as long as the computer says they're dead, they can't do anything that's a legal basis.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/CSICyber
CSI: Miami / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned. - "Tipping Point." A fellow is Buried Alive in a construction site, and is only discovered when a giant drilling machine breaks through the coffin he's imprisoned in and rips him apart. And of course, the flashback to said event is replayed over and over again. - "Dissolved." A guy gets knocked into a pool, the water of which was replaced some kind of horribly corrosive chemical. We're treated to pretty much a minute straight of the guy thrashing and screaming as the stuff eats away at him, and in the end he looks like one of The Skinless from Hellraiser (and is still sizzling away when the team arrive). - "Spring Breakdown" starts with three people dead over spring break. One person is found impaled through the sides on a sharp rail from a great height. Another is a woman found dead inside a washing machine. And the third victim is another male found buried up to his neck in sand within the low tide. - Another episode features a special machine gun that practically liquefies anyone it hits. - "Mayday" ends with Natalia forced into the trunk of a car by Randy, who promptly drives it off the edge of the dock The episode replaces the end credits music with her panicked screams for help. - One of the final few episodes, "Last Straw," actually has multiple moments: - The Jump Scare beginning: From out of nowhere, a terrified horse runs out in traffic... because someone bloodily killed and hanged its rider nearby. - Another victim is locked in a tanning-booth, and left to . suffocate and burn alive at the same time	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/CSIMiami
Crystal's Pony Tale / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes Surprisingly, the otherwise saccharine Crystal's Pony Tale has Nightmare Fuel. - The game pits Crystal against a disproportionately intimidating figure in the form of the Witch. The opening sequence featuring her is unrelentingly ominous, which is amplified by the chilling soundtrack. The lack of motivation for the Witch's actions only adds to the unsettling sense of mystery surrounding her. It also doesn't help that she shows up at random points to impede Crystal's progress. Just when Crystal is about to save one of her friends... SURPRISE! There she is to stop her. You could look up any Let's Play of the game on YouTube and it's a guarantee that around half of the commentators will bring up how badly the Witch scared them as a kid. - Also, how the Witch imprisons Crystal's friends, most of them falling into And I Must Scream territory. One of them could be encased in a cave wall, another could be stuck on the carousel and still another could locked in the circus train car. - The bees that show up on the grassy level and drop honey on Crystal, complete with the "Flight of the Bumblebee" playing in the background. - The Creepy Circus Music that plays when Crystal approaches the carousel. - When approaching the old bridge with the bats swooping in and out of it, an ominous rendition of "In the Hall of the Mountain King" starts playing.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/CrystalsPonyTale
Crysis / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes The woman you come across in Seat of Power. She's alone in an abandoned evac center, surrounded by rotting corpses who may have been her friends or family. Blood (or something worse) is dripping from her mouth, and she's holding her own dissolving internal organs in her hands and speaking in a soft, raspy voice; Woman: It's nothing. I'm not that sick...I'm feeling much better now...	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Crysis
Critters / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes - There's something terrifying about small creatures that can eat 20 times their weight, move very fast, jump high, are extremely strong for their size, and are highly aggressive. Also the fate of the Captain in the fourth movie where a baby Critter jumps in his mouth and bites at the back of his throat. - In the climax of the second film, all the critters became one giant ball of gnawing teeth. They roll on one of the fleeing townsfolk, and all that's left is a twitching skeleton with only bits of muscle. - All the more horrible if you notice that \|\|the skull is still intact. The brain is still alive in that skeleton, at least for several more seconds.\|\| - \|\|Steve's\|\| death in the first movie, a great example of Nothing Is Scarier; all the gore plays out in the viewer's imagination, rather than on screen. - Also, when the Crites first start shooting venomous quills, drastically upping the degree to which the family is in danger. Especially since it's happening in the confined space of a basement, and it's not even clear if the venom is lethal at that stage. - In the second film, a few Crites get stuck in a vent, with the heroes in the room on the other side. Mostly safe, because they can't get into the room, right? Then hairy tendrils whip across the room and grab one of them, pulling him toward the tiny toothy hairballs. Not even being blocked off can stop them from getting to you.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Critters
CSI: NY / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes - The show's first official episode, "Blink", involved a real condition known as "Locked-in Syndrome", where a person is fully conscious but unable to move a single muscle except for maybe an eyelid or certain facial muscles (communication can be facilitated with computer equipment). The French name for this translates literally to "walled in alive." Oh, and if this happens to you, there is no cure (although a few patients have partially or fully recovered on their own). Think on that a while and try sleeping soundly tonight. Bonus points for it being in the first episode, too. - The opening of "Outside Man" where a victim is shown trying to breathe with a clear bag over his face before being shot point-blank in the temple. - The guy in "Officer Blue" who got his head slammed in the door of a burning hot oven. - In "Tanglewood", the gang members used a workshop-type sander to sand off the wannabe's fake tattoo before offing him. Yikes. - "Charge of This Post": Detective Flack's injuries and all those close-ups of blood spurting out of arteries and Mac using another man's shoestring to tie one off. - "Hung Out to Dry" showed a dead man hammered to a tree. Through his empty eye sockets. With railroad nails. But that's not all. Mac then finds the missing eyeballs in the man's bloody front pocket, and we get a lovely close-up of them...and one is somewhat deflated! - "Sleight Out of Hand" involved a magician murdering his victims in ways based on his three new, high-profile tricks. The start of the episode shows him sticking his ex-assistant in a box and sawing her in half for real, using your run-of-the-mill hand saw. Not only do they give you a lovely shot of the bloody stump where half her body used to be, but they make it explicitly plain that she was still alive as he sawed her in half. - "Past Imperfect" had a guy who cut off his victim's eyelids before killing her. - The inventor's "House of Death" in the episode "Death House" is pretty damn creepy. Spikes that swing from the ceiling to impale you, a room that can either roast you to death or smush you, and the list goes on. All concealed in what appears to be an ordinary penthouse. - In "Clean Sweep", one of the victims was embalmed in a particularly crude way: one needle vacuuming out the blood, one needle replacing it with household cleaner. The victim was jabbed both times in the neck. He was also still alive. - The woman who was locked in the elevator and basically cooked to death in "Where There's Smoke". - Then there's "Blood Out" where a live guy got cut in two with a chainsaw. - In-universe example—getting that tongue in the mail in "Seth and Apep" was definite nightmare fuel for Mac, who retreats to his office and can't keep from imagining what might have happened to Christine, and though he's still unsettled when she calls him, at least he knows she's still alive and intact.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/CSINY
Cube Zero / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes - Right from the outset, we're given a stark impression as to how gristly this film will get. The first death is of an unfortunate occupant walking into a room and getting sprayed with some mysterious liquid. Not long after, he starts melting in full gory detail (that's what's pictured, by the way) until he's eventually reduced to a nasty, slimy puddle of flesh and bone sludge. Eugh. - He doesn't just get the solution on his skin; he drinks some of it, thinking it's water. - There's one scene where Meyerhold explodes after being blasted with extremely powerful sound waves. He's pushed into a room that then locks and has sound generators appear from the doors that immediately begin to torture him with a continuous sound burst that gets increasingly louder and more powerful. He's screaming all the while as this happens by the way, until he just explodes into a shower of blood that goes all over the walls. - We're even given a perspective shot of the room as this is happening just to demonstrate how loud this sound is - his screams are hardly audible. - That bit about sound being able to liquefy a human if powerful enough? Real. - Even more terrifying is that it was a Mercy Kill. Holy shit... - The fate of Wynn. He is recaptured and awakens to find himself on an operating table with his skull open. Jax tells him that because of his escape attempt, he will be "modified" before being placed back into the Cube; those "modifications" are actually lobotomising Wynn so that he becomes permanently mentally handicapped. It's heavily implied that this is what actually happened to Kazan from the first film.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/CubeZero
CRME / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes main page - My Name Is Cinder - An Emerald Unearthed - The Black Hearts - Roman's Empire - CRME With CRME featuring some remorseless Villain Protagonists, this story can certainly show many disturbing elements while providing insight on their activities. - This story, if nothing else, shows how truly sadistic Cinder can be. - The most notable moment is when Cinder strangles Melanie Black. She viciously attacks her and starts choking her with a deranged expression. And seeing the fear in Melanies eyes prompts a Slasher Smile from Cinder. Its one of the only times we see Cinders calm façade drop and make way for nothing but pure rage. - Seeing Cinders change from being affectionate to Emerald to being violently angry with her can be quite jarring. It gives you another sense of how unstable she really is under her Mask of Sanity. - Mercury's punishment for trying to expose Cinder's true intentions for Emerald? Having Emerald Mind Rape him for his behavior. She makes him see several illusions of his parents insulting him continuously while he gets angrier. He seems like he wants to murder Cinder for making him go through that. As a child of abuse, she should know how painful it is to relive those memories. Despite this, note : Or maybe even because of this she's willing to make him relive them up to eleven while she looks on with a Psychotic Smirk. - Remember in Roman's Empire when Roman said that Neo would be a serial killer if she wasn't working for him? He apparently wasn't wrong. When Emerald and Mercury go to find Neo after Roman was in jail, they come up to the house and there are bodies all over the place. Neo violently attacks Mercury on sight and only stops when they mention that they're working with Roman. Before that, Neo would've sliced Mercury's head off. - Mercury wasn't kidding when he said that he would beat the crap out of Emerald if she tried to Mind Rape him again. When she does a little bit of it in Chapter 13, he grabs her throat and slams her against a wall out of nowhere. - Amber preparing to attack Emerald. While she was nice enough to stop and help a child, she was still about to murder Emerald for attacking her. - Chapter 16. When Mercury says Emerald needs to get over her remorse. How? He encourages her to choose an innocent person to kill in cold blood. And the target Emerald picks, even to Mercury's surprise, is a lonely young boy. She creates an illusion to lure him away so she can take him to the forest and kill him. Despite the fantasy elements used to lure him away, this is a depressingly common thing that can happen in real life. The child could have been killed and no one may know until it's too late. And just before Emerald has him in prime position, she drops the illusion to see a gun pointed at his head. - Lionheart definitely has a good reason to fear Salem and he reminds us what kind of monster she is. Lionheart and a group of huntsmen tried to fight against her, but she obliterated them right in front of him. He was terrified of that happening to him. And Cinder actively idolizes this behavior. Not only does it show what little regard Salem has, it also shows the foundations for the power-hungry egomaniac she'll become in the series.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/CRME
Cucumber Quest / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes Despite looking like a cutesy children's comic series, Cucumber Quest is actually full of scary moments. As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned. - Think Princess Piano's freakouts are frightening? Here's Princess Piano forcing herself not to freak out. It's... rather jarring. - Don't let Noisemaster's fun DJ persona fool you; he isn't messing around. He was completely willing to zap Nautilus into dust, for example."Hey, Princess. All alone? ... Too bad." - Really, Noisemaster suddenly dropping his chill DJ facade at the climax of Chapter 2 is incredibly jarring. The colors take a muted tone and Noisemaster's screen-face becomes disturbingly blank. Especially after it's cracked from Liquus's counterattack. It resembles TV static. "Know what, Cucumber? You were right. I am sick of the same thing. That's why this time, there's gonna be some changes." - Mutemaster is no slouch in this department, either, despite his normally placid demeanor. Push the right buttons, and he will go livid. His immobilizing Anti-Magic field is bad enough, but he also has no problem using his greatly superior size and strength to slam Almond, a child, into a wall. - Glitchmaster's... Everything. Every where she appears she's surrounded by an Ominous Visual Glitch that horrifically distorts everything around her, within or outside the comic. The Nightmare Knight copy she replicated in the Chapter 2 interlude inflicts some kind of attack on the heroes and we're still not entirely sure what it is, only that it's accompanied by a VMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM. - Rosemaster wastes no time letting the reader knows she means business."...I haven't given up. Not yet. And until we've won... I NEVER will." - Rosemaster's powered up form is as terrifying as it is awesome, but the entirety of this page really amps up the "terrifying". - How Rosemaster gets Almond under her control - she takes advantage of Almond's heartbreak at seeing Carrot cowering behind a bush in fear by convincing the girl that Carrot's cowardice could very well make him a villain. This makes Almond cross the Despair Event Horizon so hard that she doesn't notice the branches and vines creeping into her mind. And once she's taken, Almond is influenced to kill Carrot by driving him off a cliff. - The release of the Forsaken Master plummets everyone into darkness, then Almond finds herself and Cucumber in a dim elevator. After a few minutes, the doors suddenly open — beyond them is pitch black. It's very effective, mood-wise. It doesn't last. - The result of Quakemaster's Curse. Obsidian finally removes his mask, revealing a face devoid of any features and made entirely of stone. And this is soon to be Carrot's fate if he doesn't pull through.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/CucumberQuest
Cube×Cursed×Curious / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes - The sudden Mood Whiplash in episode 2, as well as Fear's true nature, are disturbing. very - Amanda reveals that Taciturn Chatterbox was her mentor. However, when Taciturn wasn't teaching Amanda, she treated her like her toy. - The Wittelsbach Knights in general are this. Cursed sets of knight's armor of a perished kingdom. Their history states that while guarding the throne room the knights had to listen to their loved ones being tortured and violated by the enemy, and in order to protect the king could only endure. However, their efforts were a waste because the king was already killed in the backroom beforehand, and the enemy did that just to demoralize them. Gone mad, the knights exited the room and fought until they no longer could, becoming martyrs. When Fear knocks a helmet off of one of them, it's confirmed those knights' corpses are still inside the sets of armor. - In volume 12, after Kotetsu, another cursed katana, takes Kururi hostage. In an attempt to make her key absorb enough emotion to unlock the box that contains the indulgence disk, Kotetsu torture's her, making her key fill with negative emotions. That's not all, the feminine cursed tool's curse is a variation of Konoha's "to see blood", to drink blood. After punching holes in Kururi's body, Kotetsu precedes to drink the blood that comes out of the opening, licking all over her skin. The process repeats by making new wounds, and then drinking the blood, and this continues until Fear and others get to them. It looks very much that Kotetsu is raping Kururi. Then, at the end of the volume, you find out that the very female looking cursed katana is a Trap. - In volume 14, a group of thugs suddenly appear at the rundown mansion where Nurashaaki is hiding out. They appeared to have been sent there by the bribery of someone. They start fighting Konoha and Kotetsu, but being fodder, they easily get trounced. The LN describes the one way slaughter very graphically, of them losing limbs, and their blood spilling everywhere. Due to his curse, Kotetsu is sucking the blood off the cut off limbs. It's very disturbing, and major Mood Whiplash since Peavey's introduction.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/CubeXCursedXCurious
CrossCode / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes WARNING: Spoilers are off on Nightmare Fuel pages. # Base Game - Leas abduction. Imagine the situation from her point of view; You were enjoying an evening with your friends, only to wake up in an isolated, inescapable place with no idea how you got there. It's safe to assume that your friends have no idea where you are, and wouldn't be able to help you even if they did. Then your kidnapper reveals himself to be someone who has violently assaulted you in the past, who begins mocking your helplessness. No matter how hard you try, every attempt to fight, flee, or defend yourself is utterly futile. Finally, he tires of toying with you and drags you off to parts unknown. While the Blue Avatars intentions are a still a mystery at that point in the game, the entire scene is packed with disturbing implications. - The Vermilion Wasteland is unsettling on several levels; the entire region looks like a sick, tainted hellscape with giant bacteriophages infesting the terrain, and unbeatable guards patrolling the area who will instantly destroy you if you step a toe out of line. Yet even worse are the characters wandering the area. You're probably used to seeing amusing quirks and idiosyncrasies from the NPC's by now, but these are outright bizarre; some are sprinting headlong into a wall while rambling about "getting out", others are stuck in an endless, looping conversation without pause, and one girl is praying for a lantern to strike her blind. It only gets worse when you learn they aren't actually NPCs... - The worst part is when Lukas decides to log out at the end of the day, only to realize thay he can't. After several failed attempts to remove himself from the game, his expression shifts from annoyance to dread as the implications sink in; He's not just forced to play through a hellish wasteland, he's never going to leave. The realization hits so hard that he flips out and assaults the the high level guards in a desperate panic with predictable results. - Remember those overpowered guards mentioned above? Shizuka rips apart half a dozen of them on her way to your room. But don't celebrate too soon; This unstoppable juggernaut is very, very angry. At you. - After the Final Boss, Gautham enters the cyber-space playground without his avatar, which horrifies Sergey as it's dangerous to do so. He just stoically congratulates Lea for defeating him, and then walks towards the edge of the platform to ''log out''. Lea is smacked away for trying to stop, and as he falls, the screen fades to black and a flash of red punctuates his impact. # A New Home - C'tron's reaction upon realizing he was an Evotar of Benedict Sidwell, the same man responsible for the Evotars' suffering. He quickly has a nervous breakdown, making deranged faces with his eyes wide open, no less horrified than his friends. Lea has to give him a Cooldown Hug to calm him. - C'tron ALMOST gets deleted by Sidwell's management bot, which is absurdly powerful in itself. Lucky for him he was proofed from it. But the ones before him weren't, so the dread he felt was very real until this moment.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/CrossCode
Crowns of the Kingdom / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes - Maleficent's spell that starts the whole story. It's described in great detail, and its effects nearly doom all of Disneyland. - The realm of Inpotentia, a place where discarded, forgotten, or unthought of ideas go. Characters trapped in there have to remind themselves who they are every second or else they'd disappear completely. - The Dispirations, creatures who are unspoken and forgotten thoughts given being. One tells Maleficent that there are countless numbers of them. - Mickey and Donald nearly drowning while being attacked by Dispirations in the Submarine Lagoon. - The Disney Villains summon Chernabog. He proceeds to nearly wipe out the park before being stopped. - The final battle with Maleficent has her nearly kill Mickey at several points.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/CrownsOfTheKingdom
Cujo / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes Imagine you're being trapped in a broken-down car, with a rabid St. Bernard lurking around. Meanwhile, your four-year old son is going into seizures and heat strokes. The three most particularly terrifying scenes post-rabies infection, are when the titular dog mauls his owner and the neighbor, when he takes a bite out of the mom while she and her son are trapped in the car, and the penultimate scene when, having gotten back up from a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown inflicted by the mom with a baseball bat moments earlier, he shows up unexpectedly just before he dies via gunshot inflicted to the head. Yep, Paranoia Fuel aplenty. It's a small moment, but there is one scene in the book where Donna chances a look out the driver's side window, only to be face to face with a deranged Cujo. It plays way too well to the fear of looking out a window only to see someone looking in at you. The scene where Cujo becomes infected with rabies. He's chasing a rabbit in a bright field and tries to scare the rabbit out of a bat's nest, causing a bat to bite Cujo in self defense. It's like a peaceful dream that slowly turns into a nightmare and you can really see how dark Stephen King's mind was when he was writing the story. In the novel itself, it's even depicted as a bit of a Tear Jerker — King wrote from Cujo's perspective, showing Cujo's self-loathing for getting bitten, and the dog's deep fear that his owners would be angry with him and call him a bad dog. George Bannerman's death in the novel is very graphic. The poor man is literally ripped into by Cujo and has his entrails ripped out. He tries to stumble towards his pistol, literally holding onto his intestines until Cujo attacks him again. Yeesh. And as if that weren't enough, we get a marvelous Wham Line from Bannerman's perspective as he and Cujo grapple. Bannerman: Hello Frank. It's you isn't it? Was Hell too hot for you?	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Cujo
Cult of Chucky / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes It's revealed that after Chucky possessed Alice in the last movie, she went on a murder spree that resulted in her getting killed by a would-be victim who was only trying to defend themselves from a psychotic girl. Nica is appropriately horrified to hear that. Two words: CHUCKYWINS. No Near-Villain Victory, no last-minute interference; it's a 100% cut-and-dry victory. By the end, he's locked Andy up in the asylum and has succeeded in possessing Nica, driving off with Tiffany to do god knows what. Oh, and there's also another Good Guy doll which he transferred his soul into, who's likely to either find more Good Guy dolls to continue the process or simply go on killing. Minus The Stinger, this is without a doubt the darkest ending in the franchise.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/CultOfChucky
Current 93 / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes The title track of Black Ships Ate The Sky, a hard-driving noise-rock \|\|BSoD Song\|\| built on repetition, in which the speaker \|\|rapidly loses his mind as he witnesses the Black Ships destroy reality.\|\| "The Inmost Night" off of All the Pretty Little Horses. Rambling, vaguely cautionary lyrics, ranted over arrangement of piano, guitar, tape, and drones, and then buried under a flanger, to the point of sounding totally unnatural. From the same album, ''Twilight Twilight Nihil Nihil," an atonal string drone backing deadpanned rounds concerning suffering, destruction and nothingness. The official transcription in the liner notes looks like something you'd find scrawled on the walls of a Room Full of Crazy. Dragonflies and mayflies, no more dying, no more dying, DEAD! "She Took Us To The Places Where The Sun Sets," from Birth Canal Blues. The lyrics, roared in a distorted Voice of the Legion, jump between caustic damnations and disjointed visions of the world after man. Live versions, while not as heavy on the vocal effects, included several additional verses regarding the end of the world which were along the same vein. "(Hey Ho) The Noddy (Ho) from Swastikas for Noddy, especially once you realize that the song is about \|\|a young girl getting raped\|\|. "Mommy's teeth are cracked / Mommy's smile is cracked / Hey ho the noddy ho / Mommy's smile is red."	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Current93
Cursed Trilogy / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes One of many instant-deaths in 2. - The colourful artstyle with Anime Hair seems somewhat like things you would see in the early 2000s on DeviantArt, and the lack of shading makes it look like an MSPaint drawing. This ends up making things seem quite unsettling - especially when you end up seeing dead bodies. - The sheer amounts of stillness. Nothing Is Scarier indeed. - The much more rudimentary art style of the first game can be very VERY unsettling: - Examining the dead body. It's not Jennifer. But it looks highly disturbing. Until that is, it turns and suddenly look at you - but then turns back down. Now it's horrifying. - In the ending of the first game, Jennifer talks about how she doesn't remember what happened in the mine... until she says "You cut my F**ing head off". And then she suddenly raises a knife while blood flows out of her face and hand. - Jennifer repeatedly* attacks you in the mine after her dead body was taken - and you cut her head off. - In the second game, you have to at one point don a diving suit and go into a lake to take an item out of a car. With a dead body inside. Remove it, back up - and the body is now flying right at you. - There is also one part in which you enter a bathroom, and if you stop to look at the mirror, you'll see Randall's reflection... and a mantis like monster walking right in the bathroom door in plain sight. - Within the bathroom, you have to hide inside a stall. But what happens if you don't close the door? Instant death. - Going through the barn house in Cursed 2 is harrowing because there's a nearly invisible enemy within that will instantly kill you if you run into it and don't have the music box. When it catches you? A pair of enormous claws close in around you and, presumably, rip you apart. Oh, and the music used in the barn does everything it can to make the barn maze all the creepier. - Sometimes while driving in the second game, you can hear a noise. Look to the left or the right? And there's a monster running alongside the car at full speed. And then it tries to get in, requiring you to fight it off. - What may perhaps be the first time you encounter said monster in the second game will cause you to get a flat tire. What follows is a tense puzzle where you have to replace the tire... while hearing Giegue's shrill theme. It's a very very effective use of it. - In the second game, you can actually see Malus's body in the background in a few scenes. - In the second game, open up the door from the tavern to the mines and... guess what's there waiting for you. Yep, a zombie. - The truck is always one of the few safe place(s) in Cursed 2. However, the player can disturb a mummy and it will end up in the truck with you. - So you found pieces of a toddler that was apparently ripped to pieces, put them back together, and placed them into a coffin to put it to rest. Then they appear. Two scary things contribute to the nightmare fuel: - Sometimes, in a Blink-and-you'll-miss it moment before you realise what's going on? You'll see it in the background of the maze. - Go to sleep before dealing with the demon baby? Guess who crawls into the bed with you! - Listening to the audio tapes in the third game results in plenty of nightmare fuel, especially the one recorded by Spencer's wife. Her continually increasing insanity with each recording is downright disturbing.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/CursedTrilogy
Cuphead / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes "[...] And having said that it's cartoony and upbeat, its premise admittedly is that you're crippled with gambling debts and now have to collect from fellow debtors or be murdered by Satan." Cuphead is inspired by 1930's cartoons. While it does look cutesy, it tries to invoke all of the creepiness of that era as well. Examples for The Cuphead Show! go here. Unmarked spoilers below. - Starting off with the plot, the Devil tricks Cuphead into gambling his and Mugman's souls for the Devil's entire fortune after a winning streak at his casino. Thanks to Cuphead's greed, he ends up putting his and his brother's souls literally on the line. - Also, before the Devil is summoned, you can see that Cuphead and Mugman are playing dice with King Dice and a few skeletons, and the Craps table is shaped like a coffin. A kind of foreboding, perhaps? - The bosses you fight in the three Inkwell Isle areas are all the Devil's debtors which are just these unfathomably powerful beings of all shapes, sizes and forms, ranging from mighty dragons, mermaids, clowns, to even actresses to even a train carrying the dead... just how did these things manage to get their souls indebted by the devil in the first place note : the actress can at least be explained away as "She sold her soul so she can be famous", but the rest is a mystery? Badass in Distress doesn't even begin to describe it, because all of these supposedly mighty beings are now slaves of the Devil in exchange for more power or fortune like Cuphead did. No matter how mighty you are, if you deal with the devil... you become his slave! No wonder all the debtors fled when they got the chance... - Early promos of the game show the devil making a neck slice motion after winning the game. In the shadows on the wall, you can see Cuphead and Mugman's heads being cut off by the motion to drive home the point of his threat. - In fact, the game has a real hard-on for decapitation. The intro song mentions it (and it's proven to not be a figure of speech if you lose to the Devil in the final phases), Cuphead and Mugman remove their heads when getting supers, Baroness Von Bon Bon removes and regrows her head several times (before that, she makes her Throat-Slitting Gesture with her finger as her head jumps up a bit at the beginning of the battle), Cala Maria detaches her head from her body in the last phase of her fight, Rumor Honeybottoms lowers her head in the middle of her fight to attack you, and the Devil himself can detach his own head and turn it into a spider that tries to squash you. The only one it makes sense for is Dr. Kahl, and that's just due to piloting his robot, whose body you destroy. - Let's talk bosses, the game's main draw. A few start off seemingly normal but take more absurd and/or grotesque forms as the battles go on. - Cagney Carnation starts out in a cutesy pose before distorting his face and roaring at you, then keeping a maniacal grin through the rest of the fight. He must really love stretching his face one of his first attacks is him lunging his face out with an even more evil look in his eyes (which is even quicker and harder to dodge in the patched version) (although there could be mild Nightmare Retardant if one compares his face to Mr. Burns). Then comes the second phase, where he gets fed up and makes thorny roots cover the floor, limiting your safe area. His face gets even more sinister, with his teeth turning to fangs and his eyes getting more detail. Think that's the last of his faces? NOPE! Beat him and you see his defeat pose. He holds his head up, his mouth gapes open with his tongue out.... and his eyes are now two empty sockets. It's a grim reminder of what you need to collect for your journey. What's more is that he has a Dummied Out voice line that was intended to play at this moment, a drawn-out groan of pain that shows how much he is suffering from his defeat. - Hilda Berg's main design is cute enough: Betty Boop with a pointy nose and an airship for a body riding a unicycle for the most part, and her transformations as constellations aren't even that bad either. However, then you hit her final form and she suddenly begins groaning, shaking, and then turns into this bizarre crescent moon form, which invokes a vibe of a wicked witch. Then her face pops out just like Cagney Carnation, but this time, her face stays popped out, revealing a jarringly mechanized body. And for the rest of the fight, she just cackles nonstop. - Goopy Le Grande isn't too bad at first. His fight mostly consists of him bouncing up and down while the player tries to dodge him. Then comes the third phase where after you defeat Goopy, the sound of an ambulance can be heard. Suddenly, a massive tombstone falls right on top of Goopy. You'd think that would be enough but NOPE! After getting crushed by the tombstone, Goopy's third phase has him bringing his tombstone down on the ground to crush the player. Finally, after the fight is over, his tombstone form cracks vertically in half. Did... did Goopy just die? In a game rated 10+? - Baroness Von Bon Bon has quite a few creepy moments. Some of the candy-coated creeps she sends your way look a bit odd. Examples are a giant candy corn with a monster face or a flying waffle that fights by exploding and then coming back together. The Baroness first taunts you by having her head pop off and then retreating into her castle which is also alive with eyes on the towers and the gate acting as the mouth. During the later half of the first phase, she begins to fight on her own, drawing a shotgun and training it on you with a grin. Make it to the second half and the Baroness emerges from behind the castle wall, gives you an award-winning psychotic grin, tugs on the castle towers... and the castle turns monstrous with yellow eyes, the gate opening like a mouth, the walls turn into hands, and it starts crawling towards you! And to top it off, the Baroness will start throwing her own head at you! She's even holding her severed head in her game over screen! - Beppi the Clown, as expected, can be scary at times. His Cheshire Cat grin can be a little creepy, along with most of the faces he makes, but then comes the later phases. In the second phase, he turns into a balloon pump and his head separates from his body! And he sends evil balloon animals after you along with a monstrous roller coaster with some equally spooky riders. In the next phase, he's back to normal but then for the last phase, he turns into a chair swing ride, laughing all the way. And the face he makes when he spawns enemies is especially unsettling. And then his defeat pose... - Djimmi the Great is a prime example of the Deranged Animation next to Beppi: One of his actions has him shooting his skull from his head at you. And in his final phase, he goes utterly giant-sized, taking up most of the screen, all the while having an echoing evil laugh that is just as creepy. - The Phantom Express. It starts out with a cyclops ghost with an empty eye socket and eyes in its hands. It attacks by throwing its eyes at you. Then comes the second phase: a giant skeleton busts out to try and flatten you! The third phase has two heads pop out of the train that spits lightning downwards, the creepy part comes when they die and their faces literally melt away. - The lovely Cala Maria starts out as a giant mermaid who can spit ghost pirates at you! (Don't think of why she has ghosts in her stomach...) Then the second phase where electric eels shock/bites her and turn her into a gorgon (trust us, just go with it), which isn't that scary until the third phase. Her body turns to stone, leaving only her disembodied flying head to fight. Also, her petrifying gaze involves snakes coming out of her eye sockets! - Werner Werman has a creepy moment. Get to the last phase of his fight and he gets eaten alive by Katzenwagen, the cat lurking in the background. You see Katzenwagen skulking behind the wall, so you could probably predict it was gonna happen. But still, it comes as such a shock the first time around when you see it burst through the wall to eat Werner. And then Katzenwagen spawns helpers by opening its mouth, which suddenly turns into a jail cell and ghosts of criminal rats fly out. The ghost rats attack by throwing pink bowling balls, complete with creepy laughter. Thankfully it's mitigated when it turns out Katzenwagen was just a robot that Werman was piloting, but still... - Rumor Honeybottoms is intimidating at the start, though not really enough to take seriously. However, her changing into an airplane is something that's quite unexpected. But even more when she tries to attack you with one of the propellers on her wing in a buzzsaw method, gleefully laughing as she tries to get at you. And the cue that she's doing this attack is really subtle, so the first time she does it, it's likely to take you by complete surprise. - Captain Brineybeard himself isn't that bad, usually letting various sea creatures do the fighting for him. However, the third phase has his ship suddenly transform into a giant narwhal-looking monster with huge teeth. And this transformation is accompanied by an ungodly discordant screech reminiscent of Monstro. - A few of the boss areas likewise are very nightmare-inducing, mostly those seen during King Dice's boss rush, where the "gambling games (and gambling-related activities) are sinful" theme is milked for all it's worth. - You might end up fighting against a domino called Pip and Dot in a strange world made of dominoes. They're a half woman and half man, as in a face on both halves of the domino. The creepy part comes when they attack by opening a mouth in their stomach to attack, complete with shaking, large sharp teeth and a demonic snarl. - You could end up on a table against a shot glass filled with whiskey, a martini, and a bottle of cognac called the Tipsy Troop. If you look at the background, you'll see empty tables at first — but after a few seconds, the seats start to fill with demons, ghosts, and skeletons. - Mangosteen, an eight-ball with floating eyes and teeth which looks a bit unsettling already. What's really unsettling is his defeat pose, where he starts melting and falling through his teeth. It looks as if he's barfing up himself! - You could end up fighting the skeleton racing horse, Phear Lap, on a haunted derby track. - Mr. Wheezy the cigar. Cuphead fights him on two ashtrays over a giant pit of fire. And the background is a distorted image of people mingling among the smoke. Pit of fire's pretty fitting, all things considered. - Hopus Pocus, a crazed magician rabbit sitting in a hat. One of his attacks is a circle of... rabbit skulls. There's something to be said about someone who fights with the remains of their kin with a deranged look on their face. - The background of Chips Bettigan's fight features a host of skeleton patrons in the casino watching the action. Something about the lack of animation in the background save for it tilting back and forth slowly in a slightly nauseating manner also makes it more than a little unsettling. The knockout animation doesnt help, either. - Pirouletta, a cross between a ballerina and a roulette wheel, fights you on a roulette betting layout. Giant, disembodied gloved hands float slowly in the background, tossing chips around and lifting drinks. - You might go up against Mr. Chimes, an evil cymbal-banging monkey toy in a claw machine complete with empty eye sockets and an ear-piercing shriek whenever he wakes up. Also, when you make an incorrect guess in his memory game, he will let out an unsettling Evil Laugh while still hanging limply from the claw holding him. - King Dice's deep voice in his Villain Song "Die House" makes the lyrics all the more creepy. He is the devil's right-hand man. If you haven't finished your task, Haven't worked assiduously, No, I cannot let you pass; Don't you mess with me! - Speaking of whom, King Dice comes off as more unsettling than his boss. One can tell from first glance that the guy's a shifty character, so it comes as no surprise when he leads the boys on when they come into the casino to gamble. But then you have to face him in All Bets Are Off, and the way he just looms over you while you play his dice game with that ominous grin of his. Then you actually have to fight him once you reach the end of the board (which comes very instantaneously), and that grin becomes a full-on Slasher Smile as he sends his cards out, laughing all the while. Thankfully, he's fairly easy, since all you must do is parry through his row of cards and blast at him when you can. But losing here means re-doing the whole dice board game again, having to put up with all of his creepiness once more. - Not surprisingly, the Devil is milked for all he's worth in his boss fight. He morphs into bizarre creatures like a goat, a spider, and a serpent creature, he occasionally displays Glowing Eyes of Doom, and in his final phase, he jumps out his skin and hops into a hole, where you chase after him, right into a boss fight in Hell itself against his now kaiju-sized self staring right at the player! Things really get nuts from there. - The invincibility power you gain, while helpful, is activated by having Cuphead's and Mugman's heads grow huge with blank eye sockets, who follow it up by laughing rather creepily. - There is a blink-and-you-miss-it moment in Cuphead's and/or Mugman's death animations. If their HP gets dropped down to zero, they pause with a shocked expression before their eyes vanish from their sockets as a single church bell tolls ominously, signifying death, and their body crumbles into dust with a shaky downward slide whistle, at the same time their spirit forms in a dizzying state (with their straw forming into a halo), showing their shiny pink heart as they are flying away. It's all in a quick motion, but it's still Nightmare Fuel as to what happens to their bodies when they die (though they can be revived in co-op mode, making it a bit of a relief, but still...). - As if the battles with the pink ghosts in each Mausoleum stage weren't creepy enough, the patched version of the game adds a spooky announcer who spouts out creepy lines like, "Here comes the spooky fun!" and "The ghosts are out tonight." And should one of the ghosts happen to reach the urn where the Legendary Chalice is imprisoned, you now get a scary/sad chord from Shoptimus Prime that plays out like this, all while Cuphead or Mugman look absolutely terrified: - On the game over screens, the music slows down, becoming deeper and more distorted. This can turn songs that are normally fun and catchy and make them scary. Especially notable is when you die in the Die House (by hacking the game, since it's impossible to do so otherwise), and King Dice's already deep singing voice becomes just plain demonic. - This song hidden in the files was thought to be a piracy measure, but considering it's on Good Old Games it's probably an Urban legend about the file appearing after an update. The track has now been dubbed "You Paid The Price" by fans. - With the 1.2 patch update, the mid-game cutscenes are now fully animated. This actually makes King Dice and the Devil look more threatening when you end up confronting them. - The "Crisp Apples" trailer has Cuphead and Mugman sitting on a bench enjoying an apple but the facial motions the brothers make while eating can look unintentionally disturbing to say the least, which has caused some viewers to be rather creeped out by it. The chewing sounds they make doesn't exactly help either, as it almost sounds more as if they're chewing on hard glass. That's not to mention their teeth are visibly shown here (which are normally not ever visible), which goes straight into the uncanny valley for some people. - It's a Freeze-Frame Bonus but apparently Cuphead has a neck. Yes. A neck.◊ Let that sink in for a moment... especially when you consider he can detach his own head. - It can be nightmare fuel for Mac (the apple guy) if you put yourself in his shoes: Imagine walking up and greeting your friends, only to see them casually munching on a smaller version of what is basically your own head. - The fact that Mugman keeps on eating the apple in front of Mac despite probably very well knowing Mac is standing there, clearly horrified and shaking in fear. And continuously smiling as he does so. - Mac's laugh at the end of the trailer's equivalent of That's All, Folks! ended up being a Jump Scare for some viewers, especially since they weren't expecting it. The laugh also sounds rather creepy too. - While the previous trailers used the traditional hand-drawn animation, and the Switch reveal trailer had a very cool Roger Rabbit Effect, the reveal trailer for the PlayStation is unnerving. What makes this trailer unique from the others is its use of Stop Motion animation instead of the hand-drawn animation. Something about those puppets of King Dice and Cuphead look really off based on how stilted the animation is. - Despite the uncanny animation, there are two interesting instances of Fridge Brilliance here. One, stop-motion animation was a very popular animation and filmmaking technique back in the early 20th century and has been used in many popular films at the time, animation or live-action. - Two, it can also be factored that stop-motion, in general, is seen as an uncanny animation format, so this Uncanny Valley look was likely intentional. - Mortimer Freeze is a bit unsettling in his own right, for these two instances: - While he's intimidating, Glumstone the Giant may not look as creepy as previous bosses like Cagney, Beppi, or the Devil. Then he eats you and you wind up in his stomach, with only still-living reptilian skeletons keeping you from falling into his stomach acid. And now you fight his stomach ulcer. His hideous, disgusting stomach ulcer that lingers from above, grinning down at you with a face not even a mother could love. This also means you end the fight by attacking him from the inside. Best not to imagine what the outcome of that fight looked like. Thankfully, Glumstone's fine, as the ending shows. - There's something discomforting about seeing Esther getting cooked into living sausage links. Sure, Black Comedy and all, but it's arguably the most brutal transformation in the game solely because it's the cartoon animal equivalent of being flayed and cooked alive. The moo she lets out when attacking in this form sounds like a cow in pain. And then there's the fact that she's spitting out steaks at you. Is she... coughing up her own innards? - Once you defeat Esther in this form, she gets packaged into a can, out of which two long, non-living sausage chains emerge and serve as the main obstacles for this part. Notably, the only seemingly alive thing in this part of the fight is the image of Esther on the tin adorning her own packaged meat, and all she does is spit hot peppers at you with a coughing noise. It very much feels like the player killed her off for real by this point, further punctuated by the fact that sausage angels escape the can once you defeat it. Thankfully, the epilogue indicates that she came back to life and regained her original form, but the battle can be very disturbing the first time it's played through. - Esther also has a rather cutesy and charming design (being a literal cowgirl and all), making the fact that the whole battle involves you turning her into packaged meat even more disturbing. And aside from just gasping at a mirror, she doesn't seem hindered by this. Which is even creepier because, again, skinned and cut up. At least Wally was on a stretcher and Cala was simply a floating Castlevania head. This is a cow's dead, diced, but still living body running around spitting meat at you like it's completely normal. It looks so...offputting, but it's treated like any other transformation in the game barring final bosses. - The third phase of the Howling Aces boss fight involves Saluki's plane grabbing the screen and periodically rotating it. The Interface Screw is already disorientating enough, but doing so also gives the player a good view of the plane's empty eye sockets and beartrap-like teeth. - The Pawns in the King's Leap lose their heads when you parry them. Still, their headless bodies prance along. It's an unnerving visual, to say the least. - The Bishop has a rather unsettling design with his constantly aghast face, which turns into three rotating faces when he takes his head off. And throughout the whole battle, his headless body just dances in the background! - The Rook battles you with the decapitated heads of his own victims, and the player must parry them back at him. Said heads look very humanlike (possibly representing Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette), and look dead... until you parry them, at which point they look back at the Rook and suddenly gain determined smiles. - Chef Saltbaker turns out to be Evil All Along as he reveals that he's been making the heroes bring him the ingredients the whole time and will use one of their souls for the final ingredient of the Wondertart. The Slasher Smile he wears throughout his boss fight certainly doesn't help. - The secret boss fight is just creepy. Right away, the hourglass that forms the loading icon is broken, twitching as it tries to stand up. Everything from the familiar-looking Angel and a Demon constantly changing states, the grim, haunting music playing in the background, and what appears to be the Devil's skeleton hovering in the astral background, holding up the main arena! What's going on here? Is Cuphead simply having a terrible nightmare? Did the Devil actually die and is now haunting Cuphead's dreams to torment him? Who knows.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Cuphead
Cutie Pie Marzia / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes Sure, you'd expect a makeup channel like Marzia's to be all bubbly and fluffy. She's actually a Nightmare Fetishist, and she's used all that she's learned to create some pretty scary stuff. NO. - The meaning behind "I wasn't there." The protagonist wakes up at 3.30 at night. She knows that something is wrong, but she doesn't understand what exactly. She stands by the window, thinking, but the noises coming from the clock bother her: she turns and notice a polaroid camera, so she decides to take a picture of herself...\|\|and that's how she realizes she is a ghost. She wasn't there. \|\| - The fact that the only sounds you hear in the video are the storm, the ticking clock, and the camera only adds to the creepy atmosphere. - What makes it scarier is that it's sort of based on a true story, since Marzia at one point began having nightmares every night and woke up at 3:33 am. - To make it even scarier, what's 333 x 2? - "MOONLIGHT", another story where Marzia (presumably) meets a creepy pointy-nosed old man in an elevator. She goes to sleep that night, wakes up, and sees a headline in the newspaper that says \|\|that the man she met had died 10 years ago.\|\| After a few seconds of silence, the man's shadow appears, accompanied by a jarring Scare Chord. - "The Creepy Woman", a true story from Marzia's childhood. She was basically being stalked by said creepy woman who had an obsession with her, and after an unsettling encounter she wakes up one night to find the woman staring her down through the window. She then spells out Marzia's name in the glass. Luckily, it was a nightmare, but now Marzia has a terrible fear of windows. - "IT'S TIME." She had the uncomfortable feeling that something was soon about to happen and the only place she could share her thoughts was her personal journal. Luna was a sweet, lonely girl who liked to spend entire days at the park, looking at birds, people passing by, enjoying the quiet nature that is not always easy to find in the city. That's where she saw it the first time. She thought she didn't see well, it was there for just a second. Every time she could see it in a different spot, everywhere she went, it was with her. "It's happening more frequently, I don't like going outside anymore, I'm afraid I will see it again" - she shares with her diary, and continues: "I don't know if I should talk to someone about this, I have never felt this lonely before". Days passed and Luna was becoming more and more paranoid, stressed over the situation, confused by what was happening. She barely left the house, she didn't feel safe. "Yesterday I saw it again, It was inside the house. I still can't see it clearly but I'm afraid. I don't feel safe, I even begun sleeping with a knife next to the bed, maybe I should move somewhere else..." - Luna's secret was turning into something dangerous but she didn't want any help. It was a cold, rainy night. She was sleeping alone in her bed. Suddenly, she woke up, she knew it was close. She turned slowly, and there it was. By the end of her bed, a ghostly figure was standing, staring at her with black big eyes : her hair was messy , she was wearing a night gown and her neck was bleeding. Luna looked at her without making a noise, trying to understand if what she was seeing was real or one of her weird visions. In that moment, the woman said "It's time" . Luna didn't have any more doubts: she slowly opened the drawer of her bed side table and took the knife, she stared at it with no fear, and for once, it all made sense. She knew what to do.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/CutiePieMarzia
Curse of Chucky / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes Brad Dourif's voice has gotten raspier and deeper since the last Chucky movie. As such, he provides Chucky with a much more threatening voice than the previous installments. And it is awesome in its creepiness. You can tell whenever Chucky is about to move because that's when he looks his creepiest. The attic scene. Good God, the attic scene. For starters, it's where Chucky's infamous scars are revealed once again. But the real Nightmare Fuel comes with Barb'sdeath. The flashback of how Charles Lee Ray (i.e., Chucky in his original body) met the Pierce family. He is revealed to be a lovesick creep who kills Sarahs husband and takes her hostage in hopes of starting a new family with her. When Chucky learns that she tipped off the police, he angrily stabs Sarah, who's still pregnant with Nica, in the stomach. It has the added horror of paralyzing Nica from the waist down before she was even born AND cements Chucky as the Big Bad of the franchise. With the release of the season 1 finale of the Chucky television series, its arguably made even more horrifying with The Reveal that Sarah never called the police in the first place, as it was actually Tiffany who had done so due to Chucky killing without her (and potentially out of jealousy of Chuckys obsession with Sarah), meaning Sarah was pretty much screwed regardless. Chucky's second killing is done at dinner, where he's poisoned one of the chili bowls. There's a long, tense air in the dining room as the audience is left wondering who got the poisoned dish. While it also overlaps with humor, the moment in which Chucky finally speaks for the first time- nearly 40 minutes into the movie- is also somewhat chilling, especially given the Vocal Evolution mentioned above. Alice is hiding under the covers with Chucky, frightened by the thunderstorm outside, and then...	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/CurseOfChucky
Cruella / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes - The Baroness. She is not only worse than this film's Cruella, but arguably worse than the animated version. - For starters, she arranged the murder of Catherine, Estella's adoptive mother, on a whim. The very moment she and Estella stepped into her house, she quickly came up with a plan to kill her and frame it as an accident. - And that's not all. When Cruella angrily tells her that she murdered her mother, The Baroness merely responds "You'd have to be more specific." Meaning that it was far from the only time she arranged a murder. - The Baroness setting fire to the warehouse in an attempt to kill a restrained Cruella. She would have succeeded too had John not stepped in. - She is Cruella's mother. When she learned she was pregnant, she went on a rampage in her room and when her daughter was born, arranged her to be killed, and was only saved because her servant was too kind to do it, and took her to another employee so she could raise her as her mother. - When she realizes Cruella's alive, she goes Tranquil Fury on Anita Darling and secretly threatens her. - And, in the end, she tries to kill Cruella again. By herself. And in the same way she killed Catherine. Thankfully, Cruella saw it coming and prepared a parachute to fake her death, all while exposing The Baroness' true colors to the world and getting her arrested.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Cruella
Cryostasis / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes - Many of the creatures have been morphed into horrifyingly symbolic versions of their former selves. - The sequence on the medical deck is creepy. It gets worse when you realize that \|\|everyone is being treated for radiation sickness\|\|. - The hooded man that you see periodically throughout the ship, staring with a blank face is rather disconcerting. \|\|Especially with the strong implication towards the end that this is in fact you.\|\| - The kitchen flashback. You're a defenseless cook and have to navigate a room overrun by undead dogs. The dogs are normally occupied with gorging on meat, but get close to them and they'll growl, get too close to them and you're dead. And the room's layout will only let you pass them by a narrow margin. It may not sound too scary on paper, but it is. - The Mental Echo power allows you to relive the last moments of a dead body's life. You can use it on a side of beef in the ship's kitchen freezer. - Let's get a recap on the enemies shall we? - The basic 'zombies' are a lot smarter than the common use of this trope. Not only they are able to use weapons and the environment against you, they also are a lot faster. Early in the game you encounter a version with its head wrapped around in a cloth. At first it seems out of place but then you realize that (as mentioned above) \|\|they were radiation victims\|\|. - The 'welders' - fast enemies that (as their name implies) have blowtorches for hands.That somehow make you COLDER. - The gun wielding enemies are also accurate and mobile despite being half-frozen. The ones with SVT-40s are even capable of taking cover and rolling to avoid your shots. - Then there's the famous 'ice-spider' - a shriveled, frozen body of a person (who appeared to be alive and friendly a few seconds ago) moving on four icy legs. It's fast, deadly and tough and shrugs off all of your attacks until you figure out the way to beat it. - Around the time things start to get symbolic you meet the 'Jailer' - a frozen body carrying a PPSh and carrying a ring of keys in its teeth. But what stands out the most is the fact that it has a miniature CELL inside its head - with the front bars in place of eyes. The back of its head is flat with a window whose bars have been cut, a rope made out of bedsheets frozen to its clothes. - One of the toughest enemies are the 'wardens' - hulking brutes dressed in heavy coats with heads encased in a metal mask. It double-wields PPShs and carries two flashlights attached to its head. Whenever it appears it blares out like a siren.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Cryostasis
Cruelty Squad / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes The entire game tends to be pretty creepy, with unsettling sound design, low draw distance, and enemies that are as grotesque as they are dangerous. A few levels or areas stand out in particular though. - Miner's Miracle, one of the secret levels, starts out with an NPC telling you that something has gone terribly wrong and you should turn back. As you move forward, you see yourself through the eyes of someone watching you through a sniper rifle from the top of a cliff and find a man who tells you that "they" have kidnapped his wife, as well as everyone else in the area. Things do not improve from there. - In one of the employee back rooms of Mall Madness, there's a long corridor. Nothing completely out of the ordinary until the floor breaks and you fall into a dark cave, surrounded by Zombies, undead beings with an eerie Slasher Smile permanently plastered on their face. What's worse? These things don't die. Unless you have a fully-powered ZKZ Transaction Rifle or a DNA Scrambler on hand, none of your weapons can put them down for any longer than ten seconds. - Sigismund, your very first target. According to the briefing, he's been embezzling funds to invest in unproven biological currencies, which the briefing also reveals to be causing him to lose his mind, fly into random fits of rage and vomit blood all over the office. The main character discovers Sigismund to be horribly deformed, his body stretched and and hunched over with a gaping, bloody maw - all of while screaming about investing in biocurrencies and "becoming God." Sigismund : BIOGURRNGY!!! I AM MONEY... I AM GOD! - Mark, the police chief you have to assassinate in Androgen Assault. According to the mission briefing, he's been taking experimental steroids that have been driving him insane, with his messages being increasingly incoherent and violent. When the main character shows up, he discovers that Mark has been horribly mutated into what looks like a bouncy castle made of bubbling flesh with a deformed head in the center, who attacks the main character by vomiting acid. Notably, as you approach his location, Mark's distorted laughing gets louder. - Plus, the background music of the level is extremely unsettling, consisting of low rumbling noises mixed with discordant keyboard notes and occasional pounding beats. Makes traversing the whole level incredibly nerve-wracking. - The Darkworld level - pictured in the page image - deserves mention for being among one of the game's moodiest levels. The entire level is pitch black except for the mansion the target is located in which is dimly lit, as well as the skybox which includes a Faceless Eye looming over the level. Most of its inhabitants are also entirely pitch black except for their Glowing Eyes (with a creepy stretched glowing Slasher Smile to go for the civillians and the target). The icing in the cake is the approporiately creepy ambient music track that wouldn't sound too out of place in a Silent Hill game. - Even trying to get to Darkworld is itself nightmarish: you find its warp in Paradise, in a series of catacombs found in the basement of the house you spawn next to. The problem? Entering basements in Paradise will cause a deep red and black filter to fill the screen and additionally makes the music cut out. This means you're trying to navigate the basement tunnels in near-total darkness, relative silence, and while being harassed by the first appearance of the Flower and Zombie enemies, the latter of which make the disgusting growling noise you hear throughout the tunnels. - Admit it, some of you may have gotten particularly startled when you died for the first time and saw the "DIVINE LIGHT SEVERED" screen. - While somewhat more subtle, the "POWER IN MISERY" screen (upon dying four times) features a ghoul-like figure with tiny, beady brown-eyes and a blank stare.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/CrueltySquad
CVGW James / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes And yes, in case you can't tell, that is It really says something when a fanfic writer has so many stories on his plate that he has enough of a certain genre to warrant its own page. blood on his armor. Original Stories Fanfics - For AI-related horrors, there's "The Day My Computer Took Over The World". When young Jorge Andwen was sick one day, he confided in his advanced computer Mr. Happer about the evils of the world despite how happy he and his family is. This proves to be a mistake, as Mr. Happer is convinced that it has to rid the world of all evils itself. It goes as well as expected... - Thought the Redeads from The Legend of Zelda were scary? Well, have fun reading about them in "Night of the Redead", where they terrorize Hyrule in a Zombie Apocalypse. - "Norman Osborn in Mephisto's Realm" gives us Norman Osborn encountering Mephisto in basically Hell after his death in Spider-Man... and being tortured by him for his crimes as the Green Goblin for all eternity. And by "tortured", we mean "being worshipped as the Green Goblin". It's an Ironic Hell at its finest. - "Anakin Skywalker vs Darth Vader". Encountering and doing battle with the dark lord you will eventually become isn't exactly a fun time. - "Mina Mongoose and the Terrifying Tails Doll". After returning home from a concert, Mina Mongoose finds a doll made in Tails' likeness at her doorstop. She takes it inside, it shows signs of being alive, and... let's just say she's in for a crazy night. - "Ghost SMG3 and the Axol Menace" presents an evil Axol from another universe as the main antagonist. Not only did he destroy Inkopolis and the Mushroom Kingdom, but he killed the good SMG3 from his universe, turning him into a ghost. Since this was made before SMG4's Genesis Arc, this is essentially Ax0l before Ax0l. - For fans of Star Wars, there's "The Padawan and the Sith Lord on Ilum". It stars Original Character Daniel Star'lyte... and puts him through hell. A Jedi Padawan in the darkest cave of the planet Illum, he managed to obtain a Kyber Crystal and got out his lightsaber, when a vision of a Sith Lord appears before him. Turns out that Sith Lord is none other than the Emperor himself, and this encounter makes Dan one of the only Padawans to be aware of him years before the Jedi Purge. At the end of the encounter, before the Emperor vanishes, his final threat to Dan is that, even if he gets stronger, he can't stop the Sith's endgame to execute Order 66. And Dan is going to be haunted by this for years, all the way to the end of the Clone Wars when the event happens. After the encounter, he is left questioning what Order 66 is and is plagued by nightmares of the event happening. Worse, years after that day on Ilum, Dan figures out the truth about the Emperor only minutes before Order 66 comes down and does survive the event, but not without suffering some trauma. Afterwards, he goes on to wander the galaxy for a decade as the Empire grows in power, carrying the knowledge of the Emperor's true identity. Worse still, if the Emperor learns he survived and figured out his identity, Dan will be in graver danger as Imperial forces will be after him relentlessly, hunting him across the galaxy. - "The Phantom Platypus of Doom" starts off with a ghost story told by DB Platypus; the story of a platypus who annoyed people by blowing a whistle. Finally having enough, the people he annoyed beat him up one day, destroyed his whistle, and killed him. He killed all of them back as a ghost for revenge, and travels the multiverse to cause destruction. And then it turns out that the Phantom Platypus is Real After All! Here's what he looks like. - There's quite a bit of nightmare fuel to be had in "Jokerverse War", courtesy of both all these iterations of The Joker at each other's throats and the one who brought them together (read: kidnapped them all and trapped them into a strange dimension akin to War World): an Original Character bent on conquering The Multiverse named Z'or'ogh-Ro'gon (pictured). His plan is to watch all these Jokers kill each other, then decide which one is the strongest so he can force the last remaining Joker to aid him in his takeover of the DC-verse. Additionally, he has a machine that brings the Jokers that were killed back to life so they can resume their fight to the death with each other over and over again. If it weren't for Arthur Fleck, their fight could have lasted decades with Jokers fighting each other non-stop, which could have caused massive damage to the fabric of reality while Z'or'ogh continued his conquest. He may have been defeated after all this, but more likely than not, nobody will ever truly know what actually happened and Arthur, the man who saved the multiverse, went home to be arrested for what he did to Murray Franklin, and the people of that universe's Gotham have no idea of the multiverse and its horrors. - Z'or'ogh himself, really. Not only is he manipulative, not only does he revel in destruction and death, but he has the power to skin his victims, obliterate armies and civilizations, destroy planets, alter reality, and so much more. Turns out, that arena where the Jokers fought was a universe he already conquered. That's not even getting into the OTHER versions of him that are out there. That's right; the Z'or'ogh that was killed at the end of this one story? That was just one version of him. And just so we're clear, this isn't a character James made just for the DC-verse; he was made for any universe he feels like terrorizing; Sonic, Mario, Zelda, Marvel... basically the usual franchises James writes for. - "Senbo and the Starved" primarily features Starved Eggman going after Senbo, a young teenage boy, for the sole purpose of cannibalizing him, something he wasn't known to do in the source material he came from. Even though Senbo kills Starved in self-defense and makes it out alive, it was still pretty creepy. Turns out, that's not even the end of him, because he (or rather, a version of him from an alternate universe) comes back again in the story's sequel "Senbo and Starved: Thanksgiving Comeback". He's just as bloodthirsty in that story as he was in the last one, if not more so, going after Senbo, his turkey, and his family, forcing the poor kid to enlist the aid of his old enemy (and old idol) Saiko for a remote chance of surviving. - "Don't Hug Meggy and Desti, We're Scared", as the title suggests, is "Dont Hug Me Im Mario" with Meggy and Desti note : surviving here in an alternate universe in Mario and SMG4's places, trying desperately to escape the demented teachings of the suddenly hostile Don't Hug Me I'm Scared gang. Yes, they managed to freak these girls out. - "Melony in The Freddy Mansion" and "The Bonnie Terror" are this mixed with Tear Jerker. Taking place mere days after the death of Axol, Melony investigates a spooky mansion, haunted by none other than the killer animatronics from Five Nights at Freddy's. All of them are just as savage as they were in their source material, and waste no time going after her and giving her the worst night of her life. Freddy, Chica, and Foxy fail in trying to kill her as she strikes first in self defense and escapes their domain, but Freddy had an ace up his sleeve in his final moments that allowed him to alert Bonnie and track Melony down... which he was able to do when she thinks she's safe at home note : technically Axol's home. And since Bonnie interrupted her shower with his one last attempt on her life, that meant she was forced to fight off her tormentor naked. Keep in mind that Melony is still recovering from Axol's death during all of this, and now she's dealing with four Killer Robots that want her blood. That can't be good for her mental health. - Then she ends up facing yet another Killer Robot in the form of Vanny when she's trying to relax at a resort with her new boyfriend in "The Melon and the Vanny"... though at least this time, she triumphs over her tormentor without crying afterwards, and gets to have Glad-to-Be-Alive Sex with said boyfriend instead. - With The Mean One coming soon, James felt inspired to make his own take on that horror movie's spin on The Grinch by pitting him against SMG4's version of Mario in "Mario and The Mean One". Twisted Christmas doesn't even begin to describe it. - "Pooh and Spaghetti", based on Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey. Like with The Mean One, James was so inspired by the then-upcoming slasher film involving beloved childhood characters that he felt compelled to write his own version of it starring SMG4's characterization of Mario. So, here he is, fighting off the masked animal men to protect both his spaghetti and his life. Unlike "Mario and The Mean One", however, there are a few twists and turns beyond fighting for survival. For one, Pooh and Piglet are victims as well due to the murders tarnishing their childfriendly reputation, and the only reason Mario knows about the danger in the first place is because they warned him. Most importantly is the Scooby-Doo-esque unmasking; Fake Piglet is the infamous psychopath Enzo, and Fake Pooh is Slender Man. Keep in mind that Slender Man's a good guy (or at least not 100% evil) in the SMG4 canon, and we find out that he's only in all of this because Enzo made him Brainwashed and Crazy. - What happens when an attempt to bring Meggy back to her Inkling form has Gone Horribly Wrong? You get Failed Metamorphosis Zombie Meggy, originally created by Jed22EXE. This alternate universe version of Meggy was created when SMG4 tried to bring her back as an Inkling by putting ink into her, only for the ink to overflow Meggy's bloodstream and kill her, turning her into a zombie. The first thing she does upon receiving this ghastly form is go after her friends and kill them. After terrorizing her homeworld, she breaks into a tech lab and steals the equiptment necessary for multiverse travel, allowing her to put her new plan into motion: kill all the Meggys in the multiverse to, in her words, "end their misery", with the Meggy the audience is following nearly becoming her next victim. Twice, actually. - Apparently feeling one Twisted Christmas story for 2022 wasn't enough, James wrote "Santa Mario Wants Mario's Liver", a story based on a certain meme, where SMG4 Mario encounters another Mario dressed as Santa who tries to... well, what do you think? - Chalking it up to three Twisted Christmas stories for 2022, James made "Dedede's Santa Stew". Not only does he kidnap Santa Claus with intent to cook him into stew... he actually succeeds in the end. And you thought Dedede was at his worst in Kirby: Right Back at Ya!... - Long ago in 2017, James drew Sha'D'Oh Nightmare, a dark overlord who waged war against many peaceful worlds and even came back from the dead many times. He makes his first story appearance almost five years later in "Eggman's Shadow Nightmare Trial", where he captures Dr. Eggman with plans to recruit him in his plans to Take Over the World. Of course, Eggman doesn't submit... but Sha'D'Oh Nightmare corrects this resistance by torturing him, outsmarting his escape attempts at every turn the entire story. With nowhere left to escape or fight back, Eggman submits and agrees to help Sha'D'Oh Nightmare in any way he wants. You read that right: Sha'D'Oh Nightmare broke the Mad Scientist into working for him. Of course, the temptations of world conquest didn't hurt either. - Something similar would later happen in "Octo-Trouble With Overlords", this time with DJ Octavio as Sha'D'Oh Nightmare's victim and latest recruit. Octavio does put up more of a fight than Dr. Eggman did, but he still lost in the end. By the way, the events of both stories are a prequel to a particularly big story James has planned for the future, meaning we haven't seen the last of Sha'D'Oh Nightmare. - On December 19th 2022, James released a picture of another terrifyingly evil Original Character named Ahl'zu'ohra'g'augh, who's basically like Z'or'ogh-Ro'gon, but even worse. Whereas Z'or'ogh is a conqueror, Ahl'zu'ohra'g'augh is a destroyer with the capability of wiping out civilizations, having an insane amount of power—as in, not even needing an army—and an even more insane kill count. The description for him in the linked artwork will tell you more. - Lara Croft getting turned to gold by Goldfinger in "Golden Love". James' illustration of this scene was released simultaneously with the story. Thankfully, this hasn't killed her, and its effects are reversible. - "Trapped in the Ruins" is an Immediate Sequel to SMG4 Movie: It's Gotta Be Perfect, where we see Peach exploring the castle as it's slowly being consumed by the very monster that ate it whole and rendered it impossible to return. She comes across the self-loathing messages SMG4 left himself, as well as some tentacles from this monster ruining the castle further while simultaneously attacking her Toads. As soon as she realizes that there is simply no escape, all she could do is scream Mario's name. - "Tifa Lockhart's Peril" is pretty self-explanatory, as Tifa nearly falling off an unstable bridge to her death is the story's basic premise, though thankfully she lands in Cloud's arms instead. - "Godzilla: Unearthly Nuclear Horror" is a story of Godzilla's rampage as he terrorizes Japan. This includes eating someone, leveling an entire city, blowing up the moon, and ravaging the countryside. - If you've read the SMG4 fanfic Saiko Rocks, you may remember reading about a brief Offscreen Moment of Awesome, where the SMG4 gang rescue Tari from Dr. Sheridan's insane experiment. Enter "The Madness of Doctor Sheridan", James' depiction of that experiment; specifically, a mind control experiment. In it, Tari finds herself in a simulation where everything seems normal; she has her normal friends and normal home. But as soon as Tari points out several details that are way off (e.g. Meggy being an Inkling after officially turning human and SMG4 wearing purple when he usually wears blue), the simulation turns into a nightmare, causing everyone save for Mario to glitch out and attack her. Even when she barely makes it out of the simulation alive—and manages to get a message out to her friends—the mad doctor still isn't finished yet, punishing Tari for seeing through his illusion with electric torture. Thank her friends arrived when they did...	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/CVGWJames
Cyberchase / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes "Is this your worst nightmare come true or what?!" (Yes it is!)One would think this would be out of place in a kids' math edutainment show, but things can get dark in Cyberspace As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned. - Hacker fits Vile Villain, Saccharine Show to a T. He's a tall, vengeful borg who holds very few punches against the normal, human, child protagonists. They're the only ones who can stop him, and they constantly find themselves in the crosshairs of his treason attempts and hostage crises. And because they're designed as Audience Surrogates, the Target Audience is primed to imagine themselves in this situation, ramping up the fear factor. - Motherboard's appearance has unsettled some viewers due having two entirely different shaped eyes. Her tendency to glitch out makes it worse. - Motherboard first turning delirious in "Cool It". Her image starts stretching in a pulsing manner, and her round eye suddenly lurches towards the camera. We then get a lovely perspective shot showing her field of vision squashing, stretching, and distorting. Instead of animating the background, there is only a black void with perspective lines tunneling behind Digit, making it look like space itself is warping with him inside. Things get less frightening once Motherboard starts singing "She'll Be Coming 'Round the Mountain". - "Fortress of Attitude" has several scenes where the CyberSquad will be crushed or fried by lasers if they make a wrong move. When The Walls Are Closing In, they're animated too quickly note : as impending threats so often are in the traditionally animated seasons, making it constantly feel like the kids and Digit should be out of time to escape. - In "Hugs & Witches", Buzz and Delete are sent to the beginning of time and forced to take the The Slow Path while locked in a time machine they can't operate. In their last scene in the episode, they're crying for their boss's help while being shaken up by a dinosaur. - "Harriet Hippo & the Mean Green": - The Spell of the Mean Green puts Motherboard clearly out of her mind. She spins around randomly, vacantly babbling nonsense as she corrupts each cybersite with a Hate Plague. Her face also appears to be floating in front of her head, and the backs of her eyeballs (eyeball and eye-rectangle?) are visible. Looking closely at other episodes makes it clear that's just how she's modeled, which is either a great relief, or just makes Motherboard's appearance that much freakier. - The (intentionally) ridiculously child-friendly titular hippo is transformed into the also titular raving monster that chases down Matt and Digit to do god knows what to them. - The For Real Courtroom Episode, "Harry Makes a Mess". Harry's Power Fantasy Sequence of suing Mr. Sleazé turns sour. The judge slams Sleazé with a fifty-year sentence, leaving his children unprovided for. She won't withdraw the charges, leaving the imaginary Harry to guilt-trip. For some young viewers, the melodrama was enough to distract from questioning the proceedings. And yes, the fantasy deters Harry from actually going to court. But how much does that knowledge downplay the horror of watching him innocently destroy a man's life and family and reduce him to tears? - "A Whale of a Tale" is chock-full of these moments. - R-Fair City feels like a Circus of Fear once Spout is reprogrammed into a rampaging Killer Robot. The dark red sky does nothing to help. - Matt risks his life jumping a gap without being able to see the other side. He believes he knows how far it is, as if that helps, but Inez thinks that distance doesn't make sense. She tries to reason with him, but can't pierce his rash nature, and turns to Anger Born of Worry as he resists her. It's prime Paranoia Fuel because real children might make similarly dangerous decisions. - Spout can only be stopped from the inside, so the characters have to enter a chamber in his head, with a strange, dingy color palette, while he's completely uncontrollable. It helps a bit that Inez and Matt find it cool. - Glowla and the CyberSquad must stop Spout before he reaches the Aqua Power Plant. And if they fail? - Darkspot, the toy frog in "Trick or Treat", also counts. Especially when the group are crawling around looking for it and it appears above their heads bearing a Slasher Smile. Applies in-universe when the Earthlies run from a kid in a frog costume. This suggests that they might be developing trauma from their adventures in Cyberspace, which is scary in its own right. - "A Perfect Fit": - The shocking end to "The Snelfu Snafu: Part 1", when Hacker's AI is revealed. Not only is he animated in a similar way to Motherboard, he also was able to successfully take over all of Cyberspace by infecting Motherboard via a fake encryptor chip he duped the kids into acquiring. This coupled with the fact that he seemingly erased Motherboard in the Cliffhanger at the end of Part 1 made it upsetting to many young kids. Luckily, Motherboard is restored in Part 2 and most is resolved. Still, as Wicked said (in the quote above under the photo), for many fans of the show, the worst nightmare had seemingly come true. Jackie: HOW AWFUL! (sobs) This can't be happening! Hacker's destroyed Motherboard!! Inez: Matt: He's in total control!!! CYBERSPACE IS...DOOMED!!!!!! Digit: Hacker: (Laughs wickedly with triumph, as cybersites all around begin to fritz out, ending the episode on a cliffhanger) - For the rest of the two-parter, the CyberSquad must navigate a Cyberspace that is visibly ruled by the Hacker. He's terraformed and desecrated plenty of cybersites in the short time he's been in charge. Who's to say how else he could've abused his power? - "The Snelfu Snafu: Part 2" gives Hacker two more counts of attempted matricide that were very nearly successful. While Motherboard is trapped on the Encryptor Chip, he throws it into a black hole (which somehow spits it back out because he hasn't paid the fine), and later into a volcano. - "Hackerboard" abruptly shows up again for a scene in "The Flying Parallinis", reminding the viewer that he still has the means to win. - In the climax of "Shari Spotter and the Cosmic Crumpets", Hacker turning giant is somehow a minor concern in the grand scheme of things. He has untold magical powers that he can use just by speaking. He was one syllable away from casting a spell to make the CyberSquad disappear. The show doesn't have detailed enough magic rules to clarify whether it would've worked if he hadn't been stopped just in time - The way Hacker backstabbed Coop, damaging his hard drive with magnetite, in the "Measure For Measure" flashback. Coop had to flee to prevent Hacker from going after Slider. This fear still comes true the moment the CyberSquad finds Coop, with Hacker exposing his son to magnetite and kidnapping him. - Motherboard gradually losing her memory in "The Case of the Missing Memory". Control Central, which for all purposes is her physical body, then starts deteriorating and falling apart. The situation is a bit too applicable to reality whether interpreted as human or computer memory. Just to pile on more stress, Hacker is on the sidelines this time, so the heroes don't know who sabotaged Motherboard and must spend a lot of time figuring out what the Memory Integrator even looks like. - Where to begin with "A Crinkle In Time" Hacker nearly tricks the CyberSquad into trapping themselves in a strange, clock-themed Pocket Dimension forever. He holds Slider captive, forcing him to watch this until he finds a chance opportunity to escape. Hacker ends up getting sealed in the dimension instead, openly missed by no one and quickly driven insane. He would be gone forever if not for Negative Continuity. Oh, and there's the creepy giant cuckoo that grabs people to carry them between dimensions. - This episode also features perhaps the kids' narrowest miss—with the greatest potential consequences—yet. Slider is willing to risk falling to his death off a giant clock several stories off the ground, for a chance that he can buy the squad just a few more seconds to get out before they're trapped in the Pocket Dimension. - In "Crystal Clear", Hacker steals the Synchronizer Crystal after a petty slight and paywalls it off. Said crystal is the only known way for cyborgs to reactivate their synchrometers (as they must do every so often). Then Buzz and Delete smash it up and sell the pieces. It's difficult to laugh at this until the heroes discover they can just grow an identical crystal. - In "A Fraction of a Chance", Wicked breaks the portal system while the Earthlies are inside. They're trapped in the vortex and doomed to slowly dematerialize. While Digit is forced to work with an obviously two-timing Wicked and Solve the Soup Cans to save his friends, the dematerialization process slowly cuts off their contact with him. - Hacker is this close to destroying Digit's self-esteem in "Digit's B-Day Surprise" and getting his signed permission to reprogram him. Had Hacker only gotten the signature in private, Digit's loved ones would never have known what happened until it was too late. - Ledge Hackerizing a majority of the cast with Inez being the only holdout. This includes Matt and Jackie, who aren't even native to Cyberspace. Inez missed being Hackerized too by luck alone - "Watts of Halloween Trouble" is something of a foil to "A Fraction of a Chance". Hacker freezes the portal system, intending to lock the Earthlies out of Cyberspace, but accidentally trapping them inside. They discuss the prospect of never returning home, and even Digit fails to offer any comfort. If Buzz and Delete had escaped with or broken the Portal Rebooter—and they had every opportunity—the CyberSquad would effectively be stranded on R-Fair City. Hacker would find them in a matter of time. At least if the kids were stuck in the real world like Hacker wanted, Digit could fly across Cyberspace to flee, without risking leaving his friends in Hacker's clutches.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Cyberchase
Cyber Team in Akihabara / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes - The Sibyl Team nearly kills the girls in episodes 10 and 12. - Tsubame defeats the girls in every encounter with them, which even scares them. - \|\|Christian's rapid aging and death\|\|. Real-life paintings and photographs are seen in episode 24 as his very long life flashes before his eyes. - The reveal of the real Big Bad, \|\|Crane\|\|. - \|\|Crane's\|\| disgust of the bloodshed of World War I is what prompted him to escape from Earth in 1918. He uses it to justify why humanity hasn't changed at all and needs to be destroyed.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/CyberTeamInAkihabara
CSI / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked. You have been warned. Original series - CSI, original flavor, doesn't shy away from gruesome cadavers or their stages of decomposition. However, there are those who take the cake. - Liquid Man, a homeless man stuffed into a duffel bag and killed, turned into so much soup by advanced decomposition and the Nevada heat. The bag sloshed when moved, and the man's remains weren't so much cleaned off the coroner's table as flushed down with a hose. - And if that wasn't enough, a later season gave us the Amazing Bloat. You might never look at hot baths the same way. - The rotting juice from that man leaked through the ceiling and filled the entire house, and his decomposing, moldy body had a brain that looked more like green jello than anything else. - Another victim was left for three days after being stabbed before the police got to the house. The guy was bloated almost beyond recognition and had to be POPPED in order to keep him from bursting inside the van. - The short, disquieting conversation Grissom and Sara have when they find the mother's body in "Blood Drops". It's even creepier because seconds earlier we were given a shot of blood running down her hand and pattering hollowly onto the floor, the only sound. Sara: Her soul is still in this room. Grissom: There's something else here too. - Whenever any of the guys cuts a corpse's finger off, removes the bone and put the finger on their own hand, similar to a glove, to get the print! - An elderly woman is locked inside a closet during a home robbery where she eventually dies of dehydration, because the thieves assumed that someone would come by for a visit and free her. As if that wasn't bad enough, we get a sequence where Grissom imagines her scrabbling desperately at the door until she collapses and the lightbulb in the closet burning out, plunging her into darkness. - What about the episode where the first bit of the victim we find is just a head? A very mangled head at that. And if that wasn't bad enough, we find that the victim died from being buried up to their neck and letting wild dogs kill him... - There have been a lot of freaks and psychopaths on the CSI series over the years, but the guy from the season 4 episode "After The Show" has to be one of the creepiest. From the haunting, echoing music played on the cold open and the way he obsessively stares at the victim on TV in the dark, his weird obsession with eyes, the way he stares at Catherine and tries to manipulate her, and his final Villainous Breakdown... yikes. - Las Vegas Season 5 Episode 8 "Ch-Ch-Changes"... the discovery of the second body. Full stop. - Then there's the video the first victim took of the crime scene. She didn't have anything else to record it with, so she inadvertently taped over her own bridal shower. So, footage of warm and glowing festivities suddenly cuts to shaky footage of a storage locker that looks more like an abattoir and the first victim sobbing at the sheer horror of such a thing, and then back again. - Two Words: KING. BABY. - "4x4", with the bodybuilder who had that black goo behind or in his eyeballs. - Part one and two of "Grave Danger" where Nick is buried alive in a glass box with only a gun and a tape recorder telling him he's going to die there. And then the air begins to run out and he has to shoot the light with his only bullet to get more time with the fan on. And then some ants start to eat him alive. And then it turns out there are explosives under the box and he must wait to be rescued. - One scene in the second part involves Nick hallucinating that he died within the box, and watches Robbins dissect him laughing all the while. And it's all from Nick's point of view. - "Hollywood Brass" has the best friend of Brass's daughter, Ellie, in a meetup with a "client", leading to her going missing. Days later, her weighed-down body is found on the shore of a lake, floating due to significant gas buildup (which the show proceeds to show as a time-lapse of her body putrefying and bloating up). Then Ellie is made to look at the body in order to confirm that it's her best friend. - The entirety of Committed. Creepiest Bottle Episode ever. - The sixth season opener, with two bodies left to melt in the trunk of a car. And Greg having to grope inside the contents looking for the drain plug... and getting a mouthful of the liquefied corpse juice for his troubles. - "Pirates of the Third Reich", especially the surgically conjoined twins scene. Just...shudder. - The Miniature Killer is far and away the creepiest thing the series has produced thus far. - Really, any of the serials and their methods on the show range from unnerving (Paul Melander, The Strip Strangler, The Blue Paint Killer) to sick (Dr. Jekyll, Gordon Daimer, Nate Haskell) to just plain weird (The Mannekiller, The Miniature Killer). And that's just the original CSI. - "Toe Tags". A good portion of the episode involves the dead bodies talking to one another. That alone is creepy, but then they show the back of one of the victim's heads while she's talking, showing a jagged hole and a gaping cavity where her brain once was. Ugh. - "Sweet Jane" gives us Doctor Dave, a truly terrifying dentist who is a Nice Guy until the characters discover that he has been killing young women and leaving them as Jane Does for decades. Even when he knows that he's been caught, he's more disappointed that he was caught, and refuses to name his victims, leaving them as Jane Does forever. - The final part of the sitcom episode. It's all very kooky and staged until the two murderers implicitly reveal that any one who drank from a bottle of vodka laced with anti-coagulant will die in the same manner as the victims of that episode. Cut to one of the sitcom actors shaving, nicking his throat with the blade which causes blood to pour down his neck. - Try that young girl who jumped off the roof in a bikini. Turns out, her hypnotist was responsible for not only indirectly murdering her, but also a series of bank robberies as well. But dear, sweet God, the girl's legs HAD. NO. BONES. They were liquefied upon landing! And seeing all those people in the bus screaming as the girl hits the roof... - "19 Down" (aka the episode where Laurence Fishburne debuts). Specifically, the freak of the week, who looked like Noah Bennent/HRG from Heroes as a serial killer. The way he described what he did to his victims in front of a whole class (albeit via a live feed, not in person) must have rather traumatized the students. - Then there's the opening of the same episode, which gives us a nice time-lapse (with cuts) of a body stuffed into a plastic bag bloating, putrefying, and essentially melting. - "Deep Fried and Minty Fresh" features a guy getting killed by having his head dunked in a deep-fat fryer. Of course, the Necro Cam shows it happen about three times. One sequence details the hot grease entering his trachea, burning it up and causing him to asphyxiate. - "Death and the Maiden" has a teenager making love with his girlfriend for the first time, only to be assaulted and sodomized by her psychotic brother as a Disproportionate Retribution, because he wanted her to remain a virgin forever. Like many victims of sexual assault, he can't even speak about the ordeal for fear of being shamed, and eventually rejected his girlfriend as he sees her brother's face whenever he looks at her. - "Lover's Lanes" shows a decapitated head being sent down a bowling ball conveyor system in full detail, and a bowler accidentally grabs the head before looking at it in horror. - "Appendicitement". Waugh. Being a twofer episode with Dr. Jekyll part of one case, the side plot featuring the restaurant is creepier. - After it's found out that the dead victim was killed in an accident, the gang are trying to scrape together a form of communication. During this, a cook's corpse is found in the walk-in fridge. Turns out it's a rubber dummy put in to prank tour attendees. - The ultimate example? Killer makes a bunch of people cannibals without their knowledge. Even worse, they're gleefully eating the owner! The camera shots showing the cooks unknowingly chopping up the body to be served and the depiction of the restaurant logo with the smiling victim doesn't help at all. - To top it all off, the owner suffered from Hepatitis B, so not only the killer chef made customers accidental cannibals, he also caused a Hepatitis B outbreak that forced the restaurant to close and him out of a job, leading to his accidental death trying to catch a raccoon. - Meet Dr Jekyll, your friendly unlicensed surgeon who orders a sophisticated device for brain surgery custom-made, then drugs the guy who made it, DRILLS HIS HEAD OPEN AND PUTS RADIOACTIVE SEEDS INTO HIS BRAIN, makes a wig out of his hair, puts it back, and leaves without a tip. He also specializes in putting an extra appendix in you while you're deeply asleep, and tying your guts into a bow tie through your bellybutton. - Don't forget inserting a device into a victim's artery that will cause it to gradually expand (resulting in increasingly excruciating pain) until it ruptures. Oh yeah, the guy he does this to? His own father. - "Sqweegel," from Season 11 Episode 4. Essentially an unholy combination of Gollum and a contortionist in a Gimp suit... uugggghhhh. - Yeah, it didn't help that he moved like a lizard and at the end said "I am no one..." - Even worse, Sqweegel is a crossover from the CSI creators book series "Level 26," so we're never going to get any resolution. - The season 1 finale of the 2021 revival reveals that Sqweegel is going to be season 2's main case in an incredibly unsettling final scene. - Rylan Gauss◊ in "418/427". Incredibly creepy pedophile. At least he got offed by the end of the episode. - The sub-plot of the recent episode "Unleashed" was purely this. It involves a beautiful, pregnant teenage cheerleader named Maria, who was two weeks away from giving birth, commit suicide by hanging herself! First it involved a fight with her boyfriend that caused him to leave her. And before that, a viral video of her cheerleading tryouts got leaked as revenge because her boyfriend dumped his former girlfriend (who was the Homecoming Queen) for Maria, and when the bad cheerleaders got suspended, they made the video global and caused Maria to suffer a horrifying Humiliation Conga leading to thousands of hate messages from people she never knew! Between her father's death and her boyfriend dumping her, she felt lonely and hung herself. Plus, right after Nick and Robbins take her dead body out of the closet, they have to cut through her belly with a knife to save her unborn child. Absolutely brutal, especially if you've been a victim of cyber-bullying. - "Freaks and Geeks" has the CSI team digging up the stomach contents of a recently deceased Repulsive Ringmaster. Among the contents are undigested food, a watch, a paperclip, and a bitten off tit. - "Sheltered": While investigating the body of a murdered teenager in the desert, the team stumbles across a mysterious bunker where they're attacked by the man (played by Neal McDonough) living inside. The man turns out to be a complete ghost, with no identification of any kind on him or inside the bunker, even his fingerprints are gone. Things take a turn for the even creepier when they discover that one of the rooms in the bunker is that of a little girl, the closet is full of clothes not just for children but that of older women, some dating back decades, and they eventually find a teenage girl hiding inside the wall. Worse, the bed in the room shows traces of sexual activity, and the girl turns out to be his daughter! Thankfully, as horrifying as this seems, it turns out to be innocuous, if not a bit depressing. Ten years earlier, the man had been the prime suspect in the murder of his wife, despite being completely innocent, and the experience of being accused for several months while the real killer was never found unhinged him a bit, leading to him taking his daughter to the bunker, which had originally belonged to his grandfather, and living off the grid completely. The murder was committed by the father of another teenager who the girl had befriended while her father was outside the bunker doing odd jobs for money, neither her nor her father had anything to do with it. The episode ends with the father realizing that shutting his daughter away like he had hurt more than it helped and the two decide to rejoin the world. - "Last Supper" features contestants on a competitive cooking show accidentally eating human flesh, including an eyeball. The contest who ate the eyeball realized that it comes with a contact lens and spews it out, leaving the severed and cooked eyeball for the camera to see. The victim's arm had its flesh carved off, and his blood turned into caviar. - "Check In and Check Out" features a voyeuristic motel owner who not only installed hidden cameras in all of the rooms, but also laced an automatic air freshener in a bathroom with LSD, causing unsuspecting victims to go on deadly killing sprees. At least three people were murdered as a result, and David Hodges attacked Henry Andrews after being accidentally sprayed with LSD. - One episode featured a girl self-immolating herself out of guilt for being involved in a murder. Her scorched body is found by Grissom not far away from the original victim in a ditch. Her body is burnt to a crisp, virtually unrecognizable, and it's understandably assumed by Grissom that she's long since died, then she slowly opens her eyes and looks at him. Grissom: We need a paramedic! CSI Miami See here. CSI NY - "Where There's Smoke", the second ep of season 9. The first victim gets essentially boiled alive in an elevator because a mad arsonist rigged it up to catch fire after she was alone. Then, they show the charred corpse. The next victim gets something added to what he was eating that interacts with the other liquids and stomach acid to literally burn him to death from the inside. - Episode 17 of season 2. It starts off with a half-eaten corpse of a woman, who is still being devoured by beetles to the point she lacks a face. Oh, and we get some very pretty close ups of her. We're later shown a montage of her flesh being washed off, leaving nothing but a skeleton. - It was almost a relief to know that that's what happened to her — because the episode was entitled "Necrophilia Americana". The title alone gives enough disturbing mental images about the episode's subject. (It's actually the scientific name of the carrion-eating beetles in question.) - In a season 3 episode, a cheerleader and her lover get high on angel dust and out of jealousy towards another cheerleader flirting with her lover, goes on a psychotic out-of-body rage and attacks the cheerleader. When she finally comes out of her psychotic episode, she's in the middle of ''cannibalizing'' the cheerleader's remains. Her mouth covered in the girl's blood and her mouth still chewing the girl's human flesh. Her lover reacts to the scene by vomiting on the football field from what he saw. Very much In-Universe Squick. - Also the cheerleader suspect's And I Must Scream description of her being under the influence of angel dust. - People getting gassed to death by exhaust fumes in the back of a cab. Knowing that the Nazis did something very similar before switching to Zyklon B makes it worse. - Whoever wrote the last part of the episode where it appears that the much-loved Lindsay Monroe-not-yet-Messer is about to suffer the same fate deserves public castigation. - And so does whoever wrote the secondary plot of the episode "Heroes," wherein Det. Aiden Burn (dismissed early on season 2, after violating the chain of custody of the evidence in a serial rapist case) is brought Back for the Dead as a charred corpse, of all things — killed by the same rapist she was trying to apprehend. The imagery alone is enough to induce more than a few nightmares. - Until they reconstructed her face (which is creepy enough), they were treating her exactly the same as any other body, completely unaware of who she was. Hearing them talk about her in such a clinical way just emphasizes the horror when they look at the reconstruction and figure out it was her... - That poor guy whose lower jaw (and most of the face below the eyes for that matter) was blown off by an exploding cigar. And he wasn't even the intended target. The real target was a joke shop owner who had accidentally caused a death a few decades before. - "Blacklist (Featuring Grave Digger)" - episode 2 from season 6 - there's something about the murderer's raspy voice over the phone and on the GPS in the car that gives me chills. - In-universe for Mac in 'Seth and Apep', when he gets the package with the severed tongue. He can't stop the horrific scenarios in his mind about what they might've done to Christine. He's really relieved when he gets the phone call her kidnappers made her make and hears her voice. 2021 Revival - The pilot ends with a trail leading to a storage locker/lab that seems to show that for years, Hodges has been faking evidence in cases. Sara, of course, refuses to believe it but the D.A. wants Hodges arrested. The nightmare part is that this automatically places uncertainty in every case Hodges has ever had a hand in, which means the potential for hundreds, if not thousands, of guilty criminals (including some truly twisted murderers) being put back on the streets. CSI Cyber See here.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/CSI
CZW / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes - "Sick" Nick Mondo's matches often went into this territory, even by garbage wrestling standards. This is the same Mondo who at the previous year's Tournament of Death got electric-weedwhacked. - Fun fact, most falls over 30 imperial feet are lethal. Having already survived a 25+ foot fall off the back of a semi trailer at a prior CZW event, "Sick" Nick Mondo decided to top himself by going off the roof of a building with company owner John Zandig. Now a table was there to "break" their fall but Mondo overshot it and almost died by rupturing an artery in his back. Think that's the end of his career? Not quite, see this was only his second match at "tournament of death" that day and he won despite that injury, meaning he still had one more match of splinters and glass to go. Oh, and he would later state that fall which nearly killed him and the match coming afterward did not produce his most painful CZW injuries, they were just the warning signs that it was maybe time to take a break before he got broken. - Rory Mondo and Danny Havoc's feud worked around invoking memories of the injuries suffered in Sick Nick's career. - The "i quit match" between Wifebeater and Zandig. Featured such spots as Zandig being hit with a weedwhacker, then covered in salt. - Thumbtack Jacks use of a syringe as a weapon. Especially his habit of filling it with water, then sticking it through the cheeks of his opponent and squirting it out, to prove that it's real.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/CZW
Cyborg 009 / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes It's tough being a cyborg. Just ask her!Considering the series, despite its lighthearted protagonists, is about a bunch of random people kidnapped by an international weapons dealing organization to be used as guinea pigs to make new weapons, you can expect our heroes to encounter many nightmarish scenarios along the way. ## 2001 Series - The cybernetic enhancements done to the 00-Cyborg teammates is pretty nightmarish Body Horror when their schematics are looked at. Under their now artificial skin is a massive series of machine parts that probably took countless hours of surgery. Especially 004, who has the most cybernetic parts and has a body filled with mostly incompatible weapons. - The Black Ghost Organization is In-Verse Nightmare Fuel in itself for a being Paranoia Fuel up to eleven and Beyond. They're an international weapons trafficker that has connections in literally every government on Earth, and deal in the most advanced technology on the planet from hovercrafts to cyborg tech. They get their test subjects by kidnapping anyone from famous people to random children in remote orphanages for their experiments to turn them into weapons or just scientific abominations either For Science! or For the Lulz. If the subject doesn't want to cooperate they track down their loved ones anywhere in the world to either hold them for ransom, kill them, or turn them into the same weapon monstrosities like the case with Joe's childhood friends. Anyone could be an agent from Black Ghost as well, from the local mailman to an entire house in some random countryside. They have enough clout to blow up entire cities like the case with Tokyo without fail just to test their weaponry. Oh and their big goal? War for Fun and Profit by using their weapons to create a world of constant warfare that they can profit from forever. Yikes! Plus in at least one future timeline, they succeed in doing just that! - Even worse, the leaders of Black Ghost mentioned that As Long as There Is Evil in human hearts and mind, Black Ghost will always exist. - In "Little Visitors", we get to see the result of the alien slavers attacking Shanghai... repeatedly. After destroying the city, they rewind time just so they can experience the 'fun' of slaughtering everyone again. - "Frozen Time". Joe gets stuck in his Super Speed mode. He can see everyone, but can't interact — simply touching them while constantly accelerating could be catastrophic. The effects this has on his psyche are swift and brutal. - Heinrich's No-Holds-Barred Beatdown in "Man or Machine?" - "Black Ghost Lives!" offers a look into the sort of experiments the organization ran on the cyborgs when they were first converting them. It's just as fun as it sounds. - There's also the part where 004's enhancements begin to screw up, causing him to lie on the ground screaming, while 003 and 002 have no idea how to help him. They're both re-frozen in the next scene, because the scientists have no clue how to fix it either. - There's one especially frightening part where Gilmore - the Team Dad, the one who we see treating the cyborgs as his own children - \|\|performing surgery on a just-kidnapped and drugged Francoise (the same woman who he'd affectionately consider his "ballerina" and have help him out, and generally was fatherly towards), while narrating that he was so interested in trying out his new surgery ideas that nothing would have kept him from what he ended up doing. It's also shown he personally oversaw the tortures and experiments of all the cyborgs, being the one personally responsible for modifying their bodies into cybernetic soldiers.\|\| - What happens to Pyunma in "Old Friends" (\|\| a terrible beatdown from a Brainwashed and Crazy friend and later a heartbreaking Shoot the Dog moment\|\|, and the fallout during "Nightmare of Van Bogoot" \|\|where his body is almost torn apart.\|\| - How \|\|Nichol/as\|\| died in the Psychic Assassins's arc. \|\|Having your neck and maybe all of your limbs snapped via telekinesis\|\| is a TERRIBLE way to die, and for worse the Cyborgs try to help but even with all their powers, they can't do anything. - The idea of \|\|being the living food reserves of much stronger race.\|\| Poor Pu'awaks. ## '79 Series - In the 1979 arc, Jet has an arm ripped off him. If it was bad enough to see him getting a leg almost destroyed in the 2001 series \|\|twice\|\|, then this is said scene taken up to eleven. Specially when there's a close-up to the poor guy's horrified, pain-stricken face... - And when you watch the scene in its entirety it gets way, way worse: \|\|that statue is a giant robot commanded by the bad guy, whose objective is putting his hands on someone the cyborgs are protecting. He takes 002 hostage and proposes to exchange him with the person the group is hiding, but Jet tells them not to give in to the blackmail. So, to show he's not joking, the bad guy rips off his arm, only for Jet to say once again to his friends not to do it, at which point the statue tightens its grip until he passes out from the pain.\|\| ## Manga - See that allusion to Pyunma's \|\|Near-Death Experience\|\| in the 2001 series? It's much, MUCH worse in the original manga. As in "\|\|mangled to the point all that's left is his HEAD\|\|" worse. - Albert's battle with his robot double in the manga's "The Bizarre Machine" (the story adapted into "Man or Machine?") is a little more bittersweet than the ultimately heartwarming anime version, mainly because viewers are treated to a brutal few panels of \|\|the fake Albert stamping on a nest of owlets to silence their peeping (in an attempt to hide from the real deal), followed by him murdering the mother owl.\|\| - In "The Snow Carnival", \|\|the Snow Witch murdering tourists by chopping their heads off, followed by the revelation that the Snow Witch is Linda, a young woman who's being gradually converted into a cyborg due to her organs being harvested for her adoptive sister Lena.\|\| ## Conclusion: God's War (Manga and Novel versions) - The sight of lynched corpses in G-Junior's chapter, as part of the mysterious incidents occurring in the Amazon. - The mysterious deaths occurring in the UK involve several people having fallen to their deaths, with the tops of their torsos being grotesquely twisted around so that their chests and faces are facing backwards. This is shown in QUITE a few panels, with several corpses displaying this mutilation and all bearing horrified expressions. - Joe experiencing Mind Rape from Hisui as Queen Himiko, who's induced him into having a creepy hallucination of \|\|having sex with her\|\|. It leaves Joe traumatized to the point where we see him in despair, unshaven and with an emaciated face. - Joe's university peer Shiori experiencing a particularly gross and messy death involving \|\|her eyes being gouged out and her head exploding\|\|, courtesy of Hisui, who's since become "Queen Himiko". - When demonic creatures descend on Tokyo, there's one example overlapping with Narm that sets up what will befall the entire team: \|\|Jet is suddenly snagged by a demonic alligator, though oblivious at first. As Pyunma can only watch in horror, Jet is bashed up against walls by the alligator, then spun around in its mouth until it CHOMPS down- sending his upper half shooting up into the sky and spinning out of control. Pyunma has to then carry Jet's upper half off to safety, risking swimming through the alligator-infested waters.\|\| - The other cyborgs being laid waste to by demonic creatures and horribly mutilated, necessitating new upgrades for each. \|\|Among the numerous mutilations: Francoise has both her eyes gouged out and loses her right arm, Albert loses BOTH arms and his right leg, G-Junior's skin is terribly damaged, and Joe loses his left arm and stripped naked while covered in injuries.\|\| - When the cyborgs start falling to their darkest temptations, Francoise is so horrifyingly broken that \|\|she gouges out her newly improved cybernetic eyes, and THEN puts her gun-hand to her head in suicidal despair as seen in the page image. She's bailed out of her situation by Ivan, and wakes up in a hospital.\|\| - As far as the others go, \|\|Jet regresses into a violent street thug and starts taking pleasure in beating up and maiming others, and even pulls a gun on a cop. Meanwhile, Albert shoots out another trucker's tires, and starts to embark on a bloodthirsty rampage. G-Junior starts destroying nature, while Chang burns down buildings, robs safes, and then attempts to hang himself in shame. G.B. attempts to burn down his apartment and himself with it, while Pyunma and Joe attempt suicide by flinging themselves off cliffs. Ivan has his work cut out for him.\|\| - Chang \|\|being the first to die via his body messily exploding and scattering his organs everywhere.\|\| - After \|\|the sacrifices of Pyunma and Albert, the giant Buddha attacks the remaining men on the team, one by one. G.B. loses an arm and is later crushed to death by the Buddha's foot, G-Junior loses a leg and zapped to death, and Jet has his lower half entirely disintegrated.\|\| - Jo Onodera's light novel adaptation, which preceded the manga version, has \|\|Albert graphically and messily get bisected in battle, which is why he's unable to walk and has to have G.B. carry him off. Jet's maiming by the Buddha was also more dire, with him getting his arms ripped off along with the lower half of his body.\|\|	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Cyborg009
Cyriak / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes When spiders aren't scary enough... Cyriak has made a lot of videos featuring lots of Body Horror. It's not surprising why it deserves to have a Nightmare Fuel page of its own. - "The Spirit of Christmas". An utterly monstrous worm-nosed reindeer with insect-like legs breaks into a kid's room and gorily drills the kid's face with a Christmas tree that comes out of the mouth of a zombie-like Santa head that sprouts out of its butt. It has to be seen to be believed. Say goodbye to your childhood-and quite possibly your sanity. - "Cobwebs". If you're an arachnophobe, this video is definitely not for you. The most disturbing part is definitely the spiders with human body parts. - "Malfunction". An absolutely hideous creature with faces all over its body, tongues for legs and a recursive head made from an infinite number of Cyriak faces vomiting each other out travels through 50s suburbia and corrupts it into a nightmarish mess with everything twisting and growing faces. To say it's disturbing doesn't even begin to cover it. - "something". 1950s stock footage, and things have been done to it. Terrible, terrible things. People's heads grow extra eyes and extra mouths sticking their tongues out before turning into long twisting masses of eyes and mouths stretching into spirals and forming double helixes, all the while a 50s clip of home economics progressively glitches out. - "Indigestion" is easily one of the most twisted animations Cyriak has ever made, taking the viewer through a flesh tunnel filled with many horrifying things such as crab-like creatures made of eyes and fingers and tongues with teeth forming all over the tunnel. The music serves to make the experience maddening. - "Baa" is a movie about a lamb. It looks nice, until it starts spitting out sheep-colored organs from itself. Two-headed sheep that spawn more of itself out of a mouth on its back with teeth made of sheep ears, a long-necked sheep with legs growing from its head vomiting out crawling tentacled sheep heads, a living sheep engine with gears made of rotating sheep heads assembling sheep helicopters that fly away one by one and finally culminating in a tiny sheep riding a faceless phallic creature made of sheep tails spitting out sheep with A Head at Each End, before it suddenly cuts to...a normal sheep, who says "Baa!" before the clip cuts abruptly. - "hand fingers" may be a little smoother than the other animations, but it's still a good example of Body Horror. - "MEOW". A gory animated music video about a graphic zombie invasion. Starring adorable kittens. - Cyriak's music video for Sparks' "Existential Threat", which is a song about a man completely losing his mind over paranoid agoraphobia. Quite possibly the creepiest part would be the protagonist receiving some pills from a doctor who then suddenly morphs into a monstrous creature with a wide smile, syringes for hair and scalpels for fingers. The video never clarifies if this is actually happening or if the protagonist is hallucinating. - The entire video is full of typical horrors made manifest as crawling, horrific monsters. Paranoia about what's really in the medicine you're taking, infrastructure failure poisoning everyone, economic collapse, all of it ending with a nuclear war, the end of the world, and the heat death of the universe as the stars, including the Sun, all go supernova. - His video for "My Territory" by Grand Popo Football Club features scenes such as a pair of scissors cutting through a landscape made of flesh, interspaced with blinking and moving eyes. He himself described it as "a foot fetishist's nightmare".	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Cyriak
Cube 2: Hypercube / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes - "The first one had rules!" The Alien Geometries make escape even closer to impossible. - Hypercube is pure nightmare fuel. Think on it. The hypercube distorts time and space, hours' (years or lifetimes for some) worth of time spent is six minutes in base reality, the overly-large cube they are traveling may just be a singular room shifting and folding in on itself constantly, that room by itself is part of a massive cube's building blocks, implying there are untold trillions of cubes stacked together into another cube construct, "the first one had rules" (implying this one does not) and finally, the final scene. My GOD the final scene; opening the only door left and seeing it opens to utter and complete 'nothingness'. - "Hypercube" had a script that the actual director flushed down the toilet, which had this in spades. To iterate: The hypercube consists of eight levels, and you can't go into any room you have previously been in, lest you activate the trap, which means EVERY ROOM IS TRAPPED. You have to go in sequential order. Some scenes, like level five gateway where the entire place lights up and the characters see themselves in different parts of the cube, going into infinity in all directions.... the final level is some abstract space where the shadows of four-dimensional objects are going around, seeking targets to kill by integrating with them and shifting them through dimensions (a character gets caught up in a roaming hypercube, which then becomes just a cube, making the character two-dimensional. It then becomes a square (two dimensions), a line (one dimension) and then nothing) among other things... - The traps in the first cube were already nightmarish enough, but there at least if the room was safe, then it was safe. Here? You might spend hours in a seemingly safe room only for something deadly and mind-screwy to appear and rip you to pieces.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Cube2Hypercube
Cytus II / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes You wouldn't expect a Rhythm Game to be a source of Nightmare Fuel, but Cytus II's cyberpunk story can get pretty dark at times. Unmarked Spoilers Below - AEsir's attack on Neko's stream is bound to catch a lot of players off guard by virtue of it being the only event thus far to directly interact with the player. Being booted back to the title screen only to find rows of this◊ is bound to confuse and disorient many on their first go, exactly the sensation many of those attending Neko's stream probably felt. And then there's the ominous, droning tone of the video that follows - Aroma's DLC chapter is full of Nightmare Fuel towards the latter half: - The corrupted logs introduced after Aroma collapses on stage are unsettling in just the atmosphere they provide. All of the audio samples just play bizarre static and numerous lines of text are distorted. What's more is the heavy implication that these logs are mirroring Aroma's recollection of Kaori's memories. The final corrupted text log involves Kaori being kidnapped, which is followed up by the log showing Aroma screaming her lungs out in the middle of the night as she presumably relives the experience. - The final text log has a drunken Noah doing... something... to Aroma. Given his dialogue, it's pretty easy to figure out that he's most likely sexually assaulting or even raping her. Noah: You should've realized for a while now, right? Compare to Helena... I rather... you... - The final cutscene can be likened to a horror movie and for good reason. It shows Aroma screaming in pain while being subjected to Electric Torture. It's revealed later that the girl shown is actually Kaori, who is being brainwashed into taking Aroma's place following some Magic Plastic Surgery. - We already knew that the Mogura gang is despicable, but Nora's chapter reveals just how horrible they are. - Phoenix Wyle impresses the gang when he demonstrates his Magic Plastic Surgery technology. He does so by kidnapping a random man, using the technique to transform him into an exact replica of himself, then executing him once the demonstration is over. - One unit, the Ravens, conducts human experiments on babies. They are then abandoned and left to die in the wilderness. Nora was one of these children, sold off at the age of three months and subjected to cybernetic testing that left her legs affected with severe necrosis. If it weren't for her ability to resist the Ender virus, and Phoenix amputating her legs before the necrosis could spread, she would have died like the five other infants she was with. - When Nora develops her fortune-telling abilities, one member of the Mogura, Zhang, hires Nora to give him the addresses of every beautiful woman in Node 03 aged between 8 and 18 years old. By the way he talks about these girls, it's clear that they're going to be turned into Sex Slaves, and Nora is forced to used her powers to help him commit these crimes. Remember, some of these girls are as young as eight. - So Aroma managed to escape from the clutches of some men in black in Kouhei's car. All seems good right? Then she realizes the car isn't heading towards Joe's cafe. Then the camera zooms out to reveal that Noah is the one driving. - Then it's revealed that Noah got control of the vehicle by drugging Neko's father. If it wasn't clear how secretly ruthless and unhinged Noah is, this is further proof. - After Ivy spent so long trying to convince Vanessa to give humanity a chance, Vanessa has blocked Ivy from communicating with her. Considering Vanessa is still hooked up to the cyTus system, this does not bode well. - The ARC drones have suddenly begun attacking the Nodes, and no one knows what's the cause of it. Even amidst all the gang violence and other dark subject matter in the story thus far, the attacks are incredibly unnerving. Imagine if the machines ensuring your security suddenly opened fire on you en masse. - In the Crystal PuNK chapter we finally get a description of these attacks from the perspective of characters we know at ground level. It reads almost like the prologue of a post-apocalyptic story. This is followed by JOEZ getting actually bombed at the end of the chapter, with the haunting image of a bleeding Joe buried underneath rubble the last image we see. - At Xenon's request, Aroma uses her newly activated "Eye of Horus" powers to access the ARC's library. For a moment, things are silent, until suddenly Aroma suffers a massive Freak Out and collapses. When she comes to, she describes seeing a suffering person who's heavily implied to be Vanessa. Aroma's description is haunting. Aroma: I saw...a terrifying face, but it disappeared immediately... It wouldn't stop wailing ... I wanted to reach out my hand to help it... but then the emotion changed instantly. I felt... like I was going to be killed... It was this strong feeling of hatred... - Rin's DLC story reveals that humanity had a short revival period in which Architects acted as personal servants. Then an unknown protocol suddenly infected every unit, compelling them to kill humans. The unit that would become the Rin in the main story was completely aware that her body had been hijacked but was unable to stop herself from killing her master, the original Rin Yazawa. She ended up ripping out her own optic wires just so she wouldn't have to witness the act herself. - Having deduced that Vanessa is really just a victim of a malicious protocol compelling her to kill humans, Ivy kidnaps Noah to have Vanessa's consciousness placed in an empty Architect body to give her true autonomy. However, rather than Vanessa, something...else enters the body, something incredibly violent that speaks a corrupted language reminiscent of Black Speech. In the next log, we see a foreboding image of rows of skinless Architects suddenly activating with Glowing Eyes of Doom. - The Architects' assault on the Nodes is basically the ARC drone attacks taken up to eleven, with various account snippets almost painting the attack as the start of a Zombie Apocalypse. And throughout the log showing the attack, the sound of screaming civilians blares in the background. - The 3.0 update brings with it a new title screen. There is no music. Just a distorted and glitched up warning message. - The bad ending. Vanessa succeeded in wiping out humanity. And the game itself reflects that. All the characters except for Vanessa are glitched out in the character selection screen and you can no longer play their songs anymore. The game will only show the location of their song selection interface in ruins and overgrown with vegetation. Fortunately, you can change the ending by selecting Vanessa, which will automatically send you into the Final Boss battle.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/CytusII
Daemon X Machina / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes Spoilers off. Briefing Over. The alien landscapes of Daemon X Machina are not for show. Especially not when you have to consider that it isn't just the rogue AI and Immortals that you have to deal with... - The Immortals are a living computer virus cranked up to eleven. They can infect any artificial intelligence around them, turning machines and weapons meant to fight against them and turn them against the humans. Worse, they're fighting to wipe out all of humanity, when they were previously developed to help save what was left of them after the Moonfall. And they're everywhere! - The Moonfall. Jesus fucking Christ. Ever wonder what would happen if a chunk of the moon fell off and hit earth? Well, that's exactly what caused the Earth to go to hell, except almost half of the moon fell and collided. Worse, it changed the surrounding area and emitted a bizarre radiation energy called Femto, killing off millions of people. Not only that, but the Moonfall is also what caused the original Immortal A.I.s to go haywire, as the Femto emitted by the catastrophe warped it and made it so that it would try and wipe out humankind. Oh, and did we forget to mention that the stuff that killed off millions of people is also a valuable resource that's now being used to help humanity? - Oh, it gets worse. Turns out the moon is still falling in the present day and is only kept up by an anti-gravity generator complex at the center of the Oval Link. Said facility begins to fail over the course of a mission and has to be rebooted, causing debris to start falling from the moon and threaten to destroy the facility completely. The rest of the mission is basically a game of Missile Command against the debris, and if you can't stop it then getting Mission Failure is the least of your worries. - The modifications done to the Rookie, and possibly other Reclaimers. Technology has advanced to the point where people, or at least the Outers, can modify their bodies and infuse them with substances and implant cybernetics into their bodies to help them better combat the rogue AI and Immortals. And they can also just as easily remove the modifications, then reinstall them however they please. It could just be Story and Gameplay Segregation, sure, but the frightening amount of cybernetics that a person does to their body, just to have a fighting chance is just disturbing. - It gets much worse for you. By the time you've finished an upgrade tree on all three categories, you've turned into a full blown robot, which also grants you the title "Humanity Renounced". Luckily as said before, you can restore your organic body but still. - Anytime you go up against another Reclaimer Faction can lead to some tense moments, but two that stand out the most are Terrors and Western VII. - Terrors is an elite group of Outers led by Grief, the highest-ranking mercenary in all of Oval Link. Your first encounter with them, where Painkiller and Bone Box react with dread, also makes it clear that their boss is not the only person who's dangerous. Each and every one of them is merciless in combat, and they won't show you any mercy, either. - Western VII is entirely made up of criminals. To put it simply, everyone who has a sentence is recruited if they have the capability to become an Outer and therefore pilot an Arsenal, and some of these guys have racked up some serious years. Not just a couple decades, but several hundred years. Depending on how well they do out in the field, they can shave off some of their sentence time, but if they can't, they'd much rather prefer dying out in the battlefield. And from the way Rouge Cinderella talks in the Rookie's first C-Rank mission, it's implied that, even when they join the ranks of the Reclaimers, no one from Western VII has had their sentence wiped and is still shackled or has found only freedom by virtue of death out in the battlefield. - The revelation behind the continued success and survival of the Reclaimer Faction Immortal Innocence. It's been stated multiple times that their leader, Jack, has survived missions that are at best extremely difficult and at worst suicidal. It wasn't by luck or skill that he survived death. The name of their faction is not without reason, as every time they die, the Ouroboros Tower brings them back to life. And each time they do, their minds take a small, but subtle step towards the slippery slope. It isn't stated how long the Reclaimers have been active, but who knows how long these kids have been fighting and dying over and over for the sake of protecting humanity, and risk going nutty? - Grief's overall plan for humanity. He wants them to evolve further and expand out into the stars, but his way of doing it is by lowering Oval's shields and flooding what little sanctuaries of humanity are left with Femto. Anyone who dies in the process is just collateral damage, or necessary sacrifices for the sake of humanity to continue to exist. - Solomon. Arguably, he's a Giant Space Flea from Nowhere at best and possibly an Mechanical Abomination at worst. It's a sentient black Arsenal that has been cannibalizing on other Arsenals and even Immortals — yes, it's eating them — and as a result, it looks like a seriously messed up black mech that has seen some better days. It also talks in a strange alien language that barely anyone can understand (the game subtitles Solomon's speech, but vocally it sounds like a ghost moaning and unintelligable electronic gurgling.) No one knows where the hell it came from, except that it can't be killed. Sure, the Reclaimers and beat it all to hell, but it somehow manages to find a way to get back up. Later on, if you managed to recruit every Reclaimer as a partner for Free Missions, you can partner with Solomon and find out that there is a pilot behind this demonic machine. And while the pilot looks human, there's a subtle implication they are anything but.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/DaemonXMachina
Cube Escape / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes THERE. WILL. BE. BLOOD. This series has no shortage of horrific themes such as Surreal Horror, jump scares, and murder. - To start off, Cube Escape: Seasons has some scary moments like the jump scare when you crack open the egg with a spoon. - Then during Fall 1971, you're flipping through TV channels and retrieve the black cube. Once you do, suddenly blood starts dripping from above. You look up and there's a freaking bloody eyeball staring at you. - If you click the black mushroom before it's fully grown, you're in for another jump scare. The whole screen will suddenly turn into a horrific bloody forest accompanied with a scare chord. This jump scare also happens when you're blending the mushroom. - In Mr. Rabbit's room, if you look at his poster on the wall about his shows and then look at the window once you look away from it, his ghostly feature will slowly zoom past the window whilst looking at you, which can easily catch you off guard if you're not paying attention. - Chapter 4 of Case 23 is a nerve-wracking timed section where you have to repair an elevator before a corrupted soul kills you. As time goes on, the outside becomes pitch-black, the walls start almost pulsating, and you see a deer with its head chopped off. - Near the end of Cube Escape: Mill, once you insert the black cube into the water tank in the basement, the entire scenery outside suddenly turns pitch black. Upon further investigation, you see that the old lady has stabbed herself in the eyes with her own sewing needles. - Another scary thing about this is that we have absolutely no idea WHY she committed such a brutal suicide like that in the first place. She had absolutely no issues knitting all those items for you to further progress into the game (in exchange for warm milk and duck meat), and out of nowhere she kills herself. - Cube Escape: Birthday has its signature scene of Mr. Rabbit breaking down the door and gunning down Dale's family, as well as a jump scare of the same rabbit at the window. The scenes with Mr. Rabbit in Paradox (a sort-of replay of Dale's memory of this event) are arguably worse, as he leads the player in a twisted game of hide and seek first.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/CubeEscape
Dai Sentai Goggle Five / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes Dai Sentai Goggle Five might be mistaken as a gymnastic-based Sentai, but what many people forget is that this is a Sentai that fought off a Dark Science Empire that used science in the most dangerous ways. Some of their elements could get pretty chilling for a show mostly directed for kids. - Throughout Super Sentai, the Big Bad can get pretty ominous, but generally nothing too frightening to look at and most of the time, they deal with human-looking enemies. Then there's Fuhrer Taboo who spends his time behind a blue wall with just one red ominous eyes and booming demonic voice. It sounded pretty scary, but still may be pretty tame considering the wall covering it. And then Goggle Red destroyed the wall during the final confrontation, revealing an Eldritch Abomination that wouldn't look too out of place from a Cosmic Horror Story, and in fact, the first Eldritch Abomination in Sentai villain history. Sweet dreams, kids! - The show was pretty silly in the earlier parts thanks to the persistent, yet bumbling duo of Dr. Iguana and Dr. Zazoriya. But, then Fuhrer Taboo calls in General Deathmark, had the two executed, and the kind of plot Deathdark concocts start showing on why it's called the 'Dark Science Empire'... Especially the Monster of the Week. Some of them include: - Bee Mozoo, the first Mozoo he deployed was very much his Establishing Character Moment. The concept is pretty simple: Sting people (preferably children) to drain life essence for the dark master and cause a potential pandemic of Rapid Aging. But it's still pretty chilling to see just one victim: Tatsuya of the Computer Boys & Girls. One sting and the boy quickly turns into an old man. - Cactus Mozoo. You're walking in the park and see a big cactus in places where it shouldn't have grown. You approach one such cactus. The cactus' flower blooms, spraying you with a whole lot of pollen... and then... '''YOU MELT!!!''' And in your place, a similar cactus is grown. That's Cactus Mozoo's modus operandi, and to think something as innocent-looking as an out-of-place plant can suddenly cause your demise (and Cactus Mozoo's casual personality basically being a sombrero-wearing Mexican stereotype hides his nefarious plan well). Oh and that's not the last time Deathmark meddles with plantlife... - Watermelon Mozoo. He can spit out seeds that stick to you and turn you into a tree, all while keeping you conscious the whole time. And what's worse, he can simply just disguise himself as a harmless watermelon. When a family innocently tried to cut him, he revealed himself and turned the whole family into trees. Oh and his orders from Deathmark? Turn every human he comes across into trees, thereby creating a human jungle. - Hyena Mozoo. He's said to be a terrible Mozoo, capable of draining energy from Goggle Five's weapons, but that's not even close to his scariest trait. Hyena also has the ability known as Hyena Kiss, which will afflict whoever gets kissed, turning them into mindless minions who think of nothing but eating metals. They even get a silvery makeup on the mouth and on his orders, they start ravenously eating any piece of metal they find, and that includes cars, fences, signs, lamposts, even metals that contain explosive materials. - Horned Owl Mozoo. He can create picture books that appear harmless at first. But open a page with a horned owl in it and the book sucks you in, potentially trapping you there forever. Then he spreads it to children, in a short time, we get to see parents panicking because their children disappear out of nowhere. Deathmark originally planned to just hold the children hostage so the parents would do whatever he wants. But then on hearing that Miki/Goggle Pink got trapped in one of these books, Deathmark decided to just burn that one book with his indestructible flame. So basically, if he didn't get what he wanted, who knows if he just decided to pull the same stunt directed to Miki towards the children... (and by that episode, we've established that Deathdark doesn't fare very well with promises.) - Scorpion Mozoo. His stinger turns his victims into a mindless scorpion-men, thinking of nothing but assassinating anyone they come across. And Kanpei/Goggle Black is Lured into a Trap to become one of these scorpion-men. That didn't get much display of nightmarish brutality, but the appearance of these scorpion-men... especially the head... it's like seeing a red Face Hugger latching onto you and giving an endless Face Full of Alien Wing-Wong... - Condor Mozoo, one of the earliest attempts of the Super Sentai franchise to inflict terror towards food. Not only is he able to emit winds and sandstorms from his pectorals that would rot food in seconds, He generates a sand in his body that at first appears harmless towards anyone who gets hit with these sandstorms... but the real horror comes when the ones who got hit with the sandstorms attempt to grab some food and drink like it's no big deal, not realizing that this sand has firmly adhered to their bodies by magic. The whole food/drink turns into inedible black sand. We even get to see a short scene in the hospital where patients in need of nutrition were offered the most basic drink of normal water and the water turns to sand at the most critical time. And as Deathgiller coined, the sand is so sticky that there's absolutely nothing that can wash it away in terms of "normal means"... If you get hit by Condor Mozoo's Condor Sandstorm (and most of the time, you don't even realize it), you face the danger of death from starvation and thirst.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/DaiSentaiGoggleFive
Dälek / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes Before there was Death Grips, there was dälek, and they're arguably even creepier. - "Spiritual Healing", which opens with an out-of-tune piano before descending into a sinister, droney beat, backed by a very intimidating distorted guitar that can be compared to somebody screaming or a broken police siren, with Will Brooks' furious rapping over it. - The two song combo of "Heads" and "Black Smoke Rises." The former is a short interlude track that features bizarre electronic noises and distorted guitar jamming with samples of people saying the word "dialect" over it, before it suddenly and without warning erupts into the heaviest drum solo to ever appear in a rap interlude. The latter is a 12 minute Drone of Dread that sounds like something from the acid nightmares of John Cage, with Brooks reciting lyrics about what seems to be a man crossing the Despair Event Horizon in a traumatized sounding Creepy Monotone. Suffice to say, this is the part of the album that drives most casual listeners away. - The cover art of From Filthy Tongue... is very creepy on its own. - Absence as a whole could count, with its even heavier beats and even more dystopian lyrics. "Distorted Prose" and "Asylum (Permanent Underclass)" are particularly effective in this regard.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Dalek
Daikaiju Yuki / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes In a world of monsters and villains, there's bound to be plenty of things that can make you wince in horror. Unmarked spoilers ahead. ## Daikaiju Yuki - The great fire, AKA, the atom fire. Five centuries ago, mankind basically blew itself up with nuclear war. Even worse, that was when the kaiju awakened with one goal in mind: eradicate humanity so that it doesn't destroy any more. As Narajin describes to Yuki, even he killed humans without a second thought back then. Had it not been for Mokwa, we would pretty much be extinct by both our own hands and terrifying monsters. - Yuki's PTSD flashbacks of her time in the Hopeless War between Narai and both Scythia and Laurentia. The most vivid memory she has is of her commanding officer getting bit in half by Alkonoth. - The civil war that serves as the backdrop of the story. Basically, the empires of Scythia and Laurentia have formed an uneasy alliance in order to take over the rest of the Five Nations. The kicker is that they've brainwashed two of the Pantheon Colossi to act as their aces in the hole. Specifically, Alkonoth and Mokwa. So imagine for a second you are a soldier, and you see your fellow men getting picked off by a giant bird with a beak like a blade and a bear as big as a mountain. No wonder Yuki came out with so many mental scars. - Yuki's initial henshin with Narajin isn't a pleasant one. At first, she has no idea what just happened. All that she knows is that she's buried under the ground, understandably making her feel very claustrophobic. Once she rises, she realizes quickly that she's in the body of the lion kaiju. It seems like a very nasty dream at first, though Narajin manages to clear things up. - Not long afterwards, Yuki, in Narajin's body, ends up destroying a portion of the town near the temple by total accident due to her lack of control. It wasn't a great surprise for the people there, seeing their guardian kaiju make a lethal scene like that. - The dead lands. Large swathes of land that, unlike the rest of the world, didn't recover from the nuclear apocalypse, and now stand as monuments to the extinction of the old civilizations. Huge cities and structures, reduced to jagged blackened ruins that no creature could hope to live in. Suffice to say, Yuki and Narajin's time there is mercifully short. - The fauna of the world is mostly comprised of rather unsettling wildlife mutated by the atom fire. This includes featherless birds, skull-faced monkeys, and deep-sea leviathans. We don't see what the latter look like, but a dark shape is seen lurking in the abyss. Come later stories, and we see exactly what Yuki is so wary of. - The arrival of Mokwa and Alkonoth at Tarakona. Both emerge out of a volcano in explosive fashion. And very slowly, out of the smoke, the two kaiju's obscured silhouettes gives off the impression of a Bat Out of Hell. - During their fight, Alkonoth manages to gain the upper hand, and impales Narajin several times across his body with her sharp beak. She's only prevented from dealing the killing blow by Ganejin's involvement. - The Burial Mound has the Pantheon get tricked into destroying a town full of innocent people. Indeed, Laurentia's leaders, or at least Houston, were perfectly okay with selling a large amount of civilians out to their deaths in order to throw our heroes off. Let that sink in. - The full scope of Houston's plan. Having recovered un-detonated nuclear bombs, he plans on using them as leverage to Take Over the World, as well as controlling every kaiju as he sees fit. As several characters point out, it will only lead to a repeat of the great fire. - THE GARGOYLE. Once one of the bombs is detonated near a volcano, out of the Earth comes a twisted, skeletal Humanoid Abomination that's in constant screaming agony. According to Narajin, it's a new destroyer kaiju, except this one looks as if the Earth was in a hurry, hence its horrible looks. - It gets worse. The monster starts out as a moderately-sized kaiju that fights like a feral madman, taking chunks out of Narajin with its huge teeth before an even larger version of it emerges out of the volcano, crushing it violently. And then, after the true Gargoyle is brought down by the Pantheon, it emerges AGAIN with better armor and a pair of large wings befitting its namesake. - The way its defeated isn't exactly pretty either. Narajin uses the broken-off tip of a skyscraper to impale its chest, nearly decapitate it, and then impale it through the eyes just as it was charging a plasma blast. After its head explodes, the monster falls over and blows up. It just goes to show that even when saving the world, the Pantheon doesn't mess around. - Houston's demise. He deserved it more than anyone in the story, but Ivan wasn't kidding when he wanted his revenge. After the villain's plan is foiled, Alkonoth impales him through the chest with her beak. Bad enough already, but then the bird starts to open her mouth. Houston's last moments are spent screaming in agony as he's violently reduced to Half the Man He Used to Be. Blood and guts rain down as Alkonoth screeches in victory. Even Yuki is rather disturbed by it all. ## Y2K: Yuki Conquers The World ## Scythian Frost and Other Stories Scythian Frost: - The titular frost. Basically, the Arctic Circle has become so inhospitable to most life due to the nuclear winter all those many centuries ago that the mere breeze is enough to unleash the worst case of frostbite unto any unfortunate soul who happens to not be equipped enough. Sasha ends up affected by at in the end, his bullet wound freezing up and his fingers smashing apart with the slightest friction upon reaching the tomb. - According to legend, when Alkonoth defeated Vulpog, he did not survive whatever the bird did to her...but his endless amount of giant wormy parasites did! Enter the Wooly Worms, huge parasitic monsters that became the apex predators of the frozen north after their host died. Somehow, they took on the characteristics of the fox kaiju, and are practically unstoppable when our protagonists run into them. For these three, it's just Run or Die when four (later three) worms find them. - The build-up is worth mentioning. The trio finds a base, only to find that they are also Late to the Tragedy. They only find one corpse, half-frozen and ripped messily in half by...something. Upon finding some white fur next to the carnage, Kirill speculates that the Vulpog might be Not Quite Dead. Then they find documents on the Wooly Worms, and it becomes clear that the menace is only slightly worse than a giant fox. - After one of the worms gets blown up by a landmine, another worm gleefully eats through it while in pursuit of the humans. - On that note, the land mine field. Imagine being faced with technology now rarely used, and it could kill you just with one false step where an explosive could be anywhere. And sure enough, one takes the life of one of our protagonists. - Over time, the captain reveals to Kirill and Sasha that they are very expendable to him, not helped by his frequent info-withholding and Arbitrary Skepticism regarding the worms. Then, when the monsters are in pursuit, he shoots Sasha in the shoulder, madly raving about getting the glory for awakening Alkonoth and exploiting her power. And then... - ...the worms give him an appropriately awful death. One grabs him by the torso with its mouth, then the other nabs his legs. They pull in opposite directions, and he ends up Half the Man He Used to Be. The little worm feasts on the shower of gore that comes pouring out. Outrigger: - The deep-sea leviathans that menace the oceans of this post-apocalyptic world are scary just thinking about, but this story shows there's more to it than standard giant squids. This one features a gargantuan bobbit worm. Basically, imagine a burying worm with HUGE blade-like jaws for catching fish, and you have the right idea. Except this one's so big, Kai and Taika's boat is barely as big as its head! - Of course, the worm isn't the true aggressor here (it's even an Accidental Hero later on). That would be a huge sea urchin that fights it, seemingly to the death at first. And sure enough, it hunts like a regularly-sized one as well. It gets Taika Impaled with Extreme Prejudice, and drags him below to eat. When it nearly gets Kai, it unveils a large mouth described only as horrible. Had the worm leviathan not intervened, Kai would have been dead. - For some reason, even after eating Taika, the urchin still goes after Kai's boat. But it's not a Super-Persistent Predator because nature says so. Instead, it's because of the Death Patch, a huge pile of harmful materials from the Old World that many leviathans feasted on before it disintegrated. They were all driven mad by whatever was in that stuff, and the urchin was one of them. Lair of the Devourer: - Enofe Chuk. An esteemed poacher and criminal, this madman not only gets his kicks putting animals on either the endangered or extinct species list, but is also a Villain with Good Publicity (or at least he was until he became a crime lord). According to Akuma, one of his most heinous acts was massacring an entire group of giant mountain gorillas and getting away with it. And he didn't just shoot them either. He hacked some of them to pieces like a serial killer. - Although Ammit is portrayed in a sympathetic light, keep in mind that this is an animal based off of one of the more intimidating monsters of Egyptian mythology. Namely, the one that eats the souls of the dead. Thankfully, she doesn't do that here. She just eats them alive. - The giant mountain gorilla squashing Tooth flat by jumping onto him. That must have been messy, though deserved. The Pantheon Arrives!: - The unnamed monster that attacks the alien city is stated to have void-like face with a mouth that looks a lot like those of the citizens below it. It's described as a sight that has a major Uncanny Valley effect on everyone there. - Earlier, the boss getting splattered on his own limo. - Although he's a hero, Deinler's method of execution is rather nasty. He injects his foe with an acid-like poison (probably digestive juices) through a thin syringe-like thing from his mouth, and lets them die there. Sentencer of the Gods, indeed. ## Pharaoh of Eels - The books is full of illustrations by Alex Gayhart. Anyone familiar with his art style can be prepared for some rather gritty pictures...and the series' particularly gory moments being brought out in vivid detail. - The pirates and the eels' assault on the party boats. First Laki's head gets a hole blown through it by a powerful gun shot. Then out of nowhere, an eel attacks Niko. He manages to get it off, but then Jun gets his face riddled with bullets. Then Jae has the half of his skull with his face torn off by another eel. Then Manu gets his hand shot. Then it becomes clear that the pirates and the eels are working in tandem. Then Shaheed's ship gets set on fire and blown up by an eel's electrical pulse (killing everyone else on it). And finally, Captain Faro arrives to take prisoners. - CAPTAIN FARO. Easily one of the coldest and most evil human protagonists seen so far. Sure, he doesn't have the world-ending abilities that Frank Houston would have access to, but he's still a ruthless, scarred-up pirate crime lord who controls the eels by force through his amulet (a mockery of the henshin amulets) and rules the Lost Continent of Oz with an iron fist. His first instinct is to sell the survivors on the slave market, and keep them imprisoned above the eels while they wait. Just an exceptionally cruel and dangerous man. - A couple pirates watching their drunk companion drown and die, and they just laugh it off, taking Niko as a replacement. It just goes to show how heartless these crooks can be in the Wretched Hive they call home. - Once the eels are released, they end up ripping several pirates apart. We even get an illustration of some being Devoured by the Horde. - Those eels? They're actually living components of Pirangon, having been separated from him via henshin magic by Jharlaragon. So when the amulet gets destroyed, the eels merge together...and as the illustration shows, it ain't pretty at first. - Pirangon's rampage through the pirate base is undoubtedly an awesome moment, but it's also very much a Mook Horror Show for the pirates, especially the earlier mentioned pirates who got their kicks off of drowning companions. Their leader gets drowned personally by him. - Captain Faro's demise is one HELL of a Karmic Death, but it's by and large one of the most painful things to happen to a human villain in this series, perhaps even surpassing Houston's demise. Pirangon grabs him with a tentacle, and slowly charges it up. The electricity causes Faro to graphically burn alive, his hair and clothes catching fire, his veins bursting, and his left eye popping before the rest of his body explodes. And yes, there is an illustration. Hope you like it. ## Yuki vs. Fleshworld - Aten's world has been reduced to a Ghost Planet by the Dreadnoughts. Absolutely no life is left on it by the time the pantheon shows up. And then we see a recording of what happened. The Dreadnought kaiju are described as eating the inhabitants and/or crushing them under their feet while Aten and her now deceased pantheon companions can only retreat. - That's not even the worst part about this place. Shortly after everyone finds out that the planet's pantheon is dead, a storm gathers, and down falls acidic rain. It doesn't do anything to the kaiju, but it's so corrosive that it eats right through Yuki's hand, and turns a short run towards an alien base into a painful life-or-death scenario. By the time they get to the entrance, the rain is more intense, they're getting hit more often, and they all sound more panicked than they've ever been before or since. - Not long after escaping the rain, the base is revealed to be booby-trapped, and for a moment, everyone's stuck in a room set to steadily go up in temperature until they burn up under a bright-red light. Thankfully, there are no injuries this time. - Fleshworld. Imagine Unicron, except it's an organic planet-shaped predator several times bigger than Jupiter, it has teeth and tentacles, and it goes around eating entire planets without any rhyme or reason. "A kaiju's daikaiju", indeed. - There's another detail about Fleshworld that retroactively makes the Dreadnoughts scarier too. As the pantheon later finds out, Aten's planet's pantheon were so overwhelmed by the marauding aliens that they TRIED TO ATTRACT A PLANET-EATING MONSTROSITY just to make them go away. Rather appropriately, it was called the Doomsday Contingency. - We get to see Fleshworld eat a planet. In this case, the one Yamanra's Dreadnoughts were on. First its visage blots out the sky, then its sheer gravitational force causes atmospheric disruption and flooding, it tears the planet apart, and then it finishes the job with its microwave beam. The result is a crispy, tasty dead planet. Nom nom. - The entire chapter demonstrates how hopeless the war against it really is. In an instant, Fleshworld reduces Yamanra's massive legion to about 150 out of what must have been thousands. One unlucky Dreadnought ends up staring into its maw, and is torn apart by the sheer gravitational force. - Being on Fleshworld is no picnic either. It's a whole landscape full of tentacles and Meat Moss, to the point where you'd be forgiven for thinking you were standing on a being turned inside-out. Oh, and the gravity is so strong that you stand a good chance of breaking all of your bones just by moving. - And now for the most glaring detail of them all...FLESHWORLD HAD NO IDEA THAT HE WAS KILLING BILLIONS THE WHOLE TIME! He's in fact a Gentle Giant who was just acting on his instincts, and is horrified to learn what he's been doing. Thankfully, Yuki's able to convince him to stop eating populated planets, and even gives him a friend in the process. - As one might guess, the Dreadnoughts are no laughing matter. Admiral Yamanra's legion consists of HUNDREDS of varied kaiju, all gunning to kill the pantheon. And they come in all sorts of shapes and sizes too. Some are utterly bizarre, like sapient geometry and odd Mix-and-Match Critters, while others have freaking GUNS for limbs and even heads! And yet despite all of this, [[The Worf Effect, they still don't stand much of a chance against Fleshworld.]] And of course, many die very nasty deaths at the hands of our heroes. - A few of the monsters seen include other members of the species that gave us the Buggos (actually Arthroguards) and even Charybdis, something that unnerves Midori greatly. Though it is acknowledged that that particular black-hole monster was out of line. - Admiral Yamanra. A nasty combination of Dreadnought leading - General Ripper and shapeshifting seductress. To give you an idea of how awful she is, that kaiju she's bonded with isn't even alive. She killed it and is now basically using it like a puppet. - It doesn't help that the kaiju itself looks positively gnarly, like a humanoid demon horse turned inside-out with glowing purple tentrils on the back and massive talons. - What makes Yamanra so awful though is her role as a Shadow Archetype to Yuki. She's a powerful soldier, she's got tons of blood on her hands, and she can henshin with a kaiju. The difference is that she doesn't care who gets hurt for the sake of the mission, she'll gladly send her own soldiers to die for something as small as making a point (in the story's case, showing the pantheon the dangers of the Dreadnought's base), and she saw no problem killing her kaiju for the sake of control, something that wracked Yuki with guilt when she almost did it. In short, she's every horrible thing Yuki could become if she didn't have her friends. And she knows it. Several times, Yamanra attempts a Breaking Speech, trying to make Yuki embrace that violent side of hers. Good thing it never works, but you can tell from the text that Yuki feels personally attacked every time. - While being escorted by Yamanra, the pantheon are surrounded by her legion of Dreadnought kaiju. It is described as a wall of the damned, surrounding them like a sphere of monstrous beasts. - The Dreadnought legion's chosen world to form a base on at first appears to be a verdant tropical paradise...until it slowly dawns on the pantheon that the aliens have effectively cleansed it of all sapient life. The sea monster that briefly attacks and kills the scouts is killed in front of our heroes, all while Yamanra treats it like a simple case of pest control. It's a major red flag that she's nowhere near as benevolent as she presents herself. - Not to mention the main facility the Dreadnoughts are kept in. It's huge and it goes down several floors underground. And we get a little tour of most of the floors, each housing a different kind of vicious Dreadnought. Of particular note is the seventh level, which houses just one monster. A centipede/crocodile-looking colossus that encompasses almost the entire floor! And even worse, it shows up during the Final Battle (though it's thankfully dealt with with not too much hassle). - The fight between Yuki and Jorguis might just be one of the most visceral and bloody battles in the entire series. In order to use the henshin device, Yuki is forced to exit Narajin. Thing is, they're on Fleshworld, which has gravity many times stronger than on Earth. Every step is a herculean feat, and Jorguis is still active after the loss of his kaiju. They end up coming to blows, and every attack they utilize hurts them as much as it hurts each other. Bones break, limbs are destroyed, blood flies, and by the time the battle nears its end, Jorguis is a broken heap missing most of his arms, his lower regions mulched, and at Yuki's mercy. She ends up smashing the lieutenant's head to bits with her fist. Had it not been for the henshin device, Yuki would have died from her own injuries and the gravity slowly crushing her. - Upon seeing her plans fall apart thanks to Yuki befriending Fleshworld, Yamanra orders what remains of her fleet to attack the neighboring planet, presumably out of spite for her ambitions being ruined. - Yamanra threatens to blow up the planet, something she tells Yuki before their final fight. During said fight, she digs her energy ribbons into Narajin's sides, filling them up with mana in order to make them explode. It leaves Yuki in screaming pain as Yamanra demands she kill her kaiju in order to embrace his power. Thankfully, Yuki and Narajin's bond ensures an 11th-Hour Superpower. - The remaining Dreadnoughts' last resort is causing one of the Warrior Beasts' planet's stars to go supernova. It very nearly does before the pantheon is able to redirect its energy. Whatever the case, the loss of the star is implied to start an ice age for the planet, even if it's presented as not too big of a deal. ## Mokwa: Lifesblood of the Earth - The cover. Just the cover. The visage of a crazed toothy Slasher Smile with a tiny splatter in the middle is a perfect Establishing Series Moment for letting the reader know that horror is in store for them in this particular spin-off. - Sure enough, this image comes up a couple of times in the story proper, and as one might guess, it endlessly unnerves Allie. - They very premise of the story. That being the Laurentians going in to resurrect and control something literally described as the incarnation of evil. That's right. After the disaster of trying to control previous kaiju, they're throwing the lessons learned out and gunning for something explicitly described as being a menace. - The jungles of South Laurentia are very wrong. Unlike the jungles of Alkebulan, there is little to no life, and most of the plants look dead. It's as if the whole land is poisoned...which we later learn isn't far from the truth at all. - One scene in particular stands out. A Laurentian soldier cuts his leg slightly on one of the plants...and it causes him to completely rupture from the inside, fall to his knees, beg for death, start throwing up profusely, and then vomit an upward geyser of blood before collapsing in a dead withered heap as red droplets rain on the forest and the people around him. The kicker? This is implied to be how the plants sustain themselves. - Of all the kaiju seen in the series, none are quite as psychotic nor sadistic as Supayra. At first, a giant poison dart frog doesn't sound too frightening. But until he's awakened, just about everything related to him refers to him as pure evil, and the one destroyer they couldn't truly kill. When Allie approaches his tomb, she can subconsciously feel a deep hatred. And yet, the Laurentians have no problem bringing him back, despite Lieberman appropriately describing his resting place as a tomb not for him, but for them. They even plan on using Allie as a blood sacrifice. Failing that, some soldiers shoot themselves during the ceremony. - It's during his awakening that we get to see what he is truly. As General Ryan tries to use the makeshift henshin device, the frog proceeds to mentally blast his chest cavity open and blow him up! He reveals that he can communicate with other creatures with his mind, WITHOUT A HENSHIN AMULET. In other words, he's free to mentally torture his prey for as long as he likes. - Then there's what he does to the rest of the soldiers who went on the stupid mission. He lays it out to them that they're not needed, and they're screwed: Supayra: I have to thank you. Thank you for working so hard to restore this planet's true heir, and for accpeting that humans no longer have claim to it...or the right to live. Let me show you a true daikaiju, unlike those...(glares at Mokwa)...who have enabled your ways to continue. Never again...will you see the light of day! - He then proceeds to let out a croak so loud it causes their minds to melt out of their ears and the rest of their insides to be liquefied. - While killing the rest of the Laurentian invaders, he gets one in-between his lips, desperately trying to break free. With nary a care, he chomps down, taking off the poor soldier's head. - The way Supayra torments Mokwa. All he does most of the time is keep his distance and stare at the bear, knowing that she cannot harm him physically without hurting herself. He knows Allie and Mokwa suffer every time he instigates a massacre, and he's loving it. - Allie and Obasi encounter Thyrus while in the forgotten lands, and he nearly kills the young woman by taking a chunk out of her leg. It just goes to show that, despite saving a little girl in the short story preceding this one, the reptilian giant is a case of Nature Is Not Nice. - Umbria, the village that Thyrus lives near, is at first presented as a very creepy place, with everyone hiding in their homes and an old lady being extremely cryptic about where she's leading Allie and Obasi. The former even starts to believe that they're cannibals, and they'll be serving them for dinner. Of course, it turns out that they're just afraid of vampires and not at all harmful, but then the elder says that the last person who couldn't pass the test got a stake through the heart. How many have met that same fate? - A more subtle disturbing detail is that we're dealing with villagers fanatically paranoid about supernatural activity in Europe...in the distant future. This is the sort of thing that should have died with the witch trials from centuries before kaiju were even a thing. But here in the post-apocalypse, some societal vices have come full circle. - The forgotten lands are revealed to be the home of a line of aristocrats known as the Heimanns. What makes them so frightening is what they've done to the resident kaiju. According to the locals, the current Heimann, like his predecessors, is a Mad Scientist who took either the kaiju his family trapped or their corpses after the war, and did...something with them. It doesn't help that his residence is a dark castle our heroes find in the middle of an intense rain storm. Such a visage is only fit for a case of Gothic Horror. - And boy howdy, the truth about Heimann's experiments is no picnic. It's revealed that he took the three kaiju of the forgotten lands, and stitched them together with metal to create a bipedal Chimera of a beast. And it's awful to behold. It's got the head and torso of a wolf, the legs of a ram, a ram's head for a left arm, and the wings of a raven. The kicker is that this thing is in a constant state of agony just from existing. Small wonder it instantly tries to kill itself when it's freed. - Speaking of which, there's the way it's freed in the first place. Heimann is showing our heroes his work, when suddenly his voice gets lower, and he begins spouting about how weak their monsters are. It's revealed that Supayra has learned how to control minds, and the actual Heimann is begging him not to release his monster. The frog responds by making his eyes burst out of his skull, leaving a glow in their place before the scientist pulls the lever and collapses dead. - When our heroes get to Gael, everyone they meet is in a trance-like state. The people who aren't are all gathered in the local pub. According to the bartender, Supayra has made his throne in the nearby Sterling Castle, and he demands a sacrifice per day. Some people come to the bar to get drunk until they can't remember that he's always lurking in their minds. In less than half a week, this evil frog took over an entire town. - During the Final Battle, Mungonde gets his fingers bitten off by Supayra's jaws clamping down on them. Ouch. - Later, Supayra starts absorbing the energy Mokwa is unleashing onto him, and unergoes a metamorphosis into a giant bipedal frog monster that's Red and Black and Evil All Over. He declares himself to be the first Dreadnought of Earth, and then unleashes a mouthful of tongue-tendrils to drain Mokwa and Mungonde of their mana. Had it not been for the extra energy from the rest of the pantheon, Supayra would have won then and there. ## Mokwa: Ursa Major - The prologue has a boy and his father hide in a cabin from...something. Then, a fog approaches. The boy goes out against his father's will to find his pet, only for his house (and his dad) to get crushed by a Giant Foot of Stomping. One that belongs to a great knight-like figure. He and his pet escape, but are understandably shook. - It's later revealed that this is Colonel B's backstory, and we have in fact gotten our first look at the Fog Knights. - During her assault on the Golden Clan's base, Allie gets caught, and the guards proceed to shred her backside up until she's close to actually dying. She henshins just in time to make a full recovery through Mokwa, but the mental scars do not heal. And this is just a taste of the pain she's going to go through in the rest of the story. - The Lochsleech. It's this world's resident Stock Ness Monster, but instead of a large prehistoric reptile, it's a tentacled leech-like predator with a Flower Mouth full of sharp teeth. Also, it sucks people up to eat them. The Golden Clan attempted to tame it, and they proceed to pay the full price for it when they and their leader, Lord Bastilton, are sucked up. - The build-up too. While going through the castle, Allie notices murals of a large creature swallowing people up, signifying that whatever lives here was The Dreaded to them. - Bastilton's death is horrifying. Instead of just being sucked into the Lochsleech's mouth, he gets stuck on one of its teeth, his head facing the throat. Once the monster starts sucking again, his eyeballs are ripped out, followed by his skin, and then his whole head before the rest of the body follows. - Allie's nightmare while still in Gael. She sees Supayra outside of her house, who proceeds to taunt her. Her lack of a reaction is unsettling enough, but then the winds pick up. And suddenly, Charybdis is there, sucking everything into his black hole mouth. Allie and Owen are sucked in right before she wakes up screaming. - 'THE FOG. An all-encompassing, pitch-black, sentient disturbance in space-time that is slowly enveloping the planet Ganawenda. Anything that gets caught in it gets to witness it turn the place into a lifeless wasteland not disimilar to the dead lands on Earth. And on top of everything else, there's HOW it kills. It conjures knights. Fog Knights. There are three in total. The Knight Watchman and the Berserker Knight are intimidating with their Black Knight aesthetic, but then there's the Plague Knight, designed to look like a skeletal Plague Doctor, who wields a weapon that can infect other life forms with the fog itself! Altogether, they're one of the most formidable foes faced in the series, amplified by their No-Nonsense Nemesis attitudes (if you can call the will of a brainless destructive fog and attitude). - The introduction isn't shabby either. A many-limbed kaiju runs towards our heroes, and right after it tells Mokwa that they're all doomed, it's sliced into bloody pieces by the unseen Knights. There's even an illustration. And the kicker? That monster was this planet's last line of defense. - As is revealed near the end, the origin of the fog. It came from a huge mechanical tower, presumably to convert the dark matter of the universe into energy. It ended up creating the fog instead, which now seeks to destroy this world and whatever else gets in its way. That's one Hell of a Green Aesop right there. - After curb-stomping Mokwa and Mungonde, the Plague Knight stabs Mungonde in the torso, right before spiriting him away with Obasi. Allie has no way of knowing if they're dead or not at that point. - Allie's vision of Supayra while in the alien castle begins with her seeing the city on fire, and the evil frog in the middle of it all. - Upon entering the fog once more with the mechas, Mokwa is assaulted by a flurry of negative emotions, as if the fog was capable of manipulating such things. Maybe it can. Either way, it's no mystery that they're all screwed when the Knights show up. - Mons Magna gets filled with fog from the Plague Knight, and when one of the pilots foolishly tries to fire at the Berserker Knight, the mech's head gets blown up. Their screams are still heard. - The Plague Knight manages to No-Sell the very same move used to vanquish Supayra from the last story. Following that, Allie has Mokwa take Broadsword (who's head is deep in the Plague Knight after that), and swing his head around to fight the Berserker Knight. Tim is still in there, screaming all the way until the Knight gets a good hit in, slicing his mech and himself in half. - Later, Allie, Mokwa, and the Colonel come across a dead land surrounded by corrupted ground. Spikes jut out of the place on a whim, and our heroes are barely able to escape the onslaught. Then something else rises out of the ground. A horde of armored humanoid man-sized monsters appropriately named Fog Demons. They proceed to Zerg Rush at the Colonel's forces. And while many are shot at and incinerated, they keep coming and coming, eventually ripping all of the ground troops to shreds. They then swarm all over Fortress, forcing Mokwa to blow it up with the Colonel in it (even though he ordered it). Now it's just Allie and Mokwa, all alone against the fog. - Allie ends up hallucinating the Berserker Knight as Supayra. And while she does eventually get the drop on the Knight, it just goes to show how broken her mind is becoming. No matter where she goes, that damned frog will never go away. - At the place where Obasi most likely is, Allie and Mokwa come across a large abandoned city. Allie goes on foot, and finds that there's nobody around. She descends into a subway-like place, and finds just one person. When that person turns around, there's nothing in his eyes except the fog. Then more and more people show up to surround her. Every single person has been infected with the fog by the Plague Knight. And sure enough, the Knight himself shows up in human-size to fight her. After she manages to fend him off, he just reverts to normal size to crush her before Mokwa intervenes. - During their fight, Allie flings a possessed person at the Knight, whose armor shifts to turn into a spinning flower-like shape that shreds the person like a blender. - In order to free Obasi, Mokwa has to kill Mungonde. And by Allie's command, she does. Painfully. We get a long sequence of the bear slowly smashing in the mandrill's head. With each 'crack', details of how gory the affair is are not spared at all. It's equal parts tragic and downright sadistic. - Even worse, Obasi states that both he and Mungonde felt every second of Mungonde's death. He said it had to be done, but still. - The very end, in which Allie and Supayra end up laughing in unison, one voice, one laugh, one mind. There is the strong implication that Supayra is Real All Along, and he's here to stay. It's easily one of the bleakest notes the series has ended on, but it's just the preamble for how this trilogy is going to come to it's conclusion... ## Mokwa: Exorcism - The prologue is from the point of view of a bride-to-be. On her wedding day, her fiance doesn't show up. A friend reveals that he perished out at sea. The perpetrator then shows up. It's Supayra, currently running from our heroes in Lifesblood of the Earth. He eats everyone there as the bride can only cross the Despair Event Horizon. Without a second thought, she walks into the evil frog's maw after he coerces her. - The HORRIBLE things Supayra makes Allie do while living in her head. By day, he's turned her into a bitter shell of her former self, actively alienating her from her friends. By night, he convinces her that she's in a cathartic dream to work out stress, and has her lure gullible people into a furnace, where she straps them to a table, and tells them that they're a blood sacrifice before killing them. The kicker is that this has gone on for several times. And what's more, at the end of each murder, Supayra lavishes her in saliva and tongue tendrils. Allie's life, whether she knows it or not, has become a nightmare of sex and violence. - Not to mention, right before she kills her most recent victim, her eyes go yellow, and she gains Supayra's voice and sharp teeth. It's safe to say that the frog has mastered a frightening version of Demonic Possession. - The title page. Right behind "Mokwa", you can see the word "Supayra" behind it. He really is taking over... - The way Supayra acts with Allie is much more unsettling than a standard Demonic Possession. No, it's more akin to something a Bastard Boyfriend would do. Think about it. He gives Allie immense pleasure with the "dreams" and implicitly sexual affairs with his tongue tentacles, but at the same time actively encourages her to give in to her darker impulses and cut the actual positive elements of her life out. And somehow, he's able to make her start thinking that his goals, whatever they are, align with hers. It's scarily similar to how real-life abusive partners act when they want less love and more someone to control. - While killing the new colonel, Allie ends up stabbed near-fatally. She's forced to crawl all the way back home, barely surviving by henshining with Mokwa. Despite it seemingly being a dream, she can't understand while Supayra doesn't just wake her up. - The moment everyone starts to investigate the Colonel's disappearance, Supayra encourages Allie to fuse with Mokwa for the investigation. When they find evidence of it being Allie's doing, THAT'S when Supayra shows his true colors, POSSESSING MOKWA. He has her fire upon countless innocent civilians, and even blast the castle apart with the queen in it, killing her. Once again, even for a brief moment, an evil force possesses the great bear. - While possessed, Allie ends up stabbing Obasi at the base of the neck. She very nearly kills him as she screams for Supayra to make her stop. Mokwa arrives just in time to save the both of them, thankfully. - The dividing of the mind is a Dangerous Forbidden Technique done before the amulets were used to henshin, and Mokwa does it to get Supayra out of Allie's mind. the following Battle in the Center of the Mind is a trippy and harrowing affair that even has a scene of Allie getting blasted apart by Supayra's super-sonic scream before reforming again. - After Supayra is exorcised from Allie, his most vile move of all is revealed. Earlier throughout the story, Allie has felt large boil-like growths on her back, causing her to itch. Well...it turn out those boils are INCUBATING EGGS. SUPAYRA IMPREGNATED HER. And sure enough, they hatch right after Supayra is expunged. Allie can only scream in pain and shock as they burst out...one of which speaks in Supayra's voice and calls her mommy. Yup, not only did he impregnate her in the most unconventional of ways (for f*cks sake, they come out of her back like she's a suriname toad), but he also did it to reincarnate. Mokwa manages to crush ten of them, but the rest escape into the woods. - The sons of Supayra, him included, launch an assault on the soldiers coming to look for them. Many are snatched without warning and dragged into their mouths, and for the most part, it's like watching hapless colonial marines against a horde of huge Xenomorphs. Granted, seven out of ten sons end up dying, but that just begs the question as to what will happen when they grow up. - King Supayra is our villain's new name, and he promises Allie that he'll get a lot stronger to face her. - King Supayra reacting in glee when Mokwa blasts him, reveling in the pain he's currently feeling. - While rampaging during the Final Battle, Setanayra eats up a lot of people who didn't want to go into the bunker, at one point giving his father/brother a big blood smile when the latter praises him. - Even after King Supayra is killed, his spirit STILL isn't down, as it possesses the weak-willed Bill instead. He had the Mecha Knight lay waste to the city before Mokwa stops him. - Once he escapes the Knight's wreck, Bill/Supayra runs off and stabs random people as Allie chases him. Once he's cornered, the girl proceeds to smash Bill's head in slowly with her boot. It's eerily reminiscent of Mungonde's death in the last story, the difference being that it's happening to the most loathed character. It all ends when Allie crushes Bill's possessed eyes, the last vestiges of Supayra there are.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/DaikaijuYuki
Cyberpunk: Edgerunners / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes "This mess my fault?" Like the TTRPG and video game it's based on, Edgerunners has plenty of Nightmare Fuel to go around: For moments from Cyberpunk 2077, go here. ## Warning: Spoilers Off applies to Nightmare Fuel pages. Proceed at your own risk. ## Pre-Release ## Post-Release - The sheer amount of carnage, gore, and violence throughout the show is absolutely insane. Heads are popped or cut off, limbs are hacked off, bodies are bisected or blown apart, eyes are popped out, people are squished flat, it's simply horrific. We're talking about 90's OVA levels of violence here. - Adding onto this, just like the game, if someone is shot in the head, they do not have a head anymore. Metal, brain matter, blood, and bones are sent flying, and we are frequently treated to full, up close images of these annihilated heads. - As shown in the NSFW Trailer, David's first few implants are done without anesthesia. This means that he has to bite down on a metal bar, screaming in agony as he is ripped apart, torn open, and has parts of his body ripped out of him and replaced, . The one saving grace is that, as evidenced by his blank expression partway through, he passes out from the shock and pain. and feels every single cut - For an extra dose of Fridge Horror: his first upgrade is the Sandevistan implant. Imagine having spinal surgery done without anesthesia and try not to shudder. spinal - The rookie that rushes foot-first into triggering a tripmine, that zaps him with an electric charge before turning him into a fine paste in the hall with only his arm sticking to the ceiling. David and Rebecca's exasperated reactions play it up for Black Comedy, but that's yet another person dead in a heartbeat with No Kill like Overkill for a basic trap. - While it's pretty understated compared to the rest, the EMT from Episode 2 is a clear indicator of what a hellish place Night City is, where even the emergency services meant to save your life will sell you out to the Scavengers if the price is right. - The Cyberspycho from Episode 4 who kills Pilar is a deeply disturbing figure. He's so far gone he can't even string two words together, only mumbling incoherently even when actively attacking people. His chrome is also peak Body Horror, with everything from the chest down, genitals included, being cybernetic and his remaining skin looking ragged and patchy. - Episode 5 has David captured by Jimmy Kurosaki, a brandance editor specializing in XBD's that made the one David watched all the way back in episode 1. But this time, he hooks David up to a braindance that makes the viewer actually feel as if they're going on a cyberpsycho rampage instead of watching it. We see a terrified David desperately fighting for his life, killing people as he tries to understand what's happening. But the worst is when Maxtec shows up, and blows off David's limbs. As he lies on the ground David sees his limbs have turned into an amalgamation of guns, and all he can do is plead before he's shot. No wonder David wakes up horrified in the trailer. - Two words Adam Smasherwho lives up to his infamy in the final episode, as he effortlessly keeps up with David (who's experiencing an 11th-Hour Superpower with the Cyberskeleton that let him take on a vast portion of Millitech's corporate army, MaxTec, and cut through a good portion of Night City just to get to Arasaka headquarters) and No-Sell practically everything thrown at him by David and the crew. For extra measure, Smasher then lives up to his name quite well by smashing Rebecca into a fine paste during his pursuit, casually smacking Falco out of his way like he was swatting a fly and it still sent the man flying and tore off his cyber-arm from the force, and then beating David to an inch within his life before doing a Coup de Grâce by blowing his brains out. By end, Adam Smasher comes off like a horrifying mixture of the Terminator and Darth Vader as he comes down on the heroes, and if it wasn't for David's Heroic Sacrifice in hurting Smasher's ego and drawing attention back to him, it would have ended in a Total Party Kill as his sheer sadism wouldn't allow for any survivors otherwise. - Even his digital form is unnerving. Unlike the Netrunners she confronted in cyberspace, when Lucy attempts hacking Smasher his Icon somehow looks even more inhuman than his physical form, appearing like a clawed razor-toothed demon. This is especially noteworthy ever since the consolidation of the Net from it's more diverse options in the 2020s to current day state of it resembling a TRON-esque netscape, Icons have likewise become more homogenized to resemble their real world counterparts... and yet, Adam Smasher seemingly chooses to be a more fantastical monster as his Icon, which goes to show just how depraved and out-of-touch he really is with humanity. - In David's final moments, he is offered an opportunity to have the Soulkiller used on him by Smasher. As demonstrated by what happened to Johnny and (potentially) Jackie when they had it forcibly used on them, it's a Fate Worse than Death that entraps the victim as an engram construct that isn't even entirely sure if they are the original person with a soul. Johnny ignores the implications due to his sheer rage and indignation transferred over, but Jackie if his corpse was caught by Arasaka after the heist is definitely hollow feeling. David might have just well avoided an existential nightmare by being so Defiant to the End and blowing off Adam Smasher's offer, choosing to Go Out with a Smile than lose his very sense of self in the process. - The absolutely horrifying implications of Lucy's Dark and Troubled Past as an Arasaka child soldier. - First, there's the implication that Arasaka outfitted literal children with such advanced technology in the first place. According to The World of Cyberpunk 2077 book, deep dive ports like Lucy's are insanely dangerous and typically only used by professional and corporate backed netrunners— their neural ports are installed directly into the occipital lobe to allow for high amounts of data transfer, usually at rates that would make a netrunner's blood start boiling without proper equipment and precautions. And the fact that Arasaka likely installed these implants on children who look like they haven't even reached puberty? Jesus. - Then there's the fact that Lucy was a child soldier to begin with. While Arasaka drafting children into their armies is an established part of the lore (Goro Takemura from Cyberpunk 2077 was one, and he and the other children actually competed to be chosen for it), Lucy was already doing highly intensive dives into the Deep Net that very few netrunners ever attempt: as a child. And not only her. Hundreds of children. Maybe even thousands. - And then there's the fact that Arasaka is sending them through the Blackwall (the AI border between the Old Net and the New Net). There's a reason that it's monitored heavily by NetWatch and no runners dare to traverse it— very few runners have ever made it out alive from the other side thanks to rogue AI attacks. And Lucy implied that she and her fellow child runners did this repeatedly. - Like the opening cyberpsycho attack, Maine's rampage in Episode 6 is utterly horrifying to watch. Between his shotgun, his arm launcher, and his own chromed strength he paints the walls with the NCPD and Trauma Team unfortunate enough to get in his way. Made worse in that we see his sanity crumble in real time, turning him from the gruff but loving man he once was into an inhuman killing machine. And that's not getting into the utterly terrifying Nightmare Face he makes: a wide eyed, wide smiled manic look, which is somehow both wildly manic and completely emotionless, and alongside all the blood he's splattered with, he looks like a demon that came straight from the bowels of Hell itself. No wonder it's the page image after all! - His death not too long after his rampage isn't too pretty either, as he commits suicide with the explosive pyre he made for Dorio's body, which from David's (and our own) perspective is done entirely in slow-motion. The whole sequence shows him literally liquify into nothing as the explosion rips him apart in Squicky detail, just as it engulfs the entire building with MaxTac along with him. - David's hallucinations in Episode 8. While on a mission, he encounters an Arasaka employee, who he kills. While the gory mess that results isn't exactly pleasant, an amalgam of guns suddenly burst from the bloody stump of the employee's neck. David falls to the ground, frantically shooting at the employee who's letting out a demonic, distorted laugh. Kiwi then calls David, frantically telling him that someone is approaching him. He turns around to see another Arasaka employee, pointing his gun at her. Clearly in fear of her life, she meekly asks "But why?" We cut back to David's point of view, who see's guns bursting out of the woman's face, also while letting out a creepy laugh, before David shoots her. David then comes to his senses, seeing the corpses of both Employees. When Kiwi asks him about the situation, he just says he handled it, not telling her what actually happened. David's overuse of cyberware is clearly taking its toll on his mind. - The strange, distorted sound track that plays during this scene doesn't exactly help either.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/CyberpunkEdgerunners
Monster Musume / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes Chapter 13 has the girls trying to help a sick Kimihito through Suu, as she is the only one immune to cross-contamination. Their attempts are pretty much universally funny (Miia's cooking makes a triumphant return), but then they get to Papi's attempt. It manifests as Suu bearing down on Kimihito with her arms morphing into wings, parroting the argument that the rest of the girls had with Papi in a strained distorted voice, all the while having light shining out of her eyes and mouth a la Nicole Brennan◊. Jesus, Suu. This is in-universe Nightmare Fuel as well, because Kimihito is terrified! Kimihito: Y-You're just going to sleep next to me, right!? Because it kind of looks like you want to eat me!	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/DailyLifeWithMonsterGirl
Dance Moms / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes Maddie's Lizzie Borden solo. Everything about it is creepy, with her disturbing ghostly facial makeup, blood-stained white dress, and the fact that she's holding a bloody ax throughout the dance. - Special mention to the music, which is already scary to listen to; it's a mixture between an Ominous Music Box Tune and brooding, roaring synths. It's even creepier once you start to hear the words. Note that these are said by a child in the song. He's behind you He's watching you He's coming	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/DanceMoms
Dance in the Vampire Bund / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes The other three pure-born vampires' plans for Mina. As the only pure-blood female and the Progenitor, only she can give birth to another pure-blood, and can only give birth once. Their plan is to find a way to artificially age her — or just wait until she grows up — and rape her until she gives birth. Assuming it's a male heir, he'll repopulate the species. Assuming she gives birth to a daughter, they'll just artificially age her and continue on until they get the Y chromosome they want. That's before they find out about her "true form". The anime adds to this There is another Progenitor female, a "sister" to Mina, carefully kept hidden from EVERYONE. Problem is, she's also the leader of Telomere. which explains why the vampires in Telomere aren't under Mina's control. Ain't politics grand? The "chastity test". "It's a farce, and nobody is laughing". The vampire attack in the church. The nun is literally hurled into the pack of vampires to be sucked dry. Even worse? She wasn't just being eaten.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/DanceInTheVampireBund
LBX: Little Battlers eXperience / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes - Consider being in the Yamano household. Your dad is working on multiple inventions which he plans to help humanity. Then he takes a trip to an important flight and suddenly the plane disappears with no trace and not even the authorities can find a clue, leaving your mother in shocked and sorrow. Then you find out your father might have been alive, and left you with the key to saving the world, only for a crime syndicate to send multiple officers after you with robots that can kill you in your very own living room. That's episode, chapter, and part 1 of Van Yamanos journey in Danball Senki. Sweet dreams kids. - The Platinum Capsule was designed so that any unauthorized user who touches it will be electrocuted to near death. - The fact that the school has a section outside where kids hang out in the slums and when Van and co go their to find Hanzs crew in the game, a trio can come and attack your friends at any given time. Sure its with LBX, but the real life potential is just as scary. - Hanz destroying Kazus Trooper. Even though hes not too upset, the fact that his partner was instantly obliterated in a few seconds and the scattered pieces everyone are just disturbing! - In the The Gold Knight chapter /episode 4, Kazu gets brainwashed by a salesman offering a new LBX, only for it to reveal the salesman is one of the Black Agent Moes in disguise! And with LBX Egypt, Kazu while Brainwashed and Crazy comes very close to defeating Achilles. Worse, Van & Amy just think its Kazu wanting a friendly battle not knowing their best friend is being used as a sleeper agent. Kazus smiles are nightmare incarnate as he tries to destroy Achilles - Then Achilles goes into V Mode, and proceeds to rip Egypt into shreds, brutally using stabs, Extreme Mêlée Revenge. Ban is begging it to stop by the end, but at least it free Kazu from the mind control. - The next arc consists of the Innovators/New Dawn Raizers hiring an assassin named Jackal to kill the prime minister. And he proves hes up to the challenge. When Tyler and Lex explain this situation, they explain that the Innovators also have spies in the government, LBX corporations, and even the police. Now had Van dialed 9-1-1 at any moment, the possibility remains his life could be in danger by any adult secretly working for the enemy. - That and the leader of Japans life is at risk during his inauguration celebration. - Worse, the assassin can do it with a toy made for kids - Episode 6 and the second half of the level as Kazu trying desperately to hit Jackals LBX and the latter is trying to kill him and the prime minister at the time. If he hadnt be careful, two lives wouldve been lost that day. - Though Kazu shot the sniper rifle, the sounds almost made it sound like the minister was killed even with his bodyguards jumping to protect him. Truth in Television as presidential assassinations such as John F. Kennedy have occurred in similar fashions. - In episode 7, we learn the truth behind Professor Yamano's disappearance. His plane was heading towards a summit with several other professional scientists, only to find that he's being kidnapped, his fellow scientists have accepted the terms of their kidnapping, and their are two fighter crafts. Shouko and the Black Agents revealing themselves as the stewardess and the pilots respectively. - Ban witnessing the death of Takuya's older brother, Yuusuke with his own eyes, and he had more difficulty of moving forward compared to Takuya himself. - In episode 26 of W, Otacross explains to Yuuya that even though his cosplay is good, the fact that hes not putting his soul and heart into it leaves him as nothing but an empty shell. Yuya breaks down, realizing hes lived as nothing but a tool with no soul for half of his entire life and just stands broken as the Perfect ZXs continuously knocks down Lui Bei. Its even worse once you consider the first time in years he showed emotions in years was when Ban and Jin witnessed Psycho Scanning mode affecting his body. Meanwhile, Alice stand there in fear of letting her teammate down. Until their Heroic Second Wind kicks in, the entire scene is just nightmare incarnate. - Haruka was deeply burdened that her inventions lead the world to destruction. Starting from Adam and Eve before coming to learn about Mizel's identity. - The fact that was mentioned in W's light novel volume 1 and season 1. This world was being controlled by the palms of a few people, who decides how this world should be shape as well as well as not hesitating nor regretting to use and sacrifice innocent people to achieve their goals. Some of this wrongdoings were demonstrated by Kaidou Yoshimitsu and Lex. What they did were totally wrong, no doubt about it. However, when you learn about this fact, you will realised that those few people who controlled this world might have done even worse. - The concept of Danball Senki Wars, where middle-to-high school students get enrolled in simulated wars, which are revealed to be used settle real life disputes without bloodshed.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/DanballSenki
Dance with Devils / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes - Episode 1: - Rem attempting to get information about the grimoire from Ritsuka. Combined with his and the other Student Council gaining a dark aura and Rem's psychotic smirk. - Ritsuka returning to home after a semi-average day...only to find her mother has been attacked and bleeding with dangerous people still inside. - Episode 2: - While awesome, Rem did burn a couple of people to death. - Episode 5: - While it was a misunderstanding on his part, Lindo thought that Mage had raped Ritsuka. - Episode 7: - The abuse Rem is forced to take from his father. It's even implied that this is a regular thing. - Loen threatening to tear out Ritsuka's heart...he even undoes her shirt and begins to hurt her enough to make her bleed. - Lindo going into such a rage he cuts Ritsuka's face and makes Rem's hands bleed. Had Rem not snapped him out of it, who knows what Lindo would've done. - Episode 8: - Azuna is murdered by Jek via a hand through the chest. - Episode 9: - The purification test Lindo goes through to suppress his vampiric powers. He's crying out in sheer agony. - Whatever the exorcist organization were going to do, they were prepared to surgically remove the grimoire inside Ritsuka. - Visual Novel:	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/DanceWithDevils
Cyanide and Happiness / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes IMAGINATION! - Two women argue who's uglier, but turns out that at the last panel, a black-haired woman skinned the brunette woman's face. - This comic, which involves a character doing a horrifying impression of an insomniac. - The strange hallucination/nightmare that Larry has in "It's a Sad Christmas, Larry" depicting a horrific car crash. Made even scarier when you realize that the car crash was the reason that Larry's dad had been in the hospital for the episode. He doesn't get better. - A kid wants to be Ed Gein for Halloween. Of course, his mother and him are both still alive, unhurt and actually happy with their costumes and the guy's reaction implies that this is a normal thing, but still!	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/CyanideAndHappiness
Dandadan / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes You can't run away from this granny... - The first chapter has moments like Turbo Granny cursing Okarun, turning him into a possessed insanely fast monster that bites peoples groins, and Ayase being abducted by aliens who make it clear how they intend to rape her and then remove her womb and other organs. - In a disturbingly plausible combination of believable and horrible, Acrobat Silky's mortal life consisted of selling her body out of desperation to care for her young daughter, and ended in suicide after her daughter was taken by human traffickers. - Vamola's backstory includes the near-total extinction of her people by the space globalists and witnessing the survivors being fed to a biomechanical weapons factory. It chews.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Dandadan
Dangan Roleplay / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes Unreality is brought up in this round when Pooh comes upon a complete replica of him that doesn't move or speak. When he passes out during the coma motive, Monobear switches him with the doll, and Pooh wakes up in an absolute panic. He has to be convinced that he isn't dead. Maybeck brings up the same thing at the trial that week. "I fell into eternal sleep once and sometimes I don't know if I ever woke up."	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/DanganRoleplay
Cursed Blood / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes ## In General - Even though the discrimination he faces is unjustified it's not hard to see why people are so afraid of Izuku. A Quirk that makes the user nearly unkillable, allows for control of people, resurrects the recently dead as zombies under his control and some form of advanced strength means that it's quite clear that Izuku has the potential to be a terrifying big bad. - The discrimination Izuku has suffered through and discrimination in general. ## Chapter by Chapter - Chapter 1: Izuku fails to save Tae from being killed. His attempts to heal her with his Quirk turns her into a zombie. Even worse, she gets aggressive if anything even remotely threatening happens to Izuku. - Chapter 2: Bakugo pushes Tae out of a window and gets away with barely a slap on the wrist. - Chapter 3: Izuku gets punched into the air by the Zero-Pointer. Ochako tries to save him as in canon, but the sudden stop from her slap snaps his neck. Even worse for Ochako, as she honestly thinks that she killed him until he gets up. - Chapter 5: Bakugo goes berserk during the fight with Izuku. After he loses, he launches a massive explosion that injures Iida and Izuku and nearly kills Tsuyu. Izuku loses an arm, gets impaled by rebar, and gets glass in his eye. - Chapter 8: Tae goes berserk when Aizawa uses his Quirk on her, breaking his arm and a rib. - Chapter 9: Lily's new backstory. Lily's stepmother kidnapped her and brought her to a party of pedophiles who raped her to death. When Izuku resurrects her, she starts begging for her dad and is terrified the Izuku and the other people in the room want to assault her too. - Chapter 10: Aizawa is horrified to realize he had met Lily before and completely missed her attempts to ask for help. - Class 1-A misinterprets Lily's presence, accusing Izuku of enslaving a little girl. - Chapter 12: While surrounded by villains, Mineta suggests that Momo should let the villains rape her to save his own skin. - Chapter 13: Izuku manages to kill the USJ Nomu by ripping out its brain bare-handed. But in doing so, the Nomu manages to crush most of his bones and organs. - Chapter 18: Ms. Joke has to talk down Aizawa from killing a group of pedophiles connected to Lily's death. - Chapter 19: Izuku and Tsukauchi are nearly killed by Trinity the Raven, who was seemingly restrained. - Chapter 20: Konno's backstory is revealed. She was an up and coming Idol who was poisoned with Trigger by a rival. She was turned from a normal looking human into a half human/half spider. She lost her career, her family, went catatonic, and woke up in an asylum. - Inko nearly dies from a heart attack after seeing Izuku get shot on live TV. Izuku is only able to save her after making contact with Cursed Blood, which acts like a cross between a demon and a Persona. - Various factions react to Cursed Blood. All For One wants it for himself, Endeavor plans to force Izuku to conceive with his daughter, and Overhaul ramps up the experiments on Eri out of disgust at the "Quirk Disease" evolving. - Chapter 21: Magne infiltrates Ichigo's cell and gives her "The Reason You Suck" Speech before beating her to death for harming her Idol, Lily. - Shiozaki demands Izuku lay the Zombies to rest while Monoma tries to steal his Quirk and do the job himself. - The QRA attempt to kidnap the zombies, legally and then physically when it's pointed out they have no legal authority to do so. - Chapter 22: Nezu and Vlad King decide to demonstrate how terrifying the USJ was by having Izuku and the Zombies stage a villain attack. 1-B is picked off one by one as Izuku shows exactly how horrifying his Quirk and skills can be. - Chapter 24: Mineta attempts to lure an escort into several love hotels and alleys before losing his patience, restraining her with his Quirk, and attempting to rape her then and there. Even after being stopped by Naomasa, he still tries to claim that he was in the right because he paid for her and she was "just a prostitute." - We get to see Quirkism in action as every participant in the Sports Festival with a villainous or Mutant Quirk gets nerfed while Emitters are given advantages. - Chapter 25: Todoroki attacks Izuku's team during the race and his thoughts show he's beginning to think like Endeavor. - Chapter 26: Todoroki further slides into an an obsession with beating Izuku. - The League of Villains learn that Tsuyu is Midoriya's girlfriend and begin shifting their plans accordingly. - Chapter 27: Quirkism rears its head again as fan favorites with Emitter Quirks are given easy matches against Mutants and Villain Quirks. Even Present Mic isn't immune as he insults Hitoshi's appearance and openly calls Izuku a monster. - Chapter 28: Recovery Girl and Taeko start experimenting on a sample of Cursed Blood. It eventually gets fed up, attacks them with undead rats, and then self-terminates to keep them from continuing the experiment. - Chapter 29: Todoroki is unfocused during his fight with Kyoka and freezes her into a solid glacier. Only Fumikage, Izuku, and Tae's quick thinking save her from suffocating. And even then, it took Izuku giving her blood to save her from losing an arm or her fingers. - Chapter 29.5: Aizawa has a flashback to when he and Ms. Joke fought a pair of villains. He nearly died and Joke was so badly damaged that she can no longer give birth. He tracked down the villains and only narrowly was prevented from killing them. - Chapter 30: Endeavor attempts to "convince" Izuku to marry Fuyumi, and when he shoots that down and then Endeavor's demand for his semen, Endeavor is clearly willing to pummel Izuku and kill the girls and a QRA agent for the sake of his ambition. Only Saki's intervention with an extinguisher and All Might's arrival prevent it from going worse. - Mina deciding to set her arm back after it got dislocated during her fight. It gets so painful that, after she stands up, she ends up knocking herself out from the pain. - Shiozaki is so enraged that she attempts to kill Saki during their fight. Izuku calls on Cursed Blood, gaining red eyes and an aura of death. Every one of her holy water-soaked vines withers on contact with Izuku. Before being knocked out, she even begins to think of Izuku as a literal angel of death. - Chapter 31: Tokoyami is still so furious over what happened to Kyoka that he can barely control himself during his fight with Momo, to the point that several of his attacks could have heavily hurt or even killed her. It isn't until he pins her and is ready to clearly hit her that he comes back to his senses, punching the ground instead. He promptly forfeits the match and begs for forgiveness, because he knows how close he was to hurting Momo, which he would really regret. - Chapter 33: Todoroki accidentally impales Izuku through the chest with a large icicle. - Chapter 33.5: Recovery Girl is so far gone that she dismisses her own words about experimenting on sentient Quirks and cannot remember saying them. Nezu has to order her to immediately get a check-up at a hospital. It's heavily implied that she has been tending to patients while impaired. - Chapter 34: All for One hacks into U.A.'s network and makes public both Endeavor's threat to Izuku and his later conversation with All Might. - Chapter 36: Ragdoll sees several unknown people coming out of her nephew Kota's hospital room, with their conversation being vague enough that it could imply they have killed Kota - and when she activates her Quirk (which allows her to see symbolic representations of people's state), she can't detect the three girls and sees a bloodied, faceless angel-like figure clinging to the boy's neck. While in the end her fear ends up being for naught, for a few seconds she thought her nephew could have been murdered in a place where he should be safe. - Chapter 37: It's revealed that the plot of Resident Evil occurred during the dawn of Quirks, resulting in Raccoon City getting nuked. That disaster gave rise to the BSAA, which is allowed to monitor people with Quirks that are considered bio-weapons. It's implied that Umbrella still exists under the name Parasol and they are interested in Cursed Blood. - Even worse than the BSAA is the freaking SCP Foundation. They imprison anyone with a sentient Quirk or who has been taken over by their Quirk. Tsuyu notes that they live up to the fictional SCP Foundation and a woman who escaped from them got the organization investigated by the U.N. Ojiro callously suggesting Izuku be sent to them almost causes Tokoyami to Freak Out.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/CursedBlood
Cult of the Lamb / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes # Unmarked Spoilers ahead! While the game doesn't reach "You cannot escape me, even in death." Binding of Isaac levels in terms of creepiness and dark imagery, it does have a few notable moments that can make one quiver in horror. - The very first thing you see after pressing start to bring up the main menu is the Lamb floating above a pentagram with blood dripping from their eyes, surrounded by dozens of cultists praying to them. If that doesn't let you know exactly what kind of game you're in for, then nothing will. - The opening where the Lamb is approaching the Four Bishops and preparing to get their head cut off. The way the Lamb is slowly walking combined with no music is very ominous. - Anytime the Lamb performs sacrifices and rituals, their eyes start bleeding and appears to be silently screaming before it's over. While these moments are brief, it can make some first-time players unnerved due to their facial expressions. - Speaking of sacrificing, they're appropriately terrifying, with the unfortunate soul taking their spot in the middle while visibly scared, before giant eldritch tentacles burst from the ground and drag them screaming into the abyss. However, if you have the Belief in Sacrifice Doctrine the victim won't be nervous (unless they are a dissenter), and after the initial panic when the tentacles grab them, they close their eyes and smile in happy acceptance just before they're pulled to god-knows-where. This does not make it better. - One Doctrine lets you flat-out kill a follower on the spot, no sacrificing or anything. You can end some poor soul's life at any time, and it's definitely shocking, to say the least. Slightly mitigated if you do it to deal with a dissenter, since you have an actual reason for it - getting rid of a problematic follower trying to sow discord among your flock. - At first, the Ascension ritual seems nice compared to being sacrificed and as close to "holy" as this game is going to get with the follower being floated up toward the ceiling as light shines down on them... and then, if you don't have the 'belief in the afterlife' doctrine, once they ascend off screen an indescribably horrible sound happens and their meat falls down onto the summoning circle while the other followers cheer. Wherever they went, it certainly wasn't Heaven. - Rescuing a follower in Anura will show you that Heket has her sacrifices carried out by way of strapping the victim to a giant mushroom and letting its flesh grow over them until it smothers them. Going by the wriggling victims trapped under it, trying and failing to cry out for help, this takes a while. Thank goodness you saved at least one. - If the player refuses to kneel to the One Who Waits, the Lamb responds by letting out an angry roar as their eyes turn red, briefly sprouting wings, and is depicted with fangs. Keep in mind, that the Lamb wasn't wearing the Red Crown during this moment. Not to mention, the Lamb roaring and letting out bleats are the only notable sounds they make in the entire game. - The first phase of the One Who Waits' boss fight is nothing special. After he sends his attendants, Baal and Aym, at you, he attacks you himself with fireballs and barbed chains that spear out of the ground. Then you get his health down, he sinks into the ground, and everything goes dark... Before his true form, a massive red thing with three eyes, multiple beneath his flayed skin, and rows of teeth that would make Pennywise proud roars at you. Then its eyes to attack you in the middle of a lake of blood surrounded by burning crosses and several of your frightened followers crucified and forced to watch you fight for your life. And yes, that fly out of its face is it in the page image. - If the Lamb kneels to the One Who Waits and gives back his crown, he breaks free from his chains, lifts up the Lamb and murders them by breaking all their limbs, while both of his eyes start bleeding. Even worse, the One Who Waits grins evilly and lets out a deep laugh as he's killing them. - Midas's Cave is just one unsettling thing after another. The location itself has a very uncomfortable ambience. For one, the room is filled with statues that cry blood and laugh whenever Midas bids them to and it's all but stated that said "statues" are actually unlucky passers-by the cave's owner imprisoned. Midas himself is a creepy Perpetual Smiler obsessed with gold and constantly making thinly-veiled insults towards the Lamb. - If you sacrifice your followers to King Midas, the animation for them being transformed into sentient golden statues can be unsettling; first they scream and frantically wave their arms before seeming to accept their fate - poof, suddenly they're covered in molten gold, looking more like horrifying figures covered in yellow wax. And to even further ramp up the horror of this fate, unlike the followers you can resurrect that are killed in other ways such as dying from illness or being sacrificed in a ritual, these followers cannot be brought back as they are technically not dead. - A potential relation to Midas's "God" is a bizarre tree-like statue you can encounter during a crusade amidst piles of gold. Offering it 20 gold gives you a decent boon of items per offering, and you can break open the piles to gain gold coins and nuggets. Why is it so unsettling? Because the statue isn't gullible. It knows you're stealing its gold and trembles in rage every time you take something from it. - Some of the random rooms you find can be a bit creepy due to the fact that there is no explanation why these things exist. A room to grab meat, for example, has the meat in what appears to be bushes in a pink and bony room that looks like a tongue.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/CultOfTheLamb
Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes "The darkness in [Nagito's] eyes shone brightly, as if layers upon layers of darkness were folding into each other... As if hope and despair had been crudely mixed together." Being the sequel to Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc, Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair tops the creepiness in more ways than one would expect. ## The game: - Much like the first game, the murders grow increasingly gruesome. - Chapter 1's victim is "Byakuya". He gets stabbed multiple times in the chest and stomach, leaving behind a bloody scene under the table. - Chapter 2's victim is Mahiru. Her brains are bashed in with a baseball bat. - Chapter 3's victim is Ibuki and Hiyoko. The former is strangled with a rope, then hung, while the latter got her throat slashed. - Chapter 4's victim is Nekomaru. He's dropped from a ceiling and dismembered (as a robot) after hitting a stone pillar. - Chapter 5's victim is Nagito. See the "Chapter 5" section in the "Chapter by Chapter" folder for a description of it. - This game reveals the existence of the Ultimate Despair, a group of people that was, essentially, an extension of Junko. Said group caused great part of the damage seen in the first game and probably, if they weren't captured by Future Foundation, would have done more. Even worse? The class you've come to know in the game? They're a member of it too. ## Prologue: - The general atmosphere of the opening. When the main character wakes up, everything glitches until they are fully conscious. When they try to think about how they got here, the player sees a computer processing code, starting the game. It's a bizarre and unnerving image when booting up the game for the first time. - While Monokuma is still his usual self in this game, him appearing in Jabberwock Island is not a good sign at all, especially since he turns Usami into "Monomi", and radically changes the rules and dynamic of the island. Jabberwock Island has now become the new Hope's Peak setting from the first game. - Him saying "Long time no see guys!" might be a fun illusion to not seeing the player in a while, but it's very sinister Foreshadowing about the classmate's true identity. - The Monobeasts. Sure, Monokuma and Usami are mechanical animals too, but their designs were more cartoony, while the Monobeasts, while Creepy Awesome, have more "serious" contrast to them that is really unsettling. - Monomi's initial execution. Seeing such a nice character getting gunned down like that is horrific and heartbreaking. While she does reappear no worse for wear, it certainly establishes that Monokuma is NOT messing around this time. - The chapter end card. All of them are disturbing, but this one takes the cake since it establishes what's going to happen to everyone. Sinister music plays while a dull font is shown of the chapter and the name. Then, after END appears the students are shown in silhouette, with the surviving students ticker. Followed by pink blood, and "To be continued", followed by a female's voice echoing, "Danganronpa..." ## Chapter 1: - Togami's body discovery as it pretty much comes out of nowhere and he evidently died in a horrifying way, bringing a sad end to the loveable Team Dad. - Nagito's VERY creepy smile in Chapter 1's trial, after Hajime exposes his true colors. Even worse, the game zooms in on his face and his eyes look like crazy spirals. There's a good reason why it's the current page image. - And his laugh, good God... it really hammers home the truth. The guy you thought was going to be your ally during the trials, like Kyoko from the first game? He's batshit insane. ## Chapter 2: - Monokuma presents the chapter's motive for murder: A crappy arcade game called Twilight Syndrome. It sounds ridiculous on the surface until you play it, and the game is rendered in PS 1-era graphics and models, with the characters in a jarring semi-realistic style compared to the Danganronpa series' cartoony anime style. The main characters discover a murdered student, but none of them report it to the authorities out of fear that they'll be suspected. Near the end, one of the girls is stalked by an offscreen threat ominiously saying "I'll never forgive you". The game ends with that girl's corpse found by her friends, which is an edited real-life photo. While Hajime is understandably confused about this since this was supposed to be based on real-life events he hasn't heard of nor would have remembered since those were part of his missing memories, Fuyuhiko was the first to discover the true ending. His prize? Photos of said events which revealed to him the first victim was his little sister. - While Mahiru died one of the most painless deaths in the series, that doesn't make her body discovery any less creepy, especially as it comes right after a series of cute events. It's completely jarring to see the corpse of Mahiru who was so full of life and happy, lifelessly sitting in a pool of her own blood. It's made worse by the haunting and distraught look on her face. - While Peko's Sparkling Justice performance is generally campy, it's very unnerving when she says she "did nothing wrong" in regards to beating Mahiru to death and using her corpse as a doorstopper. It gets worse when she drops the sparking justice act taking off her mask and showcasing a very creepy smirk/grimace as she explains that she's a tool and therefore Fuyuhiko is the killer, the smirk combined with how cold Peko sounds is downright frightening and a massive contrast from her usually sweet and quiet personality. Thankfully after she's voted as the killer she drops the smirk and returns to her usual quiet self and is repentant over Mahiru showing at the very least that her apparent indifference towards her crime was an act. - While he's far from pleasant in the first chapter, Fuyuhiko's behavior throughout the second trial becomes extremely unnerving. He goes batshit insane throughout the trial, mouthing off at others with heavily abusive and murderous remarks, gleefully smirking while framing Hiyoko for Mahiru's murder, making Blatant Lies so stubbornly, and shouting like a murderous mentally unstable psychopath at Hajime by saying the sword would've been left in the shower room. Even after it's proven that Peko got the sword using the bag, Fuyuhiko still goes batshit insane nearly frothing at the mouth until Peko tells him "It's fine.". With the reveal after the trial that Peko is his childhood friend and it's strongly implied he has romantic feelings for her, his gradual Villainous Breakdown makes more sense, but doesn't make it less creepy. ## Chapter 3: - How about the last time you see Ibuki alive?! You're in an incredibly dark hospital with some really creepy music, and Ibuki is just standing there in her hospital gown, and the Gullible Disease makes her mannerisms and speech quite unsettling. Her sprite during the entire scene doesn't help at all.◊ The fact that this is the last time you see her is the DEFINITION of Harsher in Hindsight and will definitely leave an impression on you. - Ibuki's staged suicide in Chapter 3 is extremely chilling, beginning with the receiver turning on one hour before the wake-up time, and turning on to reveal a candle-lit stage with a noose at the top of a stepladder. Then, suddenly "Ibuki" walks on with a bag on her head, which only serves to add to the creepiness by hiding any discernible facial features. Then, she begins climbing up the stepladder... which looks absolutely fucking terrifying due to the creepy lighting provided by the candle. Hajime, seeing this, flips out and runs to the stage... only to find that he's too late, and Ibuki's already been hanged. - The CG of Hiyoko walking into the venue and spotting the killer is incredibly unnerving as Hiyoko looks completely terrified. While Hiyoko was certainly flawed she died completely alone and scared without anyone to save her, brat or not she didn't deserve that. - In both languages, the culprit of the third trial gets incredibly creepy as she's slowly cornered. Hearing Mikan go from high-pitched Shrinking Violet to chillingly calm to furious and, finally, after the trial, completely insane is just so disturbing, especially coming from a character who seemed perfectly nice earlier. - It gets even worse come The Reveal in Chapter 6. The Despair Disease simply reverted her back to her Ultimate Despair personality. Meaning this is what Mikan was actually like while she was a member. She murdered one person for no reason other than "reciprocating" Junko's love, and brutally killed another just for being a witness, all the while going Laughing Mad and showing no remorse whatsoever. If she's this bad, imagine what the other students were like at the time... ## Chapter 4: - The motive of this chapter must be one of the cruellest in the entire franchise based on its sadistic nature. After being knocked out, the remaining students end up in the Funhouse, a cheery building. But there is a catch: they'll be locked in here with no food until a murder is commited. Seeing everyone gradually losing their energy and hope, until they're barely able to even move (your movement speed is reduced to a crawl during this chapter) is not pretty. The normal, cheerful Free Time music getting replaced with RE: All All Apologies doesn't help. ## Chapter 5: - Nagito is the victim in this chapter, and how he is found is incredible sickening. He's found tied up, laying in a spread-eagle pose, gagged with masking tape. There are also stab wounds along his thighs and left arm, and his right hand is pierced by an army knife. The most unpleasant sight of all is the spear piercing through his stomach at a perfect 90 degree angle. The worst part of it all? He inflicted all of those wounds on himself (possibly excepting the spear, which may have impaled him postmortem, or it impaled him while he was still choking on the poisonous gas that he set up). The horrified expression frozen on his face does NOT help matters. Here it is for those who want to see it in full, but be warned that this is easily one of the most, if not THE most, brutal murder in the franchise. It is also important to note that he gagged himself, despite the fact that he was kidnapped by a serial killer and now associates gags with that event. ## Chapter 0: - The atmosphere of Chapter 0 is unnerving. You are playing as a character who is known only by ???, it's not Hajime, Nagito, or any character you grew to love. Just, no one. This person constantly talks in a philosophical manner, while using the word 'boring', a lot. Nagito's presence does cut the mood a bit, but not by much. - It turns out, we know who this person is in Chapter 6. It's Izuru Kamakura. - During one scene, Nagito reveals one of his hands, which is smooth and has painted nails. He has one of Junko's hands. By "with one of Junko's hands", we don't mean that Nagito retrieved it from her corpse and kept it with him. We mean that he chopped off his left hand and stuck Junko's on the stump◊. It is a sickening thought how much he's been driven to despair that he wanted to become one with her. ## Chapter 6: - Due to the thing in Jabberwock Park exploding, everything has become a glitchy mess and turns into terrifying Mind Screw central. You can examine the dead kids' cottages during this time, but read at your own risk. - Until the reveal, it almost seems like all that glitching — starting with and including the sudden reappearance of the deceased kids (sans Nagito) interacting with the survivors as if nothing happened — was a visual metaphor for the last of Hajime's neural wires fraying away. - While dead kids' last thoughts being barely coherent gibberish is already creepy, Nagito's message being perfectly fine while Nagito himself is the only one to not reappear somehow manages to make it worse. ## To be sorted: - The entirety of the final trial. Good. fucking. god the final trial. - The "noise" statements you have to shoot down during arguments are all Mind Screw-worthy segments of glitched text. - In one part of the final trial, Hajime's all of a sudden back on the beach, somehow holding a trial with all of the other kids, but they're just standing there, all glad that everything's over — except Chiaki, who breaks Hajime out of the illusion on the second cycle. But the most terrifying part? Afterwards, Hajime finds himself in a void, surrounded by a bunch of clones of Izuru Kamukura, all talking about how worthless they are and how they've crossed the Despair Event Horizon and how they can't choose any future. They're all darkened, with glowing red eyes. They speak in unison, and fittingly, ominous chanting plays in the background. That chanting? Listen carefully to it and you can clearly make out "Enoshima". That isn't just some random chanting, it's a motherfucking holy hymn. - Then there's giant Junko, who appears with very little warning and speaks through a human-sized cell phone whose screen displays another Junko. She attempts to trick the survivors into accepting her offer of "Graduation", which would allow them to keep their memories of the game world and even bring the "dead" kids back to life...as in, their bodies become vessels for the AI Junko. And the survivors would have no clue, because all the data Junko has compiled on them would allow her to imitate them perfectly. - The thought that if the students chose to "graduate" while Makoto, Kyoko and Byakuya were in there, those three would be stuck in the game world forever. With Junko. Sure, she wouldn't be able to kill them directly, but that probably makes it worse. Just think of all the ways she could use Loophole Abuse to torture them... forever. On second thought, don't. - Some of the descriptions of what Ultimate Despair did to show their devotion to Junko. One turned in their own parents to her to be experimented on. One replaced his own eyeball with one of Junko's. Hajime is so horrified at that he screams at the speaker to stop before he can finish his sentence. - This is actually worse when you look carefully and realize these are actually implied to be actions committed by the students as Despair. Note the resemblance to Fuyuhiko in the one transplanting the eye into himself. - It's also implied that Akane was the one who starved herself. Akane is normally a Big Eater, so starving herself for despair isn't a hard connection to make... - The localization actually makes the latter worse, because it's outright stated that some members tried to bear her child using her corpse. Much to everyone's horror, especially Hajime and Fuyuhiko going crazy. - Players of the first game will remember just how Junko went out: being flattened by a crusher. Whatever the members of Ultimate Despair salvaged from that corpse couldn't have been pretty. It makes the above statement from the localization even more fucked-up. - Looking closer at the pictures of the horrendous actions committed by Ultimate Despair, not only does it seem like Fuyuhiko transplanted Junko's eye into himself and Akane starved herself to skin and bones, a person wearing a hat like Kazuichi's is seen gunning down a bunch of people and the hair of the parents about to be experimented on (especially the mother) bear a strong resemblance to Nagito. - Actually, since Nagito's parents died when he was little, it may make more sense for them to be the parents of someone else who'd expressed their affection for them, like Teruteru, Mahiru and Gundham in the case of their mother or Hiyoko in the case of her father. - The very concept of Izuru Kamukura. He was "created" in a project to create a student with every single Ultimate talent. How did they do this? By inflicting what can only be described as surgical Mind Rape on a Reserve Course dropout they used as a guinea pig. And yes, he did end up with every talent. But "all of his senses, emotions, thoughts and hobbies that interfere with acquiring talent" had been "excised." As the Characters page says, someone like that could barely even be described as human anymore. The process described is so horrifying that Junko approves of it! To reiterate, this is probably the one horrifying thing in the series that she didn't instigate in some way, and she loves it as much as her own twisted schemes. That... really says something about how messed up it is. And to make it even worse: he's Hajime Hinata. - Just to make things worse, the guidebook heavily implies who Izuru's creator is. That person? Yasuke Matsuda, Ultimate Neurologist and Junko's boyfriend. Think about the implications of that. - Just the way Makoto describes the Ultimate Despair. And he says this over a lovely background image of hundreds of people plummeting into a giant flame. "Despair in human form, but utterly devoid of humanity... that's what you guys really are . The Ultimate Despairs don't care about principals or morals. They just spread despair everywhere they go. They live solely to torment everything... to burn everything... to kill everything." - One of Kazuichi's shocked faces is nearly a Nightmare Face. It looks rather haunting, and can be quite startling whenever it appears. - Once again, the Closing Argument comics slip into this, with the creepy, Slasher Smiling featureless humanoid depictions of the culprits. Mikan and Nagito's identities being revealed are also as creepy as these have ever been (Teruteru, Peko and Gundham's avert this—Teruteru and Gundham look downright comical (with traits of a Graceful Loser in Gunhdam's pose) while Peko maintains her usual stoicism). The executions and deaths once again. - Chapter 1's execution, "Deep Fried Teruteru". Teruteru Hanamura is chained to a post on the beach, and up pops Monokuma in a chopper. Instead of blowing him up, the missiles Monokuma fires at Teruteru cover him in eggs and breadcrumbs, and for a moment it looks like he'll get off lightly in comparison to the previous games' executions—NOPE. Monokuma then takes the post to an active volcano and drops Teruteru into the lava. Pan to the kids staring in horror at their classmate's sizzling corpse bobbing on the surface. - Chapter 2's execution, "One Woman Army". Peko Pekoyama is surrounded by an army of robot samurai; Monokuma holds up a straw doll with a photo of her face on it, hijacks Peko's body and starts making her cut down her enemies. Fuyuhiko somehow makes it into the "arena", as it were, and makes a beeline for Peko in the hopes of stopping her and getting her out. And he does stop her—when Monokuma releases control just long enough for her to accidentally hack him up. In remorse, she hugs his unconscious body and either doesn't notice the samurai-bots readying their swords, or actively allows them to stab her to death. - Chapter 3's execution, "Bye-Bye Ouchies!" What Mikan Tsumiki's death lacks in cruelty, it makes up for in mind-fuckery (and squick). She's lying on a bed in an empty room, and here comes Nurse Monokuma to impale her on a massive hypodermic needle — or so you'd think. The needle instead buries itself in the arm-shaped rocket that a moment before seemed to be her bed; as he injects it with fuel(?), Mikan becomes more and more ecstatic before apparently having an orgasm (there's a split-second shot of her nude), and then the rocket takes off with her clinging for dear life. We don't actually see her die for once, but it can be safely assumed she died from oxygen starvation shortly after launch. Alternatively, it's been suggested that it's a metaphor for her orgasmic ecstasy during a death by lethal injection, reveling in despair and believing she'll be with the one she loves. - Chapter 4's execution, "Gundham Tanaka Stampede". Staring down an oncoming stampede, Gundham Tanaka gets his hamsters to safety and draws a magic circle, the stampede getting closer by the second — and at the last moment, the circle fails and Gundham is mercilessly crushed. Abated slightly by the execution ending with his past pets carrying him off to Heaven. - Before that is the matter of Chapter 4's victim, (Mecha) Nekomaru Nidai, who so far has the dubious honor of being the only victim to have been dismembered. - Chapter 5's execution, "Please Insert Coin". Thanks to Nagito's bastardry, it's Chiaki Nanami and Monomi's turn. Chiaki and the remaining Monomi units are sitting at the back of what looks like a warehouse with various pixellated invader-types popping up in front of them, which Monokuma starts shooting down in a freaking tank. Chiaki spots an exit and she and the Monomi units run for dear life, with Monokuma still managing to run over all but one of the Monomis; Chiaki and the last Monomi seemingly manage to escape before smacking into a glass wall. A shutter closes behind them, and all the two can do is wait for Monokuma to crush them with Tetris blocks... - Nagito's facial expressions in his spin-off manga reek of Nightmare Face. Not to mention the dream sequence he has at one point, which has him revisit all of his past trauma and ends with Junko's hands grabbing him by the ankle...	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Danganronpa2GoodbyeDespair
D / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes Spoilers Off apply to all moment pages, so proceed with caution. Don't say we didn't warn you! The entire castle is abandoned and you are constantly alone, but that doesn't mean you're safe in the slightest. You don't even have infinite time to spare and must finish the game in two hours. - The castle is equipped with Spikes of Doom in various places, including a nasty scare in the wine cellar if you attempt to pass without retracting the spikes on the far wall. If Laura tries to go while the trap is armed, the wall of spikes come flying at you with unnatural speed and stop just short of Laura. She sees spikes just inches from her face, narrowly avoiding an Impaled with Extreme Prejudice fate. - Meanwhile, up the stairway next to the wine cellar, there is a closet to your left. You open it up to find that has no purpose for your progress, it's only there to give you nightmares. There are spikes on walls of the tiny closet with two bodies impaled in them, having decayed long ago. Notably, the scare doesn't rely upon a jump scare, gradually building to the shock of Laura staring straight at a corpse on the door with a musical build-up, and it can still be disturbing just from the content alone. - You eventually find a way outside, yet there is no comfort in this fact as you hear the sound of an unknown animal howling as if to let you know that wandering off into the wilderness isn't really an option. The game never lets you go and find out what's out there. - The flashbacks found throughout the game. They all tell a story of Laura sitting at a dinner table with her mother and having the urge to get up and start stabbing her with a steak knife, and feast upon her blood and flesh. Eventually we learn that her father had to wipe her memory of this incident due to the family's ancestry with Dracula taking shape in her.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/D
Dabchick / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes Sleep tight... you buggers. - The Creepy Face Puppet is a disturbingly humanoid puppet with glowing yellow eyes and a real human mouth, and frequently is shrouded in darkness and smoke. As the most villainous of Dixon's puppet characters, all of the other puppet characters are visibly terrified by him, fleeing in terror when he arrives. His frightening appearance compounded with his sinister nature make him a deeply disturbing character for many viewers, as well as the only one to pose a legitimate threat. - The Halloween Episodes frequently have examples of this: - "Dabchick in the Cellar" features Dabchick and Barnaby exploring a seemingly haunted basement. The titular cellar is dark, claustrophobic, and decrepit, with broken floors and a mangled grate that Dabchick states "looks like something's come through". Though they do not succeed in finding anything supernatural, the unnerving basement compounded with Dabchick's panic can make the mundane seem terrifying. - "A Ghost Story with Dabchick" has Dabchick telling a story that sets up the appearance of the ghost of a woman who fell off a cliff, and now wanders the city where she once lived, weeping and haunting passersby. Dabchick's haunting narration and the fact that this is the one episode to not feature any visuals leaves it up to the audience's imagination how terrifying the situation must have been for those involved. - "The Oogie Boogie Song - Recreated with Puppets" is a faithful homage to The Nightmare Before Christmas, showing the Creepy Face Puppet creepily dancing and singing as he torments and tries to murder Santa Claus (at least a puppet version of him). The Creepy Face Puppet's terror is shown off in full force in this episode, from his glowing eyes and claws, his wildly grinning mouth, and his evil sadism as he tries to have Santa Claus run over by a train. - "Ghost Story" features the Creepy Face Puppet telling the story of a creature called the Hatun, which steals souls away from victims by playing an ethereal horn. The story is regarded as unsettling enough on its own, complete with a horrifying and haunting Twist Ending, but the episode goes further to create its unsettling atmosphere as gruesome visuals accompany the story, adding to the terror it wishes to instill on its audience. - "Song of the Siren" has the Creepy Face Puppet return to tell a story about sirens who sing to lure men to their deaths, with unsettling and morbid descriptions of drownings, suicide, and murders. Once again this episode sets out to deliberately frighten its audience, and does so with the use of haunting visual aids that play with fears of the unknown and the open water. - Though "Nightcall (ft. The 'Gos')" is one of the Creepy Face Puppet's more comedic and mundane appearances, it still contains unsettling details, with the already creepy lyrics to Kavinsky's "Nightcall" made creepier by the voice modulator giving the puppet a echoing, otherworldly voice that compliments its nightmarish appearance. - "Dabchick Has a Panic Attack" features a tired and uncharacteristically anxious Dabchick on a walk through a forest in France. However, his hyperactivity begins to get the better of him, causing him to perceive mundane objects and occurrences, such as other people in the forest or strange nature formations, as threats. The titular panic attack occurs, with Dabchick rapidly hyperventilating as he perceives the world spinning around him and the deafening sound of static drowning out all the other sounds. The sudden mood change compounded with the hectic visuals are enough to frighten most viewers, but especially ones with histories of anxiety or panic attacks where the terror is all too real. - While the concept puppet that Barnaby Dixon showed off in his video "My most EXPRESSIVE puppet yet" is not as terrifying as the Creepy Face Puppet, many viewers still found it unsettling, and understandably so since it also used the real human mouth on a screen, this time complimented with beady black eyes, skeletal ribs, and large moose-like antlers. The feedback that the puppet was creepy-looking was so strong that Dixon scrapped the face screen and opted for a more bird-like puppet face with a beak, maintaining the shape and antlers while adding feathers. This puppet, the "Baliwick", now has an appearance that better matches its friendly, creative personality.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Dabchick
Danganronpa Another / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes Fitting for a Danganronpa fan game, it has it's share of scary and silly moments. It even outshines the game it was inspired by! ## Chapter 1: - For the first murder, Kiyoka is bashed on the back of her head and is strung up in the bathroom making it look like she committed suicide. They weren't wrong. - The first execution, Death the Volcano Shoot. The blackened, Mitsuhiro Higa, is dragged out onto a soccer field and chained to a giant soccer ball. A team of Monokuma soccer players appear and begin to kick the ball around to each other. The passing goes so fast, it causes the field to catch fire, and the Monokumas continue to kick the ball until they're consumed by the flames. The ball then rolls to a stop, revealing Mitsuhiro's roasted corpse. While he did deserve it, his fate is no less horrifying. And toasty. ## Chapter 2: - Kizuna's murder scene is quite horrific, having a stab wound in her stomach and throat, creating a lot of blood, and she Died Wide Opens. Kanata also notes that she didn't die immediately, so her final moments must have been excruciatingly slow. - The second execution. The blackened, Ayame Hatano, is shackled in a Monokuma-shaped pedaling machine and is chased down a running track by a machine packed with buzz saws. She uses the pedaling machine to jump numerous hurdles, but when she gets to the finish line, the banner turns into a large blade that chops her in half when she crosses the line. Then the buzz saw machine catches up and grinds up her and the pedaling machine. She did win, but was eaten. ## Chapter 3: - The state Kanata's body is in when the other students find her. It's so gruesome that Yuki throws up and Mikako is legitimately shocked. - During the Class Trial, Kinji starts suffering Sanity Slippage so much he eventually goes full on mental, which includes (but not limited to) calling Yuki trash and threatening to murder fellow classmates for suspecting him as the culprit. Given Kinji's usual character demeanor, it's pretty freaky to see him flip out like this. - The third execution; Launchurch. The blackened, Kinji Uehara, who has been tricked by Monokuma to kill two classmates of his, carries a cross into a church where a Monokuma nails him to it and puts a crown of thorns on his head like he is Jesus. Then a Monokuma dressed like a Roman soldier presses a button on a remote, causing the cross to shoot into space like a rocket. Kinji falls back to earth and lands in the ground head first. His body is then flattened by a tombstone. Holy crud, that was badass. ## Chapter 4: - It's hardly as graphic as the other discovered bodies, but there's just something... unnerving about the state of Haruhiko's body. He's sitting upright against the wall and his eyes are wide open, the only sign that he's dead being the bullet hole in his chest and the blood coming from the wound and his mouth. It almost looks like he's some manner of ghoul, staring at you with lifeless eyes...or a drunk man sleeping. - During the investigation for Haruhiko's murder, Yuki comes across a couple of his disembodied fingers. Kinda freaky. - The fourth execution. The blackened, Satsuki Iranami, is sitting in a barrel full of a slots. A Monokuma yeets a brightly colored dagger into one of the slots, like the game Pop the Pirate. He begins to yeet more daggers into the other slots and other Monokumas join in. When all the slots are filled, Satsuki is then blasted out of the barrel and slams headfirst into the ceiling, killing her. ## Chapter 5: - During the investigation of the fifth floor, Yuki comes across a laboratory where the corpses of everyone who's died are being stored and begins freaking out. While he's panicking, Monokuma pops up and tells him in no uncertain terms that, yes, those are everyone's corpses, and even takes out Maki's corpse to show him. We can only see the back of her head and bare shoulders, but it's implied that, since the bodies haven't been stored in cold temperatures, her body has decayed a lot. The sight (and presumably the smell) nearly causes Yuki to vomit. - There is a disturbing scene where Tsurugi decides to shoot himself in front of the other survivors with the others desperately pleading him to stop. He manages to shoot himself but is miraculously still alive. ## Chapter 6: - The bad ending, where Yuki ends up impaled right through his back by a Monokuma. Even worse, it's very easy to get it by allowing Yuki's personality to extinguish Utsuro's, leading to Death of Personality. Worse still, it's implied that his surviving classmates will face death not so long afterwards. - During Utsuro's attempts at driving the survivors to despair, he mentions that Tsurugi's father, Juu Kinjo, succumbed to Junko's influence. Not only that, but to complete their fall he and many of his fellow police officers consumed the remains of Kouhei Sasaki, Tsurugi's best friend, like they were a happy meal.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/DanganronpaAnother
Danganronpa Class Swap / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned. If you thought the original games were already full of this, then get ready for another round of Despair. # Danganronpa Class Swap - Hope's Peak Academy - As per Danganronpa tradition, the murders and the state the dead bodies are found in get more gruesome with each chapter: - Fuyuhiko: Received two blows to the head and ultimately died of electrocution. - Hiyoko: Unknowingly ingested poison, and then received numerous stab wounds after she was already dead. - Akane: Impaled through the heart with a sword and then pinned to a wall with a pickaxe. - Nekomaru: Fell one floor down and neck snapped upon impact with the ground. - Teruteru: Attacked by Monokuma and electrocuted to death. - If the murders weren't bad enough, there's also the subject of the executions: - "Chiaki": In "Boss Rush", after evading numerous deadly trials based off of The Legend of Zelda, Mega Man (Classic) and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, "Chiaki's" execution ends with her being incinerated alive by a giant Monokuma dragon. - Sonia: In "Novoselian Revolution", an army of Monokumas attempt to shoot Sonia dead while she escapes. When it seems Sonia has reached an escape route, it turns out to be another trap by Monokuma, which makes her fall onto a mob of Monokumas holding up pitchforks, impaling her. - Peko: Her execution is still "One Woman Army" from Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair, the only different thing about this is how the robots end Peko's life. Rather than repeatedly stabbing her, the robots manage to cut Peko in half. - Kazuichi: "Crash Test". Monokuma makes two test cars crash into concrete walls, and when it seems like he will do the same to the car Kazuichi is in, he does something way worse; the car abruptly stops and makes the seatbelts snap, causing Kazuichi to be launched head-first against the wall with a Sickening "Crunch!", his motionless body sliding down the wall and leaving down a bloody trail behind. It's way worse when you remember that Kazuichi gets sick during car trips. - Hajime: The execution is titled "Polished to Perfection". Hajime is tied up to an operation table, has the long hair that he grew on the story cut back to his original hairstyle, has a Hope's Peak uniform stapled on him and then his clothes are sprayed grey. Afterwards three manequins show just what will happen to Hajime; a machine will pour acid on him that will strip him to the bones, which will then be dumped into the school's trash room. Thankfully, the execution fails and Hajime ends up in the trash room alive. That said, Monokuma has no qualms about letting Hajime starve to death. - The real Chiaki: Like Junko in canon, Chiaki puts herself through the other previous executions and ultimately dies when the Monokuma dragon that incinerated the Ultimate Imposter eats her alive. - Because Mikan is the only one in the class with any medical knowledge, the group has her perform autopsies for the victims of the killing game. With every student that pops up dead, the stress Mikan feels does nothing but grow. By the time Teruteru dies, Mikan has a severe mental breakdown at the sight of his body and refuses to perform an autopsy. - Good news; Mahiru's friend Sato is alive and the Twilight Syndrome: Murder Case deaths never happened in this continuity. Bad news; she's the subject of Mahiru's motive video. As seen by Fuyuhiko and Teruteru's reaction to their motive video, the same goes for the former's sister and the latter's mother respectively too. - Teruteru gives into the motive and tries to murder Ryota to make sure that his mother is okay. Ryota found the note Teruteru gave him suspicious and asked Akane for protection. Had she not been there, Ryota would've been the first victim of the killing game. - How the first victim is found. Mahiru is just on her way to do laundry only to come across Fuyuhiko's dead body. His eyes wide open, but devoid of any life. The fact that he died from electrocution only makes things even worse. - When Chiaki is exposed as Fuyuhiko's killer, Peko's first instinct is to try to kill her herself in revenge for what she had done to Fuyuhiko. Monokuma only stops her because of the execution he has prepared. - Chiaki reveals the reason why she killed Fuyuhiko instead of reporting his actions to everyone: seeing Teruteru attempting to kill Ryota led to her deciding that no matter how much everyone tries to restrain attempted murderers, the killing would eventually begin, so she decided to start the game herself and try to get out. What is really disturbing is how she states, very calmly may we add, that it is a game and that the only way to end it is by killing others. - After the reveal of Chiaki actually being The Ultimate Imposter in disguise, "Chiaki's" final words about how the killing game must keep going and how "it is the way things are meant to be" take a much darker turn. They were in league with the Mastermind, the real Chiaki Nanami, all along, and started the killing because she had promised them safety, and as shown by their expression of pure terror when they find themselves about to be incinerated alive, they never expected the betrayal. - When you compare this to the canon Trigger Happy Havoc, Chiaki's betrayal of the Ultimate Imposter is way worse than Junko's betrayal of Mukuro; whereas Junko made Mukuro believe that she would spare her of the Class Trials and the killing game as a whole, Chiaki convinced the Ultimate Imposter that they would face no consequences for murdering someone else; Chiaki encouraged her accomplice to kill whereas Junko never gave Mukuro a reason for doing so. - Poor Kazuichi couldn't have predicted that his words of encouragement to Sonia would cause her to target him for murder, the same Sonia who invited some of her female classmates to a pool party and was such a nice person to everyone was driven to commit a murder after being reminded of her illegitimate position as princess of Novoselic. - Instead of Kazuichi dying as Sonia intended, Hiyoko took the poisoned juice Sonia had given him and drank it, causing her death. Who would've thought that the Running Gag of Kazuichi giving his meals to Hiyoko so Sonia would notice him would have resulted in such a tragedy? - Hiyoko's body is found laid on top of a kitchen counter with a stab wound. Later on, during the attack on Mikan's lab, which leaves behind a bloody mess and an unconscious Mikan, Hiyoko is found with even more stab wounds, her eyes open, yet lifeless, and with her hands positioned to make it look like she stabbed herself despite already being dead. If it weren't for the context of the killing game, it could pretty much be passed as some sort of demonic possession. - What's worse than that? The initial stab wound wasn't what killed Hiyoko, Kazuichi did that to her, as well as the other stab wounds, in order to disguise her cause of death and save Sonia from execution, even if that means he and everyone else died. It is also quite disturbing to see Kazuichi trying to defend Sonia fully knowing that the poisoned juice that killed Hiyoko was intended for him. Something even worse is that had Mikan not recovered from the attack to her lab and revealed that Hiyoko's stab wound was inflicted postmortem, Sonia would've gotten away with murder and everyone else would've been executed. - Hiyoko had locked Teruteru in the freezer of his lab as one of her pranks. She probably wasn't planning on letting him inside it for too long, but then she suddenly died and Teruteru spent a lot of time in the freezer and was unable to get out due to being too short to reach the lock override button. It may not be much compared to what happened to Hiyoko, but had no one noticed, Teruteru would have died of hypothermia. - Until Mikan brought up how Hiyoko wasn't stabbed to death, Sonia didn't have the slightest idea that she was responsible for Hiyoko's death. Not only does she have to deal with targeting Kazuichi for murder, but also watching him almost condemn himself and everyone else to death just to protect her. Kazuichi may have succeeded a little too well when disguising Hiyoko's cause of death. - Hajime and Izuru's lab is basically the room Izuru was confined to in Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School, consisting of a bed, a walk-in closet, a single lightbulb as a light source, and old wooden floor that creaks every time it's walked on. No doubt it was an unpleasant surprise for the amnesiac Hajime. - Think of the discovery of Akane's body from Ibuki's perspective: she is simply carrying stuff to Hajime's lab so she can redecorate it for him only to find one of her classmates pinned to a wall with a pickaxe, with said pickaxe being placed where her heart should be. - Peko both figuratively and literally backstabs Akane and is partially responsible for Nekomaru's death. Her desire to get revenge on the Mastermind is so strong that she no longer cares about the consequences and purely wants to avenge Fuyuhiko at all costs. - Doubles as a Tear Jerker in the sense that this time Peko doesn't have Fuyuhiko convincing her that he doesn't consider her a tool, but a loved one. She spent her final moments thinking of herself as something inhuman without anyone to convince her that she has people that indeed care for her. - The Mastermind finds Mahiru in the second-floor restroom's hidden room and chokes her with a rope until she falls unconscious, allowing them to steal all the files hidden there. Thanks to Mahiru's camera snapping a photo as she passed out, she's able to see her attacker, whose face is completely hidden by a mask with a Slasher Smile. They were both alone in a room nobody but Izuru knew existed, and the Mastermind could've strangled Mahiru to death without anyone ever knowing about it. - Like in the first chapter of Danganronpa 2, the victim of the chapter dies during a blackout. A blackout happening in a relatively small space is one thing, but it's nothing compared to it happening in the entirety of the already claustrophobic Hope's Peak Academy, which has four out of five floors available for exploration at this point. - Teruteru being dead is already bad enough on its own, but him being found dead wearing a gasmask would definitely creep out anyone not used to seeing them. Hell, him trying to find his way around the fourth floor in pitch darkness while wearing a mask that doubles as night-vision goggles while holding a cleaver was what caused Ibuki and Gundham to freak out and try to attack him, and each of them understandably believes their attacks are what caused him to die. - The students learn of Nagito's true nature after figuring out that he helped Teruteru cause the blackout in the school. It's somewhat a bit creepier here than it was in Danganronpa 2 since it has taken Nagito a few more days rather than just two to reveal what he's really like to the other students. - Monokuma considers Kazuichi to be Teruteru's killer simply because he was the one who made the radio that shocked Teruteru to death and that no one had told Teruteru beforehand that touching the radio's exposed wiring could be lethal, even though Teruteru was the one who accidentally shocked himself. Kazuichi is executed for something that is not his fault just so Monokuma can have a bigger body count. Nagito points out that the Mastermind doesn't care about who kills who or whatever the circumstances were, they just want Despair. It says something that even Izuru is put off by this revelation and decides to help the other surviving students end the killing game. - A minor one, but Gundham tells Mahiru how all the animals in his Research Lab have not been taken care of properly. It's obvious that it would affect Gundham, with him being the Ultimate Breeder and all, but if you are an animal lover, the implication of defenseless animals being mistreated by a twisted individual can be pretty gruesome. - Izuru's constant meddling in his life causes Hajime to have an existential crisis. Because he is now able to experience the frustration Izuru felt after the fourth trial, he fears that his Split Personality will end up fully taking over his body and cause him to disappear. Hajime: Don't you get it? That means that whatever is happening in my brain, we're growing closer... And if that keeps going, I might just end up... disappearing. I don't want that... I want to be myself! - Ryota stated a few episodes ago that his aim was to create an anime that would inspire hope in whoever saw it. When he shows Mahiru part of the final product, it is shown that he achieved his goal... because it causes Mahiru to behave like Nagito. Ryota is understandably horrified with the result and shows Mahiru a different anime to get her back to normal. - The second Monokuma Theatre segment is a Big-Lipped Alligator Moment showing a scene in which Sonia's grandmother, Olga Nevermind, has a nobleman poisoned and killed for what seems to be trying to take advantage of the then-twelve-year-old Sonia. When Sonia walks in, her grandmother has a 180-degree personality change and makes herself look like an innocent bystander. To sum up the whole thing, an old lady has a nobleman posioned and murdered and a few minutes later kindly treats her granddaughter to sweets as if nothing had happened. - The third Daily Life segment opens up with Mahiru having a nightmare in which she meets all of the deceased students in the cafeteria. When she leaves to find the absent students (the surviving students and Chiaki), she hears Monokuma's laugh and returns to the Cafeteria to tell others, where she finds her classmates dead, as well as two extra corpses and a dismembered hand. These are the lovely descriptions Mahiru provides: A skeleton. (Jin Kirigiri, most likely) Wide open eyes, bashed head and burnt hand. (Fuyuhiko) A big burnt lump of flesh. (Chiaki) Pale face and countless chest stabs. (Hiyoko) Countless pitchforks stabbed through the body. (Sonia) A snapped neck. (Nekomaru) Single sword pierced through the heart. (Akane) Two halves. (Peko) Battered, burnt and cut mess. (Teruteru) Contorted and cracked bones. (Kazuichi) A bloodied hand. (???) A mummified husk. (???) - Because the nightmare caused her to oversleep and miss the morning announcement and because of how she was acting after seeing Ryota's anime, the other students, believing Nagito had done something to Mahiru, tie him to a chair and question him about her whereabouts, with Nagito being completely confused. - The fourth Daily Life begins with yet another nightmare of Mahiru, in which she sees the other survivors and herself dead, with Monokuma smugly taunting her. - The Monokuma Flower is found with its bulb closed and completely covered in blood. Then the Body Discovery Announcement plays. Someone got murdered, there are only four possible options, and their body isn't even anywhere to be seen. When Gundham makes the plant open its bulb, this lets out a stream of blood with a putrid smell, which causes Ibuki's face to turn green. Feel free to not picture any of that in your head if you don't want to. - The only thing Gundham manages to recover from the Monokuma Flower is an eroded bone, as everything else was already processed. You won't be able to look at Venus Flytraps the same way ever again. - Mikan, Hajime and Ryota wake up in different Research Labs instead of their rooms. While it's entirely possible that Izuru left Hajime somewhere else other than his room, The idea that someone went inside Mikan and Ryota's rooms and took them to different places while they were sleeping is outright chilling. - Mikan finds Nagito's severed hand in the kitchen's freezer, which is completely covered in blood. Because everyone else is alive, everyone comes to the conclusion that the one who died was Nagito. Monokuma is also rather enthusiastic about Nagito being dead, way more than previous victims. - While the execution fails, it's easy to guess how utterly terrified Hajime must've been as a result of almost dying for something his Split Personality allegedly did. - We get to see the Downer Ending in this story: Hajime most likely starved to death in the trash room, and the other remaining students proceeded to live together in the school for the rest of their lives and have children with each other (Gundham and Ibuki have a daughter together and it is implied that both Mahiru and Mikan have kids with Ryota). They're all trapped in Hope's Peak forever and will grow old and die there. It is revealed to be yet another nightmare of Mahiru's however. - Chapter 5 ends with Mahiru waking up... and seeing Nagito, whom everyone thought got eaten by a carnivorous plan not long ago, standing in front of her bed with his left hand missing. - How did Nagito lose his hand? He chopped it off with a kitchen cleaver himself as part of his and Izuru's Faking the Dead scheme. - Mahiru's reaction to the second floor of the dormitory area is highly likely to be the same reaction players had when they first gained access to this area in the original Trigger Happy Havoc. - Nagito implies to Mahiru that he only had enough time to sabotage Hajime's execution during the previous Class Trial. Had Mahiru ended up covering for Izuru like Makoto did for Kyoko when Junko tried to set her up for Mukuro's murder in canon, there would have been no saving Mahiru from execution. - Mahiru sliding down a dark vent face-first definitely counts, and when she gets to the trash pit, she mentions how the floor is pure concrete and that landing in a big pile of trash was what broke her fall. - Monokuma is far from happy to see Nagito and Hajime alive and realize the former was never murdered in the first place. Had not it been for Nagito giving him "The Reason You Suck" Speech, he would've just executed them on the spot. - In order to treat Nagito's wound, Mikan has no other choice but to perform a surgery she only knows theoretically and without any anesthesia to give Nagito due to the lack of it. She tells everyone else that is best if they leave her lab due to how painful it's going to be for both Nagito and anyone who sees it. - Ryota's animation is able to inflict a desired result on whoever watches it, but said result always turns out to be rather extreme. Later on during the trial, the Mastermind reveals that they used Ryota's animation in order to make everyone in Class 78 forget about the Tragedy and the two years they spent at Hope's Peak Academy. Ryota can't do anything but blame himself for the state of the world and his classmates' deaths even if he didn't have anything to do with it directly. - Ryota is immune to the effects of his own animation, so the Mastermind injected him with torture drugs in order to give him amnesia. Those nightmares he gets are none other than The Biggest, Most Awful, Most Tragic Event in Human History. Even Mikan finds the courage to call the Mastermind a Complete Monster upon this reveal. - Mikan states that she examined the nine bodies in the bio lab to make sure all of them belonged to the deceased students. Not only are some of those bodies not in the best state (Chiaki was burnt alive, Nekomaru's neck was incredibly bent, and Peko was cut in half), but Mikan had a mental breakdown after having to perform so many autopsies. She's trying to overcome her trauma just so she and the other six remaining students can get out of Hope's Peak. - After reading the documents that go more in-depth about the Kamukura Project, Nagito is completely impressed by the prospect of a talentless student being used as a vessel for an individual that possesses every single talent known to mankind. Even when Mahiru points out that the project was meant to replace Hajime's personality with Izuru, Nagito just says that Hajime managing to reemerge from within Izuru helped him discover his talent and that it would have been a waste if it had stayed hidden. - The Headmaster's room features a coffin with Jin Kirigiri's burnt skeleton on the bed. Whether the original present box with bones or this is worse is for you to decide. - The Mastermind's identity is revealed to be Chiaki Nanami, the one who got executed for killing Fuyuhiko was the Ultimate Imposter disguised as her, and whom she betrayed as a way of both faking her death and following the rules. - Junko's reason for clinging onto Despair in canon was that she saw hope as boring due to how predictable it was. In Chiaki's case is because she states that she is unable to feel anything and Despair is the closest thing she has to feeling something. Being the Ultimate Gamer, she also sees Despair as a game she would like to play with everyone. Just before her demise, she states that she has tried all sorts of things to be able to feel something but that the only thing that worked was Despair. Even Nagito feels sorry for her. - Even when saying the most malicious things imaginable, Chiaki never loses her calm and friendly persona. Ibuki and Gundham both describe her as Cute and Psycho. In fact, her personality is almost the same as in canon, with the only additions are her being both insane and empty, as the same also applies to her talking about mundane topics, such as organizing game night with the surviving students should they accept living in the school forever, somehow manages to come off as unsettling. Mahiru's narration states that she found it difficult to believe that someone like her was responsible for the deaths of so many people. - Why was the Ultimate Imposter helping Chiaki run a killing game? All the Ultimate Imposter ever wanted was a friend, and they went along with Chiaki's plans because she was their first, and possibly, best friend. When you look back at Chapter 1, it becomes rather eerie to know that they willingly joined a Deadly Game thinking they were helping out a friend. - Chiaki says that the Hope's Peak Academy Killing Game was meant to be the final taste of Despair to both the entire world and her, as seeing her classmates get brutally murdered and executed brought her great pain and therefore Despair. Remember how in canon Chiaki is the one who brings her entire class together? Yeah, this story takes that concept to a much more morbid level. Chiaki: The Killing Game was meant to be the final blow to the world. And to myself. After all, that year we spent together... it tore my heart apart to execute you. And Imposter? Ive known them for a while. They were my closest friend ever... Mahiru: And you killed them! Chiaki: Yep. It was apex of both of our despairs, I'm sure of it... Despair of death, despair of betrayal... perhaps something so personal may have finally made them an actual person and not imitation of another? Or did it kill what little individuality they may have had? Regardless... I could see the despair in their eyes. That's what matters. - Even Mahiru is about to give up hope and just allow Chiaki to kill her after seeing the state of the world. Thankfully she decides she cannot allow herself to die or the others to just stay at Hope's Peak forever. - Chiaki states that she has decided to only kill Mahiru because of how persistent she is, otherwise she would've gone for Nagito. - After the seven survivors escape Hope's Peak Academy and Chiaki's death is broadcasted to the entire world, we get a scene with Kyosuke Munakata, Kazuo Tengan, and Chisa Yukizome in which the former expresses their intentions of taking the survivors of Class 78 to safety. When Tengan and Chisa are left alone, their dialogue implies the possibility of them being in a state of Despair. - The following scene features a young man on a phone call discussing the aftermath of the Ultimate Despair's defeat. The person on the other end of the line tells them about certain plans. In the end, it's revealed that this person is Makoto Naegi, and he is heading towards Towa City to interfere with the plans his classmates have prepared. Given the premise of the whole story it's easy to guess that Makoto and his classmates are the Remnants of Despair and that they are preparing to carry out Chiaki's will on Towa City and set up the events of this universe's Ultra Despair Girls and Danganronpa 2. # Danganronpa Class Swap 2 - Jabberwock Island - Usami is able to stand her ground against Monokuma and prevents him from turning her into Monomi and taking over the school trip. However, Usami is not stronger than Monokuma, but is evenly matched with him, meaning that no matter how much they fight neither can gain full control of the school trip and reluctantly agree to co-host it. Monokuma has to go along with Usami's plans to help the students get along, but Usami is also forced to assist Monokuma with the executions and the murder motives. That's right, Monokuma is making Usami kill the very same students she swore to protect! - Like in the first story, the murders get progressively more and more gruesome. - Yasuhiro: Stabbed in the abdomen with his own sword. - Hifumi: Crushed by a chandelier. - Mondo: Stabbed in the neck with a pair of scissors and then having his lifeless body mounted on a wall with several of those same scissors. - Genocider Syo: Strangled to death with a rope and then hung. - Aoi: Starved and Dehydrated to death. While she wasn't murdered, the fact that her depression prevented her from drinking or eating anything before entering the Funhouse only makes things even worse. - Celeste: Shot in the head and then decapitated. - With the murders out of the way, we can talk about the executions: - Sakura: In "Weight of Sin", Sakura gets crushed by a giant pile of heavy and light objects Monokuma and Usami throw respectively (the latter pretty much being forced to do it), and is ultimately crushed to death when Usami is forced to throw a single feather on top of the whole thing. - Sayaka: Her execution is titled "For the Fans", and it features Sayaka being trampled to death by a mob of Monokumas who are dressed up as her fans while a recording of one of her songs plays over a cardboard of Sayaka moving on-stage, simulating dancing. When all the Monokumas leave the concert hall, the only thing remaining is Sayaka's body, completely bruised and stomped-on. - Kyoko: "Shocking Twist". Kyoko is bound to an electric chair, with Monokuma gradually increasing the power of its shocks. The most disturbing part is Kyoko's Slasher Smile throughout the whole thing, having remembered her life as a Remnant of Despair. Usami, not being able to bear Monokuma inflicting Electric Torture on Kyoko anymore, presses an emergency button that makes the chair's helmet twist ninety degrees, instantly snapping Kyoko's neck and putting her out of her misery. - Byakuya: "Down With The Ship". Byakuya finds himself on an old fashioned wooden ship in the middle of the ocean. Several sharks are swimming around the ship. Monokuma, dressed like a pirate, then appears on his own ship and begins blasting at Byakuya's with cannons, causing the ship to begin sinking. Byakuya scales the mast, but it's clear he's only delaying the inevitable, before a final cannonball hits Byakuya dead on. - It may not seem like much at first, but why is Mukuro incapable of remembering her talent and what she had been doing in her teenage years? In the original game, Hajime couldn't remember it because he never had one to begin with, but what reason is there for Mukuro to forget about her position as the Ultimate Soldier upon entering the Neo World Program? - Some of the perks the students have access to are pretty terrifying. The worst of them all is definitely Genocider Syo's, which basically allows her to get away with murder once. She is never able to use it, but the implications of a Serial Killer being able to kill someone and not face the consequences are chilling. - Taka's perk allows him to imput additional rules. Remember that breaking the rules results in execution. Now be thankful that Taka is a completely rational individual. - Junko and Sakura's perks allow them to lock and unlock any door they want as long as they have direct contact with it. Sakura in particular makes use of her perk to commit murder. - Kyoko's perk allows her to alter any Monokuma file she wishes to, which she does in the third chapter in an attempt to get away with murder and disguise the second victim's identity. - Mukuro's perk makes her immune to rule 12 (not being able to kill more than two students), meaning that she could easily go on a killing spree and leave a single person alive, likely Junko, and allow both to escape the Island. The perk is fittingly named "Massacre". - Even with Usami having half of the control of the school trip, Byakuya is more interested in Monokuma's take on it and tells off Usami when she tries to convince him that getting along with everyone else is better. - Outside of the traitor that is working with Usami, Monokuma himself also has a traitor of his own. Usami's traitor is definitely the classmate that was killed by Chiaki at the start of the Tragedy, but why did another student end up siding with Monokuma? - Yasuhiro spends half of the chapter completely paranoid, accusing Sakura of plotting a murder and warning Leon that someone would try to kill him as he had made predictions of these things happening. In the end, his own paranoia ends up getting him killed. - At one point upon coming upon Sayaka, Kyoko, and Mukuro, he points accusingly at them and claims to "know what [they're] planning." Given that Sayaka and Kyoko end up becoming the blackened in the next two chapters respectively, what does that mean for Mukuro? - Sakura kills Yasuhiro after his accusations of her giving into Monokuma's motive makes her realize that she has the chance to learn what happened to her boyfriend, Kenichirō, during the two years she spent at Hope's Peak. Before being executed Monokuma decides to throw her a bone: He's dead. Sure, he could've died from his illness, but given that the DR1 students are the Remnants of Despair in this continuity it's not far-fetched to think that Sakura possibly killed him herself. - After the trial, the surviving student reemerge from the Trial Grounds only to find a lookalike of Toko calling herself Genocider Syo. Suddenly the reason why Toko didn't turn into her Split Personality after fainting earlier in the chapter and that empty podium in the Trial Grounds makes perfect sense. - Just how did Genocider Syo get separated from Toko? So far it hasn't been explained how exactly the Neo World Program managed to separate the two of them. - Celeste goes blind with rage the moment Kiyotaka calls her a Spoiled Brat. She lifts him up by the collar of his shirt and throws him against a table with dishes. - Mukuro is awoken in the middle of the night by what seems to be a shadowy figure and decides to follow it. It heads towards Jabberwock Park, and when she corners it, she discovers that it's barely human. For some reason, it seems it also has destroyed the arcade machine Usami provided as a motive. What exactly was its reason for destroying it? - The prize for clearing Kyoko's route in Magical Girls Unite! is a recording of Jin Kirigiri's execution. Yes, Kyoko did just watch a video of her father getting shot into the sun and reduced to bones. - Turns out Monokuma had hidden two additional routes for Toko and Sayaka in Magical Girls Unite! and Hifumi managed to find them. The only one he managed to play was Toko's route, and the prize for beating it was none other than a police case file showing the murder of Takaaki Ishimaru, Kiyotaka's father. He was killed by Genocider Syo in the same way all of her previous victims were: stabbed to death with scissors and mounted onto a wall with those same scissors. The motive was made so that Taka would try to kill Syo for killing his father, and Hifumi, already being terrified of living with a Serial Killer, decided to get Revenge on his behalf by killing her. - Genocider Syo threw away Hifumi's letter and Celeste ended up finding it. Believing that the note was intended for her, Celeste began working on an elaborate murder plan (dropping the library's chandelier on the would-be attacker and framing Mukuro for the crime) that would've been successful had the real killer not gotten involved in the situation. The only reason Celeste didn't become the blackened was because of a mere coincidence. - The fact that Sayaka only became the blackened because her survival instincts kicked in and caused her to push Hifumi under the falling chandelier only to realize to her horror that Hifumi wasn't actually trying to kill her. It gets so bad that she throws up after realizing she has caused someone's death. She was just enjoying herself in the beach a few moments ago, and now she is responsible for the second murder. - After being exposed as the killer, Sayaka, out of desperation, decides to hold Hina hostage at knifepoint, believing that Monokuma can't execute her as long as she's holding someone who is completely innocent. Kyoko is forced to physically subdue Sayaka and rescue Aoi, allowing Monokuma to proceed with the execution. - Mukuro's narration states that Sayaka pulled the knife out of her uniform. If she had it hidden with her the whole trial, does that mean that she was planning on threatening someone with a knife from the start?	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/DanganronpaClassSwap
Damien: Omen II / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes "HELP ME! MY EYES, HELP ME!" - Aunt Marion suffering from a heart attack when she sees the raven during the night. - Joan Hart's death, with huge heapings of Eye Scream. - The accident at the Thorn residence's lake. The ice under Bill gives way and he's pulled under. Why? Because he was opposed of Thorn Industries going into agriculture. He didn't even know about Damien being the Anti-Christ. In this world, opposing the Devil's plans, regardless of whether you know or not, will mark you for death. Bill doesn't die right away, but is pulled along by the current and slowly drowns. - David Pasarian's death at the chemical plant. A unit in the explodes and Dave tries to escape the fumes, but he asphyxiates from the chemicals. Those final gasps of air when he tries to climb the stairs are horrific to hear. - Kane is alive when he is bisected by the elevator cable. He watches himself get cut in half across the waist. - Damien killing Mark via a brain hemorrhage when the latter refuses to join Damien's quest for world domination. The worst part is that Damien really didn't want to do it as he saw Mark like a brother, but Damian knew he had no choice when Mark refused. This was the point of no return for him. - Charles not only gets hit by a train, but is carried along on a coupling and is still alive, and screaming, when the train couples with the freight car with the Wall in it. - Arguably worse in the novelization of the film; Richard stumbles out of the train car and finds Charles still alive, albeit briefly.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/DamienOmenII
Courtney Crumrin and the Night Things / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes - Tommy Rawhead & Bloody Bones wins hands down. Most of the Night Things are. Courtney actually sends Butterworm to scare the Alpha Bitch by night. - The very first chapter has Butterworm eating a rather dweeby boy who follows Courtney into the woods. A following scene, where Butterworm jokes about how the boy is "somewhere in [his] lower digestive system" is pretty creepy. \|\|The last issue of the recent series revealed the boy's parents had been looking for him the whole time, but finally give up when they find his jacket covered in dried blood.\|\| - What the Twilight King does to \|\|Templeton\|\| after he \|\|kills his daughter? He enchants Templeton to fall in love with dead princess, so he may mourn her for eternity.\|\|	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/CourtneyCrumrinAndTheNightThings
Dagon / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes As a story of H. P. Lovecraft, this is inevitable. Unmarked spoilers below! ## The short story - Everything about this story emanates horror, from Lovecraft's vivid description of the vast wasteland the protagonist is lost in, to the way that the reader and the narrator both share the same obsession with climbing the mountain. Neither know what this will achieve, but both begin to think, on the sole basis of paranoia, that it is their only hope. Then there's the final passage, which is simply terrifying: "Often I ask myself if it could not all have been a pure phantasm — a mere freak of fever as I lay sun-stricken and raving in the open boat after my escape from the German man-of-war. This I ask myself, but ever does there come before me a hideously vivid vision in reply. I cannot think of the deep sea without shuddering at the nameless things that may at this very moment be crawling and floundering on its slimy bed, worshipping their ancient stone idols and carving their own detestable likenesses on submarine obelisks of water-soaked granite. I dream of a day when they may rise above the billows to drag down in their reeking talons the remnants of puny, war-exhausted mankind — of a day when the land shall sink, and the dark ocean floor shall ascend amidst universal pandemonium." "The end is near. I hear a noise at the door, as of some immense slippery body lumbering against it. It shall not find me. God, that hand! The window! The window!" ## The film	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Dagon
Cube / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes - The main characters wake up in a cube, with a door on every side of the cube, and each door leads to a similar cube. Some cubes contain death traps, which kill you either instantly (\|\|Alderson\|\|), or slowly and painfully (\|\|Rennes\|\|). Every method of detecting traps seems to fail at some point, so for a large part of the movie, people are risking a high chance of death every time they enter a room in a desperate attempt to reach food, water, or help. - Further disturbing is the fact that the puzzle doesn't have a point: in a discussion, Worth implies that the puzzle isn't part of a grander scheme, that people are being stuck in it because "you either use it, or admit its pointless". So basically, they (and who knows how many others before and after them) are in this situation because somebody built the cube and they want it used. That's it, that's the reason. "Because it's there." - You wake up in a room, surrounded by strangers who may want to kill you and hundreds of evil deathtraps. And if you don't escape fast, you'll starve to death. - The intense amount of claustrophobia that one would feel being stuck inside the cube. Even if one does not have claustrophobia, they will most likely develop it the longer they remain inside the cube. Combine that with the death traps and the hopeless futility of trying to find a way out and you are left with an insanely nightmarish situation that should only be reserved for the worst of the worst of nightmares. - Anyone who has some experience with abusers and/or people with VERY bad tempers knows how scary a man like \|\|Quentin\|\| is. He's obviously a sociopath gone over the edge. Not to mention the fact he's also an Ephebophile who clearly harbors intents to \|\|rape the young female prisoner\|\|. \|\|Quentin\|\| was a bigger monster than the Cube ever was.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Cube
Danganronpa: The Animation / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes In the episode's dub, after Yasuhiro asks her about her earlier statements regarding "living in harmony and making the best of things," Celeste angrily shouts out these lovely words back at him. Celeste: THAT WAS BULLSHIT! YOU IDIOTS DON'T KNOW THE FIRST THING ABOUT "DESPERATE!" I'D HAVE MOWED DOWN ALL OF YOU TO GET OUT OF THIS ROMAN HOLIDAY!	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/DanganronpaTheAnimation
Danganronpa: The Wolf's Game / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes As a Danganronpa fan series, Danganronpa: The Wolf's Game is bound to have some terrifying moments. Spoilers below are unmarked - In Chapter 2's trial, during Myoko's breakdown, she makes her most terrifying face. - Kyo ends up deciding on what the Twilight Werewolf's execution is and afterward, he gets told his little brother is going to be executed with her. - The Twilight Werewolf Yakumbo Oboro herself. She claims to have committed every mortal sin, which includes raping Tomoyasu Seisuke's corpse after killing him and then eating his leg in front of the cast.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/DanganronpaTheWolfsGame
Daft Punk / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes - "Rollin' N Scratchin'" is just some lone beats at first, which then turns into an alarm-like sound, which then turns into what can only be described as "robotic screams of agony." - "Television Rules the Nation." It's the bizarre distortion about 0:32 seconds into the song that does it. And as for what the refrain implies... - As pictured, the video for "The Prime Time of Your Life" deserves a special mention. It involves a little girl named Melody who's so insecure about her weight that she hallucinates herself tearing her own skin to become thin like everyone else... only to die from bloodloss. - The song itself is no slouch on Nightmare Fuel, either. There is something about the distorted vocals that makes one feel uneasy, along with the uncanny beats and the song picking up a very fast pace. And the bass drum you hear near the end? It is a rather accurate replica of your heartbeat as you pass away. - The video for "Technologic." That robot is horrifying, and even more so when you realize what it is: the skeleton animatronic of the Chucky doll used in Seed of Chucky. - "The Brainwasher." isn't that much better. The dark, repetitive riff and nods to Black Sabbath do it. - "The Prime Time of Your Life / The Brainwasher / Rollin' N Scratchin' / Alive" from Alive 2007. As mentioned before, the first three songs are already Nightmare Fuel in themselves. It comes off really unsettling until "Alive" kicks in. - The first minute and a half of, "Touch" is... very very unnerving. - The last few lines of it however, are rather tearjerking. - "Contact," especially the second half, is extremely unsettling, eventually descending into pure distortion and static — before becoming swallowed up. - Fortunately, if you have the Japanese version, you do get a beautiful bonus country-flavoured track called "Horizon" to calm you down right after. - Nightmare Retardant: It stops being horrifying when you realize that it's just the sound of a rocket propulsion system as it goes up in the atmosphere. - "Within" has very eerie lyrics, compared with the creepy as hell robot voice. - In "The Collaborates:" Pharrell Williams, Pharrell talks about how the beat of the music mimics the rhythm of a human heart beat, with a black and white animation of a heart plays in the background, then it fades to a strange machine, an artificial heart, showing how they are robots. While this does not seem very creepy on its own, it is once you realize where those clips are from... - "Rock 'N Roll" is when you push acid house to its limits. It goes batshit crazy especially at around the four minute mark. - The distorted vocals on "Oh Yeah" could give potential chills. - "Steam Machine" has that frickin' whispered vocal of "STEEEEEAM MACHHHHINE". The weird music doesn't help matters. - "Short Circuit" can be seen as subtly creepy - the first half of the song is energetic 80s synth funk, but then it starts living up to the title: the tempo starts gradually slowing down with every repetition of the loop, the synths start playing an eerily out-of-tune melody, and the sound quality quickly starts degrading, like the instrumental equivalent of an Electronic Speech Impediment.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/DaftPunk
Daily Equestria Life with Monster Girl / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes Return to the main page here. Moment Subpages are Spoilers Off. You Have Been Warned. - The description of Cereas body as perceived by a pony in the first chapter. It gives the reader a very good idea of why the fear response to a centaur is instinctual for ponies. - Cereas fever-induced delerium while running through the wild zone. It is made explicitly clear that she would have died of her injuries without the Princesses. - The description of the road that lead Cerea to Equestria. Running through alien ever-changing environments while being chased by a wall of nothingness... - The root angler. Most of the debris around it were bones. - The neurocypher. A monster that can scramble its prey's brains, then slowly lower itself onto the disoriented pony, mouth-first. - The summoning ritual is one in-universe. The ability for this many unicorns to combine their magic is explicitly called a weapons-grade working. The Princesses are essentially treating it as a weapon of mass destruction with no known counter. - The descriptions of the sudden losses of magic are horrifying. - The first victim, a pegasus courier, almost plummets from the sky. - The second, an earth pony merchant, has his enchanted cart drained first, and only has a second to realize something's gone wrong before it gets him. — the forest blurs, all four knees go weak as his blood roars in his ears and there's a single moment when he realizes that sound is the only thing he can truly hear, something he's about to test with his own scream — - Untreated platinum is this in-Universe. Nightwatch: "...it absorbs magic. Constantly, from everything — unless you know how to tell it not to, and that's really hard to do. And risky. So someone can wear the translator, and the platinum won't absorb from them. Just the air. And any thaums it takes in go to the spells. But when you get a lot of platinum in one place, and it's not treated...it just keeps pulling in power. Small pieces can leak a little, unless they're stabilized. Big chunks... they're more stable. They hold the magic. And when it can't hold any more, when there's nowhere for the power to go..." - In chapter 59, Wordia Spinner interviews the arsonist who burned down Nightwatch's apartment. She starts to realize with slowly growing horror that this mare perfectly represents the end product of all the distortions, insinuations, and half-truths she's been writing in the Tattler for years, twisted to serve the fanaticism of CUNET. And all this happens before the carriage they're riding in suddenly loses all its magic and capsizes in a wild zone. - Absolutely everything about Tartarus. It's an Eldritch Location which is at least partially aware, capable of rearranging its own geography and generating illusions to torment its captives. It can muffle or interfere with sounds, but will always let the sounds of screaming pass unhindered. Inside it, Cerberus becomes an abomination with an incredibly painful venom rather than the friendly three-headed dog he is outside. And there's the little factoid that, while inmates can kill each other, nothing you can do within Tartarus will ever let you take your own life. - Chapter 77. Oh Chapter 77. - Chapter 78 just builds on what makes Tirek so terrifying. He's revealed to be part of a highly mutagenic race of unknown origins from somewhere outside of Equestria, where the centaur form is just one of several possible forms a member can take. He was so envious of being unable to use magic that he surgically modified himself in an attempt to gain the power to manipulate magic for himself. Instead, he found himself cursed with a Horror Hunger; now he couldn't gain sustenance except by feeding on magic. When his brother "betrayed him" by seeking to find a way to undo the surgery, he killed him, then began terrorizing Equestria. - Comes to the climax in chapter 79: - The surgery that Tirek underwent? Implanting platinum wire into his bones. - Despite the centuries in torment and his repeated defeats, Tirek refuses to give up his mad obsession with having magic. Even when Cerea suggests that, since now that he does have the fine control to only drain a small amount of magic at a time, he could take up a more peaceful existence by only feeding on what he needs, Tirek refuses. His logic: the only way he can possibly hope to end his hunger permanently is by taking all the magic. Even if this means wiping out Menajeria... and then moving on to the next world. And then the next world. And then the next, ad infinitum. - The last vestige of Discord's essence inside Tirek has given him the power to manipulate the wire under his flesh, extruding it from his body to use as Combat Tentacles; he's been able to drain spots far away from his Tartarus cell by extruding the narrow wires through stone and earth for miles, then start draining where the tips end up. - In the end, Cerea realizes that Tirek is such an existential threat to not just Menajeria, but to The Multiverse, that she is forced to kill him by stabbing him through the heart with her own Anti-Magic sword, willingly sacrificing her life to do so. - The steady deterioration of the arsonist's mental state carries its own form of horror. She starts out by telling herself she's not to blame for the fire in Nightwatch's apartment (which spread throughout the building and put a foal in the hospital). After CUNET moves her to a safehouse in Ponyville, she takes up the idea of murdering foals who don't adhere to the group's ideals and begins adapting her magic to that end. She starts to outline this viewpoint to Wordia in Chapter 59, but one of her guards stops her just in time. Then she gets arrested and locked up in a cell at the palace, worsening her slide into madness — and after the mob breaks her out, she threatens to strangle two foals to death unless Cerea lets her go. She is ultimately committed to a mental hospital and will stay there until/unless she is judged fit to stand trial for her crimes.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/DailyEquestriaLifeWithMonsterGirl
Danganronpa Zero / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes Anything to do with The Worst, Most Despair Inducing Incident in the History of Hope's Peak Academy is this, even if it hasn't exactly happened just yet. Even knowing what's coming, the novel as a whole has an uncomfortable sense of dread. With the Tragedy of Hope's Peak having taken place and The Parade in full swing throughout the background, the first dominoes that will lead to the The Tragedy are already in motion. Hope's Peak Academy, originally portrayed as a beautiful utopian school in the first game, is put on full display as the corrupt, greedy, elitist establishment that it truly was. Under the tyranny of the Steering Committee, they treat Reserve Course students as cashcows and segregate them from the Ultimate students; they have no trouble covering up murders that take place on school grounds, and even force some of their own students to solve the situations for them. At one point, they try to pressure Yasuke Matsuda into interrogating one of the survivors of the Tragedy of Hope's Peak. When he asks what happens if he refuses, the Committee members laugh and say he doesn't have a choice, even threatening to have Ryoko expelled if he doesn't comply. Ryoko Otonashi herself at times. Do NOT try to keep her away from Yasuke. I wanna meet Matsuda-kun. I wanna meet Matsuda-kun. I wanna meet Matsuda-kun. Ryoko receives a letter that tells her to come to the Central Plaza at 1 AM if she wants her old memory notebooks back. When she does, she sees someone standing by the fountain. She asks if they're the one who called her there, but gets no reply. When she gets closer to see if something's wrong, she gets a look at the man's face. His eyes are bloodshot and his tongue hang limply from his mouth. As the wind picks up, she also notices he's not standing. He's hanging from a rope around his neck. Underneath him is one of her missing notebooks. And when she turns around, the body disappeared. It turns out Yasuke had been covering up the deaths to keep suspicion off Ryoko. Fake!Junko (actually Mukuro) playing around with one of the Madarai brothers' corpse after killing him. Junko beating Yasuke's dead corpse till there's nothing left but a lump of meat. It brings up imagery one would associate with Corpse Party.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/DanganronpaZero

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