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H. P. Lovecraft / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
For those planning on sleeping tonight, whelp, good luck.H. P. Lovecraft is probably one of the most respected horror writers of all time. Pretty much any horror author who came after him owes him for at least one idea. He codified the idea of the Eldritch Abomination in fiction and was one of the first (if not
*the* first) writers of the Cosmic Horror Story. There were so many brown notes in his work, you could call it a brown opera. He is the Trope Namer for Go Mad from the Revelation and the creator of Cthulhu, one of the most well-known monsters in horror literature outside of Dracula or Frankenstein's Monster. In general, he has some pretty spooky stories to his name. **WARNING:** Spoilers are unmarked.
- "Pickman's Model" takes the cake. It's about a painter who draws horrifying, nightmarish portraits... and then it turns out he wasn't using his imagination.
*Well - that paper wasn't a photograph of any background, after all. What it showed was simply the monstrous being he was painting on that awful canvas. It was the model he was using- and its background was merely the wall of the cellar studio in minute detail. But by God, Eliot, it was a photograph from life!*
- Try reading "The Statement of Randolph Carter." Randolph Carter and his friend Harley Warren go digging in an ancient cemetery. Warren goes alone into its depths, only to discover... something so horrible he pleads with Carter to seal the tomb up and leave him before it gets out. Eventually, he stops responding, even as Carter begs him to respond. And then he
*gets* a response, but it's not Warren...
*YOU FOOL, WARREN IS DEAD!*
- Or "The Festival", An eerie story of Kingsport that makes that city even weirder than Innsmouth or Arkham.
- Or "The Whisperer in Darkness" —
*never* look at those "lonely woods" the same way again.
- Or "The Thing on the Doorstep," or "The Music of Erich Zann". Lovecraft was a master of horror. "The Music of Erich Zann" has some of the best examples of Nothing Is Scarier ever devised. The main character of "Erich Zann" never managed to find his way back to the house he rented from... or the street... or the
*NEIGHBORHOOD*. Was it All Just a Dream? Or somewhere out there, is there some spatial anomaly just waiting to draw in another victim to some bizarre, crumbling neighborhood, where otherwordly music echoes through the air?
- "The Picture in the House." Unusual for Lovecraft, as it does not involve Cosmic Horror Story tropes or even the supernatural, and it actually has fairly effective dialogue. Just a nearly 200-year old cannibal. Also, the single scariest use of
*italics,* ever.
-
*The Colour Out of Space*: It's a story about a goddamned *color* that will give you nightmares. Lovecraft was just that good. Imagine something so abstract that you can never comprehend it slowly eating you and the entire landscape around you alive over the course of months, and being even unable to flee. And considering that the dam project mentioned in the story was real, one has to wonder how many contemporary readers got really uncomfortable about drinking tap water.
- His description of the epileptic trees just feels so wrong and vivid.
*...And yet amidst that tense, godless calm the high bare boughs of all the trees in the yard were moving. They were twitching morbidly and spasmodically, clawing in convulsive and epileptic madness at the moonlit clouds; scratching impotently in the noxious air as if jerked by some alien and bodiless line of linkage with subterrene horrors writhing and struggling below the black roots.*
- The fate of the poor bastards infected by The Colour. At least the animals and plants died quickly, but HUMANS infected by it are, understandably, turned into ravening madmen.
- The poor farmer's son, who has to deal with his mother who's now a Madwoman in the Attic, after being driven insane by the infection.
- The strange meteor completely defies all known physics, much to the confusion and mild terror of the professors of Miscatonic University. After about a week of fruitless testing, the remaining fragments simply vaporize, and they're forced to conclude that whatever it was, it likely didnt even originate from within our own universe. With all traces of the meteor gone, some of them wonder if it was ever there at all. If only...
- You think Lovecraft's standard stories are scary? Try reading some of his calm and lucid descriptions of his own
*real* dreams. The man was the living embodiment of Nightmare Fuel.
-
*The Dunwich Horror*. One of the worst things about this one is that, for once, Lovecraft didn't skimp on the descriptions. The titular Horror was only visible for a second, but... Well, how about we just let the witness explain: *Bigger'n a barn... All made o' squirmin' ropes... Hull thing sort o' shaped like a hen's egg bigger'n anything with dozens o' legs like hogs-heads that haff shut up when they step... Nothin' solid abaout it — all like jelly, an' made o' sep'rit wrigglin' ropes pushed clost together... great bulgin' eyes all over it... Ten or twenty maouths or trunks a-stickin' aout all along the sides, big as stove-pipes an all a-tossin' an openin' an' shuttin'... All grey, with kinder blue or purple rings... An' Gawd it Heaven — that haff face on top...*
...
*Oh, oh, my Gawd, that haff face — that haff face on top of it... That face with the red eyes an' crinkly albino hair, an' no chin, like the Whateleys... It was a octopus, centipede, spider kind o' thing, but they was a haff-shaped man's face on top of it, an' it looked like Wizard Whateley's, only it was yards an' yards acrost...*
- Wilbur Whateley's true, undisguised form was also pretty dreadful:
*"The back was piebald with yellow and black, and dimly suggested the squamous coloring of certain snakes. Below the waist, though, it was worst; for here all human resemblance left off and sheer phantasy began. The skin was thickly covered with coarse black fur, and from the abdomen a score of long greenish-grey tentacles with red sucking mouths protruded limply. ...On each of the hips, deep set in a kind of pinkish, ciliated orbit, was what seemed to be a rudimentary eye; while in lieu of a tail there depended a kind of trunk or feeler with purple annular markings, and with many evidences of being an undeveloped mouth or throat. The limbs, save for their black fur, roughly resembled the hind legs of prehistoric earth's giant saurians; and terminated in ridgy-veined pads that were neither hooves nor claws.*
- Why did Old Man Whateley do all this, enter a pact with Yog-Sogoth, forced his daughter to bear her monstrous Half-Human Hybrid children, and plan for The End of the World as We Know It that his grandsons would bring about, especially since he would never live to see it? We're never given an explanation for it, there didnt seem to be any sort of advantage in it for him, and he didnt seem deranged enough to want it just For the Evulz.
- "Cool Air". The narrator lives in an apartment below the brilliant Dr. Muñoz, who's obsessed with avoiding death and keeping his apartment as cold as possible. Eventually, the cooling system he uses breaks down, and is forced to stay in a tub full of ice, until the workers hired to keep supplying him flee from the room, terrified out of their wits. Then the narrator enters the apartment and finds a final letter written by the doctor. The next time someone asks you to crank up the AC for them, you're
*definitely* going to think twice... *""The end," ran that noisome scrawl, "is here. No more ice -the man looked and ran away. Warmer every minute, and the tissues can't last. I fancy you know -what I said about the will and the nerves and the preserved body after the organs ceased to work. It was good theory, but couldn't keep up indefinitely. There was a gradual deterioration I had not foreseen. Dr. Torres knew, but the shock killed him. He couldn't stand what he had to do -he had to get me in a strange, dark place when he minded my letter and nursed me back. And the organs never would work again. It had to be done my way -preservation -*
for you see I died that time eighteen years ago.
*"*
- At one point, shortly after the machine breaks down, the doctor has a panicked fit and it's implied
*his eyes fall out of his skull!* He covers his eyes and run into the bathroom, and the narrator mentions that afterwards he's never seen without bandages over his face again.
- It's telling that despite being one of Lovecraft's best short stories, it was actually rejected by the editor of his regular employer
*Weird Tales*. It's widely belived to be because of the ending, which might have drawn censorship for its gruesome nature.
- "The Dreams in the Witch House" is particularly scary due to the protagonist's sheer confusion. You may be afraid of raccoon tracks for about a month afterward because of the witch's familiar Brown Jenkin, whose paws — like raccoons' — resemble tiny human hands.
- "The Call of Cthulhu," the most famous of all things Lovecraft and the birthing place of the horrid thing itself.
- "The stars were right again, and what an age-old cult had failed to do by design, a band of innocent sailors had done by accident. After vigintillions of years great Cthulhu was loose again, and ravening for delight."
- The cult holding ceremonies in the swamp. They're so terrifying and repulsive that the normally insular and isolationist swamp settlers have called on the state police to help, because this is something so far beyond what even they can tolerate they're even willing to ask for help from the hated federal goverment. The 2005 silent movie version had an excellent adaptation of the scene where the police head deeper into the swamp, following the sounds of the drums and screams. Finally, they find the ceremony itself, and it's like looking through a window into Hell.
**Cajun**: This ain't no negro voodoo, this is the Devil hisself.
- The reveal of the Cthulhu figurine at the Archeologist convention, which is so horrible that all of the attending explorers are stunned into silence...all except one, an aged man with one eye, who is the only one there who has seen something similar before. Decades earlier, he had visited an outcast tribe of Inuits in Greenland, who had been exiled for their depraved beliefs. He forced one of the tribal members to show him to their shrine, kept on an isolated rock, where he finds another Cthulhu figure, carved out of a walrus tusk. With the explorer distracted by his find, his "guide" takes the opportunity to attack him, and carves out his eye using a fishing tool.
-
*The Shadow Over Innsmouth*:
- When the village drunk tells the protagonist the tale about the reason the people of Innsmouth are part-fish. Some real Squick when he mentions that the sailors
*mated with some strange-looking fish!* That isn't the worst of it: The protagonist is also part of the Innsmouth folk and, upon learning this, he decides to invite his family to swim in the water in a manner that is seriously creepy.
- The sequence in which the protagonist is pursued through the town at night by its residents from his hotel room all the way to the surrounding roads, hiding in crumbling houses that contain unseen horrors and praying the townspeople's car headlights don't find him, is one of the most harrowing chase scenes in literature.
- Zaddok Allen's Info Dump about what happened in Innsmouth and the truth about the "plague" that wiped out so many of the original inhabitants. He also mentions that the Deep Ones could easily overwhelm humanity and conquer the surface, and the reason they haven't is basically because they don't feel like it. But anger them, like the original inhabitants did, and you'll regret it...
- "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward." Even if you see the twist that Curwen had come back to life and killed Ward to assume his identity coming from a mile away, the storytelling is so good, and the writing so skin-crawlingly creepy, that
*it doesn't matter.* Now that is some damned effective horror.
- Similarly, we have
*Under the Pyramids*, listed here as "Imprisoned with the Pharaohs," a Lovecraft story that relates Harry Houdini's (fictional) experience in Egypt. After being lowered into a pit near the Giza pyramids and The Sphinx, Houdini finds a large procession of undead led by Pharaoh Khephren, the king who remodeled the Sphinx after himself, and though he cannot bring himself to look directly at the members of the procession, the shadows that flicker on the wall brings to his mind the stories he had heard from Bedouins about blasphemous priestly experiments, with mummies constructed to look like the Egyptian gods, with the bodies of men, and the heads of animals, rejected by all sane divine forces and erased from all historical accounts. He then watches an elaborate ceremony that eventually reveals... something which has 5 heads and tentacles sprouting from its mouths. Except these are actually the toes and the claws of the creature; the narrator simply mistakes the being's single paw for the creature itself. Then, just as he's managed to nearly escape the ceremony, the creature fully reveals itself. The thing's true face, which is supposed to have been the Sphinx's original image, is left completely to the reader's imagination.
- After awakening, the narrator can find no trace that what he saw really happened... except no one else seems to remember the treacherous guide who had led him into the ambush in the first place. The same guide who possessed an unsettling likeness to Pharaoh Khephren...
- Juan Romero from "The Transition Of Juan Romero" disappeared in a bottomless red-lighted cavern beneath Cactus Range, filled with monstrous shapes. In "The Mound", there is the deep red-lighted cavern of Yoth beneath the subterranean land of Knyan, which is itself sited somewhere deep beneath Binger, Oklahoma -
*more than 1000 miles away in a straight line*. This means the entire North American continent is honeycombed with stacked up monstrous underground worlds populated by not-quite-human creatures.
- "Herbert West-Reanimator." It's not that Mr. West reanimates the dead; it's what he reanimates them
*as.*
- West attempts to test his reanimating serum on Dr. Halsey, the recently deceased dean of Miskatonic University's medical college. Halsey comes back as a bloodthirsty monster that kills sixteen people before being subdued. West's response? "Dammit, it wasn't
*quite* fresh enough!"
- During World War I, West starts experimenting with reanimating severed body parts. Including the severed head and headless torso of one of his former colleagues.
- West refuses to abandon his research even though it's clear that the process is
*always* going to produce insane, psychotic monsters no matter how "fresh" the body is. He thinks the problem is that the brain is always too decayed to bring back the original person, but never seems to entertain the idea that it's the serum thats the problem.
- "The Terrible Old Man."
- Three thieves attempt to rob an old, mysterious man, and get more than they bargained for. Given something of a Setting Update by FEWDIO Horror's "The Prey." The tone of the story up until the very last page is very much the cynical amusement of Bierce or Twain, which makes The Reveal that much worse.
*"But when he looked, he did not see what he had expected; for his colleagues were not there at all, but only the Terrible Old Man leaning quietly on his knotted cane and smiling hideously. Mr. Czanek had never before noticed the colour of that mans eyes; now he saw that they were yellow. *
Little things make considerable excitement in little towns, which is the reason that Kingsport people talked all that spring and summer about the three unidentifiable bodies, horribly slashed as with many cutlasses, and horribly mangled as by the tread of many cruel boot-heels, which the tide washed in."
- The Old Man has another appearance in a story set in the same town, concerning an old wooden house seated atop a cliff by the oceanside, with its only door facing the ocean, and no stairs or road leading to it. The Old Man mentions that the house was ancient even when
*his grandfather was a boy*. The narrator even mentions that, considering the age of The Old Man, that must date back to the very earliest days of colonial America, if not before that.
- While
*The Rats in the Walls* lacks any of the explicitly supernatural elements found in most Lovecraft stories, it is no slouch in the horror department. In particular, there is every bit of what they find beneath the old priory, and then what this revelation does to the protagonist. *". . .they found me in the blackness after three hours; found me crouching in the blackness over the plump, half-eaten body of Capt. Norrys, with my own cat leaping and tearing at my throat. Now they have blown up Exham Priory, taken my cat away from me, and shut me into this barred room at Hanwell with fearful whispers about my heredity and experiences."*
- "Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family." The title character's family has been weird and animalistic ever since his great-great-great-grandfather brought back a mysterious wife that nobody saw much of after returning from the Congo. Arthur Jermyn seeks more knowledge of his ancestry, and eventually obtains the mummified body of a female white ape from an unknown species very close to humanity... who also happens to be his great-great-great-grandmother. He doesn't take it well.
-
**Nyarlathotep**. What makes him so especially scary among the nightmarish pantheon of Outer Gods is that, unlike every other one of them, he is interested in humanity. Specifically, in dooming us all to madness and despair. And, he can take any form he wants, potentially up to and including the other Outer Gods themselves. Which means that every single politician you elect, religious figure you worship, and celebrity you admire could all be mere avatars of a horrifying entity hellbent on driving every single one of us as insane as possible.
-
*The Shadow Out of Time* seems almost tame until you consider the full implications of the story. Humanity is not permanent, and we apparently last for such a short time that the Great Race Of Yith considers us a speedbump in history, something to be passed over after studying us for a bit. As far as the Lovecraftian mythos is concerned, humanity is doomed. Whatever our doom is, the Great Race Of Yith has decided to utterly skip humanity, and instead choose to inhabit a race of sapient giant beetles that would come after us rather than risk getting caught up in what is coming. In-Universe, there is no changing or avoiding that future. Sooner or later, one of the horrors of the Lovecraftian mythos wipes out humanity, if we don't do it to ourselves, and something comes along to replace us afterward.
- After reading about the horrors that Lovecraft's universe has to offer, you might be wondering who the Top God is. The answer is Azathoth, the Daemon Sultan who resides at the very center of the Universe and is the creator of all things. What sort of deity would create a universe overflowing with horrifying monsters, aliens, and unspeakable things? Some horrifying Mad God? Nope. The answer is a Blind Idiot. Azathoth is a completely mindless embodiment of Primordial Chaos, with no personality, autonomy, or even solid physical form. The universe and all of its residents, including the other Outer Gods, are part of one vast dream that the omnipotent being is having while it sleeps. The instant that it wakes up, which is just a matter of
*when*, everything will cease to exist, and Azathoth will be completely oblivious that anything was ever there at all.
- Probably the worst thing about it all, is that most of the Cosmic Horror beings stance on humanity in general,
*they don't care*. in comparison to their power and way of life and thinking, we are literally nothing to them, even worse, all the madness and death they cause by being a living (at least their definition of living) Brown Note? Just a side-effect! They literally cause it by being witnessed/heard by us on accident, as our minds literally cannot take their full influence, they can wipe us out in a blink (if they have eyes to blink), just by existing, they don't mean it, it just happens.
- While the terror of his stories has slightly faded due to the fact that "Humanity is not the center of the universe" is no longer so inherently terrifying as it once was, the existential dread of the Cosmic Horror entities is still potent. Humans, in comparison to many of the things that populate the mythos, are less than ants compared to these horrors, since a swarm of ants could possibly kill a human. We are less than bacteria or viruses, as at least those can potentially kill a human being. Imagine being so inferior to another lifeform that you are less than ants, bacteria, and viruses in comparison. That is the true horror of the Lovecraftian cosmos, that we are so laughably inferior that we sit somewhere between microorganisms and nothing in relation to how we compare to them.
- This◊ photo of H.P Lovecraft, the shadow covering his eyes, Lovecraft not showing any emotion and the fact that he looks like he's staring directly at you suits perfectly with the types of stories he wrote.
- Late in his life, Lovecraft wrote some critiques regarding the laissez-faire capitalist system, and even warned
*everyone* about the horrors of it. While the very same man had radically different political shift during 1930s, his signature writing style of Cosmic Horror has retained in his critiques on the very system widespread in his societies. However, Lovecraft became an Ignored Expert regarding politics throughout history, and most who known about Lovecraft didn't ever try to check out what's going in his later life. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/HPLovecraft |
Hugo the TV Troll / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
- In the classic games, Scylla (the series' Big Bad) straight up addresses the player in quite a menacing way. The opening cutscene has her take up the majority of the screen, first looking at Hugo's family that she imprisoned in the cage before turning to face the viewer, saying that she can see you and scratching the screen with her sharp fingernail,making a hideous high-pitched noise. On top of that, she looks
*really* freaky the entire time. Some versions up the ante, such as the Croatian version making her even more terrifying than she already is by providing her with a genuinely scary voice.
-
*Jungle Island* has a few creepy moments.
- In the Rumble Ride game, one of the losing cutscenes has the minecart containing Hugo, Fernando and Jean Paul being pushed off by the villainous monkeys, and landing into molten lava. What follows is the trio fearfully standing on top of the sinking minecart as they look down, before they're suddenly incinerated by a giant blaze and reduced to skeletons, giving one final wave before falling apart and dropping into the lava.
*They literally had the guts to make the main characters horribly die on-screen!*
- In Volcano, the final stretch before reaching the end has monkeys that will chase after Hugo once he's spotted by one standing on the side. Getting captured by a monkey here treats the player to a cutscene where the monkey that caught Hugo presents him to a much larger monkey, which quickly proceeds to
*swallow him alive*. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/HugoTheTVTroll |
House of Mouse / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
*House of Mouse* segments
- Dennis the Duck pretty much committing suicide with a giant eraser. And this is
*played for laughs*.
- During the Grim Grinning Ghosts musical number in "House Ghosts", Pete finds himself with the Attic Bride (most likely Abigail Platecleaver) from the Haunted Mansion ride. He kisses her hand and then the hand falls off her body as she
*morphs into the Banshee from Darby O'Gill and the Little People*.
- Also when he meets the Hatbox Ghost. Theres an extreme closeup of the ghosts face.
- Do NOT piss off Hades. Unless you want to be burnt to a crisp.
*Mickey Mouse Works* shorts
- Pluto being buried alive by Minnie in "Minnie Takes Care of Pluto".
- Theres also the part in Hell, where Plutos shoulder devil grows to a massive size and laughs maniacally.
- Huey, Dewey, and Louie fooling Donald into thinking they're zombies and that he had killed them in
*Donald's Halloween Scare*. They eventually chase him into an empty grave, shovels in hand...
- Donald poses as a Jason Voorhees Expy to scare the kids out of their candy, but his initial appearance is pretty frightening nonetheless.
- The nephews posing as zombies who were scared to death is pretty creepy and they threaten to bury Donald alive for it.
- The
*Donald's Goofy World* short. It has Donald dreaming that everyone in the entire world have turned into copies of Goofy up to and including Donald himself. It's creepier than it sounds.
- Although much of the cartoonish music makes this somewhat Nightmare Retardant.
- The short bears an eerie resemblance to Philip K. Dick's short story
*Silvia Everywhere* with a few minor changes (including the All Just a Dream ending). That was a story for adults; this is a cartoon for kids.
- And the Organ Donors short, where Mickey, Donald, and Goofy donate pipe organs, but they get called by a creepy toymaker who wants to steal Mickey's heart to bring a giant doll to life.
- One "Pluto Gets the Paper" segment involves Pluto getting sucked into a street sweeper, and landing in the tank. Several other visibly terrified dogs are trapped in there, prompting Pluto to flee back the way he came, leaving them to whatever fate they face.
- "Mickey's Mechanical House": The robot chef becomes a control freak over Mickey's life and is nearly invincible during his ensuing fight with the mouse. Mickey eventually causes him to crash when water is poured on him, and he's forced to flee with Pluto from the destruction of their new home.
- Goofy, and eventually Donald, are literally
*killed* for *How to Haunt a House*. Even though it's temporary and played for laughs, it's still pretty frightening to see Donald and Goofy die.
- The title cards for the short are also spooky in set up, a cemetery at night during a storm.
- "Dance of the Goofys": The kid who taxidermizes insects is rather unsettling. He sees that the Goofy's are perfectly sentient beings but he's still out to kill them.
- Earlier in the short, one Goofy is Eaten Alive by a frog.
- The witch from
*Hansel and Gretel* fattens up Mickey and Minnie and then runs downstairs in a mad fit of glee, and immediately prepares her kitchen to cook roast mice. Mickey realizes something is up, and the witch's approaching shadow is pretty creepy. They then run for their lives, besieged by the Witch's magical candy and sweets.
- The two fail to escape and are caged. They see the witch's kitchen and realize what she's planning to do to them. She then looks them over and decides to kill and cook Mickey first while Minnie is initially helpless.
- The two mice end up in the witch's oven, which is more like a chamber of a hellish inferno, and barely escape. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/HouseOfMouse |
House of Cards (US) / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
**As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.**
Basically anytime Frank goes full on Iago or Richard III, but some of the most disturbing examples include:
- His slow and methodical murder of Peter Russo.
- His quick, but no less methodical, murder of Zoe Barnes by pushing her in front of a moving locomotive.
- Entrapping Lucas Goodwin.
- The look he gives the camera once he gets to sit in the Oval Office, as well as the loud knocks on the table. One would be forgiven for thinking Kevin Spacey was reprising his Lex Luthor performance here.
- When he well and truly tells Claire exactly what he thinks of her in the season three finale. You realise the extent of Frank's hatred and contempt for everyone around him.
- His intimidation of Catherine Durant when he tries to get her to back off challenging Claire for VP has outright admitting he killed Peter and Zoe (with only a minor pretense subsequent to this that he was joking) and then implicitly threatening that he will do the same to her. This is the first time Frank has actually used the threat of murder during a back room negotiation, and it shows that even the presidency will not satisfy his lust for power.
- Frank and Claire essentially decide to start a war in order to have a chance at winning the election. It gets absolutely blood-chilling when they subtly provoke some ICO wannabees into killing one of their hostages ON AIR to "make the terror" that will justify a war. And as if this couldn't be any worse, Frank and Claire watch the live-stream of the hostage's execution with complete indifference, and then BOTH of them look directly at the camera. The Underwoods, now truly united, seem virtually unstoppable.
- Realizing he's losing the election, Frank goes so far as to take a terrorist attack as an excuse to close down polls in a desperate attempt to put off his inevitable loss.
- The final line of the Season 5:
**"My turn."**
- Not every frightening scene on this show has to do with Frank. Let's not forget the Season 3 finale, where Doug kidnaps and murders Rachael and acts like a dick the entire time. It's actually a shockingly dark and detailed depiction of a kidnapping. Everything about it shows what a horrifying fate it must be for one to be brought to the middle of nowhere, murdered, and buried where no one will ever find them. Subverted in that Doug decides at first to not kill her, but Double Subverted when he decides to anyway, for reasons that are left to speculation. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/HouseOfCardsUS |
HuGtto! Pretty Cure / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
- In Episode 10, Hugtan, who is
*an infant*, overexerts her power to save the Cures and then falls comatose as a result. She doesn't wake up for at least a day afterwards, rattling Hana to the bone.
- In episode 42, Homare tries to call Henri, wondering where he is. Unfortunately, he is in the car driving to a skating performance, and this causes his car to crash into a truck, leaving him injured. This may make the target audience of young girls, as well as some adult viewers, feel a bit nervous or scared, as it is a somewhat realistic depiction of the consequences of using your phone while driving.
- All three times George nearly achieves his goal of freezing time. The world turns gray and everyone is petrified, and only the Cures (aside from the first time when it nearly perfectly works) and the villains are unaffected.
- Whenever a villain is in their final episode (Ruru, Daigan and Ristoru excluded), they will turn themselves into an Oshimaida (some of them unwillingly). It is horrifying to see them as the very monsters they create. Special mention goes to Jinjin and Takumi, who are fused together into one and the result in nothing less than horrifying. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/HugttoPrettyCure |
Hulk and the Agents of S.M.A.S.H. / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
Hulk-Busted
- Blastaar's Borers are horrifying in detail, resembling giant parasitic worms with gaping maws and red, glaring eyes. The gigantic worms from "Of Moles and Men" have a similar thing going on. For anyone who has seen images of parasites, seeing at these creatures will send chills down your spine.
Into The Negative Zone
- The Leader reaches Moral Event Horizon when he infects the Hulk's team with crystallized material that poisons the victim's blood until it eventually covers their entire body, solidifying them. To makes matters worse, the Leader intended for the Hulk to
*helplessly watch his teammates slowly die*, enraging him to point of no return, and finally dumping him on Earth to destroy and kill everything until the Leader finishes him off so the world would announce him as their leader.
The Venom Inside
- Just like in
*Ultimate Spider-Man*, Venom is every shade of Nightmare Fuel. Starts off by taking over the Agents of S.M.A.S.H., one by one, leaping from Skaar to She-Hulk to A-Bomb to Red and finally to the Hulk himself, draining their gamma energy becoming larger and more powerful each time. And just as Spider-Man and the others free Hulk, Venom reabsorbs the rest of the team. With the revelation that ||Venom is getting ready to explode, at which *the entire population of New York will be infected with Venom symbiotes!*||
Abomination
- Abomination. A massive Nigh-Invulnerable man-turned-beast who hides in the shadows, and then brutally beats his opponents who draw near with incredibly ease. He also has a truly nightmarish plan to wipe out the Hulks for good. What's the plan?
*Destroying half the continent with an anti-gamma bomb and blaming the devastation on the would-be deceased Hulks.*
Deathlok
- Deathlok himself looks creepy as hell. He made his grand entrance into the present day as
*flesh, bone, and machinery regenerating from nothing*.
Enter, The Maestro
- How did ||Future A-Bomb|| lose one of his arms? The Maestro apparently
*tore it off*. It's only mentioned, and not shown, but still.
- And ||Hulk damn near does the same to the present-day version.||
Spirit of Vengeance
- Today on your lighthearted superhero show,
*The creepiest animated version of Ghost Rider ever demands that you repent lest you be Dragged Off to Hell.* He can create flames hot enough that *The Abomination* was left screaming in agony (and much louder and longer than you usually get to *scream in agony* on a kids' show.) And his powers were much stronger here, able to No-Sell anything *hulks* can throw at him. His chains are just as strong. There is *no* way to fight if he has condemned you no matter how strong you are, even if they sure made the attempt *look* cool.
- Also, the Hulks' trip to actual Hell (even if it's not called that in-show). Apparently, one of the writers thought the show was missing fire, brimstone, and an Eldritch Abomination. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/HulkAndTheAgentsOfSMASH |
Hulk Vs. / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
# Hulk vs. Thor
# Hulk vs. Wolverine
Jeez, Wolverine got his metallic claws, you know that?!
- In Wolverine's flashbacks to the Weapon X program.
- The girl and her father inside the car within the town the Hulk smashed through. Logan initially imagines the Hulk bearing down on the innocents as a shadowy, advancing doom.
- Later on, when he finds out this wasn't the case, the flashback changes to show the truth. Weapon X's squad destroying much of the town while attacking the Hulk. The jade giant notices the civilians and tries to save them, scooping them out of their car and trying to shield them with his body. Sadly, the girl's echoing screams imply they were still killed in the crossfire despite the Hulk's efforts to get them out of harm's way.
- Lady Deathstrike getting aroused from impaling Wolverine's back with her claws. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/HulkVs |
Howard Lovecraft and the Frozen Kingdom / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
Howard seeing his father Winfield rambling to him about the apocalyptic plans of King Abdul while locked in an insane asylum can be eerie to watch, especially for children in real life whove had to see their parents decline in their mental state. Not to mention Howards father constant Madness Mantra: He is coming
Its implied Winfield went through many awful treatments while in the insanitarium. Especially given the time period.
The Shoggoth is firmly terrifying, as described by Queen Algid, and the fact it describes how its the one who drove Winfield insane. The fact the creature is also voiced by Ron Perlman of all people only ups the scare factor and the fact he planned on eating young Howard and slowly digesting him over a thousand years.
Queen Algid: It is a terrible, indescribable thing. A shapeless conjury of protoplasmic bubbles with myriads of temporary eyes, forming and unforming. Quite Nasty.
|| Queen Algid Bunk revealing herself Abdul Alhazred, complete with Black Eyes of Crazy , face paint, and tentacled hair, while revealing she plans on releasing Spots true form as Cthulhu to sacrifice Howard and merge realities to destroy everything. The fact she randomly starts crawling on the walls like an insect only makes it more apparent shes a Humanoid Abomination.||
The Downer Beginning of Howard Lovecraft and the Undersea Kingdom. Abdul Alhazred makes it to Howard's home, brainwashes his mother before taking both of Howard's parents hostage. Howard escapes, but Abdul manages to seal away Spot and casts a spell on Howard to turn him into a Deep One unless he learns magic to break the spell. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/HowardLovecraftAndTheFrozenKingdom |
Hunter: The Parenting / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
Beware what crawls through the dark...
Alfa has moved from one grimdark setting to another, and thus the horror still remains.
**Beware, unmarked spoilers ahead!**
## Main Chapters
- The vampires. Far from being sensual predators, they are hideous and feral wretches. Justified in that they are Sabbat vampires, diametrically opposed to the comparatively civilized Camarilla who typically fit the former stereotype.
- Pyotr, pictured above, is incredibly gaunt and haggard with slick hair and wide, staring eyes- his distinct mark of being a Nosferatu. He also makes his presence known via Jump Scare, immediately going for Boy while Door is distracted.
- The bites on Door and Big D are similarly unsexy and vicious. It is less a kiss of undeath, more an attempt at
*mauling.*
- As silly as he seems at first, the Mighty Kevins deranged behavior and facial expressions, as well as his powerful domination, put an end to the notion that hes just some clown.
- Big-Ds face after revealing that he was high on DMT the whole time. His face stretches into an
*unnaturally* enormous smile as he laughs like a madman.
- Kitten's story of the Fiddler, especially the part where he traveled deep into a cave and never returned. This can not only hit home for those who are afraid of caves (and dark places), but it's implied the Fiddler was also killed by... whatever was lurking in those caves.
- The moment the Licks are left to their own devices, they immediately and brutally turn on each other. These are Sabbat after all, fundamentally selfish, cutthroat predators, who only care for their own survival - and are from the only faction where Diablerie is approved of.
- Door's rationalization for continuing to enjoy the spectacle when Marckus starts having second thoughts, following up on his prior stated belief on these being nothing but murderous corpses. It really shows Door in a more unsettling light and even makes his somewhat goofier behavior right before feel disturbing. It shows the darker side to Door that many people, especially those used to Dorn's comedic potrayal in
*TTS* weren't expecting.
- Pyotr strikes after Ape brings down Shitbeard.
- The first thing he does is
*ram his arm through the Gangrel*. By that point, Ape begs to be spared... **Pyotr:** *[tenderly]*
Don't worry, kid
I was just putting on a show. After all... we're family.
**Ape:**
You... you mean it?
**Pyotr:**
Do I mean it? Come on... what do you think
?
- Pyotr then proceeds to playfully bump Apeboy's face with his fist. And then he does it again... and again... and again... and again... and again.. at the end of it, Ape's face is a disfigured darkened lump and Pyotr hasn't even fed on him yet.
- When Pyotr feeds on Ape, the latter's somehow still alive for a period, and his corpse is actually
*deflated like a balloon* when it's all over. Jesus...
- After feeding on the brutalized Ape, Pyotr turns to Shitbeard. He's regrown his eyes, they're glowing red, and staring down his former comrade
- And after that, Pyotr starts reaching out to Shitbeard. The fact that this is in the latter's point of view makes it all the more unnerving, almost like The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You.
- The thing worth pointing out is that he seems to deliberately go out of his way to spike that bit of personal cruelty before killing his former comrades, but also mocks Marckus' commentary when it stops. He isn't just enjoying the cruelty and murder he inflicts on Ape and Shitbeard, he also is deliberately making it uncomfortable for his captors, as if to take pleasure in showing them how much they messed up and how they're clearly not ready for what he can do.
- The animation also makes these scenes immensely more unnerving, due to what appears to be a 3-D effect on Pyotr's head as he talks to his victims.
- Out of nowhere is a random shot of Big-D eating an entire ham shank bone-first before wrapping his jaw around it unnaturally. This is likely a result of the animation style, but it is still very unnerving and unnatural.
- Big-D arrives just in time to see the madness wrap up, and contrary to his normal confidence or how he was initially acting when he first walked in, for that matter he completely flips out at Marckus, scolding him for letting vampires diablerize each other. And then there's a loud crash. Pyotr is loose, revitalized, and
*stronger* after betraying both of his former teammates. The family waits in horror, but there's only deafening silence — A stealthy, *invisible* vampire is loose in their house, and they have no idea where he is. And then, the episode ends.
- The entire episode can be one big build-up for fans of the tabletop game, as they know exactly what happens when a vampire drains another. For context the family just gave Pyotr, the smartest of the vampires, the Super Strength of Shitbeard with the durability and shape-shifting of Ape and a full tank of gas to use them with on top of being back to full health with his own invisibility powers. There's a reason why Big-D was so panicked.
- The very thumbnail for a start. Pyotr looks more monstrous than ever with his mouth far too wide and bloodstained while his eyes literally shine like torches, emitting beams of light. Presumably the same light that makes the close-up of his face visible at all, considering how dark the picture is in general.
- The scene where Kitten has to close the office door. The tension is almost at Hitchcockian levels.
- During one scene, he manages to keep Kitten from escaping by
*throwing a car at him* to block the doorway. This is after using Big-D as bait to draw him downstairs and into view of a window that specifically lets him creep down the hall to get at him. After Kitten abruptly throws a boot down the hall to try and hit him and get a sense of where he is, we get a brief enough glimpse of Pyotr through his invisibility to see him catch the boot in a way that suggests he'd been specifically waiting for Kitten to notice him the entire time.
- Pyotr torturing Marckus by giving him a treatment not unlike Apeboy, stomping his skull into the dirt with just enough force to make it painful, but not to kill him, doing it faster and faster until Kitten interjects. All to make it clear to Kitten that if he leaves, his fiance will only die when Pyotr has had his fun.
**Kitten:** Wait, stop! **Pyotr:**
"Wait,
**STOMP?**
" Well, I was gonna ease up, but if you
*insist...*
- The first eyecatch isn't actually static. Big-D's shadowed face gradually appears in the distance, staring at the Licks (or maybe at the viewer) while grinning malevolently just like in the previous eyecatches.
## Audiologs
- Any time that Big-D drops his drug-fueled rambling, it is a very bad sign. He sounds paranoid and unbalanced, but that's because
*everything he says in these moments is almost completely true.* And he's right to be afraid.
- Big-D's tangent on fighting werewolves is genuinely unnerving, describing their behaviour and power to Kitten with such lucidity. There's no drug-induced rambling, no jokes made, nothing. Just pure, ominous seriousness about the matter. It paints the werewolves of the universe in an even more dangerous light than the vampires.
- Though the vampire explanation he gives is
*worse.* Big-D carelessly mentions the word Tremere out loud, and when Kitten repeats it back to him, he immediately has a very loud panic attack because of how much he may have just endangered his family due to how deadly serious the vampires take The Masquerade. **Big-D:**
Notice how the conversation started. I carelessly said the word 'Tremere.' [...] If we were in public, in a restaurant, or on the street when I said that... We would very well have to move.
**Kitten:**
That seems a bit extreme.
**Big-D:**
And it is
*necessary.*
- While not as bad as his explanations of Vampires and Werewolves, his brief on Mages still highlights how dangerous they are. Sure, they can be taken down by bullets but Big-D quickly explains that this is a bad idea as they can inflict a "Death Curse" on whoever kills them. Kitten remarks that aside from the death curse they don't seem to be too powerful. Big D then adds that they have "Near infinite power to alter creation" with their wills and minds. He then puts it into perspective: Kevin, the "Vampire Wizard" they faced, is almost nothing compared to a "True Magi" and the group wouldn't have survived an encounter with him if he was one. It really does showcase just how low on the power scale the Hunters are, and also just how powerful a Mage is that even a vampire's powers are mere "Child's play" to them.
- Kevin's account of how it feels to serve the Tremere clan is
*incredibly* uncomfortable, given the visceral description of having your thoughts and emotions overridden by an outside force. It *reeks* of abusive gaslighting, made worse by the fact that it seemed to come from his own mind.
- Kevin reveals some information that makes the situation the hunters are in even worse. He is apparently 9th blood generation, Shitbeard is 10th, Ape is 11th, and Pyotr is only 12th. Pyotr is in charge due to how long he has been a vampire alone. Which means, considering the order that Pytor diablerized the others in, he just jumped up not one but two generations, and might aim for Kevin to get a third jump in. An aged and experienced vampire has dramatically boosted his blood potency and become strong after a long period of being relatively weak and is now loose in the hunter's house.
- During a point where Kevin's reaching his boiling point again, he reveals that he's starting to regain enough of his strength to use Dominate again. Though it fails due to a mix of malnutrition, missing an eye, and Big-D likely just being "built different", his remaining eye takes on that same blood-red light that nearly let him kill Big-D in the tunnels and force his family to watch.
- Big D is keeping
*something* other than Kevin in his basement. Something that he is *very* insistent on no one else finding out about, even as its screams and howls echo throughout the house. Whatever it is, Kevin can't help but be visibly unnerved.
- Big D re-emphasizes what he said in the first audiolog, that the Camarilla have eyes and ears
*everywhere*, and that even the slightest misstep at any point could easily deem you a threat to The Masquerade and subsequently put you on a hitlist. Hence, Big-D muses the most important part of the interview is making sure that the police aren't on the Camarilla payroll, and if they are, making sure that they don't decide that the family has breached the Masquerade. However, the officer he's speaking to is *incredibly* good at not giving anything away, to the point where Big D actually *isn't sure* of whether or not the man is compromised. It takes a very quick, very brief slip of the word (with Chapman accidentally mentioning "tunnels" he shouldn't have been aware of) for him to confirm... and right after that Big-D makes a mistake of his own, which would have *ensured* he'd be imprisoned by a vampire's thrall had it not been for his quick thinking.
- There is another moment that definitely confirms that Chapman is a ghoul prior to that. After Big D jokingly boasts about having a Bruce Campbell jawline and Chapman says he likes The Evil Dead, D panicks for a moment and then backtracks after he realizes Chapman is talking about the movie, not the vampire. Then just as Chapman is about to continue, his face suddenly
* contorts*, eyes bulging and teeth barring. It comes out of nowhere for a split second. And on a rewatch, it is quite obvious thats Chapman's withdrawal kicking in.
- During the interview, Big-D - assuming the identity of Kevin - forms an alibi that mentions the vagabonds he and his friends picked up were a couple of missing persons. Chapman brings out a very,
*very* heavy sounding binder of missing persons cases, and asks if "Kevin" can name any of them. He finds one that he recognizes, a fairly handsome man in diving equipment, but can't place at first. Only to realize it was Pyotr before he was Embraced. The Nosferatu curse made Pyotr *unrecognizably* hideous, and Big-D muses that's why he was "such a prick."
- Guy Chapman tries to be a decent fellow even as a Tremere plant within the Constabulary, but he makes it clear as day that the eight months of withdrawal from the abusively inattentive Camarilla have done a number on his mind. He not-so-subtly threatens that he is fighting the urge to attack Kevin for his blood not out of fear of what will happen to him, but because he's trying to offer them a good deal for a sip. He knows that anything they do to him in retaliation will get them in hotter water by marking them as cop killers, and he's so desperate he's stopped caring about his life entirely and would rather die than go another month without his fix.
**Chapman:** *[sigh]*
...Herbie. I have killed
*six*
men in my service to the Regent. Two of them with my teeth. I recently injected contraband heroin into my system, just to simulate the thrill of Vampire blood.
*It didn't even compare*
.
**Kevin:**
You being freaky will not convince me!
**Chapman:**
Oh, I don't think you understand. I
*am*
a freak. I
*will*
kill again. And I will literally blow up the Constabulary for even the smallest possible pint of vitae. If you don't give me what I want, I might just try and take it. And if I try to take it, you'll both probably kill me, so you'll have
*my*
blood on
*your*
hands. And quite frankly, I'm so desperate for a fix, I don't really
*give*
a fuck
!
- Mixed with Tearjerker, Big-D confides to Horse his regrets over keeping secrets from his own sons, as well as his fears and worries of the potential consequences should he come clean with his family. Beneath the kooky, loud-mouthed Junkie Parent is every parent's worst nightmare magnified — a Hunter who has to live in constant fear and suspicion if he has even the smallest chance to survive, and a father who tries to protect his children even while constantly questioning if the decisions he makes are the right ones. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the sheer hell that is Big-D's life.
- The screaming/howling noises from the second audiolog return outside of Horse's barn, meaning that something is out in the wilderness
*watching* the family. For the briefest moment, one can actually see something leap through the treeline in the background.
- Turns out, those noises were coming from Krakus the whole time, as Big-D reveals. But you have to wonder, what the hell's even
*causing* Krakus to act so primal and animalistic to begin with?
- Kitten's story with Door about his first encounter with the supernatural — A vampire brutally murdered a student at his college (implied to have been a friend of Kitten's for good measure, given that he identifies her by name), and Kitten walked in on him feeding. The worst part? The vampire in question seems to have been from the Nagaraja, a clan of vampires that don't strictly drink blood, but instead devour the flesh of their victims — The dead girl had been cut open, and the vampire was eating her internal organs. Door expresses sympathy for Kitten's trauma, remarking that he shouldn't have had to witness something so "absolutely foul".
- Even worse, the vampire was Edwin Davies, a rich and popular classmate Kitten knew from his university days, known for giving people his own money out of generosity. While Kitten did end a threat that would have seen more people dead, the encounter traumatized him for years afterward. It highlights the underlying horror of the
*Hunter: The Reckoning* — no matter where you go, no one will know someone is a vampire until it is too late... and that vampire could be *someone you know personally*.
- One detail that stands out somehow manages to make it all even more disturbing. When Kitten catches Davies in the act, the guy starts ranting at Kitten about how he hates having to feed the way that he does, as if he's desperately trying to make excuses for himself. If the theory about Davies being from the Nagaraja clan is true, this could, charitably, almost paint him as a reluctant Tragic Monster. However, when Kitten is throwing things at him, Davies starts screaming about the coffee getting on his suit. For someone who apparently didn't want to have to kill to survive, the guy was more angry about some coffee stains than being covered in the blood of an innocent woman. Although given how his outfit was already unquestionably ruined and it seems like Davies was af least once a genuine charitable nice guy, it is likely that this focus on something tiny during something catastrophic was his Sanity Slippage out in force.
- Horse can speak. But it's nothing you want to hear, especially not the prophecies of Gehenna. And going by the shadows in the barn, his true shape is bigger and spindlier.
- Horse had spent most of the episode vomiting up tons of blood all over the place. Already a little disturbing (and definitely nasty). But then Boy notices that these bloodstains seem to be forming
*shapes*. And that's when the prophecies begin, implying Horse's "disease" has been something else entirely...
"What. Is. It. Thoust. See...?
Doth Thine eyes... See it... Oracle?
Gaze into... mine Crimson Miasma.
Thine Faeder laid bare...
Dessicated on the rocks by thy hand...
Of Two, One Falls...
One rises.
Damnation.
The third eye opens.
His Suet will feed and warm her gullet.
The Patriarch, in mastering Luna, ends harmstrung...
He will wish death upon his flesh...
But no mercy shall be given, for none he hath gave.
The rising three shall signal wars end.
Woe and triumph.
From them...
Bloodshed.
Armageddon for all.
Kine, Kindred, Garou, Milklings, Elohim.
In the light they all will"
- There's also the glaring fact that Horse's words feel less like a threat and more like a
*warning.*
- As Horse speaks his prophecy, his eyes bulge out to near-perfect spheres, turn red, and gain a vertical slit for a pupil. Warhammer 40k fans (and of course TTS fans) might recognize this as looking very similar to
*The Eye of Horus*. It's a chilling reminder that Horse's 40k counterpart is the Satanic Archetype to the Imperium of Man.
- Though it's only for a brief moment, Elise's first appearance has her perform a Stealth Hi/Bye with an utter Nightmare Face that scares Marckus, Grimal, and Harry. The face in question has her with glowing red eyes and what looks like tears of blood. Oh, and her face is completely in the shadows for the first few moments she shows up.
- There's a tense moment where Brok snatches Marckus' phone to call up and harass his fiancé, mistakenly believing Marckus is engaged to a woman. Yeah, it turned out to be a ploy by Marckus, but imagine if it hadn't and Kitten had actually answered. Considering Brok had already spouted some homophobic shit at the bartender, it's doubtful he would have been very tolerant upon finding out Marckus is in a relationship with another man. Anyone with any passing knowledge of hate crimes against LGBT+ people would know that moment could have ended VERY badly.
- Brok could be incredibly cruel and violent when someone gets him angry, dropping all aspects of humor. Marckus and his friends find this out the hard way. Unlike the supernatural horror of vampires, the violence Brok and his goons cause is entire natural and realistic, and they genuinely make the friends worry for each other's lives.
- Guy's intervention was a case of Big Damn Heroes, but his revelation to Marckus that he easily overheard the entire conversation the four was having about the supernatural thanks to his enhanced Ghoul senses, including that of vampires, makes it very clear that had Big-D and Kevin not been on good terms with him, the four of them and their loved ones would have easily become targets to whatever bloodsucker was in the land for knowing about the Masquerade.
- During the talks about the Arcanum, Markus brings up Kitten being worried about what the Arcanum would do if they found out about their activities with Markus thinking that it is very unlikely that the Arcanum would actually do anything given how toothless they seem. Harry remarks that, in the past, the Arcanum has not been above putting out hits on people and having them taken out if they become too problematic. Given how much effort the Arcanum went to wipe out evidence of the Family's research, it does hint they are not quite as harmless as they seem and are prepared to do the same to the family themselves if they become too much of a problem.
- Big-D finds a large pit in a room while waiting for Giles to get the break room blender. The latter says that the 99p store was built atop an abandoned chalk mineshaft. Then Big-D falls in on accident before the episode ends, Big-D's fate unknown at the moment. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/HunterTheParenting |
Hunt: Showdown / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
As is fitting the horror themes, the game is absolutely packed with nightmarish imagery and implication.
- An observant player may spot that the fact that many personal items left behind would imply that the various areas in the game were abandoned in a hurry, with the occupants either being quickly killed or fleeing. All except Alice Farm, which features many barred doors, improvised barricades topped with spikes, and mounds of corpses piled up into hastily-made pyres. It's not exactly clear, but you could easily assume that this was the site of a group's Last Stand.
- The monster design in general is pretty horrifying.
- The basic Grunts range from "walking corpse" to "borderline skeleton", including such lovely details as guts hanging out and huge chunks of flesh missing. Some even sport metal cages over their heads or muzzles that they seem to have gnawed their way out of.
- Hives have become walking... well, hives of bugs, with their entire chest cavity split open and lungs exposed, bent over backwards in a U-shape that puts their heads off to the side at around waist height... sideways.
- Not to mention the constant whining howl they make when they are nearby.
- Armoureds are barely even humanoid with strange plant-like masses growing from elongated limbs that cover most of their bodies.
- A new type of Armoured, the Concerntina Armoured, is named after the bombs that spread razorwire in an area. On top of their already clustered appearance of masses growing on them is a bunch of said-razorwire snaking through it's body, getting too close while attacking will cause you to bleed.
- Meatheads are massive bloated corpses with no heads that seem barely able to keep their intestines inside their bodies. Like the Hives, they've become walking nests for leeches the size of household cats that act as the main creature's eyes and ears.
- A later patch added the Water Devil, which is a roiling mass of blood-hungry worms that make an ungodly shrieking sound the moment you set foot in the water. Many players reported they didn't even want to approach the water after they were added.
- The Butcher's lair, wherever it may be, will always be ankle-deep in huge piles of human bones. Add to the fact that the Butcher seems to be wearing a leather apron and mounted a pig's head to itself with a surprisingly elaborate headdress means it might not be as mindless as you'd assume.
- The Assassin is the third boss added to the game, it is in fact a cluster of insects that swarm together around their lair. It can form itself into a roughly humanoid shape that will attack with sharp stingers that inject poison into the victim. When threatened, or if the target has moved away, it will turn back into a swarm of bugs that fly about the area and be invulnerable to attack. Worse yet it can form copies of itself to distract and surround anyone inside the lair, though thankfully these disperse after an attack. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/HuntShowdown |
Howard the Duck / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
## Film
- As Dr. Jennings flees with Howard's girl, he begins to run out of energy. The way he recharges sent an entire room of birthday children running screaming, and a pair of parents regretting they had rented the film. Witness it here.
- The possessed Dr. Jennings, and the horrid aliens, creep out any kid. ANYONE.
- The scene where the bikers nearly chop Howard's head off.
- When Beverly is poking through Howard's wallet, seeing the condom he carries, and recalling that ducks have giant, corkscrew-shaped penises... | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/HowardTheDuck |
How to Kill a Monster / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
## The book provides examples of:
- Gretchen wastes no time in pointing out how creepy her grandparents' large house is.
- The place only has two windows (which are barely even big enough to be considered windows), one on each floor, with none of them in any of the bedrooms!
- Gretchen doesn't fail to notice the eerie emptiness she feels in her first night struggling to sleep there. Her bedroom is almost as big as a gym, yet the only pieces of furniture were a lump bed with a scratchy blanket, a small lamp with a dim yellow light, and a warped wooden dresser with the drawers hanging out. She can't help but feel as if she's staying in a prison cell.
- As if all of the above wasn't enough, the rooms around the place are filled with almost nothing to find fun in. Even when Gretchen and Clark
*do* try to find things to have fun with, it all fails horrifically. They come across a room filled with newspapers and magazines, and when Gretchen tries to look through them, *hundreds* of cockroaches come skittering out of them and all over her body. And in the next room they try, they find toys all over that were all broken (likely due to the monster getting ahold of them beforehand).
- When cornered by the monster, he grabs Gretchen and pulls her close. She can't help but stare up at his face and notice that his eyes were deep, dark pools with
*tiny worms swimming in them*. And then the monster opened his jaws wide to reveal that his mouth was *filled with bugs which crawled up and down his tongue*. Gretchen is understandibly terrified and tries to get out of his grasp.
- The book, as well as the episode, ends on quite a chilling note. After they escape, Gretchen and Clark run deep into the swamp at night and don't stop until their grandparents' place is no longer in sight. As they stood still to catch their breath and celebrate, Gretchen suddenly remembered that they still hadn't read the second letter that their grandparents left for them. She demands that he take it out and read it out loud, and he does so. It tells them that if they kill the monster and escape the house, stay on the road and NOT in the swamp. It then reveals that this is because the monster that is trapped in the house has dozens of family members hiding in the swamp, waiting for him to return, and it is not safe for their grandchildren to go out there. Gretchen and Clark then notice shifting shadows all around them through the dim moonlight, and can suddenly hear whistling sounds throughout the swamp. Clark fearfully asks Gretchen if she has any more ideas, to which the terrified girl replies that she doesn't.
## The episode provides examples of: | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/HowToKillAMonster |
How to Get Away with Murder / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
**As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.**
- Paxton killing himself in the fourth episode.
- 'He Deserved To Die':
- Rebecca's actions in the flashforwards, especially how shocked to her core she appears, which can initially make the audience think she's responsible for Sam Keating's death before the reveal.
- The Wes/Rebecca sex scene is juxtaposed with Lila Stangard's body being exhumed for a second autopsy in loving detail.
- In "Kill Me, Kill Me, Kill Me", we finally see the murder play out. Sam starts attacking Rebecca, and only stops for a moment when the other students arrive before trying to attack whoever gets in his way. His drunk and violent behaviour is especially disturbing considering how calm he's been in most of the scenes we've seen. Eventually during the struggle he's pushed over a railing by Michaela when he goes after Laurel. While they all try to figure out what to do, it turns out that Sam's Not Quite Dead, and he grabs Rebecca and tries to strangle her. The worst part is the final act doesn't have any music or anything, all they hear are Rebecca's choked cries, and even then it takes them a while to realize what's happening.
- Episode 11 features a woman trying to get a slap-on-the-wrist plea deal for being an unwilling accomplice in helping her husband imprison two girls in their basement as his sex slaves. Annalise is at first determined to help the woman, whom she believes is as much a victim as the girls, but it's revealed over the episode that the woman not only drugged the girls shortly before each time they were raped by her husband (albeit according to her, so they wouldn't suffer from remembering the experience) but had kept one of the children they bore and lied that it was stillborn. She intended all along to continue raising the little girl as her own (and reveals that she usually kept her all alone, in a cabin, with nothing but a toy giraffe to keep her company,) insisting that the girl was "her" baby. Annalise is clearly disgusted and makes sure the girl is brought in by the authorities, while withdrawing as the woman's lawyer.
- The Reveal of
*Frank* as Lila's killer.
- One of the final shots of the first season finale is Rebecca's body underneath the basement stairs, and Annalise and Frank questioning if the other killed her.
- In the premiere "It's Time to Move On", the reveal that Bonnie killed Rebecca in the basement by gagging her and asphyxiating her in a plastic bag. Especially how calm and unemotional Bonnie is... even as Rebecca breaks down and begs for her life.
- The flash-forward cliffhanger for Season 2: Annalise has been shot, seemingly by
*Wes*.
- And when the subsequent episodes expand on it, we see that Emily Sinclair is also dead - dropped from a great height, with her
*eyes* seemingly *gouged out*.
- In Episode 4, Annalise's client having a breakdown and outright
*threatening her false friend while she's on the stand*, inadvertently revealing herself to be the killer, is a very frightening sight.
- At the end of Episode 6, Oliver reveals that he found the identify of the serial killer who murdered Helena Hapstall, and is justifiably chewed out about it by Connor. Oliver surprisingly doesn't understand the severity of the situation as he's become overzealous after assuming the role of the Keating Five's Sixth Ranger, but the audience does when the serial killer himself is not only revealed, but is shown
*watching both Oliver and Connor* in their apartment through the webcam.
- Episode 7:
- Oliver being cornered by Philip Jessup, who
*snuck in right behind him*. Ollie is completely trapped alone with the same murderer he's been tracking overconfidently and he's about to pay the price for it.
- Episode 8:
- Annalise is alone with a drunken Nate who outright states he should
*kill her*, demands Annalise to approach him, and suggests a way for Annalise to "earn his forgiveness". Thankfully nothing of the sort occurs, Annalise tells him to shove it and that she won't sleep with him, but the mood itself is unnerving as she's with a man who not only could physically overpower her, but right then and there stated his murderous intent.
- The gang meet up at Annalise's house after Connor finds Oliver missing. Thankfully, Oliver turns up to the house in good condition, but he brought a guest - Phillip Jessup.
- Episode 9:
- Asher calmly
*snapping* after a heated talk with ADA Sinclair, putting his car in reverse and *running her over*, only to immediately after realize the enormity of what he's done.
- Most of the episode, as it deals with the night all the flash forwards so far have alluded to.
- Annelise asking the Keating Four (Bonnie has already driven away with Asher) to shoot her to help uphold her charade, and how it goes pear-shaped once she managed to convince Wes a little too much.
- Episode 12:
- Laurel discovers that Wes was the primary suspect in his mother's death. Then we get a shot of 12 year old Wes holding a bloody knife and standing over his mother as she bleeds out. To make it creepier,
*he doesn't remember any of this*.
- While Wes didn't murder his mother, it turns out that basically his entire life is a lie — his father is his mother's rapist and he only made it into law school due to the machinations of a woman that was indirectly responsible for his mother's suicide. A woman who, as a result, has been more in control of Wes' life than he has been for practically his entire life.
- The scene in "Don't Tell Annalise" where Frank kills Bonnie's father by forcing him to breathe hydrogen sulfide until it
*melts his lungs*. While in context the man was a pedophile who horribly abused his daughters and deserved even worse, out of context it's Frank forcing an old and infirm man to breathe in toxic gas, the man being too weak to even fight back and only able to twitch and jerk in pain.
- The reveal of who died in the fire: It's Wes, and half his body is horribly burned. Even Nate is visibly disturbed by it.
- The music that plays during the reveal doesn't help.
- Wes' death scene in
*Wes*. It's a long and disturbing scene.
- Episode 8:
- Simon's body laying on the floor of Caplan & Gold, blood coming from the back of his head.
- Excess amounts of blood leaking down Laurel's legs followed by her screaming in agony as she's forced to give birth to her premature son on the floor of the elevator. So. Much. Blood.
- Nate's murder of ADA Miller where he essentially beats him to death in blind rage over believing him to have ordered his father's murder behind bars. Made even worse by The Reveal that Miller was innocent, and had even tried to stop the murder from happening.
- The reveal that Sam slept with and fathered a child ||Frank|| with his own sister, Hannah.
- The torturing of Frank by Laurels brother Xavier. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/HowToGetAwayWithMurder |
HUNT the TRUTH / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
## Season One
- First off, Ben's audio signal that has become iconic is pretty eerie in itself.
- The ||life of the flash clones.|| We already know that they are replacements for the ||abducted children||, but ||consider their situation.|| ||Thrown into the life of a kid they
*don't even know* and doted on by complete strangers who are supposed to be *their parents.* Then, their augments start to twist and break as they slowly die of a horrific wasting disease that's also uncurable, *rotting away* as trained, experienced doctors and terrified parents watch their child slowly suffer.|| No wonder Ben ||turned against ONI.||
- FERO's voice is
*very* freaky. ||Fortunately, she soon sounds more human.||
- The "anomalies" in deep space. No one knows what they are, nobody knows where they came from,
*and they're getting stronger every second.* ||And with the release of the game, it turns out that those were the Guardians waking up.||
- Episode 8 has probably the most shocking and horrifying event so far. ||Chief, the protector and saviour of trillions of people, the Captain America of the Halo Universe, the most famous Space Marine
*ever*, goes to a peace conference on Biko and attacks the human delegation's security, kidnapping the head diplomat. Nineteen humans die, the diplomat's dead body is found soon afterwards, and the picture Ben posts makes it seem that Chief is looking *right at you.*||
- Somewhat mitigated by Episode 10, which reveals that ||the Chief was probably trying to foil human-supremacist terrorists who had infiltrated the delegation. The real scare is that the UEG, for whatever reason, doesn't want the public to know the true circumstances behind the Chief's attack, even though their coverup is both increasing colonial instability and hurting humanity's chances for a lasting peace with other species||.
- The description of ONI's headquarters is very, very ominous.
- The sheer, unadulterated power ONI possesses. They actively monitor everything.
*Everything.* Within five minutes of Ben ||revealing everything he's found to a meeting between UEG and ONI top brass||, ONI has closed out all of Ben's bank accounts, and even ||cut off Waypoint (read: basically, Internet) access to *the entirety of the outer colonies.*|| Oh, and in the same episode, people are rioting and civil war is pretty much inevitable, plus ||FERO disappears and so does Mshak.|| Anyone who has even *spoken* to Ben is getting slowly getting threatened by ONI too.
- Episode 10 is pretty calm for the most part, until ||Ben finds out that ONI condemned his entire apartment and stole everything in it, including his emergency funds||.
- Episode 11: ||ONI comes
*very, very, very*, close to killing Ben. Until FERO saves his ass.||
- Apparently, some glassed planets can suffer from powerful 'storms' of razor-sharp glass fragments capable of ripping people to shreds. Ben barely escapes being caught in one.
- As of the final episode, Ben is ||finally captured by ONI.|| The worst part? ||
*We don't even know if he's dead or not.*||
## Season Two
- The beginning of Episode 0 has ONI preparing to ||massacre the civilians attending a rebel rally.||
- Episode 1 reveals that ||Ben is alive and in ONI prison||...but he's been reduced to a very sorry state. ||And then, he breaks into insane laughter...||
- Speaking of Episode 1, do we even have to mention ||Midnight Facility||? It's essentially a place where ONI ||locked up all the people they have captured and made them "disappear". Commander Sankar mentioned walking down a long line of identical-looking cells,
*so Ben wasn't the only prisoner ONI had at Midnight Facility.*||
- Near the end of Episode 1, the total ||cataclysmic destruction of the outer colonies was outright terrifying. We didn't see the video, but we did hear the destruction in audio form. It's disturbing and terrifying at the same time.||
- Episode 3 sees the return of ||Mshak||, who is very paranoid about Maya's AI, Black Box, calling it/him a zombie. And he somehow has a plausible reason to be that way.
- The ending of Episode 3 is completely nightmare-inducing, with Maya saying one word while you hear
*very* familiar screeches that will send chills down the spines of *Halo* fans new or old: ||Jackals||. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/HuntTheTruth |
Hyouka / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
Per wiki policy, Spoilers Off applies here and all spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned. Some sequences that help illustrate the analyses are bizarrely disturbing and somber. The film where we are shown a murdered person with a mutilated arm. Even the boys commented that it looked quite real. It was just a film, but still... | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Hyouka |
How to Train Your Dragon (2010) / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
**Per site policy, Spoilers Off applies to all Nightmare Fuel pages, so all spoilers here are unmarked. You have been warned!**
- Hiccup in his first few scenes proves to be a source of duress for Stoick, who pulls him out of passing dragonfire and yells at him for being outside during a raid. Then Hiccup disobeys those orders to test his dragon-trapper, which leads to a Monstrous Nightmare nearly burning him alive. As Stoick reveals, Hiccup does this on a
*regular basis*. What's worse is, from Stoick's annoyed reaction upon seeing the Monstrous Nightmare chasing his son, something that would give any parent a heart-attack, Stoick's *getting used to this*.
- Gobber points out the terrifying truth that Stoick won't always be around to protect Hiccup. His son is growing up, and always running into danger. Stopping him isn't possible. The best Stoick can do is prepare him for it.
- If things had gone differently in their first encounter, either Hiccup would have cut out Toothless's heart or Toothless would have burned Hiccup to a crisp. This makes their respective acts of mercy and developing bond more meaningful.
- The falling scene, especially once they pass the peak of the mountain.
- The Red Death's introduction. You hear it roar moments before its head erupts from the magma to casually swallow a Gronkle whole, visibly causing all the other dragons to shrink away in fear. And then it smells Hiccup, which causes it to start climbing up through the hive to get at him, off-handedly eating a Zippleback that didn't move in time.
- In-Universe for Stoick, when Gobber informs him that Hiccup has a way with dragons. After watching the second film, guess who else had a way with the beasts...
- Early in the movie, Stoick leads a few of the other Vikings in the tribe in three longboats to head to Helheim's Gate, which is wreathed in fog with the only thing visible being three pillars of rock. However, once the Vikings head in, we get a brief glimpse at a Monstrous Nightmare illuminated by the fire of other dragons in the mist before cutting away to the Deadly Nadder. Only one longboat returns to Berk. We don't get any explanation as to what happens to the other vikings, but we can assume most of them were killed in the skirmish.
- The Red Death, a dragon the size of a mountain, taking flight and ascending into the sky after Toothless and Hiccup. Having it emerge from the earth is terrifying enough, but seeing something that looks like the unholy spawn of Fenrir and Jörmungandr take to the air and disappear into the clouds can leave one awestruck. That's the point where the Vikings probably thought that Ragnarok has started and the world was about to break.
- It comes
*very* close to becoming a Hero Killer twice over, nearly crushing Fishlegs underfoot before being distracted by Snotlout hitting it in the eyes. Later on it comes within millimetres of swallowing Astrid and her Nadder whole through its Vacuum Mouth, stopped only by Toothless blasting it in the face. If either of them had been even a second slower, Fishlegs and Astrid would have been killed, simple as that.
- Not to mention seeing it spew
*waves* of fire when it can't keep track of where Hiccup and Toothless are flying. When most of the other dragons have been shooting quick bursts of fire, watching the Red Death go *ballistic* and unleash a continuous stream of flames through the sky (roaring in utter rage all the while) is just terrifying.
- The Red Death's design is pretty creepy. It's got More Teeth than the Osmond Family, small, rheumy-like eyes, cracked/decayed-looking skin and a mouth like that of a theropod, on top of being covered in coral-like spikes. While all the dragons in the film have lots of teeth that are proportionately very big, along with the occasional disturbing design element, the Red Death's stand out more thanks to how huge it is and the Ugly Cute designs of the other Dragons.
- While it's very difficult to argue that it didn't deserve it, the Red Death's final moments are pretty unpleasant - we see its eyes bulge in terror as it realises it's about to hit the ground while its wing membranes visibly shred/burn apart, followed by it exploding in a firestorm that nearly kills Hiccup and Toothless (and does leave the former down a leg).
- The beast is summed up by Stoick the Vast, who had been established as a Badass among Badasses, in three simple words.
- Some of the details on the various dragons in the handbook are... less than pleasant. The illustrations, crude as they are, do
*not* help. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/HowToTrainYourDragon2010 |
How to Train Your Dragon 2 / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
- Valka's mask is a bit more than a tad creepy. Her introduction in the clouds and the way she would move about when in the cave is also unsettling. It's understandable for someone who's lived only with dragons for 20 years with no human contact but still, no less creepy.
- Toothless's cold, reptilian eyes when he's controlled by the hypnotic song of the Alpha.
- "No dragon can resist the Alpha's command. So he who controls the Alpha... controls them all. Witness true strength... the strength of will over others. In the face of it... You. Are. Nothing."
- The fact that Toothless, lovable, loyal, Toothless is mind controlled so casually into attacking Hiccup, only for his blast to kill Stoick.
- This lets us see why Night Furies are so feared. All other dragons have dangerous, but seemingly survivable forms of fire breath. Toothless' blasts, when he is serious, are a One-Hit Kill even for a viking of Stoick's size.
- The blurry red vision of Hiccup from Toothless' perspective when Toothless is under the control of the Alpha and Hiccup tells Toothless, "Stop! Snap out of it!"
- From Toothless' POV: being mind controlled into killing someone you love, and then having no recollection of it afterwards. While he ended up killing Stoick instead, it was still someone he cared about, and all the same it remains a powerful mixture between this and Tear Jerker trying to imagine how Toothless would have felt like had he really woken up to find that
*he just killed Hiccup.*
- The lead up to all of the above mentioned is also mixture of both this and tear jerking; Hiccup throughout the entirety of the film wants to confront Drago so he can convince him that dragons are kind creatures, just like he had successfully done before with Astrid, his dad and his entire tribe, and thus were confident it would work again. Finally seizing the much-awaited opportunity, he gets retaliated with "No!... Let
*me*... show *you!"*, and Toothless mind controlled into attacking him and ending up instantly killing his father.
- Drago and his Alpha Dragon are walking Nightmare Fuel. Even in a setting full of battle-hardened Vikings, Drago exists in a class by himself owing to his being absolutely Ax-Crazy.
- Drago's face is covered is scars and is missing one of his arms which has been replaced by a metal one. We are treated to seeing the stump not once, but twice.
- Drago's Alpha dispatches Valka's Alpha by impaling it on its tusks. It cuts away just a split second before the deed, but you can feel it.
- The Alpha's call to brainwash the dragons after the other Alpha is killed. Dragon's army swells to massive sizes and you know Berk is next and there's nothing Hiccup can do about it. It then proceeds to destroy Berk, very nearly succeeding.
- Stoick's flashback to how Drago killed many island chiefs with his dragon army for refusing to pledge allegiance to him.
- If you listen closely enough to Stoick's narration, you'll hear Drago speaking almost in-sync to what Stoick is saying. This moment is so traumatizing to Stoick, he remembers it word-for-word.
- During Stoick's funeral, Valka mentions to Hiccup that he "Came too early into the world". Hiccup was born prematurely. Even though we all know that Hiccup pulled through, can you imagine what his parents were going through? Yes, Valka told Hiccup that Stoick believed he would be okay, but could you imagine parents having to possibly face the possibility of their
*first* child dying, especially given the time-period and harsh conditions in Berk?
- Valka describes to Hiccup the cruelty of dragon-trapping, showing him dragons who have lost limbs, been blinded, or wing-sliced by various means. We see one of these awful traps in action in the battle at the sanctuary. A dragon gets lured into one of Drago's domed traps, and we see it slam shut before the dragon is fully inside, clearly crushing one of its wings between the two halves of the dome. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/HowToTrainYourDragon2 |
Hunter × Hunter / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
Just when he
couldn't get any creepier.
*Hunter × Hunter* has been noted as being one of the darkest series to have **ever** been serialized in Shonen Jump. With fairly extreme content such as mass murder (including children), hundreds of extremely brutal deaths and a gritty atmosphere, it's no *wonder* that people are disturbed at some of the stuff Togashi has written and drawn.
- The 2011 anime is criticized for censoring the fight when Killua and Jones fight(if it can be called a fight), but that Killua places the piece of Jones' shirt with the heart in his hand after he dies in that version is quite terrifying on its own. In the first anime, when Killua has killed, he's done with it; the second anime shows that Killua enjoys himself even afterwards, mocking the dead.
- Hisoka, a Monster Clown with a rather disturbing, pedophiliac take on the Blood Knight trope. He can do all kinds of creepy faces, his creepiest is by far is when he prepares to kill a participant in the Hunter Exam, now shown above. Worse still, as he makes this face, he lets out an extremely unnerving, savage screech that makes him sound like a rabid wild animal.
- And when one would think it cannot get any worse, Hisoka manages to let loose an
*even worse* expression of pure, unbridled bloodlust. More specifically, during the fifth round of his battle with Chrollo he breaks a *downright disturbing* face that combines a vicious grin with elements of Game Face, which is clearly not helped by the excessive amount of intricate detail put into the expression thanks to the sheer overabundance of detail lines (not to mention the pointed-looking ears), making him look like as if he came out from *Berserk*. One can only imagine how this might be rendered in the anime...
- The Phantom Troupe in general. A band of nigh-unstoppable killers who take whatever they want, whenever they want, and usually just kill everyone in the vicinity, even if it isn't necessary.
- One of the members, Shizuku, is an adorable bundle of Moe tropes, to the point that by judging her looks and mannerisms alone, she would be considered somewhat the Token Good Teammate of the group. However, in her second appearance, she's bashing heads into paste without even changing her expression. She also has a creepy looking Living Weapon Vacuum that can suck anything that isn't alive (including corpses), which can, under the right circumstances, erase them from existence. Later on, a fight with a Chimera Ant showed that the vacuum can also suck up all of a target's blood and leave them
*mummified*.
- Chrollo in general is creepy as all hell. A few of the nen abilities he's stolen are disturbing as well, like the "Indoor Fish" that devour human flesh, only the victim is unable to feel anything, and is kept alive as long as the fish are active (the victim used to show this ability off was Laughing Mad while down to half a head and random bits and pieces of body parts before he was killed.)
- Feitan was never a nice guy to begin with, but hearing his Evil Laugh as he burns Zazan to a crisp for breaking his arm is pretty unnerving, especially coming from one of the quieter members of the Troupe.
- Uvogin may be the Starter Villain as the first to fall, but he doesn't show any easy time for anyone. Our introduction to his fighting prowess is murdering an entire army's worth of mafia and being immune to their weaponry. When everything from the neck down is paralyzed as he's set up for a slow excruciating death by the mafia's Shadow Beasts, he
*eats* half of one's skull and *kills another by spitting a bone fragment through his head.*
- Every time Killua enters assassination mode or generally loses control and intends to kill is pretty unsettling to say the least. Hell give his victim a Kubrick Stare, his eyes will become duller, his pupils will shrink, hell give his victim anything between a Psychotic Smirk and a Slasher Smile, or some combination of the above.
- "Oh, this looks like a happy, relatively innocent series, doesn't it?" Then the Hunter Exam starts up and people start dying horribly. Let us count the ways, shall we?
- Just getting to the damn place is an excursion in itself, with the exam takers sailing through a storm in which Gon is nearly thrown off ship trying to help a crewmate. The second act has them having to answer a hypothetical question that involved having to sacrifice a loved one. One participant that was tailing our heroes answers and is told to go a certain way. If you're watching the anime, we don't see what becomes of him, but in the manga, we hear him scream but are never shown what happened to him. The third act has the examinees fight shapeshifing monsters, though at least they were friendly and just conducting a Secret Test of Character. All this is just the stuff encountered at the
*starting* point.
- The first portion of the exams aren't too bad, just a simple endurance test by running 80 kilometers and a similar length stairway climb, but the second portion involves trekking through a very dangerous marshland. Before the test even begins, the applicants are demonstrated why the place is called Swindler's Swamp when two shapeshifting creatures try to trick them into thinking the current examiner is a fake and pulled a Kill and Replace so he could lure most of them away and eat them, which was only prevented because Hisoka proves the examiner the real deal. Once they continue, fog obscures visibility instantly and most of the participants end up killed gruesomely by the wildlife such as dinosaur creatures with strawberries on their shells, mushrooms that spread out spores that kill you and grow mushrooms on your corpses, butterflies that knock you out instantly if they fly by you and a crow that can imitate the examiner's speech and lead people who fall for it into a pit of spikes, to say nothing of getting completely lost and losing your sense of direction during the trek. Heck, Gon and Killua nearly end up eaten by a giant frog that hides underground until someone steps on it and swallows its prey whole, only escaping thanks to the spiked juice Killua held onto (though he claims he could've escaped without it).
- After some shenanigans of cooking in the next portion, the exam was changed to... jumping off a cliff, grabbing onto some webbing, retrieving an egg and having to use the wind from the canyon to propel yourself back up. Some unfortunate participants let go too early and end up plummeting to their deaths because they didn't bother to wait until Gon gave the okay do so.
- During the trip to the next part of the exam, Gon and Killua get into a friendly match with Netero. Both Killua and he display how really frighting they can be if they get serious. Killua ultimately quits the game when he realizes he can't win and head on to go to sleep. As he does he bumps into two applicants who of course try to bully him... and end up red smears on the floor.
- Fourth portion: make your way down a tower within a time limit with any pathway leading to unknown dangers. You can't scale down it (as one participant found out when he attempted it and some flying monsters quickly snatched him off the side), and it also acts as a prison for criminals to boot. Our heroes are not only stymied by a purposefully unhelpful participant who they get stuck with, but get into several matches with some of the criminals who're more or less stalling for time (since however many hours they can manage to do so reduces their sentence). For the most part, the matches are somewhat comedic: Tonpa gives up and reveals his true colors to the heroes, though Killua knocks the wind out of his sails by stating his opponent would've
*tortured* him if he didn't do so as quickly as he had. We also see how scary Kurapika can be when his opponent claims he's part of the Phantom Trope. And of course, said Killua versus Jones fight that was mentioned above comes about, and again, it's not pretty. Likewise, more of Hisoka's bloodlust is on display as we see him fight yet another person who has beef with him and, on a minor note, one of the participants managing to reach the end only to drop dead right at the end goal. Poor schmuck.
- Speaking of Jones, his appearance is quite unsettling, and his backstory of being a sadistic serial killer who tore his victims to pieces is downright terrifying.
- The scene where Leroute mentally tortures Leorio in the 1999 anime is also pretty terrifying, especially if you put yourself in Leorio's shoes.
- Fifth portion, steal the badge off an opposing target. Basically anything goes in this and the participants can use any means to get the badge, including killing. This is where Illumi, Killua's older brother, is finally introduced by the way to which he promptly kills another participant just because she accidentally shot at him. Gon is forced to confront Hisoka here, and he does
*try* to get the badge without him knowing or fighting and it is as utterly tense as it sounds. He would've succeeded too if the person targeting him didn't hit him with a numbing dart. This leads into Gon confronting Hisoka directly and luckily, him sparing Gon since he likes his development so far and doesn't want to kill him... for now. And then there's what happens after in the cave (which is not recommended for anyone with ophidiophobia) as Gon, Kurapika and Leorio end up in a situation where a person's dead body ends up summoning tons of snakes around the cave.
- Final portion is a straight up one on one match between the remaining participants. You win your match, you get your Hunter's license. Simple enough, except Gon's fight has him horribly outclassed in every way by his opponent who knocks him around like a rag doll. The whole match is completely and utterly horrible to watch, but he keeps getting back up every time. Ultimately, while he does eventually succumb to his wounds, his opponent conceded, not wanting to kill him, giving Gon the win. However while he was unconscious, Killua finally encounters his brother Illumi, which scares him enough to quit the exam, but not before he kills his opponent to disqualify himself so Leorio can gain his license without fighting. Just think about that, said participant finally reached the end and ended up dying for no reason just because. Again, poor guy.
- Some of the things Illumi can make your body do with his needles are...unpleasant.
- The Zoldyck's guard dog. Even Gon is terrified of him- he takes one look at its eyes and KNOWS it is trained beyond reasoning. It just looks very off.
- And Mike's Establishing Character Moment was to eat two thugs who stepped through the trick entrance to the Zoldyck Mansion and rip every last piece of meat of their bones, interspersed with their agonizing death cries which suddenly go away as he polishes them off in a matter of seconds, then pauses to open the gate back up, throwing out the skeletons, which made the Kukuroo Mountain tour group head for the hills. And the carcasses are unceremoniously tossed into a garbage can with the lid not on tight, showing no concern for how they are to be mourned or disposed of, leaving potential loved ones in the dark. It's also implied this happens a
*lot*.
- Kurapikas scarlet eyes in episode 62 of the 1999 anime when he threatens the guy who tried to kill him after winning the scarlet eyes at the auction. The dark lighting in general and combined with the water dripping down Kurapikas face, making it look like blood, with only Kurapikas eyes shining through the darkness making it look like he wants to suck the guys (and by extension, the viewers) blood and soul out of his body.
- Just see what happens to Illumi's face the moment Hisoka asks if he can kill Killua. His eyes bug out into scribbles and he literally turns a shade of what is best described as
*moldy patina demon*, sending out a wave of Killing Intent so massive it causes all the nearby crows to scatter and Killua to sense his overwhelming bloodlust from miles away.
- There's additional Fridge Horror, too; look at Hisoka's hand while he says this. He basically slipped in a
*rape pun* towards a minor into a casual question about murder.
- The dubbed version is even worse. Instead of asking to kill Killua, Hisoka specifically says "If I see Killua and there's a chance, can I..." before Illumi cuts him off. Combine that with the hand gesture, and no wonder Illumi is so pissed at him.
- The entire Chimera Ant arc is the kind of grade-A Nightmare Fuel that horror movies are made of. Giant Mix-and-Match Critters swooping in and effortlessly butchering entire populations (by the hundreds. Daily), dragging whoever they don't kill back with them to have the flesh stripped from their bones and turned into giant meatballs for their queen (while they're still alive, mind you). If you're especially unlucky, you'll get reincarnated as a Chimera Ant and continue the cycle, possibly on people you used to know.
- Early on, some rogue Chimera Ants take over Gyro's drug factories and enslave some of the soldiers, essentially turning them into dogs. We're treated to a scene where the "dogs" speak out of turn and are crushed to death under an Ant's hoof.
*Graphically*.
- The brain torture scene. The Establishing Character Moment for Neferpitou, who lobotomizes a captured Pokkle and forces him to reveal every detail he knows about Nen. And then she has him butchered and fed to the Queen. The entire scene is so graphic and disturbing that it had to be censored for Toonami's broadcast of the English dub.
- And then the end comes along, with Nightmare Faces galore, and Gon becoming very,
*very* intense and pragmatic (to the point that he's willing to murder Komugi, an innocent blind girl.) For anyone who still remembers the old Gon from before all the hiatuses, it can be very unnerving.
- All of the rage and anguish he feels culminates in him finding out Kite has been Dead All Along, having a complete mental breakdown and blaming himself for being too weak. The especially sad part about this is that we've been leading up to it for the entire series. Togashi has drilled into our heads that above all else, Gon hates feeling helpless against stronger opponents and having his pride trampled on. Villains like Hisoka, Nobunanga, and Genthru all made him feel helpless too, but this time, his mentor was killed, mutilated, and turned into a puppet while he couldn't help him at all. When Neferpitou tries to kill him after breaking the news, he releases all the rage and despair he had kept locked away, creating a contract with his Nen by sacrificing his vast potential and his ability to use Nen, which enhances his body to its absolute physical peak, turning him into a full-grown adult within
*seconds*. In this state, he completely obliterates Neferpitou, a Royal Guard with an astronomical amount of aura and one of the strongest characters in the series by casually stepping out of the way of their attacks and punching them into a mountain with a Jajanken. After they pass out, he continues to bash their head in until it's ground into a bloody *paste*, remembering Kite's lesson about finishing off Chimera Ants. When Pitou's Nen ability grows stronger after their death and manipulates their corpse to sever Gon's right arm, he picks it up and **impales them** with it without hesitation, before concentrating his aura into his stump and destroying the entire forest they fought in. The tranquil, hell-bent fury he shows here is incredibly disturbing, compared to his first appearance as a happy-go-lucky 12 year old boy. After his transformation, his body deteriorates overnight, giving him into a corpse like appearance. It's said that his Nen contract was worse than death, having spent all of his aura, he can do nothing but slowly die as his body withers away without any energy to sustain it.
- Meruem, The Chimera Ant King. Just the way Togashi writes and draws a character who starts out as all-powerful and nigh-unstoppable and only gets more powerful from there is
*terrifying*.
- Just being anywhere near the King is fear inducing in itself because of his unpredictability,
*especially* at the start of his birth. He demonstrates that he will immediately kill whoever even slightly annoys him without warning, and the requirement for that is *very* low. He kills two of his subjects after his birth, the first for seemingly ignoring his demand for food, the second of which was for **offering to a handkerchief to clean off the blood off his tail** when Meruem picked Colt specifically do it. He's not above *eating* his own kind either. The King makes any Bad Boss preferable.
- The Royal Guards are no slouches in this department, either, both in-universe and in Real Life, but
*especially* Neferpitou.
- Then, there's Menthuthuyoupi, whose power is pretty much weaponized Body Horror, allowing him to grow dozens of eyes and increase his muscle mass to a ridiculous degree as he gets angrier, making him look like something out of a Lovecraft work. What's especially terrifying is his Rage Blast, where his body literally swells up with anger, turning it into a massive blob of faces that can detonate with enough force to create massive craters stretching dozens of meters wide. His final form is the apex of his weirdness, resembling a grotesque centaur with a giant, deformed face in place of his shoulder.
- The scene where Meruem kills a family of farmers. In one swift move, he beheads the mother and father with his tail
**right in front of their young daughter**, who spends her last moments screaming out of trauma before Meruem impales her.
- The anime manages to make some of this worse, not only because it shows some of these things in motion and with sound effects, but the sudden art shifts that accompany some of these things make it absolutely terrifying.
- Gon's Tranquil Fury at Pitou, which is very disturbingly subdued compared to how much he usually gets enraged over the tiniest things. His transformation into "Adult Gon" after his Heroic BSoD is also
*terrifying*, in stark contrast to most shounen hero powerups.
- Netero's secret weapon, the Miniature Rose. It's a chemo-explosive weapon of mass destruction that has claimed 5,120,000 lives since its creation. Dying in the blast is a mercy, because survivors absorb a poison released during the explosion that slowly destroys internal organs and emits more toxins through any kind of contact, creating a lengthy chain of victims. When terrorists got their hands on it and activated the bomb in an enemy capital, killing 110,000 people, an international treaty was signed that prevented further production, but a staggering 80% of all countries refused get rid of the remaining Roses. In a world full of magical creatures and supernatural martial artists, something this mundane killing some the most powerful characters in the series (through poisoning, no less) hits a bit too close to home. Worse still, it's compact, easy to make, and
*every* country has a stock of these nukes lying in wait. The entire Hunter X Hunter world is basically wrapped up in a giant Cold War.
- The face◊ Shaiapouf makes at Knuckle when he senses the King's been wounded. It's a perfect visual representation of his hidden bestial nature and the hatred and contempt he holds for humanity and anyone who would harm the Ant King.
- Alluka/Nanika. Creepy black eyes aside, when she grants an especially large wish, her demands for the next person to come along are severe. And if you refuse her demands four times,
*something* happens, and you, your closest loved one, and possibly many other random people are killed. One person literally got compressed into a cube of human beef and splattered all over creation, with other kin in the family implied to suffer the same consequences somewhere at the same time. Can you imagine that you're doing something totally unrelated like sitting at the dinner table and then, all of a sudden, just because someone disobeyed the demands, POOF- you're mincemeat!?
- Everything about this situation is horrible. From the "Cheerfully Cute Girl + (Pester Power)Nen = OMGWTF" to the fact they're both a part of a very twisted family to the mechanics of how the Alluka-Nanika team actually works (they see each other as family; nobody else apart from Killua does, and even he resents Nanika to a great degree) to the fact that only Killua sees them as the two vulnerable young girls (and, you know...
*people* not "dangeously powerful tools to kill, hide or use") that they know they are is all a lot more creepy than when we get to see Nanika all awake and firing on every reality warping cylinder. Worse... the two kids with the more "normal" sets of emotional range in the Zoldyck family? Are the two who have spent a lot of time with the (still rather young for her species) Nanika growing up, despite their parents' (and Illumi's)... reservations. And precautions. What does this say about the family, exactly?
- Chapter 341 gives us a good look at some of the things that have happened to people trying to enter the Dark Continent. People who entered not only didn't survive, but had their bodies twisted horribly and were thrown back into the human world. According to records kept of what lies in the new world, there are many more horrors to look forward to. One survivor who came back was rendered immortal, horrendously emaciated, and insane by a virus. The Guide, a mysterious being who takes people to the Dark Continent, forced five different expeditions to take an extinction-level threat back with them when they returned to civilization.
-
**Brion,** a spherical botanical weapon that protects the ruins of an ancient city. When the special forces of the United States of Saherta tried to enter the ruins, Brion utterly decimated them, leaving only two survivors. We aren't given a description of what Brion does to trespassers, but the accompanying image depicts what appears to be a man, completely motionless, with Brion *clamped over his head.* Whatever this thing does to intruders, **it ain't pretty.**
-
**Ai,** a strange, gaseous black lifeform, and one of the much more terrifying things from the Dark Continent. Why is it so much more terrifying? Because we've already encountered it first-hand. Remember Nanika? Killua's little sister with horrific Reality Warper abilites? Yeah, *she's a member of Ai's species;* seems like the Zoldyck who traveled with Netero to the Dark Continent brought back more than he bargained for, and now Alluka *has a member of Ai as her split personality.* Take all the Nightmare Fuel involving Nanika and her wishes on this page, and give it to **an entire species.** *That* is what Ai is.
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**Hellbell,** an absolutely *nightmare-inducing* snake. If running into and getting killed by this isn't pants-soiling enough for you, great news!: Its bite also induces homicidal urges in its victims, driving them to kill everyone around them. Imagine you and a friend are adventuring through unexplored lands when you run into a terrifying snake that ends up biting your friend. You both make it out by the skin of your teeth, but then your friend suddenly grabs you by the neck and tries to choke you to death, doing anything they can to **kill you.** And a scenario just like this happened to *an entire expedition team* that wandered into Hellbell's territory.
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**Pap,** a creature that keeps people as pets. Not only is the idea of being turned into some *thing's* pet already terrifying, but Pap turns its victims into horribly emaciated, baby-like caricatures of a human that are connected to Pap (who hide in logs and are completely hidden in darkness save for their eyes, mind you) by umbilical cords. The description of "a trade-off between life and pleasure" implies that people who become Pap's pets experience intense euphoria while in this state, which just manages to make things *so* much worse.
-
**Zobae,** the immortality disease. The one person we've seen who's contracted it has become a horribly-disheveled, almost catatonic mess, not saying or doing anything but leering at folks who pass its cell and occasionally nibbling at its arms. It's not mentioned if Zobae has any nasty side-effects besides eternal life, but either way, it's clearly not a disease you want to catch.
- The Kakin Royal Family. Prince Tserriednich is the kind of guy whose hobbies include collecting body parts (like the Scarlet Eyes) and murdering young women as twisted performance art. His expression when he thanks God for the opportunity to murder his siblings so he can inherit the throne rivals Hisoka's and Illumi's. His eldest brother Benjamin, first seen wrestling a lion and breaking its neck in a fit of rage after Tserriednich hangs up on him, is no better. The goofy character design of their father, King Nasubi, belies that he's the kind of man who would order his own children to battle to the death on an expedition to a Death World for the right to succeed the throne. His Nen guardian (which is based on his personality) is a horrific mishmash of insect parts and
*breasts*. And this is the ruling family of one of the most powerful nations in the setting. Oh yeah, and it bears repeating that the family handles its succession a la Klingon Promotion- kill everyone else and you can become king. Who cares if you don't want to kill or be killed- you're roped in whether you like it or not!
- Even worse: at least two of the King's children are just kids. One of them is a
*baby*. And it's likely they won't be spared. Another one is being manipulated by her closet bitch of a sister, and one even tries to walk away from the whole ordeal out of pure disgust.
- The war is getting even worse when it's revealed that
*all* the princes have been given Nen guardians. They're parasitic by nature and act independent of the user's will, meaning they can kill anyone the moment one of the princes detect hostility, even little Woble. Kurapika succinctly surmises this means that the princes will end up slaughtering each other regardless of how kind or innocent they are.
- Hisoka gives us another grade-A Nightmare Face after having his face blown off and
*coming back from the dead*. Yikes.◊
- Nen Baptism. Get hit by a sufficient nen attack and your body begins releasing nen at a crazy rate. If you can't control it, you will die. Even if you can control it, it may leave you crippled in some way. Then, as the Chimera ants demonstrated, if you attack with nen, you better be ready to kill, as you may end up giving your opponent nen superpowers if they weren't already nen users.
- Pariston. The Election Arc established he wasn't a great person, but he went from trolling to outright sociopathy when Ging confronted him: He does everything because he LOVES when people hate him, and if he gets bored of a plan because he can't "play" with people - like Beyond's plan, which involves a long "boring" voyage - he chooses the option that will get the most people killed or angry - such as releasing all the captured Chimera Ants. And Ging is the only person who can reliably predict and stop this man.
- As mentioned above, the Nen Beasts. Each and every one of them is a grotesque mistake of nature and it's undeniably for the best that these things are invisible to those who have not awakened to Nen. The very first one we see◊ is a yonic nightmare that has no business being in a manga for kids, with dozens of engorged, veiny breasts on either side of its head, which essentially has a toothed vagina for a mouth, and spindly, spiderlike limbs dangling off of its sides.
- And unsurprisingly, Tserriednich has the most horrific Beast of the lot. If this was your only exposure to it, you'd think "Yeah, it's gross, but there are worse in his family." Then you get to
*this page* and realize Togashi was holding back just so he could hit you full force with the true extent of its ghastliness later.
- Benjamin is essentially an Ax-Crazy Blood Knight with the hideous face of a lion who attacks every problem that comes its way until it drops dead on him- that includes murder plans in store for his own equally demented biological brother. And when he's pissed, he tears off his suit in a fit of rage and his face almost pustulates with fury.
- He sent one of his men to wipe out the bodyguards protecting Prince Woble and also had Sergeant Might tell his personal batch of soldiers to basically find an excuse to kill his enemies and pin it on self-defense. One of them easily offed one of Woble's bodyguards and then ended his own life, giving him the excuse he needed to declare war to "avenge" the death of his comrade. When a phone call came from Benjamin to Kurapika to discuss the situation, it wasn't to speak to him personally- it was to have his sergeant do the talking and give the group the honor of choosing how they would like to die. Worse, his personality is so wretched that one of the attendants refused to answer his proxy first, simply choosing to have them hang up, knowing nothing anyone said or did would get Benjamin to ever consider any form of mercy for any reason.
- Chrollo has snuck aboard the same ship with the Princes and Kurapika & co. right in the middle of the succession war. And he's in a VERY bad mood after the fight with Hisoka had roughed him up a lot, made even more worse when Hisoka himself had soon killed both Shalnark and Kortopi not too long after his battle with Chrollo. Uvo's death may have gotten a few tears from him, but this is a face of pure, unbridled fury.◊
- Silent Majority, a Nen ability involving a conjured doll, kills a bodyguard by draining him of all his blood via white snakes. Even more terrifying? Its user's identity is unknown at the time of the attack. The grisly result of the attack is shown here.
- Camilla's already a Psychopathic Womanchild who is spoiled to the core and is cold-blooded, but how can you make her worse? Reveal that she knows how to use Nen and fashioned it into a beast ON TOP OF the Nen Beast she was given, and it immediately snatches anyone who inflicts fatal wounds to her and squishes them in its clutches to process out their life fluids as a way of instantly healing and reviving her. She is functionally Nigh-Invulnerable and thinks she doesn't even need a Nen Beast because she
*already has one she made for herself*. One which she purposefully made look pure evil while cute and able to crush anybody into oblivion, leaving *nothing* behind. Eldritch Abomination isn't enough to cover how freakish and demented that is.
- If the Kakin Royal Family wasn't nasty enough, the reveal in Chapter 378 regarding what rulers does to their
*illegitimate* children only makes it worse. What do they do? They give them the choice of identity amnesty from the heritage line to the throne and if they accept it, they get the ceremonial right of having two razors *drawn parallel with each other across the entirety of their faces as brands* and then have them crudely stitched up. It makes refusing the offer (aka a swift execution) much more lucrative in hindsight for them.
- The Xi-Yu Mafia working under the Third Prince has a Nen Ghost working for them; A deceased member of theirs called Misha Hao. Who has a
*post-mortem Nen ability that lets her possess dead bodies for the sake of impersonating, and then inconspiciously disposing of dead bodies whenever a Xi-Yu Family member is involved in a killing*. After Hinrigh kills a member of the Heil-Ly family by slamming his hand, transformed into an axe made of his own blood, into the back of his head, Misha's power kicks in and though the dead sod, she is able to play the fight between him and Hinrigh off as a petty scrap to the ship's guards, before she proceeds to make the corpse walk off for disposal elsewhere on the Black Whale. Paranoia Fuel does not even begin to describe the three mafias on the ship. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/HunterXHunter |
Hyperdimension Neptunia the Animation / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
- CFW Trick's debut appearance is not only creepy due to the excessive use of shadows, but also due to the situation he's present in. Two little girls go off to play with friends, go away from them for
*just a moment* and get kidnapped by a pedophile? Good Lord, way to set off episode 2 folks.
- Episode 4 shows that, as the Goddesses are captured, the prison pyramid in which they are sealed is slowly filling with some strange, black liquid (which is either implied to be their bodies melting to become the liquid, which adds an entirely new level of horrific, or the liquified form of their power). When the black liquid fills the entire container, they will die.
- It gets even worse in Episode 5 as the liquid reaches them and starts causing ethereal, moaning hands to coil around them as they all get slowly submerged, as the pyramid turns pitch black as they get fully consumed. Thank god for The Power of Friendship saving them all. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/HyperdimensionNeptuniaTheAnimation |
Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
- When Rei gets a hold of the dark power that Croire gave to her, she becomes completely insane and reveals that her goal is to wipe out not just Ultradimension Gamindustri, but
*the entire world*, so she can get rid of the CPUs once and for all. She also reveals that she used to be the goddess of her (now-destroyed) nation Tari, as well as being the one responsible for the destruction of said nation after her power-hungry behavior got the better of her, which resulted in her killing *all* of her citizens after they turned against her.
- The scene back in the Hyperdimension with Rom and Ram after Chapter 4. They end up meeting some people of the Citizen Group. And then they actively try to hurt Rom and Ram.
- When the CPU's confront Mr. Badd, he reveals what happened to the kidnapped children. He explains that they were forced to use CPU Memories against their will and the vast majority of them ended up as bug monsters who were unable to speak, and then says that
*they* were the "monsters" the CPUs were fighting for years. What's worse is that the same thing very nearly happened to little IF and Compa, to which the CPUs understandably react in disgust and anger (Blanc even transforms into White Heart to teach him a lesson), especially Plutia, who had already tortured Arfoire after the latter kidnapped IF (whom she unintentionally traumatized) and Compa, and would've done the same thing to Mr. Badd had the other CPUs not restrain her and run away. Thankfully, Mr. Badd redeems himself and helps them relearn to speak; the ending gives the children a happy ending in that Anonydeath ended up synthesizing an antidote to turn them back into people. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/HyperdimensionNeptuniaVictory |
Hunter: The Vigil / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
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*Hunter: The Vigil* takes all the horrors of the New World of Darkness and adds the layer of potential insanity. You can't let your loved ones know what's happening, because they'll either think you're a loony or be put in danger. Vampires could have influence over your job or the police, so you can't just go around staking every bloodsucker you see or you'll find yourself out of a job and under arrest. Werewolves are stronger, faster, and more vicious than you and won't hesitate to tear you to shreds. You can't kill ghosts with bullets, and they can possess you. Slashers generally possess nothing even resembling morals, and would just as soon slice you up as say hello. Even Prometheans are frightening, since they are aberrations from nature and reason. The changelings are probably the worst, since they had no control over what happened to them and are sometimes so twisted they cannot interact with human beings without harming them in some way. The worst part of it all is the fact that a hunter must make a moral decision, slowly wearing away at themselves until the line between man and monster is nearly nonexistent.
- Let's look at the list of horrors that being a Hunter means having to face, before and after you learn more about what they actually are from their perspective:
- Walking, blood-sucking corpses that claim to rule the night — and there is more than boasting to that assertion. They can charm and manipulate with the skill of consummate predators; part of this is natural, but part of this is something supernatural. They can bend people's minds with a look, a word, a
*thought*, control animals and read their thoughts, or inspire terror by their mere presence. They can become invisible, they can meld into the ground underfoot, a wall, a tree, anything. They can roam the night in the shape of a beast or as a wandering bank of mist. They can move faster than a human can blink, shrug off being hit by a car, punch through a brick wall, or worse. Their blood is the ultimate intoxicant; and drink it too often, and you become their slave, in mind, body and soul. They don't really feel pain, so unless you know their weakness, they just keep soaking up every bullet, blade, arrow, punch, anything you throw at them until they have their fangs in your throat.
- The reality:
*Everything about that perception is true...* except that there is a part of the vampire that is still human, still capable of remorse. However, the creature *will* eventually lose the battle against its utterly amoral predatory instincts. It is only a question of *when*
Isn't it?
- Werewolves — every nightmare you ever had about the wolf come to life in one gore-dripping package of killing machine. They could be anyone, and you won't even know it until they come for you. They can wield weapons with human skill, then turn into a monster and rend you limb from limb with bare fangs and claws. They heal almost as fast as you hurt them... and, in fact, that makes it almost impossible
*to* hurt them seriously. Blow them up, run them over, drop things on them, shoot them, stab them... they'll just heal up and be right back after you without even being slowed down. Their mere presence makes you want to curl into a ball and weep for mercy. What's worse? *They have Black Magic too!* They can do... *things* that shouldn't be possible, and you can never tell what a werewolf is capable of until it's too late — some can hurl fireballs, others can make your weapons betray you at the worst possible time.
- The reality: They're guarding the world against something
*even worse.* Well, a third of them are; the rest are a bunch of fascistic, bloodthirsty nutcases who either want to revert the world to a primal nightmare in which humanity will become chattel for legions of mad spirits, or basically want to wring every last drop of goodness from the world and create an endless, unceasing *Hell*.
- Witches, people who have sold their souls to the darkest powers for dark blessings and foul boons. They can raise the dead against you, turn you into lifeless stone, call down thunder and lightning, flame or worse against you. They can manipulate fate itself so that bad luck comes your way until you die — without ever tracing it back to the witch responsible — or bend time and space like playthings. They're unnatural, too powerful to trust, and could be anywhere.
- The reality: Not only did they
*not* get magic from making a Deal with the Devil, the truth is almost the opposite. They really got magic by undergoing a spirit quest in which they visited a higher reality and were granted power by benevolent living ideas without having to offer anything in return. Most of them envision a future where *everyone* can do magic. Anybody could become one. *You* could become one, and are more likely to than many - the mindset that makes people hunters is the exact kind of insight that interests Witch patrons. The one downside is that while the majority want to protect muggles there are still some who have gone as power mad as you thought. Except they're *even worse* than the previous description implies. Some want to reduce muggles to hunter gatherers or outright genocide them, some achieved immortality by discovering how to eat human souls and the biggest evil Witch faction effectively rules the world, serves malevolent living ideas of tyranny and is manipulating all muggle power structures - including many the hunters you're working for.
- Twisted walking dead men, like a cross between Frankenstein's Monster and the Golem. They feel nothing for humans besides envy and spite and hate, so they lash out with all their awful power at random, and wherever they go, the earth itself suffers from their presence. Some poison the water into a toxic sludge, others make the wind foul or cause the very earth to rot into dust, while others cause fire-storms, rip open holes between reality and... someplace
*else*, create the freezing desert of tainted dust that is a nuclear winter or even erode away organic matter, leaving only unliving, electrified wasteland. They transmute matter with foul alchemy, and often make more of their ilk from the remains of their enemies.
- The reality: Most of them are almost harmless, men and women made of the dead, who seek only to purify themselves until they become a true, living human. However, even if you know this,
*you can't stop yourself from hating them*; it's an inescapable part of what they are, that all who truly live despise them. What's more, where they walk, they awaken monsters, creatures that seek to feed on them but are forced back into sleep by normal humans... and will do anything to stop it. And some of them have abandoned their quest for humanity, embracing the monstrous nature at their core. They *herd* those monsters, hunting their own kind... and being everything you fear about the others.
- Faeries who roam the street, disguised so well that even
*other monsters* can't tell what they really are, looking to trick people into pledges that let the fairies steal their souls. Want to try and fight them? Good luck, we're talking about monsters who convince the very wind that you should be pushed away, trick light into ignoring them and letting them disappear, or sweet-talk the universe into letting them rebuild a car with pieces of scrap metal. And don't even bother trying to restrain them; they will free themselves easily from any bounds or open portals to their realm from the door of any room you'll try to lock them in— nothing can keep them trapped, period. And when they do drop the Mask, and unleash their fae selves, the human before you melts away into a fearsome beast of a person, or a living candle wick, or a cyclopean giant, ready to make you just as twisted as they are.
- The reality: The "faeries" you're thinking of aren't the soul-eating faeries. They're the soul-eating faeries'
*escaped slaves*. Well, we **And they used to be human, just like you.** *assume* you're human - the real faeries could have stolen the real you and replaced you with a magical android, and nobody - not even you - would know. And the thing is, just because the slaves were victims doesn't mean they aren't crazy, or dangerous. Each and every one of them feeds on uncontrollable passion to power their magic, is a Manipulative Bastard due to their inherent sense of politics and social dynamics, and the very reason they're *here* is that they fought and tricked their way out, despite the otherworldly madness. They're paranoid and forever wary of *any* threat to their freedom, and they've become alien to the world - beautifully mad. Hell, even their *friends* are scared of their passions - *Mortal Remains* tells the tale of one Spring Queen who *frightened the Ashwood freakin' Abbey* purely through her fetishes, to feed on their desire. The fetishes she *voluntarily demonstrated.*
- "Ghostwalkers" Fog Men, Self-proclaimed ex-dead men who willingly share their bodies with...
*things* that can only be demons, giving themselves ghostly powers that they use however they choose. They can twist their forms into monstrous shapes so horrific that the sight can drive you insane. They can make the walls run with blood. They can turn animals against you, making even a most trusted and loved pet want to kill you. They can fill your lungs with stagnant water, or light you on fire. If you shoot them or stab them, fog pours from their wounds instead of blood, sealing their injuries. If you kill them, they *come right back*. And that's not even getting into what they can do by commanding the dead... What might be most horrific is that they devour ghosts to fuel these powers, eating all that remains of a deceased loved one so they can do these terrifying stunts.
- The reality: Those
*things* are old ghosts. Ghosts so unspeakably old that most have forgotten what living is like and make their bargain just to relive their earthly desires. We'll let that sink in for a moment. Oh, and their hosts, the Fog Men, were human like you, once. They accepted the bargain because when the Reaper came knocking, they realized they didn't want to bite the dust, not in the slightest. Most use their second chance to patrol the nonliving and keep ghosts where they belong. You're probably more likely to become one than anyone else.
- Ancient undead sorcerers whose power and might are Biblical in scale. If you value your life, never,
*never* disturb their resting places - or worse yet steal from them - otherwise not all the powers of Hell will be enough to save you. They are relentless, implacable, and indestructible, like ancient Terminators - they *will* find what they're after, no matter what stands in their way. And should they reveal their true selves, the sheer weight of time will crash down on you, sending you running for your life.
- The reality: They do this because their gods tell them to, and they cannot disobey. These ancient monsters are nothing more than tired old
*slaves* bound to the whims of entities they can barely remember. The "lucky" ones have lost so much of their soul that they shamble through the ages as near-mindless automatons, blearily rising from their tombs only for the task that has called them back, seeking to end their tortured existence and return to the peace of death by completing what is required of them. The unlucky ones are still self-aware enough to be cognizant of the fact that they have outlived everything and everyone they ever cared about, that their world is gone forever, and that they are mere pawns to unearthly abominations who were their slave-masters in life and demand a servitude that will compel them to obey. For all eternity.
- Demons. Literal, bona fide, goddamned (literally)
*Fallen Angels* who rebelled against the Creator for personal reasons, and now walk the Earth as false humans. They are utterly selfish, completely amoral, and capable of perfect lying to get what they want-up to and including a a promise that will let them steal your soul, hollow it out, and then *wear it like a suit* so they can take over your life. Or the life of someone you know. And if you corner them, they can shed it so they may better kill you.
- The reality: The Creator in question? We sure hope it's only
*a* God, because frankly, their reasons for rebellion are *completely legitimate.* And the God- *Machine* isn't just amoral and willing to manipulate mortals for its own ends, it's a completely alien Eldritch Abomination that mutilates reality into orderly patterns by dint of its presence, and is willing to send similarly mechanical angels to force the issue. Demons are actually *more* human and given over to consciences then their "noble" brethren, and yet they're still evil by human standards-both out of desperation to remain free (or at least, rejoin the collective on their own terms) and because they literally don't have the same moral instincts as humans-their Fatal Flaw can easily be something like Generosity, since they view it as sabotaging their own work and those of their demonic friends for a quick feel-good act, and their Virtue can be literal Pride, as they assert their own self-will and that of their chosen organization against adversity and thus, their inherent "humanity", if such a term can apply to such alien beings. The only thing a demon has to really worry about when moral issues are concerned is the upkeep of the false human self he possesses, and they're always looking for a new one or parts to maintain it...
- Living nightmares from the darkest reaches, abominations that attempt to disguise themselves as humans. They walk amongst humanity, seeking only to devour what they wish. Their very presence causes nightmares, terrorizing the dreams and souls of humans until they either go insane or are compelled to join the Hunt, and they can shed their false disguise to kill you in all manner of monstrous ways. They can open pathways to drag you into the insane, physics-violating realms they call home, where the environment itself is helping them against you. Worse, they see most other monsters as kinsfolk, and can even mimic their powers to some extent, passing themselves as them- meaning they can fool you into thinking you are hunting a vampire or one of the other creatures on this list, before dropping the disguise at the last minute.
- The reality: That pretty much is the reality. Except that the whole "causing nightmares" thing is involuntary. If they don't indulge their beastly appetites, their soul-form will go wandering off into the dreamscape, tormenting people despite their best wishes; a lot of them actually are tormenting people in the physical world because it's the only way for them to keep control over it and avoid harming people they actually care about. And the people who join the Hunt? Yeah, you're probably better off avoiding them. Preferably by being on the other side of the state, if at all possible.
- Rogue, insane mutants, psychics, hybrids and cyborgs who no longer think like humans in any capacity-their biology, minds, and
*souls* have been so altered they no longer even have a true self-only a purpose. Upset them, they lose what little remains of their sanity and with it, their grip on humanity, becoming even more powerful and monstrous. Fail to kill one fast enough or break its cause before it, and you may find yourself recreating the ending of *AKIRA*, with you playing the part of hapless biomass for the rapidly growing cathedral of flesh.
- The reality:
*Some* of those mutants may have done this to themselves, but the majority were made by *perfectly normal humans* who decided they care more about results and getting what they want, than things like ethics, or morality, just that they needed a weapon or to indulge their curiosity, abducting people and experimenting so hard *their *. Some of these people **souls** break *are hunters.* Including conspiracies, such as Did we mention they want those same mutants back? And a few still work for their sociopathic masters? **the one you may work for.**
- Hunters, hunting you because you're in the way, or because you don't follow what they see as the right path of the Vigil. Even if you can justify killing vampires nightly, these guys are human, and humans count for murder. Some of them might have powers on par with what a witch might have. Others control the entire local area, police and politicians included. Maybe they have a secret you've worked hard to ignore ready to drop in the local news if you don't toe their line. Maybe they've finally snapped and decided that you need to die to prevent you from becoming a monster yourself. They might even be working with the monsters you've been trying to hunt. Others don't care about you, or anyone else. As long as they have what they want, you and everyone you're fighting to protect can die and mean nothing to them.
- The reality: That is the reality. Still think you want to be a hunter?
- As noted above, most of these things are transformed humans so
*YOU* could be one of them one day. The worst are probably Vampires since every one of them can make more of their kind any time they want. Maybe one day you'll piss one of them off so much he decides to see how you like being a blood sucking nightmare - or worse, impresses him to the point he wants you as his agent. And then you'll be the one having to fight off the attacking hunters. Lycanthropy is genetic but inactive until the werewolves' nutcase moon goddess decides to awaken it, so you could suddenly turn into a Wolf Man one day because you caught her eye. You could even be a nascent Beast and not know it until your Horror comes to eat and replace your soul. And let's not forget that your extremely high chance of a horrible death makes you perfect material for becoming a ghost or Sin-Eater. And there's always the chance the True Fae will come to take you to their world.
- Each tier 3 conspiracy in Hunter is nightmare fuel from an entirely human perspective, from the core six to the ones in the supplements.
- Task Force: VALKYRIE is every dangerous conspiracy theory about the US government, and really ANY government. Their authority cannot be limited by law. Their ends just barely justify the means. They are the men in black that are all too human, and at the same time completely inhuman. They are the mysterious agents making dissenters and whistle-blowers vanishing in the night. They aren't just tapping your phones, they're watching you during every waking moment. They can make you forget anything, make you their prisoner in your own skin. All for the US of A.
- Have you met the Cheiron Group yet? Nice guys really. A bit of a corporate culture inside the group but still a focused organization dedicated to finding some of the science behind the monsters. If you ignore the illegal surgeries on their own people. And what is essentially torture on anyone from monsters to their own people. Did we mention the pills that may or may not be made out of dried vamp blood and given to US soldiers? And the secrets that might be behind their board of directors? Sometimes you are just paranoid. This isn't one of those times.
- The Malleus Maleficarum, which literally
**is** the book on Church Militant. Despite what it seems, a priest admitting what is said in a confessional is a **gross** abuse of the Church's authority, and if a priest is willing to do that it is rightfully terrifying. But no, that's not the worst of it. The worst is that unlike TFV, you can't argue that their corruption is a result of needing money and resources. The leader of the Malleus knows how vampires work, what their blood does to him, and he still drinks it. Both power and the blood have corrupted him, warping what was supposed to be a mission of divine protection into a long, rambling struggle. They still torture with modern and "classic" methods, and a third of them are willing to wage holy war on any religion that isn't Catholicism.
- The Ascending Ones may be one of the more diplomatic Conspiracies on paper, but in reality, what's there is scary. See, what you have with the Ascending Ones are a group made up of one third religious militants, with all of the holy war-zeal you'd expect of that, and one third of ruthless drug cartels who blithely supply heroin and worse drugs to generate funding for the "glorious hunt". That's a pretty scary combination as it is, before you wrap them all together with their various noxious elixirs and tonics that let them achieve impossible feats — let's not forget, the Ascending Ones are the Conspiracy with an Endowment that can turn a human being
*into a vampire*. **Permanently**. What other sorts of alchemical horrors could they be hiding in their closet? To say nothing of the implications that, like Cheiron, they've been willing to take supernatural beings apart as alchemical ingredients.
- The Lucifuge — they're people who sincerely, honestly believe that they have the blood of Demon Lords And Arch Devils in their veins. They have Black Magic enough to make their claims credible. And they're determined to send every other monster back to Hell first before they end up there themselves.
- The Hunt Club from
*Slashers* is a group of serial killers who have put a points system in place to rank their murders. Their "Stereotypes" section has the "typical" Hunt Club member talk in incredibly snide terms about several of the other groups... but when he reaches the Lucifuge, he's *terrified*. These guys freak out *professional serial killers*.
- The Knights of St. George are, to some extent, the Protestant answer to the Malleus Maleficarum... on the surface. Under that surface, they fear and revere "the Faceless Angels", a group of beings so powerful that just
*trying* to communicate with one is believed to have caused The Tunguska Event. These beings are drawn by magic, and the Knights hunt and slay magic-users in order to keep their gods sleeping. They have a way to draw your deepest sins and worst elements to the surface and torture you with them. The worst part of all this? Other books have hinted at just what those Faceless Angels actually are. Without even knowing it, the Knights of St. George worship the Abyss, and everything they do makes it just a little stronger...
-
*Mortal Remains* gives us the Faithful of Shulpae. Let's not beat around the bush here; they're a shameless Cult straight from a Cosmic Horror Story universe, and their Endowment is Cannibalism Superpower. On the plus side, they only restrict their sacred palate to monsters...because they believe the monsters (especially Arisen) are gods in the flesh, and by partaking of the Feast, they gain a special kinship with the divine in general. They're even somewhat offended by the Malleus Maleficarum's understandable squeamishness-in-the-key-of-purging (since they don't see the difference between the Eucharist and the Feast, it's just that the latter is a bit more literal), and are honestly confused as to why the Lucifuge are ashamed of their heritage (since they were *born* with kinship to the divine).
- Les Mysteres, from
*Spirit Slayers*, are a loose confederation of religious cults that have taken to worshiping the very real animistic spirits that dwell in the Shadow (though they may see them, depending on their own denomination, as Christian saints, aliens, whatever). Because of this, though, they have willingly blinded themselves to the fact that the spirits are *monsters* who think absolutely nothing like humans do and so exist only to promote themselves. As a result, when Les Mysteres gets a foothold in an area, chaos ensues as they do various things to feed the "holy spirits" — which can include things like committing arson and murder — and unwittingly fostering the environments that let spirits slip through into the real world to possess humans. So, the presence of a Mysteres cell means you risk ending up being overwhelmed by some alien abomination from another plane and having your body stolen — or having your soul sucked out so it can take you over entirely, or either fate happening to your family and friends. But wait, it gets worse! Les Mysteres takes a very "the spirits are good, so they have a reason for doing everything" approach to their faith, which means they tend to blame the victim. So if a spirit ruins your life, Les Mysteres don't really care if you *survive* their efforts to get rid of the spirits. Assuming they can even be bothered to make an effort.
- In fact, they're so blinded to the true evil of the spirits they worship that they've actually managed to get "who's the good guy and who's the bad guy" totally
**backwards** when it comes to Uratha. Meaning they often help and work alongside with (until they end up being useless, and get eaten) the *Pure*.
- The Hototogisu, from
*Dark Eras.* An Ancient Conspiracy of Con Men and Merchant Princes founded during the Sengoku Period as what was essentially a Mega-Corp with one goal in mind; to *outcompete* monsters in economic matters. They don't care about justice, or humanity, just the fact that as long as monsters sniff around their back pockets, it cuts into their profits. "Okay," you may say. "They're amoral, greedy jerks who want a bigger pocketbook, so long as they keep their attentions on monsters, what's the deal? They don't hurt me." Oh, but you don't know how they *deal* with their supernatural rivals, do you? Not by killing them, not by driving them out, but by *literally stealing their powers*. Simply with a well-placed bit of Blackmail, a cuckoo can gain *any* of the powers on this list without losing a scrap of their humanity, giving them all the power that stopped them from total economic domination with none of the weaknesses. And then *force the monsters to work for them to get their powers back*. Oh yeah, and the guy who founded them, Inoue, bought immortality of some poor schmuck a while back, and he still lives in Tokyo, with a pack of monsters reliant on him to do anything with the economy. You know what type of creature that's most in thrall to him? **Vampires.** Read their entry again, about their sheer powers, and realize that a normal man not only *matched* them in ruthlessness and cunning, but now **owns them.**
- The potential for hunters to go Jumping Off the Slippery Slope is a subtle one, but still very real. Especially when one remembers that, when hunters were first mentioned in the
*Antagonists* core splat, one of their viable tactics is to track down and interrogate a monster's still-mortal friends or family. Up to and including torturing or murdering them, which some hunters will deliberately do for nothing less than the psychological advantage this will give them against their quarry.
- As scary as the above is, imagine actually being part of a cell that
*did* such a thing, having either to deal with the guilt of being party to such an act... or being so far gone that you don't *care* about what you did.
- If that's not scary enough, think on this. Some monsters are actually
*very* protective of their mortal kith and kin, and likely to go on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge in retaliation for what you did. Some of the more likely candidates for this (as in, nearly assured to do so), are werewolves, Prometheans, and, oh yes, **demons**. Read up above on what the various children of the night are capable of. Now remember that this one has a very personal grudge against you and almost certainly has friends and favors it's willing to call in to get back at you. Enjoy your war, asshole.
- Then there are the Beasts, who see most of the other supernaturals as extended family. Mess with a Beast's family, biological or adopted, and prepare to face a world of nightmares.
- Perhaps the scariest thing about
*Hunter* is the fact that, no, just because you're human does **not** mean you're the good guy. Many hunters are no better than the monsters they fight — Ashwood Abbey are serial killers/rapists/torturers who just happen to think monsters are better prey than humans, the Promethean Brotherhood are wannabe witches who ritually murder anyone with magical powers to steal those powers for themselves, and that's just scratching the surface. Even if you start out with noble intentions, Jumping Off the Slippery Slope is very much a real thing for you.
- Four World of Darkness lines have Night Horrors books, bestiaries of possible NPCs and creatures for a chronicle. Why doesn't Hunter have one? After reading all this, why would it need one?
- Everything about Slashers. Basically, think about every Slasher Movie villain you have ever seen: the Hillbilly inbred cannibal freaks and Mutants, the Malevolent Masked Man who just won't die, the Evil Genius who kills you using elaborate deadly traps, the boogeyman with mystical powers who shows up when you repeat the right words three times, the seemingly friendly and nice guy who turns out to be a vicious serial killer. Well, they all exist in this setting
*in addition* to all the supernatural critters. And unlike them, they are all humans; even the ones who *are* supernatural beings became that way not because they were turned through some form of Viral Transformation or something similar, but because they became monstrous enough to actually go through the transformation. Oh, and if you really insist on joining the hunt, you have a very high chance of becoming one of them as a result of constantly killing people.
- According to Player's Guide to the Contagion Chronicle, Slashers
*don't have souls.* For the record, *every* gameline has souls, or at least soul equivalents - Prometheans have something that might become a proper human soul, Sin-Eaters and Beasts have their Geists and Horrors acting as a replacement, and the Unchained have their Primium. Even Deviants have souls, just broken ones - which means in a sense, Slashers are even **more** inhuman than any of these.
- Think about what it means for hunters if the storyteller decides that fan games exist in the chronicle as well. Not only are you contending with the "usual" threats that come with being a hunter, suddenly you're up against threats that
*no one* has ever even talked about. You may have staked vampires, filled werewolves with silver, turned witches into corpses, but suddenly, what happens to your cell? Your people are being turned into dust by some lunatic with gear out of a cheap 1950s-style sci-fi flick. Your friends are being attacked by fish-men that are driving you insane and making you incapable of doing anything. A literal dragon is burning your group to ashes, and looks like it's saving you for the meal. Either a legion of monsters from the shadow of the world or a would-be superhero who cares not for this "collateral damage" thing is after you, either because you exist or because of "the greater good." Just because you're ready for anything doesn't mean you're ready for when it, you know, finds you.
- If we're bringing in fan-made supplements, one would be remiss to not mention the Immortals supplement for Highlanders. Sure, compared to the other factions and splats they normally keep to themselves due to their single-minded focus on the Prize or wanting to fit in. But in the event a Hunter gets on their bad-side, or worse attracts the attention of one of the more immoral of their kind? They are faced with a truly implacable warrior potentially centuries old with combat experience to boot. Mortal weaponry does nothing in the long term, explosions mean little and even drowning or setting them on fire is only a temporary stop-gap. Ageing does not stop them, as imprisoning will just delay the inevitable. And in the event one DOES take off their head? The Hunter, and the surrounding area, are not going to survive.
- On a flipside, Hunters can be a source of terror for the other forces of the Chronicles of Darkness. Hunters don't follow the same rules, and are willing to fight where other mortals flee. The fact that there are hunters at all terrifies a lot of monsters. It means that someone fucked up,
*and the mortals know.*
- Since we're adding fan works here's some new slasher undertakings for your viewing pleasure:
- Harpies are social butterflies who have ways to make people do the dirty work for them, eventually some make it to the top of the social foodchain and become Alphas who want to make sure they stay on top no matter who gets hurt.
- Sentinels just want to be your bestest friends forever by any means necessary, until they become Wardens, who literally don't care about anyone else.
- Strangers feel like they're missing something and kill people to find what they're looking for, some of them find it and become Transcendents and decide to celebrate being complete the only way they know how.
- Predators fancy themselves as hunters Hunting the Most Dangerous Game, some of them get so caught up in it that they become Beasts, feral savages that kill humans for sport.
- Splinters don't want to kill you, it's just that they NEED to, sometimes that need grows until they become The Split who act as if they had become different people entirely.
- Chameleons are the perfect social predators, so generic to other people that they're barely remembered after a murder. You literally might not even see them even if you're alone with them. Coincidentally, this is why they murder, since they think the world has forgotten them. Boogeymen take it to another level, literally: They're able to phase in and out of Twilight and can appear anywhere. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/HunterTheVigil |
Human Target / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
- In "Victoria" when the princess' Protection Command detail turn on her due to her desire to marry someone outside of noble origin.
- In "Communication Breakdown" Chance and Ilsa pinned down in a cabin with several spiders. Even Chance is freaking out at this point. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/HumanTarget |
Hulk / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
The film's surrealistic style results in plenty of nightmarish imagery: Bruce violently playing with a dinosaur toy as a toddler; Betty dreaming of herself as a child witnessing a gamma radiation explosion, among others.
Danny Elfman's overall score is chilling and psychologically intense, unlike his other works.
The Hulk is pretty scary in this film; his roars and growls practically sound demonic.
There's also Hulk and Bruce's relationship. The page image comes from a scene that genuinely sells how much the Hulk hates his alter ego. It starts slow and eerie, only to show Bruce's tiny hand wiping off the steam from the mirror and the Hulk's comparatively giant finger on the other sideand then he grabs and attacks Banner. The earlier script and Peter David's novelization take it further. The Hulk smashes Bruce's face into the mirror after grabbing his neck. While staring at his face, a bloodied but unyielding Bruce slowly and gently unfurls the Hulk's fingers from his neck. After seemingly calming down, the Hulk turns on a dime. He forms a fist, swiftly punches Bruce in the face, and breaks his neck, killing him.
Betty and the Hulk's first meeting, at least the first half. Betty is sketching away in her cabinoblivious of the danger coming for heruntil she hears a rustling as if something huge just crashed into the woods. It's eerily quiet as Betty goes outside with a flashlight, looking for the noise's source. She walks toward some trees where the Hulk is watching her from the shadowsobservant viewers can notice part of the Hulk's body when the beam from Betty's flashlight passes over him. Upon finding him, Betty becomes petrified with fear and unable to move; she can only stand and stare at the Hulk in shock, with her flashlight aimed at his partly-concealed face and glowing green eyes looking at her. It's not until Betty's light shuts off that the Hulk steps out toward her and Betty moves to retreat from him slightly before he fully reveals himself to her. The novel version arguably builds the tension leading to Betty and Hulk meeting better. Betty awakes from a deep sleep with a start, realizing all the animal sounds in the woods suddenly disappeared before hearing the rustling noise. The local wildlife sounds return later while Betty takes Bruce into the cabin after the dog fight.
The Hulk-dogs and their attack on Betty qualify with their ferocity and twisted, mutated state combo. The sequence's novelization and original script versions feature more gore, mainly how the Hulk kills the dogs. He quickly kills the pitbullSammyby leaping to a great height and landing on his back, crushing and driving Sammy's body into the ground. The Hulk tries the same method again, but the two remaining dogs wise up and barely dodge him. Then the poodleLilylatches onto the Hulk's ankle, and the mastiffSmokeygets his throat. Betty sees mangled flesh and oozing blood at the base of Hulk's neck after he gets the dogs off. The Hulk uses an uprooted redwood tree like a bat and smashes Lily's face flat against Betty's windshield. Then she performs a final lunge at Betty, bursting through the windshield as she pulls the seat release; Betty falls back flat as Lily crunches her jaws just above Betty before expiring. The Hulk partially smashes Lily through the windshield in the script instead of against it. While Betty tries to retreat from Lily, the poodle springs back to life and partly closes its jaws around Betty, lightly injuring her before dying and melting away. In the script, the Hulk finally kills Smokey by crushing Smokey's head with one hand; in the book, he grabs the dog around its throat and squeezes the life out of it in a "pulpy bursting of flesh and bone." In the book, after the Hulk turns back into Bruce and opens Betty's car door, she partially staggers out before noticing blood on Bruce and realizing it's hers, from cuts she got from the broken windshield and Lily's claws during her final attack.
The Hulk riding a fighter jet into the atmosphere until he starts freezing, along with the pilot's scream, is highly unsettling. While the idea of the scene on its own doesn't sound so bad, it very much is the way the movie executes it.
When David first gets his absorbing abilities and becomes the Absorbing Man is rather creepy.
People can see David biting into the electrical cord and turning himself into electricity as either this or Narm, especially the close-up of Lightning!Absorbing Man's face.
Water!Absorbing Man is probably the creepiest of all; after the Hulk throws Rock!Absorbing Man into the lake, the Hulk suddenly sees a reflection of David and slaps it, and a humanoid tidal wave Jump Scares out and pulls the Hulk underwater. He subjects the Hulk to a Mind Screw sequence that leads to the Hulk and Bruce collectively deciding to give it more energy and Absorbing Man's resulting Power Incontinence makes him become what looks like a watery version of the Eldritch Abomination page's image.
David: (Inside Bruce's mind) Sleep now, Bruce, and forget forever. Struggle no more, and give me all of your power.
The graphic exploding frog scene is disturbing; it could also count as Squick.
The novelization reveals the death of Lawrence Berkeley's original elderly janitor, Benny Goodman. David goes to Benny's house late one night with his dogs and tells him they're hungry. Benny says he has no dog food, followed by David saying they'll "improvise." Then he snaps his fingers, and the dogs are on poor Benny in a heartbeat, forcing him to the floor with the pitbull clamping on Benny's throat before he can scream. David casually jokes about loving Benny's 'orchestra' and closes the door behind him.
Talbot's death in the novelization. With the Hulk trapped in the sticky foam, Talbot takes a handheld laser drill, stabs it into the Hulk's neck, and tears off some large chunks. After the Hulk escapes the foam, Talbot uses a rifle to shoot armor-piercing bullets at himbut they rebound off the Hulk's skin, with some riddling Talbot in a hail of bullets. Clutching his chest, Talbot feels something soft come out and tries shoving it back in before dying. Compared to the film version, it's another level of Hoist by His Own Petard and a more gruesome comeuppance for a thoroughly-evil character. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Hulk |
Hyperion Cantos / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
- Two words: The Shrike.
- The little Bikura people (who'd been stunted by the prototype cruciforms) were quite frightening, especially before you knew what was going on.
- What they did to Father Duré was pretty bad, though. Duré sharpened his arrestor rods and crucified himself, somehow missing the important blood vessels on his left arm. Normally, that should kill him, but he impaled himself on a Tesla Tree on the planet Hyperion. These trees release electricity, and since he impaled his arms and feet using metal rods with the Cruciform, they kept bringing him back to life. His clothing, skin, flesh were long-destroyed after seven years on the tree, but the electricity and the parasitic Cruciform kept him alive, constantly in excruciating pain. When his friend saw him and picked up his bestos bag and dropped the cruciform accidentally, it killed Father Duré. Just before dying, Duré smiled. This caused Hoyt to become so mentally and emotionally scarred that normal painkillers stopped working. He had to use Ultramorphine. He got better, becoming the pope for 200+ years.
- Lenar doesn't need stronger painkillers because he's emotionally scarred - it's because he takes on Duré's cruciform and gets it put on his back. Father Duré is still alive inside it - and when Lenar Hoyt dies, he takes over. That's right - every time the pope dies, there is a fifty-fifty chance of him being resurrected as his old mentor, who is immediately killed again by the Pope's Swiss Guard to rise as the pope once again. Yeah, Father Duré has it hard.
- Father Duré enters the Hyperion labyrinth twice, and both apply. In the first, he learns the secret of the Bikura and received the Cruciform that remakes his body. The second time, he finds it filled with millions of bodies, stacked so thick that they're decomposing at an arrested rate.
- Aenea's death scene. Go read
*The Rise of Endymion*. Among other things, her fingernails are plucked out and one of her finger is bitten off by a clone of Nemes. She's half-blind, broken and nearly dead. She almost has her eyelids and nose chewed off by Nemes, and almost had her eyelids and lips sewn shut. Her feet are burned by a flame through a grate on the floor. She dies in the end, consumed literally by the fire. And the worst thing is anybody on a planet with someone who got communion from Aenea witnessed and felt what she went through. The same thing that almost drove our narrator insane.
- The Archangel ships.
- The Technocore. Try to trick hegemony leaders into making fugitives partake of the cruciform by luring them into the labyrinths under Hyperion. All told with a pleasant smile on their holographic faces. Creepy. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/HyperionCantos |
Hunter (UnwelcomeStorm) / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
Basically everything about Taylor that isn't her being sad, and even then there's some overlap. Over the course of the story, she's slowly grown more and more obsessed with killing "Beasts". She starts off slow, and then begins tearing her way through Yharnam like a fucking meat grinder. At the end of Sophia (8), Velocity puts it best. **Velocity:** First she was a brute. Then a mover. Then a bio-tinker. A shaker. **Sophia:** And now? **Velocity:** I have no goddamned idea.
- One of the very first things Taylor does is use the Saw Cleaver to cut off a man's arm at the elbow so she can drink
*the blood from the arm.*
- One of the recurring problems that people have while trying to fight Taylor is that she absolutely
*won't die*. You can maim, burn, disembowel, do whatever you want. It won't matter. Taylor will come back, and you have no say in the matter. If she wants something dead, it will die. Just a matter of time.
- People who start learning more and more about Taylor start to find that she smells like
*moonlight*, which is not an actual smell at all and is actually really concerning. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/HunterUnwelcomeStorm |
Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
Taking place 100 years before
*The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild*, when the Great Calamity devastated Hyrule into the post-apocalyptical world that Link would come to explore, it is inevitable that you would experience the horrors in Hyrule's past.
## Warning: Spoilers Off applies to this page. Proceed at your own risk.
- The opening cutscene showcases the Great Calamity as it happened in
*Breath of the Wild*, with Guardian Stalkers destroying Castle Town and Calamity Ganon hovering over Hyrule Castle under the red sky. It truly sets the tone of the bleak outcome that awaits Hyrule should the Terrako's mission fail.
- Harbinger Ganon is Terrako's alternative past self possessed by future Calamity Ganon's malice. Coated in darkness with a glowing red eye, this Evil Counterpart is responsible for making Hyrule a much more dangerous place than it was in the original timeline and according to Astor himself, it houses Ganon's consciousness, making it clear that Calamity Ganon is far from the mindless Generic Doomsday Villain as he was depicted in
*Breath of the Wild*.
- The discovery of the date of the Great Calamity from memory banks of Terrako. Upon hearing that the Calamity will happen on Zelda's birthday, you can see King Rhoam's face being filled with dread and resignation. Despite their best attempts to better prepare for Ganon's return, they still cannot unlock Zelda's sealing power in time and are literally a day away from the apocalypse. In some ways, it's even worse than the original timeline, where Ganon struck without warning, because now Zelda has to bear a burden far greater than anything her father had imposed on her before. The world is about to end within 24 hours, and there's nothing she can do about it.
- In the Chapter 5 mission "Calamity Strikes", Calamity Ganon makes his move but not when Zelda is away at the Spring of Wisdom like in the original timeline. He instead strikes early, when Link, Zelda and Impa are about to leave Hyrule Castle for Mount Lanayru, trapping them in the castle while the Guardians get possessed by his Malice. It serves to highlight the inherent danger of changing the future. If Hyrule is trying to avert disaster by making different choices, Calamity Ganon simply changes his plans to still catch them off guard. In short, you mess with time, it tends to mess back.
- While Chapter 6 mission "Relentless as a Waterfall" gives a triumph Heroic Second Wind for Hyrule's forces, the next mission "Each Step Like Thunder" gives a grim reminder that despite the arrival of the New Champions, it is
*barely* enough to make a difference in the long run. Calamity Ganon's attack on Fort Hateno is a relentless swarm of Guardians of all kind along with every other monsters you have previously fought (including the Lynels), and these foes will stop at nothing to bring down the fort (which will give you a Game Over). Even when Zelda unlocks her sealing powers, the battle remains a grueling struggle of defense and offense, with Elemental Guardians and a White-Maned Lynel working together being the centerpiece of terror. By the end of mission, you'll feel truly glad that the battle is over and don't have to deal with more Guardians... for the moment.
- The Prophet of Doom himself, Astor, is a terrifying human representation for Calamity Ganon.
- Unlike Master Kohga and his Yiga Clan, Astor is a genuine Knight of Cerebus with no redeeming qualities or Freudian Excuse. He's simply a madman bent bringing forth the Great Calamity for no reason other than making the world fall to its knees. He's also under the delusion that he can control Calamity Ganon and treats his allies as disposable tools, which makes him all the more monstrous since he's doing this on his own accord.
- When Astor revives the defeated Blight Ganons, he forcibly extracts the souls of the Yiga Footsoldiers right before Master Kohga and Sooga's eyes. It is here he shows Calamity Ganon's true colors towards the Yiga Clan and attempts to kill Kohga for his soul with the Hollows. While Kohga is shown to have escaped, Sooga is nowhere to be seen, implying he perished defending his master to the very end.
- His ultimate fate and death. After losing to the heroes one too many times, Astor breaks down ranting and orders Calamity Ganon to devour them. But he gets no response from Harbinger Ganon. He then notices that his arm is being covered by Malice. His words soon turn into choking sounds of pain as the Malice slowly consumes him alive. He tries to look at the Harbinger, which only gives what can only be described as a blank, unfeeling Death Glare as the Malice covers Astor's face completely, and he is absorbed into Harbinger Ganon, who proceeds to transform into Calamity Ganon's ultimate form.
- Each language's interpretation of this scene is equally terrifying for different reasons.
- In Japanese, he gives out a loud, terrified scream that sounds like a mix of panic and agony.
- In English, he does not scream. Instead, he gasps a few times before the malice appears to start forming in his throat, slowly choking him to death. Worse? Turn the music and sound effects off leaving only the voice, and you can hear what appears to be a
*death rattle.*
- In French, his scream follows the Japanese version more closely, but it appears to... power down and stop towards the end, like a malfunctioning robot.
- The Italian version, unlike the others, never weakens or gets choked out. He just... stops.
- The German version sounds like the voice actor got doused with gasoline and set on fire to record the screaming.
- On a similar note, the European Spanish version features panicked wailing that sounds like a demonic clown.
- Finally, the Latin Spanish version follows both the English version and the Japanese version, with half-screaming, half-choking.
- The
*Guardian of Remembrance* DLC briefly shows Astor leading a small cult in the middle of the woods, comprised of people who long to see a glimpse of the destructive future to come. But as the cultists cheer, Harbinger Ganon's Malice slowly infects and kills them one by one, with the penultimate cultist desperately trying to snap Astor out of the ritual. The seer simply stands by and continues worshiping as the Harbinger finally kills the last one, then strolls off while praising Ganon's power and envisioning the destruction that Hyrule will come to. Worse, one of the cultists is shown to briefly be Not Quite Dead, as we get a POV shot of him feebly reaching out for the departing Astor before succumbing.
- The DLC mission "Conquering Hyrule" is a What If? (or at the very least, the idea of), what if Calamity Ganon and his minions were successful in winning the war? The end result is
*devastating*. You take down the champions one by one as Calamity Ganon and Master Kohga, culminating with a battle against Zelda and Terrako trying in vain to protect her.
- "The Yiga Clan's Retreat" shows us exactly what happened when Astor betrayed the Yiga Clan. The entire level is a mad dash as Kohga and Sooga desperately flee a seemingly endless army of Astor's minions, with the Blight Ganons at the head. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/HyruleWarriorsAgeOfCalamity |
Human Trafficking / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
As one of Lifetime's darkest shows, it does
*not* shy away from the gritty, realistic world of sexual slavery.
- Sergei Karpovich. Aside from being
*very much* a Truth in Television, the man has no redeeming qualities whatsoever and has not a shred of conscience or remorse for any of the atrocities that he and his people commit. For example, the fact that he can have someone murdered halfway across the world with *one phone call* displays how ridiculously powerful he is. Also something of note: if it weren't for his two fatal flaws, greed and being so paranoid about the loyalty of his employees, you'd have to wonder how long it would have been before he was ever caught.
- Helena's captivity began because she fell for a man she thought was a nice guy but was really one of the traffickers. When he dropped her off at the house, she first encounters a bunch of strange, burly men and some young women crouched on the floor crying. When she tries to make a run for it, she is held by one of the men as she cries desperately for Frédéric, who walks away (and never receives any punishment as far as we see) and she is then brutalized and then raped.
- Her death. As she was able to secure the safety of her Aunt and daughter and end up herself in a safe house, things looked promising for her, but then she begins to see something outside from the balcony and begin to excitedly tell Kate, who was in another room and begged her not to go outside, she begins screaming "It's the same thing!" and is suddenly shot in the head. The last image of the first part is Kate cradling her body and sobbing.
- Just about everything that happens to Nadia. Being duped into thinking that she will become an internationally famous model, she unwittingly is thrown in the world of sexual slavery. At one point, she tries to run and would have escaped if not for Sergei's Dragon tackling her. Other points of torture include watching one of his henchmen brutally murdered in front of her, being left heartbroken by news of Helena's murder to the point she almost commits suicide and being gang-raped on camera.
- The life and eventual fate of Annie's Vietnamese friend. While the former was kidnapped and forced into slavery, the latter was
*sold* by her father into the world. A short while later, she gets really sick with an infection, which alarms Annie as she begs Tommy to get her help, to which he and his partner take her outside, summarize that she is of no more use to them since she's sick and contagious, and kill her while a horrified Annie watches helplessly from a window.
- Kate's own Rape as Backstory is a combination of this and Tear Jerker. After rescuing Helena, she confides in her her own past how she came from a big Russian family and how they all had a family reunion every year and at one of the gatherings when she was twelve, her favorite Uncle forced himself on her. At one point, she admitted that she not only was crying out for her father to save her which he never did but also told her Uncle that he was hurting her, to which he replied, "Good. I
*want* to hurt you." She then told her father what happened, only for him not to believe her and to call her a "dirty girl", and the bastard did it again the following year.
- The fact that Paranoia Fuel is in full effect here. You can never be sure of whom or what you can trust; if an online dating service will find you your soulmate or lead to a vicious trap, if that modeling agency is a legitimate business, if the "nice guy" who you begin to have feelings for has ulterior motives, how safe are you vacationing in a foreign country with your parents, etc.
- The scene when Sergei is being interrogated by Meehan alone and as he is about to leave, he goes in the opposite direction (against the agent's protests) where he fixes himself in the two-way mirror and glares down in the direction where Kate is sitting on the other side and smirks at her as she has a worried look on her face. Did he know she was there? This scene was also included in the trailers for the mini-series.
- The poor girl in the beginning of the first part who commis suicide by jumping out of a window to escape from her captivity. She was no older than fifteen. This also doubles as a Tear Jerker.
- Tommy's death. One moment he is talking on the phone carrying on business and the next he is killed via a Boom, Headshot! seemingly out of nowhere with no warning. Granted, he was a real bastard that had it coming, but the sudden nature of his death is haunting.
- At one point in the second half, Kate investigates a lead Helena gave her before her death in Washington DC and a young girl and an older man stroll by while she is sitting in her car. A second later, the girl suddenly reappears in a Jump Scare by putting both hands on her window in a cry for help before the man brutally whisks her away and out of sight before she can even react. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/HumanTrafficking |
Hunger Games Simulation / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
**As this is a Moment page, there will be unmarked spoilers for each tribute's respective source materials.**
- Any instance where a team "tribute" all gang up on one individual. As if one tribute killing them isn't enough. Just imagine a whole gang of villains or
*entire populations* tearing away at you!
- The reverse of the above also counts as this, where
*one* tribute kills an *absurdly large group tribute* in *just one hit*, making them genocidal at best and an Omnicidal Maniac at worst.
- An in-universe example: in Season 8, Dawn Bellwether, Haruhi Suzumiya, Madoka Kaname, and Cloud Strife have a slumber party one night, only for the girls to kick Cloud out and invite Nightmare Fredbear on the next. Sweet dreams, girls!
- In Season 74, Barry Ill, a patient who constantly gets tortured by sadistic doctors, slowly gets disemboweled by Prozac Bear. While Cute and Psycho tributes are to be expected in the Games, Prozac is a brightly colored parody of a Care Bear, like most of the doctors at Sparklecare (though they're different kinds of cutesy animals instead).
- In Season 75, Maou, in a primal craze,
*eats Kirby.*
- In Season 81, Arnold, a cowardly schoolboy, undergoes Sanity Slippage and slaughters multiple tributes with explosives and meat hooks.
- In Season 85, Terry Bogard slaughters around 11 children, all belonging to the Loud Family. And then there's his own death: he gets slaughtered in a primal craze by Khan, who proceeds to make a meal out of him.
- Specific examples of group tributes ganging up on an individual:
- The Akatsuki all bash Khan's brains out with maces in Season 85. As if one person doing it was bad enough - and it doesn't help that the Akatsuki itself is made up entirely of killer ninjas.
- Before that, the Cleveland Cavaliers
note : which had a roster of 15 players and 10 members of the coaching staff at the time of nomination won *and* made the most kills in Season 84 by killing Matt the Radar Technician on the first day, then pushing Homer Simpson into a pitcher plant when hostile plantlife grew rapidly, and *then* murdering three more tributes after the arena event *in almost quick succession*, and finally *back stabbing the Chicago Cubs* note : which had a roster of 45 players and 12 members of the coaching staff at the time of nomination with tridents.
- Another noteworthy instance happened during Season 87's Bloodbath, where the aforementioned Cavaliers all sliced up John Cena with swords.
- Later on, in Season 88, the Cubs all slowly crushed Bob the Builder's skull.
- In a gag save for Season 195, all seven members of BTS dismember Smiley 100 P because they mistook her for President Snow.
- Specific examples of one tribute killing an absurdly large group tribute:
- Tiny Tina, who was already a few sandwiches short of a picnic in her home series, was the first tribute to cement herself as genocidal, when she skewered
, Sephiroth and Gordon Ramsay with an energy spear in Season 96. **all of humanity**
- Another noteworthy instance of this was the Arena Forcefield from Season 203, after it killed
with an **all previous tributes** **omniverse-sized axe.**
- Topping
*that* is an event in Season 231, where Eijirou Kirishima and Katsuki Bakugou because they **destroyed everything that has ever existed, exists and will exist...** And they **offended them with a yo mama joke!** *never showed any remorse for this.* Fridge Horror sets in when you realize that they killed and destroyed everyone and everything that are important to them without regret. All of their treasured belongings, their families, their friends... they destroyed it all. Yes, *they even killed All Might.*
- And all of that culminated in the Grand Finale, where Scipion 3, after losing his hearing from fighting Peacekeepers, slowly lost his sanity and
and fed them to Jyushimatsu Matsuno and Kanaya Maryam! **cooked the souls of all the previous tributes**
- In Season 165, Theodore Roosevelt skins Garuda's skin and wears it as a jacket. Let's repeat,
**the 26th President of the United States SKINS a Primal and wears her flesh as a jacket.**
- In Season 177, Emily Grey kills herself in disgust after catching the Faceless Old Woman and the Tormentor having sex. Dear lord, that's an unpleasant image.
- Specific examples of group tributes ganging up on an individual:
- In Season 19, Detroit
*and all its citizens* ate a piece of flesh from Atsuko Kagari. Depending on how you look at it, either they tore off one piece and shared it with each other, or they all ripped out one piece *each*. Either way, Akko miraculously survived this ordeal... until she got fed to a Man-Eating Plant by Cozy Glow, a canonically Cute and Psycho filly.
- During the Bloodbath of Season 31, Deadpool managed to find Metro Detroit (somehow) hiding in the cornucopia, only to be overpowered and slain by the city
*and* its inhabitants.
- Season 41 had Kairi hiding in Michigan to get away from the unreformed Changelings. She got killed by
*all the citizens living in it *and * the state itself*, who were all revealed to be Changelings in disguise! If that's not enough, they were all possessed by the last tribute they killed before this happened (somehow, since they didn't kill anyone up until that point). It ultimately ended with them Zerg Rushing Goku Black and pummeling him to death.
- Similarly to the "Akko Incident" above, a pre-Season 58 gag save sees
*Australia and its entire population* eating a piece of flesh from Jin's body. This example is considerably more terrifying, however, due to the large increase in population for the massive group tribute, the possibility of many of these Australians being *sasaengs* note : hardcore K-Pop stans who go to extreme lengths to get close with their favourite idols and Jin later *losing an eye and still somehow surviving.*
- There's an event where a tribute summons
*all the tributes registered in the HGS Database* to kill another, with Ai Mizuno being the first victim in Season 36. Since the Database is constantly updating itself, the number of summoned tributes ganging up on the poor victim increases with every new version. And *that's* not even taking group tributes into account.
- Season 59 features the entire population of Netflixworld (which numbers in
**more than one billion people**) ripping Don't You Ever Stop Orga's spine off in the Bloodbath, before immediately ripping Tina Russo's jaw in Day One. After they got shrunk by Michael Corleone, they were then eaten a few days later in The Feast by Hardcase.
- Specific examples of one tribute killing an absurdly large group tribute:
- All instances of a tribute killing Gamechanger's group tribute(s):
- Captain Jack Sparrow first did it in Season 19 when he killed the city of Detroit and all its citizens.
- The CN Tower followed next when it killed Wayne County, MI, alongside its citizens in Season 24.
- Waxmancer Sturmi became the third to accomplish this by killing Southeast Michigan and everyone in it during Season 33.
- Nightmare then became the fourth to achieve it when he killed the Lower Peninsula of Michigan, alongside everyone living in it during Season 38.
- While Donald Sutherland did it alongside Pepsiman and Dale, as well as killing three tributes instead of one, he still deserves to be mentioned, as he technically became the most murderous out of the three by killing the United States and its entire population alongside Hat Kid and Pesci Trish during Season 56.
- Tari became the next tribute to kill an absurdly large group tribute of Gamechanger's, when she killed the land and entire population of North America in the Bloodbath on her own during Season 57.
- Creator God Gaia then killed the nation and entire population of Australia alongside Vanya Shah, also during the Bloodbath in Season 58.
- Season 71 saw Kylo Ren bombard the entire population of Africa along with Darth Malgus and Seo Changbin.
- Ribombee was the first to kill a non-Gamechanger absurdly large group tribute, by killing the entire Resistance during Season 30.
- Lion-O then killed all celestial bodies in the Solar System during Season 44.
- DIO currently tops the technical most kills in Reboot, when he destroyed the
**entire Multiverse** in Season 45, taking after Winter Amethyst in the OG.
- The entire arc of Greg Universe and Rose Quartz in Season 22, where they both underwent Adaptational Villainy by being a murderous couple. It's no wonder that their son Steven was just as murderous as them in the pilot.
- The season began with Rose absorbing the souls of Garfield, Matt, Commander Thorn, Trevor (who's a
*demon*), and a nightgown in order to transform herself into an eldritch horror. She even drank a strange drink that made her grow bigger, effectively making her even more of a giant woman. While she was De-Powered with Chill Out by Dag, she still managed to go against her ideals with her crimes.
- Meanwhile, Greg, after getting high on Jotaro Caulifla by grinding them into a powder and snorting them up, asked Raiko where Rose was, wanting to confront her for cheating on him. He eventually found Rose and killed her for it, but not without going on a drug-induced rampage himself.
- In Season 52, Mikey, a sweet kid in a wheelchair, imagined that everyone, including his own father, was laughing at him.
*The very next day*, he acted on those feelings by summoning a gigantic shadow dragon, which then proceeded to devour Clay Dunestrider, *his own dad*, BTS note : who were all shrunken before this, Maou-sama, and Killmonger.
- Season 54 has the North East Central States
*and* their citizens wander into a garage with robotic copies of every single one of them, and they collectively question their reality. Then, they all get pulverized by the Bullet Hell God's orbs in his Arena Event. To quote 6k1 note : technically 6k *2*, but they're interchangeable since they're clones in *Convergence*: "do they even have enough body bags for all of *those?!*"
- In Season 60, Miko Mitama subjects Kim Taehyung, otherwise known as V, to
*all the previous (family-friendly) fatal events at once*, and this includes from the above list. V did nothing to deserve this, especially because he was mugged for his Smash Bros invitations by Esmerelda and Landia. **every entry**
- Needless to say, the Fridge Horror associated with this is tremendous, especially given just
*how many* fatal events there were at the time of that season. In fact, many tropers interpret V's fate as him being trapped in an The more you think about it, the more horrifying V's fate becomes. **infinite death loop.**
- What makes this worse is how Park Jimin - who is not only his bandmate, but also his best friend - takes all of this. He started out very much like his real-life self - a kind, selfless young man who gave Bonkers a blood transfusion using his own blood. After V's fate was sealed, he slowly lost his mind and began to work alongside Lord Voldemort. By the time he finally turned on Voldemort and was immediately killed by Navi the Fairy right after, he was an insane, psychopathic Death Eater - all because he lost his best friend to the worst fate that any tribute in the Games could ever go through.
- Remember the part where one of the rules in the Reboot outlawed cannibalism in the Troper Games? Well, turns out somehow they
*forgot* to remove the event related to it, resulting in Eredars ripping off a piece of Zorua and eating it. While this was Hand Waved as Zorua *distracting* Eredars with a piece of meat, it's still chilling.
- Valecor. First appearing as living literal nightmare fuel, he's the embodiment of all evil. He recruited various villains he came across and his goal is to make a utopia for all villains.
- The G-13 glitch virus. It is some kind of a virus that consumes every universe they get into quickly, glitching and eventually destroying them helplessly. It is stated that a lot of the universes where Timewrecker's men came from were already destroyed by the virus, and Timewrecker himself broadcasted the virus destroying the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon world to the nominators in his message, with even the legendaries being destroyed easily.
- Timewrecker himself. He's the leader of a group of space pirates and used to be a top follower of Valecor, and it shows. He apparently killed the nominators in alternate timelines and is planning to take them on all at once. Even worse is that he plans on attempting to control G-13 as a Weapon of Mass Destruction.
- He captures massive populations in Pocket Dimensions and releases them in the Arena just to mess with the nominators. Since he pulls them from Alternate Timelines, he can do this as many times as he wishes, and he also forces the nominators' Fourth Wall counterparts aka
*their writers* to fight in televised death matches.
- A diary entry reveals that he orchestrated the Great Destruction, destroying several Cosmic Keystones to obliterate EVERYTHING to weaken Xiamos and tricking Scipion into drinking nightmare fuel by disguising it as an exotic muscle drink.
- The destruction of the Universes caused by the Legion of Doom's machine. 10 Worlds are completely erased from existence. With any deities, powerhouses and other beings in it erased as well. Even worse, not even being outside the destroyed Universe will save you as Lucemon, Diny and others find out.
- Downplayed with the Neon Quarters. When most of the villains are superpowered, over-the-top entities that aren't likely to appear in real life, the Neon Quarters are a group of believable, realistic terrorists who are active in the state's politics, have a false religion in an attempt to control Panem's population and their goal is to push Panem back to a totalitarian regime. They are a realistic threat that can appear in the real world, making the group more unsettling than most villains. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/HungerGamesSimulation |
Hunters of Justice / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
Even though it's about super heroes and protectors of the helpless doesn't mean the story is free of nightmare fuel.
**Warning! In accordance with wiki policy, all spoilers will be unmarked.**
- The very beginning starts with basically a war for survival that Remnant is losing. With countless people dying and the students of beacon (including Ruby who is only 15 years) having to fight hoards of alien robots who apparently want nothing more than to kill them all. Even worse is the examples of people who have no powers, no combat training or experience caught in the middle. With the main characters having to stay behind so there's room to evacuate civilians
- Then Ruby is taken by said robots leaving her older sister distraught.
- The Queen of Fables was sealed in a book that somehow ended up in a
*public library*, where a Geist attack led to Team RWBY setting her free. Also, Geist in Metropolis public library.
- Blake ends up in "Beauty and the Beast", where Gaston, masquerading as the Beast, has
*Adam's* appearance.
- Raven telling Qrow that Brainiac is interested by his Semblance and wants to study him. Needless to say, Qrow is
*not* okay with that.
- Brainiac has significantly accelerated his 'acquisition' of cities and destruction of planets. How many more will he take before being stopped?
- It's implied by Ozpin's analysis on why no one's taken Brainiac out for his many, many crimes is that Brainiac's connection to his bottled cities means that if he's killed or the connection is otherwise forcibly severed,
*all* the cities would be destroyed, along with the *trillions*' of helpless sapient beings inside. It's the main reason that he rejects Ironwood's plan to Suicide Attack him with a fifty-kiloton nuclear bomb to the face.
- Luke Fox and company finding an exposed mass grave is bad enough, but then Violet/Halo wakes up and starts screaming, freaking everyone out.
- A number of Grimm were drawn by the events of
*SHAZAM! (2019)*, and though Billy managed to destroy them without much issue, it's clear that they were only a minor portion of what would have showed up if he hadn't defeated Sivanna and the Sins.
- Although Ruby rejects the temptations of the Sins, the fact that they spoke to her at
*all* is disturbing.
- Mr. Mind is active in Fawcett and is using his Psychic Powers to direct the Grimm in order to advance his plans, and despite his small size he nearly manages to kill Yang, Jaune, Billy and Freddy by hurtling them into an abandoned train car with his telekinesis, which he then sends on a collision course.
- Mr. Mind escapes with Sivanna by threatening a Psychic-Assisted Suicide on several police officers, and nearly does it anyway even after the heroes let him go.
- Mr. Mind and Sivanna manage to cut Fawcett off from the outside world, the former taking advantage of something happening to Luke and company that apparently involves Fear Gas.
- Luke's base is attacked by a release of the enhanced Fear Gas that can destroy gas masks... and
*then* the fear draws the Grimm in hordes.
- Mr. Mind's plan turns out to have been to free
*Black Adam* from his prison inside the Rock of Eternity to deal with Billy.
- Nora overloads her Aura from pushing Jaune out of the path of an attack by Black Adam, and if Jaune hadn't awakened his Semblance right there, she'd have been killed.
- The Grimm as of Chapter 60 have grown so numerous that they are starting to overrun entire
*countries* in the Middle East.
- The next chapter reveals that they've killed over
*ten thousand* people.
- Lex Luthor has stolen the Mother Box from Star Labs, and is trying to use it to track down what's signaling the Grimm, possibly opening the door for
*Salem* to end up on Earth.
- Adam Taurus has been running amok within Vale, brutally killing anyone he doesn't like. He is especially cruel towards Faunus' that he sees as race-traitors for working with humans. He mutilates their bodies by cutting off their Faunus parts.
- Brainiac has control or near-control of
*all* the Maidens. Luckily, he's unaware of the Relics, but if he ever found out he could easily claim them all and become nigh-unstoppable.
- During Brainiac and Ozpin's discussion in Chapter 47, he brings up that Remnant was lucky he found it before someone more dangerous did. One shudders to think of what would have happened had someone like Darkseid located the planet.
- The conversation is terrifying from Ozpin's perspective as well. Brainiac's invasion showed him that there are malevolent beings out there who make Salem, his Arch-Enemy and the greatest threat to Remnant, seem like a footnote. When Ozpin brings up Darkseid's name, Brainiac openly admits that even
*he's* not at the top of the food chain.
- Penny, despite being mostly machine herself, is not completely immune from the effects of being in the vacuum of space. Her artificial skin becomes gray and swollen, with some pieces even breaking off and revealing her mechanical parts. Even her human-like eyes have completely broken away, revealing glowing orbs in place of them.
- Just when it seems that Penny is safe with the Green Lanterns, it's revealed that Brainiac installed a malware within Penny's systems to allow him to exert direct control of her in the event she tried to escape. Meaning that Brainiac is able to completely control an aura-enhanced android with the power of the Winter Maiden. Now, Kyle and Guy are forced to try to subdue a Brainwashed and Crazy Penny without killing her while she desperately tries to resist Brainiac's virus. Brainiac, on the other hand, is not concerned with any damage Penny might receive as he will simply repair her upon her recapture.
- Hal and Qrow discover just how Brainiac creates his near-limitless army of drones. To their horror, Brainiac was flash-cloning brain-dead Coluans and harvesting their nervous systems. Their bodies are systematically taken apart and replaced with cybernetic enhancements. Any remaining parts are recycled and reused to create the next batch of clones.
- When Ozpin initially revels in defeating Brainiac at chess, he mockingly asks Brainiac what he plans to do now. Brainiac, in his seemingly cold, detached manner, calmly gives Ozpin a full damage report and that his operations have been severely set back. It is clear from Brainiac's tone that he is
*seething* at this. However, Ozpin's mirth soon gives way to fear when Brainiac reveals that he will be reevaluating his doctrine, increasing experimentation, and seeking to enhance his forces. The implication is clear: as bad as things are now for his captives, things are about to get *much worse*.
- The Fall of Atlas is told entirely from a civilian point of view (specifically Willow's). These aren't brave soldiers fighting valiantly against an overwhelming enemy, but terrified people trying desperately to survive as explosions and debris are kicked up all around them. They remain trapped in the Schnee family bunker for an entire day before finally emerging to see their city in utter ruins.
- When Brainiac examines Willow, he notices that she is highly intoxicated, and thus, he administers a "Sobriety Solution" to counteract the alcohol in her system. It works and Willow can feel her head start to clear; however, this brings her very little comfort because it only reminds her that what she's going through is
*all too real.*
- It's finally happening. Salem is coming to Earth, thanks in part to Lex Luthor. What's even worse is that the League is under the impression that she's dead, which could give her time to familiarize herself with Earth, strengthen the Grimm already there and make new plans for the planet all completely unhindered by the only people who can stop her.
- Kilowogg mentions that the losses suffered during the assault on Brainiac's ship has left the Green Lanterns weakened as it will take some time to find and train new recruits. The lessened presence of the Green Lantern Corp will undoubtedly lead to increased intergalactic crime and the Sinestro Corp will likely try to take advantage of the power vacuum to expand their influence in the galaxy. To make things worse, it's possible that the other Lantern Corps could be dragged into the impeding conflict, potentially sparking a full-scale Lantern War. The implications of that are disturbing...
- In order to fully rid Penny of Brainiac's virus without losing Penny's soul in the process, Cyborg must directly interface his systems with hers. While he is certain of his plans success, it is also not without considerable risks. Should he fail, he might not only end up losing Penny but he might also end up exposing his own systems to the virus. One shudders to think what sort of damage a Brainiac-possessed Cyborg would be capable of.
- To prove her immortality to Lex, Salem lets Deathstroke attack her, including riddling her with bullets and cutting off her head. Even if you know she'll regenerate, it's rather disturbing.
- The Spectre decides to introduce himself to Salem by
*ripping her heart from her chest and crushing it right in front of her*. It doesn't kill her, but for the first time in millennia she actually felt pain and fear from this encounter. The Spectre then promises that while he may not kill her in the way she deserves, she just got a taste of what awaits her in the afterlife. Salem is left visibly rattled by the encounter.
- Unbeknownst to Ozpin, Ironwood has revived his plan to use the Dust Nuke. He plans to use it to force Brainiac to place the captive Remnantian cities on a habitable world and then detonate the nuke once they are free, killing Brainiac and all of the other captives in the process. The plan hinges on the idea that Brainiac must believe that Ironwood is willing to sacrifice everyone. The scary part is, Ironwood is perfectly willing to sacrifice trillions of innocent lives in order to save what is left of Remnant even though he is perfectly aware that doing so is effectively crossing the Moral Event Horizon. He is willing to go so far because he sees that the other cities are not his people and thus not his responsibility and that killing them is far more merciful than allowing them to remain as Brainiac's guinea pigs.
- Apparently RWBYJNPR has been targeted by
*multiple* groups of time-travelling assassins, only for the Legion members in the past to stop them before the Remnantians even noticed.
- Jonah Hex rather ruthlessly shooting one of Chronos's "men". While he turns out to be just a robot, Jonah confirms to Qrow that he didn't know that
*before* he fired.
- The side story
*Tales from the Dark Multiverse: The Wretched Weapon* gives us a first look at the Dark Multiverse, where here it shows a saddened Ruby go mad by grief and guilt by Penny's loss, and turns to Luthor for help when the Justice League supposedly can't rebuild her. Unfortunately, this turns for the worst as it causes a fusion between Penny's desire for friends and Brainac's cold logic, which ends with both Ruby and Penny becoming "one".
- Luthor is killed begging to be freed from Penny's control, Yang and the rest of the Remnants are "uploaded" into a digital scape, and the League and the rest of Earth's inhabitants follows them. Worse, the Batman who Laughs becomes "friends" with the new Penny/Ruby to help her continue her ways of saving people.
- The Elseworld,
*The Last Knight*, isn't as bad as the Dark Multiverse one, but still is tragic as it has *Ruby* be the broken one and not Batman as Omega. While those who've read the comic know how the story will end, it's still a Bittersweet Ending. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/HuntersOfJustice |
Hyper Light Drifter / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
**Unmarked spoilers below!**
- The introduction is an ominous vision of both the past and the Drifter's own struggles, with the ancient civilization being wiped out in a massive explosion and the Titans rampaging across the world in the aftermath. During this, the Drifter stands in a river of
*blood and corpses* before they start hacking up blood, which grows darker before Judgement forms and starts hunting the Drifter, who can only run. They seem to escape and ascend a staircase, but three of the Titans appear, letting out this awful roar before they begin to outright *decay* in front of them.
- Judgement. A shadowy, nigh-unstoppable
*thing* that hounds the Drifter in their dreams and is seemingly the source of their illness. Whenever enough Modules are collected, the Drifter suddenly collapses as they have a vision of Judgement killing them in increasingly brutal ways, with no way of stopping it. It's full power is on display in the Final Battle as the monster is a terrifying Lightning Bruiser that is just as unrelenting as it was in the dreams. Even then, it's implied that not only are multiple people aware of it, it appears differently to each one. The worst part? It might not even be *real*, only a mental manifestation of the Immortal Cell's corruption. As the text unlocked after activating the 16 monoliths said "HARNESSING A GREAT WELLSPRING, A PERFECT, IMMORTAL CELL WAS CRAFTED TO BE IMBUED WITHIN ALL SENTIENT LIFE. A NOBLE GOAL, THOUGH SUCH A POWER TERRIFIED OTHERS, AND BROUGHT RUIN AS ITS PURPOSE WAS TRANSMOGRIFIED. THE ABHORRENT CELL STILL FESTERS, DEEP IN THE CHAMBERS OF THIS WORLD".
- The eastern area. At first glance it's a beautiful city on the water, and easily the most brightly lit local in the game. Then you find the native otter people have been completely slaughtered by invading frogs. First we see them throwing a fresh corpse on a pile, right next to several of their pelts that have been strung up. The three only survivors are all horribly injured, with the only conscious one explaining how he escaped just as the frogs started to flay the otters. Bodies litter the water in some parts, and the area outside the boss room even has freshly skinned bodies on display. And then the boss's intro is biting an otter in half...
- The Western area is a dense neon forest covered in strange crystal growths, that quickly grow back if you hack them apart, sometimes rapidly enough to entirely encase the Drifter. As you head further in, you begin finding the bodies of those who suffered a similar fate with growing frequency, culminating in an entire battlefield frozen in time where every combatant was encased in solid crystals as they fought and died. Closer inspection reveals that some victims were encased even while fleeing in terror, indicating just how blindingly fast the initial spread must have been, and how lucky you were not to have been there at the time.
- While the northern area is beautiful and majestic, the further you range into the avians' territory the more apparent their psychopathy becomes. Crude, stained altars choke the nooks and crannies, bodies are nailed to walls in deliberate and symbolic ways, and according to the one non-hostile native you encounter, they
*burned their own eggs in ritual sacrifice* before you arrived.
- The southern area may seem tame compared to the others, being a large open desert with barely any threats or landmarks across the surface and almost everything of note being below the ground. Yet the hidden monoliths claim that this was once the most advanced, populated, and vibrant region throughout the world;
note : The impressive subterranean facilities are indeed a stark contrast to the wasteland above, even after years of neglect. Then you learn that this was the region where all four Titans began their rampage. The most densely populated area on the planet was so thoroughly annihilated that nothing above the ground survived.
- And the forces responsible for that atrocity aren't even finished. As you traverse the depths, you stumble across a massive, beating heart a dozen times larger than you are... and deep in the chasm below is its owner; the fourth and final Titan, in the process of being repaired.
- Whenever the Drifter starts coughing up blood at random. One second, they're simply walking through one of the game's areas, and suddenly they're walking at a slow pace, leaving blood puddles behind while the screen is covered in glitches. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/HyperLightDrifter |
Hyrule Warriors / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
The garden in Cia's palace◊ is a Stalker Shrine to Link, containing statues of his various incarnations note : Young Link, Wolf Link, and right-handed Link. And if that weren't enough, in battle, she can summon a Dark Link to assist her. Houston, we have a problem...
- The place is actually called the Temple of Souls, a palace that exists in another dimension and is implied to be able to change itself to reflect a person's mental state
note : sound familiar?, which should be an indicator of how messed up Cia is.
- The fact that said shrine includes Young Link (who is now playable to witness the horror himself) and Wolf Link is a bit disturbing.
- Hell, consider the Temple of Souls from Link's perspective. As far as you know up to this point, the Sorceress Cia is a lady that threatens Hyrule's existence and she apparently has a thing for you
but not much more than that. Then, you step into the Temple and see that she doesn't just "have a thing" for you; she is a goddamn lunatic Stalker with a Crush who has started this
*entire* war so she can have you (not to mention that you are part of the reason she was corrupted in the first place). That would cause even the toughest of fighters to suffer a My God, What Have I Done? influenced Heroic BSoD (or at least a nervous breakdown).
- Cia's Sanity Slippage, particularly in the final level of the Master Quest DLC. As Link and the heroes foil her plans and she undergoes her Villainous Breakdown, she becomes more and more desperate and willing to take bigger risks, such as using
*her own life force* to bolster her magic, knowing full well that this will likely kill her. If that wasn't enough, Ganondorf tries to take the Triforce of Power from her. Lana tries desperately to save her, but by that point, Cia is too far gone and starts to lose it, especially when her allies begin to abandon her. The Madness Mantra she gives is quite disturbing. **Cia:** *"The hero is still by my side... the hero is still by my side..."* **Cia:** Oh ho! Link! Did you get a shiny new sword? Mmm, I'd like to see it...Come to me! **Cia:** Link, stop wasting your time with petty brawls! *Come show me what that sword can do...* | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/HyruleWarriors |
Hyperbole and a Half / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
- For 2nd grade Allie, the skeleton man.
- "Wolves," if not for the reader, then for poor Benny.
- Attempted when young Allie tells her younger sister the 'scariest story in the world'. It backfires.
- Simple Dog's internal monologue telling her to roll around on a dead animal. The visual aid is pretty disturbing.
-
**CAKE. CAKE IS THE ONLY THING THAT MATTERS.**
- From the book, the helper dog spazzing out when she first sees the simple dog, snarling and clawing at the car window with wild eyes. To make it worse, the helper dog is a German Shepherd mix — she's pretty big and strong for a dog.
- The story about how Allie's mom got lost in the woods with her two children with no way to get home and having to desperately put on a brave face so as not to terrify them.
- The part in "Texas" where Allie wanders alone into a rough neighborhood looking for a grocery store. It's terrifying enough that the houses here are described as having bars in all the windows and there are
*bullet holes* in some of the cars parked along the street, but Allie is also delirious from a high fever and has absolutely no idea where she's going.
- In a Fridge Horror way, the fact that despite having to be pulled off the track after passing out, no mention is made of anyone trying to get Allie medical attention despite the fact that she was very obviously unwell.
- Young Allie attempting to step out of a moving car after waking up from oral surgery. Thankfully she still had her seat belt on, but the chance of serious injury was still quite high. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/HyperboleAndAHalf |
I Can't Be a Magical Girl!! You, a Magical Girl, Say / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
- Izuku cannot die, not really. Even when his body is wrecked beyond use, like when his ribcage was shattered and his heart was turned to sludge on an industrial-grade metal pole, he is still able to recover after two weeks of regenerative hibernation.
- The Handyman has many pupils in two main eyes, but they don't only have two. They have many, enough to fill an infinitely dark room in some mysterious space in the Abyss.
- Some place between time and space itself exists called the Abyss. It's where the Voice of the World exists, and thus, where gods exist, detailing the lives of those in their designated universe in a constant cloud of whispering voices.
- Death apparently isn't the same as falling unconscious without a heart. What then is death? | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/ICantBeAMagicalGirlYouAMagicalGirlSay |
hololive English - Mythbreakers / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
Calli puts the Mythbreakers through some pretty horrifying stuff in their World of Darkness TTRPG sessions.
- Scout explores her family's mines with Dr. Nice
note : A doctor that came to Belt Buckle because he sensed something wrong with the way the elderly seemed to be dying off and suspected more than just old age was at play . While it starts out normally enough, once they go deeper the walls start to become flesh-like, and then they discover a partly-dissolved body which Dr. Nice suddenly realizes is Betsy note : A kindly old lady that Scout's father had invited to stay with them supposedly due to her declining health . The walls then come to life around them and demand a blood sacrifice for a pact signed ages past, which Scout realizes her father had been upholding by sacrificing elderly folks that had visited the farm in order to obtain the raw materials for their forge. With the mines digesting them, Scout and Dr. Nice make a break for well and only barely escape with their lives.
- Calli casually mentions that there's a reason that the dust the raw metals in Scout's forge disintegrated into seemed to taste like bacon, which horrifies Gura and the chat.
- When Scout's words nearly breaks Yuul's cover, Yuul is forced to lie to Antonio that it came from one of the other waiters. Antonio then confronts the waiter and takes a bite out of him, draining him of all his blood. As he spasms, he stares directly at Yuul the entire time with Calli hammering in that he died because of Yuul's lie. The worst part of it all is that Antonio knew that Yuul was lying the entire time. He knew the waiter was innocent and killed him anyway for no real reason.
- ||Not only is Watoto forcefully possessed by The Wyrm in the finale, but his body is warped into something... inhuman, in the process, with his remaining human parts being almost worn like a suit for the rest of the resulting Wyrmtoto abomination. All this does not stop Watoto from feeling, or visibly reacting, to his friends being forced to fire at him and attack him. It's a miracle he even survived to return to his own body at all, but it still cost him a leg. || | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/HololiveEnglishMythbreakers |
Ice Age / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
*Ice Age* may be a series primarily focused on comedic antics back in... well, the Ice Age, but just because of that doesn't spare it from the more disturbing elements of that era.
<!—index—><!—/index—>
## Ice Age: A Mammoth Christmas:
- Yes, believe it or not,
*the Christmas special* contains an example. Scrat is ice-skating gracefully with his acorn. He goes through a log, where he misplaces the acorn and instead mistakenly holds onto *a huge spider*! Scrat screams in terror as the spider (up close even) bites him, cutting to black. Yes, Scrat is the Chew Toy, but *that* was just sudden, out of nowhere, and just plain scary, *especially* if one has arachnophobia... | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/IceAge |
Ice Age / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
When he explains his plan to his goons on how to take down Manny. **Soto**: Mammoths don't go down easily. There's only one way to do it. First, you have to force it into a corner. Cut off its retreat. And when you three have it trapped, I'll go for the throat... | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/IceAge1 |
Hush / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
What? It's just the friendly neighborhood serial killer.
- The scene where Maddie tells the Man she hasn't seen his face and will never be able to identify him and begs him to just go... and he responds by calmly taking off his mask, making it obvious that he doesn't intend to let his prey survive the night.
- Really, Maddie's
*entire* situation is this. Being deaf-mute, she's completely oblivious to her stalker's presence for a good portion of the beginning of the film, until he makes himself known when he sends Maddie pictures to her laptop...of Maddie herself reading from her laptop, with said picture having been taken just from a nearby window.
- The murder of Sarah, who desperately tries to get Maddie's attention as she is being killed just outside of her friend's house, and Maddie is completely oblivious due to being unable to hear her dying friend's screams. The thought of being unaware that your friend's murder in spite of being just a few feet away is enough to send a chill down your spine.
- Even worse for Sarah. The safety she needed was
*right there*. But her deaf friend just cannot hear her.
- While trying to stay alive and alert in her home, Maddie notices someone banging onto one of her windows and goes to investigate. She sees the corpse of her friend Sarah being held up by the Man, being used to knock onto the window to torment Maddie as she is trapped in her own home.
- John Gallagher Jr's slimy, smug, and chilling performance as the killer.
- Maddie hides in the bathroom and awaits the killer's arrival as he smashes his way into her home. With her knife at the ready and struggling with blood loss, she's fully prepared to fight him to the death. Then, the bathtub silently has shards of glass fall into it, as the killer smashes the skylight and slowly enters the room from
*behind her.* Maddie can't hear him and is initially oblivious to the danger as the man taunts her and prepares to stab her in the back. If he hadn't laughed against her neck, he would've killed her right there. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Hush |
Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
- The baby
*Tyrannosaurs* rampaging among the young mammals quickly became rather distressing, culminating with one baby violently pushing an aardvark so he'll fall right into his sibling's waiting, hungry mouth.
- Later when Sid is forcing the same baby to spit the aardvark out, he ends up spitting out a different mammal. How many other innocent animals did the babies eat?
- The looming threat that Rudy poses for the entirety of
*Dawn of the Dinosaurs*, who makes even Mama cower in terror. When his shadow appears over the cave that Mama, the babies, and Sid are bedding down in, no less than a minute after they've taken shelter there.
- A minor Nightmare Fuel, but when we see Scrat after the tar bubble scene, he's shown unconscious and dangling from the tree by some tar. While that might not seem disturbing out of context, but the way Scrat is positioned when he was unconscious (his head lowered, neck raised and motionless)◊, it look like he accidentally hung himself on the way down. Fortunately, Scart is revealed to still be alive moments after, but still.
- The gas cavern. Sure, it's funny with the gas making Manny, Diego, Crash. Eddie and Buck's voice high-pitched and it makes them laugh silly, but then Ellie discovers the horrible truth as Buck points to the skeletons of laughing dinosaurs who previously died there. In other words, the gas is essentially a helium version of the Joker Toxin!
- The fact that Buck got one of his eyes
*clawed by Rudy* in his backstory told to the gang.
- As the Herd are trekking through the Jungle of Misery, some pitcher plants surround Ellie and watch her with their eyestalks. She understandably starts feeling disturbed.
- Then Manny misinterprets her alarm as hunger and attempts to pick a fruit that's lying around in plain sight...which turns out to be a trap laid by a carnivorous flower that grabs Manny and Diego with its vines and traps them inside its petals. According to Buck, they'll be digested in minutes if they don't get out.
-
*Mannys Nightmare*. It starts off with Ellie waking up near the campfire and realizing she is all by herself. She starts calling out for her friends until she hears a sound. In the bushes, a monster with glowing eyes (resembling Rudy) peaks through the bushes, and promptly attacks her! The nightmare ends before things could get gruesome, but it sets Mannys internal fears about losing Ellie. He is still affected from the loss of his previous wife. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/IceAge3DawnOfTheDinosaurs |
Honey, I Shrunk the Kids / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
Being co-written by the same folks who wrote horror film classics such as *Re-Animator* and *From Beyond*, it's safe to say that *Honey, I Shrunk the Kids* is essentially a horror movie for children.
# Spoilers are not to be marked on Nightmare Fuel pages. You have been warned.
- Really, any of the giant creepy-crawlies. It's best not to watch this movie if you're insectophobic. Standouts include:
- The bee. Imagine being stuck in a flower, having a giant bee coming toward you. Those kids are lucky they didn't get stung, or that would have been EXTREMELY painful. Especially if one of them was allergic.
- The entire scorpion sequence. The fight between it and Anty is especially horrifying when the scorpion corners Anty, holds him in its pincers and stabs him with its tail. Anty's terrified cries make it worse since he knows hes going to die.
- It becomes even sadder and scarier when you realize that his death cries have been purposefully made to sound like he's screaming, "Help me! Please, help meeeEEEEEE!!!!"
- Anty's first appearance. While he becomes less frightening once we get to know him, the initial shot of looking down at the camera is quite startling.
- The kids almost getting chopped to pieces by a lawnmower.
- Nick almost being eaten by his father after falling into his bowl of Cheerios.
- Any time the kids are in proximity to their now skyscraper-sized parents, who are hundreds of times larger than them and unable to see or hear their minuscule children. Notably the first time Wayne walks into the attic as the kids are right in front of him on a tiny couch on the floor yelling and screaming at him for attention, his giant foot comes within inches of squishing them. And later, when Nick and Russ Jr. are hanging on the bee as Wayne swings a giant baseball bat at them, despite them repeatedly yelling at him to get him to stop.
- An early version of the script was going to have five kids and that one of which would die in the sprinkler sequence. Instead, they settled with four kids and one of them, Amy, nearly drowned.
- This could double as Nausea Fuel: in the scene where the "river" of running mud is introduced, Ron suggests "it could be a stream of dog pee and it would look like a river to us." It's never established in that scene whether it is or isn't urine. So when they later end up
*in it*, and Amy chokes some back up after they give her mouth-to-mouth, it is pretty disgusting, especially if you miss Amy's line in the next scene, "Mud is still mud, no matter how small you are."
- The trailers all featured the scene where Nick, having fallen into his father's cereal, is almost swallowed by him, as he screams, "No, Dad! Don't eat me!" with the close-up on Wayne's cavernous mouth. In the movie this lasts for all of a second before Quark interferes, but in the trailers it just ends with Nick slowly being taken toward his doom.
- The series had its share of Halloween episodes, but mostly they were pretty tame. "Honey, I'm Spooked" was largely the same, until Amy ends up getting possessed. The spirit distorts her face horribly, alters her voice and in the scene where the possession first happens, gives her a smile from Hell. Perhaps what makes the scene more creepy is that when it happens, Amy is looking after her mother Diane, whom the spirit has caused to regress to childhood. When Amy first turns to her with her horrifying new face, Diane reacts just like any little kid would with a terrified "I want my mommy!" | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/HoneyIShrunkTheKids |
I Am a Hero / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
A bizarre Zombie Apocalypse story set in Japan during the end of the world as we know it,
*I Am a Hero* can leave you feeling deeply unnerved or a little ill at times. **As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.**
- The first zombie that Hideo sees, a woman hit by a car, walks away from the accident with her spine badly broken. She looks like she's been folded in half by the impact.
- Zombified Tetsuko is shown in full color on several pages, her Tainted Veins and terrifying eyes standing out against her pale skin. The fact that she was on her period and is now dressed in her underwear and doing a jerky upside down crawl really doesn't help matters.
- The Undead Child seen eating what appears to be its mother's flesh, still calling out for her, as Hideo flees Nerima is a mixture between this and a Tear Jerker.
- The appearance of some of the ZQN. This entire page could be filled just with descriptions of the more hideous zombies, but special mention goes to the cook with splinters of wood sticking out of his eyes, the pregnant zombie dragged along by her half born baby after her head is blown off, and the zombies who reflect the beginning stages of Flesh Golem construction, looking like two or more people just smashed together.
- The fate that a young girl In Pisa, Italy nearly suffers. The orchestrators of the Zombie Apocalypse need human women as "queens" to birth their offspring, and she would have been one of them had she not been rescued.
- The zombie babies at Mt. Fuji are absolutely terrifying to look at. They're also incredibly dangerous.
- Iura's death. While it's just absurd enough to be funny in a way, it's also terrifying. He's half aware of what's happening, but delirious enough to rip off his own penis while very aggressively masturbating.
- The Hives, enormous monstrosities made up of thousands of ZQN stuck together in a way that stretches the Flesh Golem trope to its limit.
- A low key example, but when Hiromi points Hideo's shotgun at Oda in subconscious anger and jealousy, the combination of her actions and expression work together to let you know that something is still
*deeply* wrong with her.
- Oda's death. Crushed in the back of a garbage truck with the zombie baby that bit her, while she turns into a frantic, disfigured monstrosity. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/IAmAHero |
I, Claudius / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
Moments subpages, including Nightmare Fuel, are SPOILERS OFF. You have been warned!
When Augustus is presented with the evidence of his daughter Julia's adulteries and all the men she's slept with, he interrogates each one with deadly calm and sarcasm. The last few are so terrified, all they can do is nod that yes, they have slept with Julia. Augustus, enraged and utterly humiliated, finally lets loose with "IS THERE ANYONE IN ROME WHO HAS NOT SLEPT WITH MY DAUGHTER"!?! and orders for the men to be dragged out. BRIAN BLESSED, talking about the scene decades later, remarked:
"Now we see, the full power of Caesar [...] Take them out! They're going to be vaporized. They're going to be vaporized!"
The overall effect of Blessed talking calmly and quietly (for once) is not unlike watching the inexorable burning of a slow fuse leading to a very large barrel of gunpowder.
Caligula. What he does to his sister Drusilla (getting her drunk before chaining her up on his bed, stripping her naked, cutting her open and eating her unborn child, all while assuring her that it won't hurt) is disturbing enough, but at least happens offscreen, and the audience doesn't see the result. His cousin Gemellus, on the other hand... Gemellus has a weak chest, and won't stop coughing. Caligula finds this incredibly aggravating, and eventually sends him to his room in the middle of dinner, but insists later that evening, when Claudius comes to see him, that he can still hear him coughing. Midway through their conversation, he says that it has finally stopped, much to his relief. Shortly, they are interrupted by Macro... carrying Gemellus' severed head. Which is so mutilated that Claudius doesn't recognise it. And Gemellus is only twelve years old.
We do see Caligula come out with blood on his mouth and telling Claudius 'Don't go in there.' Claudius looks in, then looks revolted. And this is the toned-down version of the scene.
While Caligula's actions post-apotheosis are horrifying, the lead-up to his mental breakdown takes the cake for creepiness. He is in a meeting with the senators as he starts changing the topic suddenly, repeating things he's already said, and complaining about a headache that is like "a galloping in his head" - and as the scene proceeds, the viewers can hear the sound of galloping horses, too. Eventually, he collapses on the floor, screaming in pain and begging Augustus (whom he believes is invading his mind) to make it stop. It's enough to make you feel sorry for him. The galloping sound effect returns later when he is cutting up Drusilla, only to resolve into the sound of Claudius who is desperately banging on the door.
The description of Tiberius' actions at his villa is horrific. A woman describes how she was raped by him when she offered herself in place of her daughter and kills herself.
When Sejanus is overthrown, Livilla - whom he conspired with - is locked in her room by her own mother and left to starve to death, screaming to be let out. What's even worse is that Antonia tortures herself by sitting outside the locked room, listening to her daughter's cries, since that's her own punishment for giving birth to - and taking it upon herself to murder - such a monstrous woman.
In the same episode and almost the same scene, Sejanus' children, a daughter and son — neither of whom is over the age of 10 — are murdered by soldiers. Roman culture viewed killing a virgin as abhorrent, and one of the soldiers points out this fact to Macro. Macro's response is "Then make sure she's not a virgin when you kill her. Now get on with it." Suetonius wrote that this was the practice under Tiberius when executing virgins. It's mentioned by Claudius' wife that the soldiers who killed Sejanus' children raped his daughter before killing her, and dressed the boy in his 'coming of age' robes (so that he was legally an adult) before doing the same. Apicata killed herself after finding out what was done to her children's bodies.Ugh.
It's easy to forget that most of these people are FAMILY, and actively plotting to murder, imprison, or exile one another for their own selfish personal gain. Very few of the Julio-Claudians seem to have any familial love for one another, and those who do often have that love exploited by other family members. Livia, in particular, has little to no love for her own offspring, plotting to murder two of her own grandsons (Gaius and Lucius) and admitting she would have killed a third (Germanicus) and even her own son (Drusus) if she had been given the opportunity. Meanwhile, Augustus sends his own daughter into exile never to see her again, and Claudius' own mother never misses an opportunity to make him feel bad about himself, asking him to be with her when she commits suicide and then doing the deed before he arrives as one final act of spite. Livilla tries to poison her own daughter, and in turn is starved to death by her own mother, who barricades her in her bedroom and sits outside her door to listen to her final moments. Caligula not only disembowels his own pregnant wife but then consumes the fetus. When even most wild animals will put themselves in harm's way to protect their families, it's downright terrifying to imagine being a part of the Julio-Claudians, where your own parents or siblings may be actively plotting to harm or kill you on a constant basis. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/IClaudius |
Hyperion Cantos / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
- Two words: The Shrike.
- The little Bikura people (who'd been stunted by the prototype cruciforms) were quite frightening, especially before you knew what was going on.
- What they did to Father Duré was pretty bad, though. Duré sharpened his arrestor rods and crucified himself, somehow missing the important blood vessels on his left arm. Normally, that should kill him, but he impaled himself on a Tesla Tree on the planet Hyperion. These trees release electricity, and since he impaled his arms and feet using metal rods with the Cruciform, they kept bringing him back to life. His clothing, skin, flesh were long-destroyed after seven years on the tree, but the electricity and the parasitic Cruciform kept him alive, constantly in excruciating pain. When his friend saw him and picked up his bestos bag and dropped the cruciform accidentally, it killed Father Duré. Just before dying, Duré smiled. This caused Hoyt to become so mentally and emotionally scarred that normal painkillers stopped working. He had to use Ultramorphine. He got better, becoming the pope for 200+ years.
- Lenar doesn't need stronger painkillers because he's emotionally scarred - it's because he takes on Duré's cruciform and gets it put on his back. Father Duré is still alive inside it - and when Lenar Hoyt dies, he takes over. That's right - every time the pope dies, there is a fifty-fifty chance of him being resurrected as his old mentor, who is immediately killed again by the Pope's Swiss Guard to rise as the pope once again. Yeah, Father Duré has it hard.
- Father Duré enters the Hyperion labyrinth twice, and both apply. In the first, he learns the secret of the Bikura and received the Cruciform that remakes his body. The second time, he finds it filled with millions of bodies, stacked so thick that they're decomposing at an arrested rate.
- Aenea's death scene. Go read
*The Rise of Endymion*. Among other things, her fingernails are plucked out and one of her finger is bitten off by a clone of Nemes. She's half-blind, broken and nearly dead. She almost has her eyelids and nose chewed off by Nemes, and almost had her eyelids and lips sewn shut. Her feet are burned by a flame through a grate on the floor. She dies in the end, consumed literally by the fire. And the worst thing is anybody on a planet with someone who got communion from Aenea witnessed and felt what she went through. The same thing that almost drove our narrator insane.
- The Archangel ships.
- The Technocore. Try to trick hegemony leaders into making fugitives partake of the cruciform by luring them into the labyrinths under Hyperion. All told with a pleasant smile on their holographic faces. Creepy. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Hyperion |
Hype Williams / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
- "Existential Flux".
- Many of the
*cryptic, to say the least,* videos on Dean's now defunct channel pollyjacobsen leaned very weirdly into Nightmare Fuel. Out of all of the videos on his channel, though, is the "stalker" series. At least 11 or so videos of Dean still in place, usually in a mask, before something moves or flashes, while a strangely monotonous R&B loop plays in the background ( *"I've been watching you..."*). Nothing Is Scarier. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/HypeWilliams |
Ib / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
Understatement of the century.
**As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.**
- The way the game kicks off without Ib really doing anything to trigger what happens. She's simply wandering through the gallery, looking at things like she's supposed to, when suddenly the lights flicker and she's stuck in a terrifying and deadly situation.
- Perhaps the creepiest aspect of the game is the
*Background Music itself*. It's basically Paranoia Fuel on its own. Throughout the whole Cursed Gallery there are a handful of BGMs played for each area, but they are uniformly ominous music that *always* set you into thinking that something very bad will happen or a Jump Scare moment will pop out of nowhere. Sure, there are several jump scares or sudden loud voices around and they do not happen that frequently, but the soundtrack is creepy enough that you won't stop thinking about it.
- Exactly
*what* did Red Eyes actually do to Garry? If you fail the doll room puzzle, you see Red Eyes reaching out of its painting for him... and then the perspective automatically switches back to Ib, who is in a different area, so the player doesn't see what happens next. When you venture downstairs and find Garry, he's a rambling, psychologically traumatized mess with no memory of what happened, or the events leading up to it.
- In one room early in the game, there's a painting called "The Lady in Red". It appears to be an ordinary painting... until you walk away from it, and
*it tears itself off the wall and starts chasing you.*
- One of the first puzzles involves heading into a hallway with a bunch of people with colored shirts in frames. There are six, and they give hints about where to look in the next room. All but one is lying, and you have find out who's telling the truth. Once you do that and find what you're looking for, you hear something from the hallway. Once you get out, all of the picture frames have red splattered all around them, and they're all wielding bloodstained weapons... except the truth-teller, who's completely gone from its frame. In a show of irony, they all yell "Liar!" It's
*really* unnerving.
- There's an optional sequence you can encounter by switching back to Ib immediately after The Reveal... or barring that, completing the doll room event successfully. It's a three-part sequence, regarding Mary going off the deep end. First she runs out of the room to stab a mannequin head, which
*bleeds*. Second, her sprite will *visibly begin to follow Ib from behind* — something that NEVER occurs anywhere else in the game, even in cut-scenes. Third, she'll wander around endlessly, ignoring the player completely. Couple this with some unnerving Madness Mantras and vaguely threatening dialogues and you've got the player completely freaked out.
- The dolls. THE. FREAKING. DOLLS.
- The simple fact that until near the end of the game, Ib can't see the dolls at all. Her mind replaces them with completely harmless bunnies, so she can't even see why Garry would find them unsettling.
- The doll that stalks Garry down a hallway. Her tendency to teleport around when you're not looking is more than a little spooky. Also, if you kick her, her head keeps following you.
- The Giant Doll, also known as "Red Eyes". It first appears in the alleged bunny room (pictured above), and continues to appear ominously in several of Garry's solo sequences under certain circumstances, sometimes peeking over the top of walls and pillars and looking back and forth. Then in the second doll room, the Giant Doll starts crawling out of a painting. If it catches Garry before he can escape the room, he is later found by Ib and Mary, traumatized and muttering incoherently. In a normal playthrough, Ib's able to snap him out of it, but if you really screwed up before that point, Ib can't save Garry and you end up with one or the other of the worst endings in the game.
- Even succeeding in the second doll room gets creepy; while Garry manages to escape the room, the thought that the dolls are still there is more than unsettling. Also, the split second before Garry escapes the room, the dolls suddenly all turn their heads at once. They don't look at Garry, they look at the
*player*!
- In the regular art gallery, a dialogue choice with another art gallery patron reveals that 9-year-old Ib thought the headless mannequin statues were scary
*before* they started attacking her in the phantom gallery.
- Those roses. When you take damage, they wilt. Fair enough, except it works the other way around too; Garry mentioned that before he met Ib, whenever his rose took damage, he'd notice physical wounds opening up on his skin. Imagine if you'd left your flower behind, never realizing its significance. If a monster found it, you could just be walking down the hallway when huge cuts start opening up on your body, and since you don't have a vase, it might never heal...
- Starting in Version 1.04, if you let Garry kick the mannequin head and return to the room opposite the one where you had to move the table... it's changed. There's a hanging, severed mannequin head dripping blood into a vase, a poster on the wall mentions that someone damaged the artwork, and behind it, someone's scribbled "Hanged Garry".
- And then in optional dialogue later on, Garry asks Ib if there's something around his neck...
- The Sketchbook World is already quite disturbing. Even more disturbing that Mary is actively looking for Ib and Garry, and at one point very nearly finds them. Even more disturbing after you open Pandora's Box and every once in a while sharp pointy objects randomly fly out at you. And then Mary
*does* find you...
- Everything about Mary, the psychotic painted girl who wants to become actual person is Nightmare Fuel.
- First of all, this...thing wasn't even a person. It's just a drawing that was drawn so well that she outright came to life, and a being like that doesn't really have any agency to comprehend what is bad and what is good. Even if she would become human, without any sort of understanding of how people actually work, it would just be a monstrosity.
- Secondly, to turn herself into a person, she had to kill a person who entered the Cursed Gallery and take their place, indicating for her to even become a person, she must kill one even if she were to comprehend that it's bad..it's simply needed for her to. In one of the endings (listed at the Endings section), it became true and the result is left to the player's imagination.
- And true to the fact that she was basically drawn so well that she came to life, Mary almost looked like a real person trapped in the Gallery and both Ib and Garry were genuinely fooled, that they don't actually find out Mary wasn't even a person until the Doll Room event. AND since she has a large portion of control over the cursed gallery, the other artworks find this out and snitch to her...and then she suddenly reveals her true personality as a psychotic creature.
- The Reveal that Mary is a painting is disturbing in and of itself, but one of the things that makes it so frightening is that Garry learns about this while he is separated from the girls, meaning that if Mary were to attack Ib right now, there would be nothing Garry could do about it.
- The mirror. If Garry kicked the mannequin head, checking the mirror after the Separation room will lead to some pretty scary images. Garry's own head may be blotted out (which only Ib can see), both Ib's and Garry's eyes will be scratched out with the word "EYE" scrawled all over the mirror, "NOFIRE" may be repeated to cover the mirror, and the word "Play?" may appear, written in crayon. Creeeepy.
- In the Grey Room with all of the Painted Ladies, if Garry kicked the mannequin head, the Hanged Man portrait can have a (random) case of Red Eyes, Take Warning.
- When Ib and Garry are captured in the Sketchbook world. One moment they're staring into a toy box, the next moment they've been shoved into it and find themselves trapped in an area filled with statues... and dolls... and mannequins... and more dolls... and more mannequins. To make things even better, Ib's rose is missing. Depending on what story path you're on, either one of the dolls steals Ib's rose and gives it to Mary, and Garry ends up having to trade his rose to save Ib's life, or Ib finds her rose and discovers that the impact from the fall knocked all the petals off except one. And there's no vases in the toy box so no chance for Ib to recover her rose. Either way, you're in bad shape in this section.
-
*Carrie Careless and the Galette des Rois*. A charming little storybook, drawn in crayon, about a little girl celebrating her birthday. There is a coin in one of the cake slices and she accidentally swallows it. But that's okay, because it was a lucky coin, so now she'll have good luck. Then one of the girl's friends goes back to her mother, and she can't find the key to the study now. The friend, realizing that they'd baked the key into the cake by mistake and Carrie had swallowed it instead of the coin, decides the best way to get the key back is to kill her. The end.
- Last but not least? The events were all because of an artist named Guertena. Who is he actually? Just an artist who was so skilled and passionate that his artworks came to life. This manifested in the worst way one can imagine.
- The Dungeon, a Bonus Dungeon accessible after beating the game once, contains such charming things as discovering Garry's lighter is out of oil right when you're in a pitch-black room, a giant sleeping snake that you have to get past, giant flowers that grab Ib's ankles and eat her if she tries to walk by them, a painting named "Mistake" escaping its frame and wandering around, a vase that has blood in it for no apparent reason...
- Mistake would be creepy enough even if it
*wasn't* trying to kill you: it almost looks like conjoined twins fused at the torso, if one of them had gotten their head cut off. And the way it comes alive is just as bad; Ib reads a label near the painting, saying "My heart goes to art. My spirit goes to my creations" (a quote from Guertena), and suddenly Mistake springs out of the painting and tries to chase Ib down. (May also induce Fridge Horror if you think enough about it. Is Guertena's spirit itself in Mistake?)
- The painting "Malice's True Form". You encounter it in a dark room, it makes sounds and moves slightly when you look at it closely, when you move away from it you hear something fall to the ground and it makes the weird noise again, then you go back to find that there's nothing in the frame that had held it. And then later you are in the area with the giant snake and find that "Malice's True Form" is right there in the hallway. Eek. It doesn't attack you, and it can't even harm you in any way, but it's still creepy as hell.
- It turns out to be perfectly okay, he really did need a rest and he woke back up just fine, but the part where Garry takes a nap is quite disturbing, especially when he says it feels like his legs are becoming one with the floor, or the "....." if you try to talk to him after that.
- It gets better. In the real world, there is an exhibit named "Fusion". It is a sculpture of a person whose legs are missing, so that it looks like the person is becoming one with the floor. To top it off, the sculpture is entirely blue.
- Even scarier is the sequence you have to go through before going to the secret room. Garry falls asleep, you can't go outside alone, and you've done possibly everything in that room until there's nothing to do until Gary wakes up. Of course, when you check on him, he's not waking up at all, and all of a sudden the next thing you know, the room and everything in it begins shaking about. Check on Gary during this and your dialogue choices are "Garry!" and "Wake up!", and choosing either will just prove to be futile no matter how many times Ib tries to wake Garry up in her state of panic. And since she can go through the Bonus Dungeon alone, imagine her freaking out during this with no one around to give her a sense of security.
- "Final Stage". It's a strange, diamond-shaped bed that Ib can sleep on, and she dreams about her birthday. Awful cute, right? Sleep on it too long, though, and Ib sleeps forever. "Ib All Alone". Notably, while Ib gets a "nostalgic feeling" from it, if Garry's with her at the time, he won't let her near it because he gets "a bad feeling" about it, and he's right.
-
*Not* sleeping on it for too long can be almost as bad. If you wake up in time, you'll find that some of the petals of Ib's rose have fallen off. It really gives the player a sense of *wow, that was a close call*, and it removes any possible ambiguity to Ib's fate if she doesn't wake up in time...
- The "Welcome to the World of Guertena" ending. Garry loses his mind in the doll room, Ib is unable to bring him back to his senses, Ib has a breakdown over this, and Mary has grown so fond of Ib that she can't bear to go to the human world because it would mean parting with her. So she instead keeps Garry and Ib in her world. Forever. Not to mention she has a freaky Slasher Smile in the final scene.
- The ending "A Painting's Demise" is very disturbing. With Garry driven insane by the Doll Room and Ib too distraught to leave, Mary abandons them and leaves the Fabricated World. Only, as she steps into the "Alternate Gallery", the writing on the walls threatens and warns her not to leave. When she
*does* step out into the "Real Gallery", there's no-one around and the Gallery's door out is locked. As Mary gets frightened and tries to find another way out, it slowly gets darker, and dark paint drips from the ceiling like blood. The "Embodiment of Spirit" rose sculpture is faded into a withered and grey husk with a warning about Mary's "fabricated heart", the poster advertising Guertena's Art Exhibition at the entrance has turned into an image of a face-down (dead?) Mary◊, the windows overflowing with a creepy bloodlike red liquid, the creepy crooked writing saying things like "B Y E B Y E M A R Y◊", the painting of "Abyss of the Deep" bleeding out into the Gallery, "A Well-Meaning Hell" turns into Tones of the Dark Gallery◊, and then if you repeatedly examine Mary's inventory screen as things◊ get darker...◊
- The fake Garry, who appears if you're on the path for "Forgotten Portrait". When you get to the portal back to the real world, this guy appears, telling Ib there's another exit and trying to tempt her away from the portal painting. If you go along with him, you get "END: Ib All Alone", and if you refuse him and jump through the portal anyway, he suddenly lunges forward as if trying to grab you. Worse yet is the ending; Garry is dead and his corpse is displayed in a new painting in the gallery. Ib and possibly everyone who ever knew Garry forgets him. Ib gains absolutely nothing from the journey except maybe horrible nightmares she can never explain and a man lost his life. Who's to say that this isn't the first or
*last* time this happened or will happen?
- Any of the "Ib All Alone" endings, but particularly the one you can get in the Bonus Dungeon, if you sleep too long on the artwork "Final Stage" (as mentioned in the Dungeon section).
- The "Together Forever" ending, while cutesy, has its fair share of Fridge Horror. Garry is dead and becomes a painting like in the "Forgotten Painting" ending and everyone who knew him supposedly forgets him. Mary becomes real and is remembered as being Ib's sister. Ib and Mary become loving sisters and go on together. Okay, that's kinda cute and not too terrible except for Garry, but Mary is
*insane*, or at the least just runs on Blue-and-Orange Morality due to being a drawing. Who's to say that her insanity just went away? Worse yet, she most likely lacked any moral agency or human understanding, and becoming real may not be enough to fix her broken mind. It's entirely possible that she would grow up to be a serial killer just because she couldn't comprehend why it's bad, and even if she doesn't, that doesn't change the fact that the kind-hearted Garry had to die to let a monstrosity become human have access to the real world. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Ib |
iCarly / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
**As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.**
-
*iWanna Stay with Spencer*: If Carly hadn't ducked, the hammer that flew off Spencer's fan of hammers almost certainly would have killed Carly, with a worldwide audience to see it. Granddad Shay definitely had every reason to be concerned about Carly staying with Spencer.
-
*iSam's Mom*: The Shadow Hammer is a violent criminal, named that way because he's never caught and carries around a hammer as a weapon. Mrs. Benson fears for her and her son's safety after they have their address exposed on TV. They end up hiding in Carly and Spencer's apartment. In the end Spencer gets sick of them, and switches Freddie's apartment number with some random apartment down the hall. At the end of the episode the Shadow Hammer appears, stalking the hallways of their building. He looks at Freddie's apartment, realises it's not the right one, then *continues down the hallway to find the apartment that Spencer switched numbers with!* Let's hope that apartment was empty!
- Nevel Papperman. Wanting a kiss from Carly is creepy, yet tame, but then he surrounds his Hacker Cave with close-up shots of Carly on the webshow. Seeing an 11-year-old act this insane is just chilling...and that's just his first appearance! His later actions are even more twisted and cruel, from trying to get Carly brutally beaten by a professional and temperamental boxer, to tricking the others into basically
*torturing* Freddy, all for his sick amusement.
- Nora in
*iPsycho* lives up to the episode's title. Her insanity isn't played for laughs; she keeps the iCarly crew as her prisoner and tries to *murder* Gibby with a firepoker when he tries to rescue them. She even wore a creepy Richard Nixon mask while *wielding an axe* for no reason, looking like a slasher villain!
- The whole relationship between Lewbert and Marta is terrifying. Everything seemed perfectly normal between them and, for the first time in his life, Lewbert was
*happy*. However, Marta soon changed and turned into crazy Control Freak. The stress led to Lewbert's wart forming and his mental state started dwindling. He decided to jump off a cruise ship, swim to shore and change his identity just to get away from this woman. Years later, Carly and her friends located her and led Marta to Lewbert, resulting in bad memories flooding back. One night, the trio decided to spy on them to see how things were going between them. Marta initially tries being nice and inviting him to the Philharmonics, which he declines. Marta suddenly goes into Yandere mode and demanding him to do what she says. She forcefully cuts his hair while he's cringing in his seat. Although the abuse is supposed to be Played for Laughs, the idea that Lewbert was in an abusive relationship that drove him insane and was almost sucked back into it is terrifying. While he is a scumbag, he didnt deserve any of this.
- The near death experience the girls went through in
*iQuit iCarly*. The insane wind, being up so high in the air, dangling from the platform, the screams... all of it. Dan even admitted himself that it was insanely frightening. On a related note, a college student in Indiana was killed under similar conditions. It is to the point Carly and Sam realize their fighting nearly killed them, causing them plus Fleck and Dave to break down in tears and reconcile.
-
*iStill Psycho*: Nora's not just insane, but her parents are as well and they're accomplices in her plan to keep the iCarly crew as prisoners.
- Her way of keeping the gang from making any sudden moves? If they did, she would push a button, which will make Spencer spin so fast, his brain would turn to goo.
- Mrs. Benson boards the elevator in
*iCan't Take It* and a man hidden in the corner (we as the audience realize it's only Gibby, but she certainly doesn't) reaches past her to press the emergency stop, causing the elevator to jerk to a sudden halt and the lights to automatically dim, adding an even more frightening atmosphere and further disguising him, as if the long coat, hat, and sunglasses weren't enough. When she asks him why he stopped the elevator and her breathing speeds up, it's not hard to imagine where she feared this was heading.
- While played for laughs since it's supposed to pay homage to
*Carrie*, Spencer's "garlic-powder prank" flashback is portrayed like a *horror movie*, with creepy *A Nightmare on Elm Street*-esque singing, and a whole bunch of kids shrieking in agony as the garlic powder essentially blinded them. It was so bad that the kids, now adults, hold major grudges against Spencer for it, and proceed to beat him when they get the chance.
- Both times when Carly has a claustrophobic panic attack. The first time it happens (
*iSpace Out*) she, Sam and Freddy are staying in a simulated space pod for 36 hours to win the chance to go into space. At first Carly is the one trying to keep the peace between Freddie and Sam but it ultimately becomes too much for her and she *breaks a window* to escape. The second time occurs in *iSam's Mom* where in an attempt to patch things up with Sam and her mom, she gets all three of unwittingly trapped in a confined space. She is reduced to bleating like a goat. Both times are played for laughs but it is rather frightening to watch. Although some may find the goat noises quite annoying.
- A bit of Fridge Horror pointed out by
*Quinton Reviews* in his retrospective of the series: earlier in the season, it's revealed that on one of Carly's previous birthdays, Spencer took her to a petting zoo, and an apparently-traumatizing Noodle Incident occurred involving... *a goat.*
- The Halloween episode. Sam, Carly, and Freddy explore a creepy room with bloodstains and an old woman shouting die. Turns out it was just the old woman yelling at her cat for getting into the red hair dye (which the kids had assumed was blood), but the fact that the kids were in the dark for most of the time in that room doesnt help. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/ICarly |
I Am Not Okay With This / Nightmarefuel - TV Tropes
- The very first thing we ever see: Syd running down an empty street completely covered in blood, looking terrified. It's on one of the promotional posters as well.
- Even though she doesn't use it a lot, we see some idea of how powerful Syd can be. Throughout the show she manages to ||kill a hedgehog accidentally, knock over several hundred square feet of a forest (including multiple trees dozens of feet high), destroy a library, give someone a nosebleed, and then blow up that same person's head.||
- This is even acknowledged by Syd ||after Stan's attempt to bring out her powers involves making her angry. Seeing as she can't control them, her first response is to throw
*two* bowling balls at him. Although they miss Stan (and very narrowly at that), they hit the wall behind him with enough force that one of the balls *stays in place* long after the attack.||
- In the same episode, after leaving Stan in the bowling alley, Syd walks home at night and we immediately see that a man—who can apparently teleport or turn into shadows—has been following her this whole time. Worse still is that Syd can apparently feel that she's being followed, yet can't do anything about it, as she doesn't have enough evidence to know who it is.
- Even when you take away the whole superpowers context, Syd is still a young girl being stalked by someone who can very well harm her and her family. It gets bad enough that she freaks out at school and ||destroys the library as a result.||
- ||Brad reading out Syd's diary for the whole school to hear is this for anyone who has been in the closet or suffered any sort of personal trauma.||
- ||Brad's head exploding and splattering everyone with gore. Sure, he was an asshole to everyone throughout the show, but did he really deserve to die that gruesomely?||
- ||If you pause it at the right time, you can even see his eyes leaving his head.|| | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/IAmNotOkayWithThis |
Ice Age: Continental Drift / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
**Manny**
: I have a little paunch, too, but I wouldn't name myself after it.
**Gutt**
: (
*laughs mockingly*
) Very funny. But that's not how I got my name. (
*brandishes claws*
)
**These**
got me my name!
**Sid**
: I don't get it.
**Gutt**
: No? Alright, then. (
*slices through Sid's upper ropes, making him dangle upside down*
) Lemme give ya a visual aid. I just gently press here... (
*pokes Sid's belly*
)
**Sid**
: Hahah! Stop! That tickles!
**Gutt**
: ...and go down like this. (
*moves his finger down to Sid's chin; Sid's laughter is promptly replaced with a gasp of horror*
)
**Squint**
: And then your innards become your
*outards*
! (laughs)
**Sid**
: Uh, I still don't get it.
note :
In this case, Sid may just be lying and pretending to still not understand Gutt's monicker. He's so terrified that he tries to play dumb
. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/IceAgeContinentalDrift |
I Against I, Me Against You / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
- No matter how comedic he is, O'Malley is a terrifying villain. He's able to take over people AND ponies and use their bodies for his destructive purposes, which are to kill and destroy. Why does he want to kill and destroy? Because, other than being the anger part of the Alpha, he thinks it's fun. He is essentially Evil Pinkie Pie.
- Speaking of which, guess which pony he takes over first?
**Pinkie Pie**
: "
**My name... is... O'Malley!**
"
- Horror goes up exponentially if you read Cupcakes.
- Imagine you are the most happiest pony around that lives to make other ponies smile, but one day, you look at these same ponies and you start thinking about murdering them in the most gruesome ways possible. You get angry more often and you threaten those that annoy you, no matter who they are. Pretty soon, you find yourself attempting to kill your friends and taking pleasure from their misery. Finally, to make matters worse, you believe that deep down inside, you have always felt that way and that this is the real you.
- Using Pinkie's body, O'Malley threatens to bake a child into a pie, attempts to kill Rarity and only succeeds in burning down her home, and threatens to eat the Cake Twins.
- During a psychiatric meeting that Pinkie is forced to attend, O'Malley decides to give the good doctor something to think about:
**Pinkie Pie/O'Malley**
: "
**Tell me, do you think of yourself as powerful, Ms. Minuette? Getting inside ponies minds and reshaping them as you see fit? I know what that feels like. You and I actually have a lot in common in that regard. The main difference is, I can do it more efficiently! Even after Im gone, those that Ive been in still have a piece of me left! You cant get inside ** *my* head, you fool! *I am the very concept of what you do!*
"
- In Chapter 8, Pinkie Pie/O'Malley tricks the citizens of Ponyville to go to the Town Hall so he can burn the building down
**with them still inside!**
- Even after O'Malley is removed from Pinkie, he gets the last laugh. The murderous images he gave to Pinkie are still stuck in her head, and she attempts to seclude herself in order to keep her friends safe, thinking that she is danger to everyone around her.
**O'Malley**
: "
**Even after Im gone, those that Ive been in still have a piece of me left!**
"
- To matters worse, O'Malley isn't the reason the story earned its Dark heading!
-
*The Great Destroyer has arrived. The end is near.*
- The first thing Meta does is that he goes to Dodge City and massacres almost every single pony there and burns the city to the ground.
*We Are The Meta*
- While Meta fights Applejack and Rainbow Dash, who are both losing, Fluttershy attempts to save them using The Stare, but her stare is reflected off the Meta's helmet causing her to give The Stare to herself! | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/IAgainstIMeAgainstYou |
Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
- The baby
*Tyrannosaurs* rampaging among the young mammals quickly became rather distressing, culminating with one baby violently pushing an aardvark so he'll fall right into his sibling's waiting, hungry mouth.
- Later when Sid is forcing the same baby to spit the aardvark out, he ends up spitting out a different mammal. How many other innocent animals did the babies eat?
- The looming threat that Rudy poses for the entirety of
*Dawn of the Dinosaurs*, who makes even Mama cower in terror. When his shadow appears over the cave that Mama, the babies, and Sid are bedding down in, no less than a minute after they've taken shelter there.
- A minor Nightmare Fuel, but when we see Scrat after the tar bubble scene, he's shown unconscious and dangling from the tree by some tar. While that might not seem disturbing out of context, but the way Scrat is positioned when he was unconscious (his head lowered, neck raised and motionless)◊, it look like he accidentally hung himself on the way down. Fortunately, Scart is revealed to still be alive moments after, but still.
- The gas cavern. Sure, it's funny with the gas making Manny, Diego, Crash. Eddie and Buck's voice high-pitched and it makes them laugh silly, but then Ellie discovers the horrible truth as Buck points to the skeletons of laughing dinosaurs who previously died there. In other words, the gas is essentially a helium version of the Joker Toxin!
- The fact that Buck got one of his eyes
*clawed by Rudy* in his backstory told to the gang.
- As the Herd are trekking through the Jungle of Misery, some pitcher plants surround Ellie and watch her with their eyestalks. She understandably starts feeling disturbed.
- Then Manny misinterprets her alarm as hunger and attempts to pick a fruit that's lying around in plain sight...which turns out to be a trap laid by a carnivorous flower that grabs Manny and Diego with its vines and traps them inside its petals. According to Buck, they'll be digested in minutes if they don't get out.
-
*Mannys Nightmare*. It starts off with Ellie waking up near the campfire and realizing she is all by herself. She starts calling out for her friends until she hears a sound. In the bushes, a monster with glowing eyes (resembling Rudy) peaks through the bushes, and promptly attacks her! The nightmare ends before things could get gruesome, but it sets Mannys internal fears about losing Ellie. He is still affected from the loss of his previous wife. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/IceAgeDawnOfTheDinosaurs |
I Am Legend / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
The news reporter describing the ongoing mutations being caused in those treated with the Krippen virus, showing how something that should have been a source of hope has gone so badly wrong. **Reporter**: So far, almost 5000 patients treated with the retrofitted virus have begun exhibiting symptoms resembling the early onset of rabies. Twenty five patients have already died. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/IAmLegend |
I ♡ Arlo / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
Her song deserves mention. It's basically her boasting about her owning the swamp and its creatures while she starts to sound increasingly insane and her powers ensnare Arlo.
*I'm the one who created this whole thing.*
*I'm the one who created this whole thing!*
*I'm the one who created this whole thing.*
*(Arlo is hypnotized)* | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/IHeartArlo |
Ignited Spark / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
**As is the case with all pages detailing Nightmare Fuel, Spoilers Off**
- The entire assault on the USJ. Good lord, the USJ.
- The prelude to the USJ relies on building a good amount of tension. As the students head towards the bus, they spot the storm clouds above them, wondering where it was supposed to come from since the forecast said that it would be sunny. Once they actually get to the USJ, the storm begins in earnest, with the students surprised that the weather seems to be pushing them inside. It's a tension-building setup for what's to come, as readers knowing what's about to happen can practically see Nine's pretty much urging them inside the trap he's made.
- Once they're inside, Nine decides to set the mood as soon as Thirteen finishes her speech about the safe use of Quirks, using several bolts of lightning to cut the power to the building. And then Nine and his crew slowly make their way across Kurogiri's portals before Nine finishes the chapter with the following bone-chilling declaration.
**Nine:** It doesn't matter, we went through the trouble of bringing our entire cabal to meet the Symbol of Peace personally, and that's what will happen. We needn't worry if he's running a little late ... he'll come as fast as he can when he hears the screams of the children.
- While things were pretty scary in canon during this arc, the whole idea is a group of villains invading a school and ready to murder teenagers who are not even a week into the hero course, here it's arguably more horrifying. First, the Villain Consortium is led by a far more cold, calculating, and sociopathic mastermind than Shigaraki, with Nine far more shrewd and calculating, and has a crew composed of several competent villains, confirmed to have killed both Pro Heroes and villains alike in the past. And not only did they bring the Nomu with them, but Nine also brought
**Hood** for good measure.
- Not to mention his use for the thugs he brought along. In canon, Shigaraki intended to use them to help him fight All Might. Here, Nine brings them along for one terrifying purpose: to take a syringe full of Trigger. Once they've taken them, they devolve into raving, monstrous beasts, unable to tell friend or foe apart as Kurogiri separates Class 1A and traps them with the monsters.
- Chapter 16 is this on steroids. After Izuku refuses to take Nine's offer of peace, the villain decides to sic Hood onto Izuku to pass time until All Might arrives. Props to the author for writing an absolutely terrifying sequence, or more accurately, one-sided massacre, and giving Izuku a beatdown more brutal than anything he got in canon, at least until the PLF War arc. It's a miracle he is still alive by the end of the arc.
- Chapter 17 brings another horrifying twist: Turns out that Muscular has been used as a base body for Hood. Think about this. Two of the strongest, Ax-Crazy and bloodthirsty characters in the manga have been merged. And All for One reveals he is not even complete yet. God knows how much of a monstrosity it will be when the Doctor finishes upgrading it.
-
**All For One is healthy.** Who could be arguably the most powerful and deadly character of the series lacks his Drama-Preserving Handicap. And since it took All Might almost dying to stop his reign of terror years prior, and Itsuka just got One for All, is up to the readers to imagine how worse things will be when the villain decides to step out of the shadows.
- By the end of chapter 18, Teko decides to go out for a walk to clear his thoughts. However, its revealed that he is actually going to meet with someone to get information about the Consortium. And who are the people he meets? Hekiji Tengai and Shin Nemoto, from the Shie Hassaikai. This means that Teko had, in the past, ties with the Yakuza, and raises questions about the old master's past, and makes a setup for dark secrets of the Kendo family.
- While Chapter 19 is mostly lighthearted, the beginning is not so much. Izuku wakes up after cuddling with Itsuka and Ochako much to his embarrassment, and Ochako's tone suddenly becomes sultry and flirtatious. You would think that it would lead to some Erotic Dream from this... if Ochako did not suddenly become Hood, grab Izuku's head and start to squish it until it explodes, prompting a Catapult Nightmare. Needless to say, Izuku can't bring himself to sleep again after such a nightmare.
- Also in Chapter 19, Nine and Slice's scene seems far tamer than when they first appeared - up until Slice seems to get cold feet about going after Class 1A again. Once she shows even the slightest hesitation, Nine turns the charm on, reminding her that he helped save her from her Dark and Troubled Past and how he helped her see the world as it truly was. It's truly meant to serve to show the views that Nine and Slice's relationship is a very dark mirror of Izuku and Ochako's own relationship, and seeing the depths of Nine's Manipulative Bastard tendencies.
- After a relatively light-hearted Chapter 22, the ending of the chapter is extremely harrowing. Itsuka, walking by herself, runs into Eri, and soon discovers that she's about to be confronted by someone heavily implied to be Overhaul himself. What makes this even more terrifying is that, unlike Izuku who had Mirio with him, Itsuka is entirely on her own, and the street is even mentioned to be empty. Had Itsuka not trusted her senses and sprinted away with Eri as fast as she could, no doubt what would've happened if Overhaul got his hands on her ...
- A bit of Fridge Horror. It's implied that Overhaul got a good look on Itsuka's face (something Midnight lampshades in the following chapter) and the Sports Festival will happen very soon. And to make things worse, Itsuka will make the opening speech. Even if Eri is moved to a safe location like U.A., as soon as she appears on screen, Overhaul will know who is the person that took Eri and he might want to go after her for pure spite. And maybe not even Teko's friendship with the Boss will protect her against the capo's anger.
- While this is mitigated by Itsuka simply dyeing her hair for the Festival, what no one else knows, is that thanks to Camie, the Consortium now has her address and can find out about Eri at any given moment.
- While Overhaul's abuse towards Eri is not a surprise, there is something especially morbid about Eri's choice of words when she describes the Mad Scientist experiments on her:
**Eri:** He
he has a long pointy mouth, he never takes it off unless - unless he has to look into me. And - and then he wears a mask when he does that."
- Everyone is quick to pick the words "Look
**into** me." The way it draws parallels between this and sexual abuse is very surreal.
- Chapter 23 ends on a rather disturbing note. Remember when Camie met Izuku and Nejire in the previous chapter? Turns out it wasn't a coincidence for her to meet them there. Camie is the newest recruit of the Villain Consortium and her first assignment is to track down all students from Class 1-A, which she succeeds. By the end of the chapter she and by extension, the Consortium, has a complete list of the addresses, routines, all of it. Nine was dead serious when he made all students his personal enemies and one can only fear when he decides to act on it.
- In the following note, the Consortium now has a girl capable of casting hyper-realistic illusions on their crew. As if they weren't dangerous enough on their own. Not to mention Camie's infatuation with both Izuku and Nejire, which bears a disturbing resemblance to Himiko's interest in Izuku and Ochako in canon. Reviewers also noticed that since her illusions can create realistic itens, she also counts as one for Twice.
- At first, The Reveal that Stendhal is a hero sounds like good thing, meaning that the heroes have one of the most badass characters on their side and that the Hero Killer won't stand a chance... until Akaguro takes a drop of Tensei's blood and he becomes far more morally ambigious individual. And then Paranoia Fuel kicks in: There is a good chance that there is no "Hero Killer", and that this might just be a hoax used by Stendhal to murder fellow heroes without drawing suspicions. And to make the paranoia worse, it all could be an even bigger cover up by the Hero Commission to get Heroes that are not aligned with their interests killed and pinned by somebody else. The fact that Tensei seems to be the main target from the blood quirk user, only adds fuel to the theory that Tensei is close to unfold something he is not supposed to about the Trigger theft and heroes murdered by the Consortium and the corrupt organization wants him out of the picture.
- More details about All Might's fight against All for One resurface. Appearently, the killing blow that he inflicted on the villain (a United States of Smash most likely), turned the entire forest
*into a crater*. And after making sure that All for One wasn't breathing anymore, Nighteye arranged for the body to cremated, and its ashes disposed off, which raises the questions over how Demon Lord managed not only to survive All Might's most furious attack but came back full recovery.
- The Dramatic Irony of this line:
**Gran Torino**: I think the only assurance we have right now is that there's no chance in hell that he's in good shape. You smashed that bastard's head against the ground hard enough to reduce it to sludge - the best we can hope for at the moment is that he's clinically brain dead, and this Nine guy is just using his quirk while he's busy laying around being a vegetable.
- Gran Torino mentions that Tsukauchi's investigation has a new lead: Yuga Aoyama. It appears that the boy was found in a hospital in a similar situation that Nine and All for One's previous victims. While it may be a relief find out the boy is not dead, or worse, Fridge Horror kicks in when you renember that All for One made very clear his family would pay for his failure, and how he will react when he finds out about it.
- While Kaminari accidentally stunning down most of the contenders from the second event is not something that we spent much time on, that doesn't change the fact that the poor boy electrecuted nearly 15 people unconscious. If the boy unleashed something stronger with less control, so many people could have got hurt in worse ways.
- Shoto expresses an unsettling level of Lack of Empathy after Izuku and Ochako crash into the ground. This become worse when he mentions that is a trait that he got from his brother Toya. Clearly, the eldest Todoroki behaves an awful lot like Sociopathic Hero for someone who went through a case Adaptational Heroism, raising the question if Toya is actually that different from his villain canon self. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/IgnitedSpark |
Ikenfell / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
- While the three ghosts that show up at the beginning turn out to be benevolent, the way they appear and the noise that one of them makes can be quite unsettling.
- Maritte is able to use Safinas method of getting into Ikenfell without using the gate by travelling through what looks like a dark cave, only it turns out that something else is there as well. Later on, the party has to use that same method to get to the Snatchers Lair, and Pertisia has a panic attack over it. Its later revealed that she was attacked by that creature, and it left her with one side of her face scarred, and the loss of one of her eyes (or at least the ability to use it).
- The lack of Background Music doesnt help - all you hear is the partys footsteps and the creature flying overhead.
- Later on, you have to fight the creature, known as the Unseen. It seems to be able to shape shift, taking the form of a constantly-moving clawed hand.
- A flashback in Chapter 5 shows Aeldra and a group of people trying to stop the Dark Fold, and it killed all of them except for her. The exact details are not shown, but the fact that it took down two members very quickly without giving them a chance to defend themselves is scary. Aeldra is very lucky to have survived the encounter, even if it did give her a lot of guilt.
- The Stacks. The music is unsettling, and becomes even worse when you clear the areas and cause the ghosts to explode, leaving red stuff all over the room.
- If that wasnt bad enough, there's the basement, where there is blood dripping everywhere, and a large, round shadow is seen passing through. It's scary enough for the text at the save cat to say that the party feels uneasy (it still restores their HP though).
- Agony, the round thing seen in the basement, is a huge, floating, red ball made of blood that has only a mouth, and is seemingly able to turn invisible.
- When travelling between floors in the Spelltower, youre treated to a few cutscenes where the earthquakes cause cracks to open in the ground. And one of them involves the old book falling from the bookshelf, and giving an Evil Laugh...
- During the game's climax, an earthquake causes the negative feelings that Aeldra has been removing with blood magic to be returned to her, making her think the Dark Fold has returned and causing her to attack in the direction she sees it... which results in Bax
*getting impaled onscreen*. The party's shocked reactions are appropriate.
- Because of the above event, Ibn Oxley ends up losing control of his powers to the point where he isn't himself anymore, and he makes some scary faces as he decides to take the still-contained Sapling away, and to emphasise his loss of self, he is referred to as "Oxley?" and then just as "???". | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Ikenfell |
Ice Age: Continental Drift / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
**Manny**
: I have a little paunch, too, but I wouldn't name myself after it.
**Gutt**
: (
*laughs mockingly*
) Very funny. But that's not how I got my name. (
*brandishes claws*
)
**These**
got me my name!
**Sid**
: I don't get it.
**Gutt**
: No? Alright, then. (
*slices through Sid's upper ropes, making him dangle upside down*
) Lemme give ya a visual aid. I just gently press here... (
*pokes Sid's belly*
)
**Sid**
: Hahah! Stop! That tickles!
**Gutt**
: ...and go down like this. (
*moves his finger down to Sid's chin; Sid's laughter is promptly replaced with a gasp of horror*
)
**Squint**
: And then your innards become your
*outards*
! (laughs)
**Sid**
: Uh, I still don't get it.
note :
In this case, Sid may just be lying and pretending to still not understand Gutt's monicker. He's so terrified that he tries to play dumb
. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/IceAge4ContinentalDrift |
If the Emperor Had a Text-to-Speech Device / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
As funny as the series gets, one must remember this is still a parody of the originator of the term "Grim Dark"...
- Helbrecht and his rage are quite scary. When he gets summoned into the Throne Room, he almost tries to kill the Emperor in a fit of confusion and anger, and later on, would have cut Boy in half if Dorn had not intervened. Later on, the Custodes and Rogal freak out and start a four-way screaming match which included the threat of genocide and near-rebellion on the Custodes' part, only stopped when Helbrecht himself made it stop. It makes you wonder if the Black Templars have some kind of gene defect that spreads rage around the people near them. It's incredible that no one was killed or fell to Khorne during the Podcast.
- The Emperor is known to have a Compelling Voice that can being peace of mind and confidence in his charisma to anyone, especially those devoted to him. Helbrecht's vocalizations as he's winding down from having it used on him make it sound almost like the hate-fueled battle craze is trying to
*actively resist* the compulsion. The Black Templar's hatred is so strong, even the Emperor's word needs a moment to get past it.
- It gets worse: Whammudes was chanting "Maim, Kill, Burn", over, and over, and over while talking about how all the NORMIES should die. So yeah, that was about a single sword stroke from falling to Khorne.
- The Custodes' insanity is also quite frightening. It's hard to remember how unhinged they really are if you're too busy laughing at their gay, fantastic personalities. However, there is something deeply wrong and broken about them where they will turn from being cheerful and fruity one moment to serious, badass protectors the next, to petty, squabbling sycophants the next, and insane murderous maniacs the moment after that. They each have their own unique traits and have plenty of depth which is unsurprising given how old and experienced they are, but the mood swings they have are completely unpredictable.
- In-Universe example, but apparently "The Inquisitor" is such an awful book that it's equivalent to
*torture*, and gives anyone who reads it hallucinations of the warp.
- BEHEMOTH, Eliphas The Inheritor's "OVA" of TTS has this in spades due to it being about the first appearance of the Tyranids. Magos Varnak's Data Codex in particular doesn't help matters. Especially not since it's a reading of an
*actual canon quote.*
- In general, the Tyranids are the biggest SERIOUS source of Nightmare Fuel in the TTS-verse so far. While Chaos certainly has its fair share of horrors, there is always a healthy mix of hilarity to balance out their darker and scarier aspects even with characters as horrible as Lucius the Eternal. The Tyranids, on the other hand? Any interaction with them has MINIMAL humor
*at best*, and nothing but horror at worst.
- When the Tyranid figureheads, the Norn-Queen and the Swarmlord, are both onscreen, it becomes clear that they aren't simply animalistic abominations. The Norn-queen nearly kills the entirety of Death Watch without raising a talon before Kryptman manages to break its psychic assault, and then after that reveals it had used their time writhing in agony to summon defenses to its chambers and outnumber them. Meanwhile, after the Swarmlord takes the field, all of the effects of killing the Queen are
*immediately* undone. And when the Marshall challenges it in close quarters, one expects it to leap at him, tear him apart to prove itself as its own one-man army and begin its own rampage... but it doesn't. It just stares at him before commanding a Gargoyle to do the job. The Hive Mind's strongest arms are also among its smartest, and they know they're too valuable to risk a direct conflict, and if the Ultramarines hadn't broken the frontline and allowed Calgar to challenge it directly, the Swarmlord would likely have never suffered a scratch short of complete Exterminatus.
- The aristocrats from Jopall are, in layman's terms, completely and horrifyingly deformed. One of them looks like it's melting, another is horribly swollen, and the one who speaks has some weird device that gives him a horrific permanent smile. They somehow make Timothy, that slave... man-thing from Special 5 look normal in comparison.
- The incomplete Ahriman clone in the Slaaneshmas special, a living reminder of how Fabius Bile is Chaos' premier Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant.
- The whole scene horrifies both Ahriman and Lucius the Eternal. Yeah, you heard me. Fabius Bile has managed to horrify LUCIUS THE ETERNAL, who up until now has been the largest source of Nightmare Fuel in the entire series. Yeah.
- As silly a video as it is the fourth Special sheds some disturbing light on Tzeentch's abilities. Mainly that he can swap between different forms at random off-camera, one of which is what looks like a
*melting tower of corpses*. He tends to switch into that one and wiggle around when he's feeling *jovial*.
- In the fifth special, Asdrubael Vect's cup-bearer, Timothy. He looks like the hybrid spawn between E.T. and a scrotum. If he was ever human, he barely looks like one now.
- The sixth special reveals where Custodisi went after the Emperor zapped him out of existence- he was sent to the Warhammer Fantasy world, where he's gone quite mad and is now the leader of a tribe of ogres. The only thing he really wants anymore is to return to his Emperor, Magnus, and his brothers, but no one realizes this when they face him. Also, it's possible that he's being puppeted by Magnus the whole time, and when we last see him, he's unconscious, has had his arm chopped off, was covered in dung, and was lit on fire, and that was
*before* getting thrown down a deep dark hole.
- The second Whammudes vox-cast gives us a tour of one of the duties of the Emperor's Caretaker: cleaning the Emperor's personal sewer system.
- Said sewers require a Titan-sized ultra-reinforced seal door that is the only way to enter from the palace, and for good reason. It's filled with the waste materials from the Golden Throne, entire lost groups of pilgrims who mutated to the point where they feed off the sludge in the sewers, and is a petri dish of deadly microbes and organisms (especially the fungi, which Whammudes makes it sound like having orks down there would be
*preferrable* - and Boy's voxcast has already revealed that there already *are* greenskins spawning on Holy Terra). There's so many toxins and plagues down there that if any escaped, they could depopulate half the planet. Oh and a Custodes needs to be with a group of Sisters of Silence because... *something* lurks in the sewers that's strong enough to nearly kill Whammudes. Something intensely psychic that *did* manage to boil off most of his skin, in fact.
- It only takes five minutes into the episode for the horror to start, when Whammudes encounters something that makes him drop his usual boastful ramblings and become one of the Imperium's finest warriors.
**Whammudes:** Now, [Canal] Sextus regularly damns my existences with *its* existence. It's been clogged time and time again, and there's just-
(
*distant, echoing, inhuman scream*) **Whammudes:** ...Right. ( *tersely*) Perimeter scan. What do we believe that was? The Undesired, ripping into each other? Please, please, *please*, I dearly hope that is the case...
- Whammudes also reveals that some of the cleaning duties require him to crawl into pipes his usual body would be utterly unable to fit in... and, in the process, shows the non-Custodians among us that Custodes can do their Pillar Man namesakes good by
*noisily contorting their bodies, breaking bones and tearing sinew*, so they can actually crawl into those tight spaces. The episode gets pretty awful for claustrophobics after that point.
- The main threat of the episode is some sludgeform spawned from the Golden Throne's runoff, which Whammudes refers to as a "Bastard of the Sludge." And if you listen carefully during his struggles with the gibbering monstrosity... the name isn't an exaggeration.
- It gets worse when Whammudes crawls into a pipe system after the thing, gets stuck, and realizes "It's -
*it's behind me."* The Bastard starts *biting the toes off Whammudes' feet* while gibbering something like "GIVE ME YOUR BONES."
- Most of the creatures in the sewers, Whammudes can handle. The moment the Bastard shows up, Whammudes immediately decides that it has to die
*now.* This thing is enough to worry one of the most dangerous men on Terra, and it's not even done growing in power yet. And by the end of the episode, it's potentially still alive.
- On top of everything listed above, the vox-cast format means the entire video is
*audio-only* meaning every horror it contains is entirely left to the listener's imagination.
- The third Vox-Logs episode has the Dark Eldar escorting Leman Russ to the arena attempt to distract the very dangerously bored Primarch with a simple and harmless game... that unexpectedly turns into full-blown horror.
- Leman Russ' "Game" with his Dark Eldar captives is a pretty damn horrifying version of the 'Questions' children's game. Because, apparently, his time in the warp means he is able to manifest whatever he is thinking of during the game, starting with a gas that
*rapidly suffocates* the Dark Eldar before Skraket finally catches on. And apparently, he and Magnus used to play this exact version while they were still on the same side.
- After a Mood Whiplash during which Russ summons Urist, who pushes Skraket off the ship to his death, the final thing he thinks of starts out.. weird. When asked whether it's a lifeform, he hesitates and explains "The answer is complex, but I'm leaning towards no". When asked whether it's a concept, he again hesitates, and when asked whether it's an emotion, he, yet again, hesitates before the "no."
**Jebarion**
: Does it...
*live off*
of emotion?
**Leman**
:
*Yes.*
[anguished realization
]
**Jebarion**
: (
*horrified gasp*
)
**Xylatro**
: Oh... NO! We... cannot... (
*hyperventilates*
)
**Jebarion**
: Please... mercy...
**Leman**
: (
*chuckle*
) Ironic. (
*yawns*
) Next question.
**Xylatro**
:
*Is it... D-ugh... Daemonic?!* **Leman**
:
*Yes...*
- Now this is where you almost feel sorry for the Dark Eldar, because Eldar cannot utter Slaanesh's name because it makes Slaanesh notice their souls, yet they have to say it to avoid Russ conjuring it forth. And
*Russ knows this*. Jebarion tries to get around it by calling it "She-Who-Thirsts", but Russ denies having any knowledge of what that is. Xylatro decides to take the plunge, and we hear firsthand why they were so terrified: the mere utterance of its name causes his soul to painfully, and horribly, be drained out as his body turns to ash. Also Leman Russ' powers are such that if he didn't fall asleep, FREAKING SLAANESH WOULD HAVE BREACHED COMMORRAGH. Let it be known that, with this, Leman Russ might be one of the only beings in the galaxy to actually make a Dark Eldar weep from sheer terror and a broken mind.
- Speaking of, Slaanesh up to this point has been portrayed as a Laughably Evil Too Kinky to Torture god(dess) with an Extreme Libido.
*Not when summoned by Russ*. The rhyme she gives as she approaches the Dark Eldar makes it *very* clear what is in store for their souls when she gets her hands on them, and as the rhyme continues, you hear screams in the background grow louder and louder. It almost makes you feel bad for the *Dark Eldar*. Almost.
We come, we come~
We enter your city~
Paint the walls with your blood, so pretty!~
Listen to your bones as they loose!~
The wonderful sound of your abuse!~
Hear your soul sing as it boils in our pool!~
*Your fate will be a thousand times as cruel!*
- Four words seen mere seconds before Russ falls asleep both ratchets up and perfectly encapsulates the horror of this sequence: "
". The distorted sound that plays as Slaanesh does so really sells the moment. **Slaanesh enters the materium**
- Dorn's Night Before Sanguinala:
- While it's mostly cheerful, this episode proves conclusively that the Skaven do exist in the 40k universe since the
*Great Horned Rat itself* tries to crawl into Boy's room and tempt him to worship. While Boy banishes it with contemptuous ease, the fact that it could do this proves how scary-powerful it is to manifest in the Materium. It also shows that the kingdoms of Intelligent Rats under the surface of Holy Terra were not just a Mythology Gag about the Skaven, they're *actual Skaven.*
-
*Day In the Life of Boy* gives us a typical day of Boy's life that's filled with, as usual for Boy, this and Black Comedy.
- Principal Vox-Caster Proprietus shows us the typical Body Horror a lot of the civil servants of the Imperium put themselves though. Larger than normal feet with legs so thin that
*their veins are exposed like cord bundles* and exposed ribs to do things like grasp objects because of intentionally breaking their fingers *just turning the Voxcaster on*. The art also shows he has a Vox speaker, maybe two, shoved into his mouth and widening his jaw to the breaking point, along with ever-bulging eyes that seem incapable of blinking. *All of this is intentional by the way.*
- Boy's daily route to the Palace in itself is a death course. Just to get to the Eternity Gate (the final gateway before the Sanctum Imperialis, where the Emperor resides) requires not getting crushed by the sheer sea of people on the streets, avoiding landmines left since the time of The Siege of Terra, avoiding the trigger happy Arbiters
*and the intelligent rats*, and do a stealth infiltration into the Gate because if the pilgrims catch him "skipping the line" they will eat him alive.
- Terrifyingly, Boy implies that there are intelligent rats with an empire under the feet of those on Terra. Those who know their
*Warhammer* lore can piece together that *Skaven exist and their kingdom exists on Holy Terra itself.*
- Proprietus's reaction to Boy telling him he'd met the Emperor in the flesh is... not friendly at all. Not only does he "censor" Boy by taping his mouth shut, he also threatens to kill him and his whole family for daring to even say such a thing. Needless to say, Boy
*snaps* and beats him within an inch of his life with his vox-caster and his legs, mortally injuring him in the process. Then Asshailer arrives and manages to momentarily stop Boy by shouting so hard he makes his ears bleed. If it wasn't for Karstodes' timely arrival, Asshailer would've killed Boy.
- The Shadow Over Immateriums is one long exercise in this. Especially once the main character Bruce Norring makes accidental psychic contact with the
*Tyranid Hive Mind* and has a vision that culminates in an absolutely **massive◊** Hive Fleet that dwarfs the galaxy rising up to devour it. He's almost infected by the Genestealer Cult until his choice words manage to accidentally summon the Ordo Xenos Inquisitor Adriele Quist, from the Warp to slaughter the whole damn thing and leave. The event leaves the formerly hard-boiled detective laughing and sobbing in fear at what he's seen.
- Said "Hive Fleet" can be a bit more terrifying when you look closer at it and see what looks like
*eyes* near it's base. It might not be a Hive Fleet, it might just be a Tyranid Bioform so absolutely massive and incomprehensible that it just *seems like one*.
- Alternatively, since it's a psychic vision, it may be the Hive Mind itself. Quite literally a hungry god,
*and it's looking right at you*.
- During the segment, there is a sound that steadily grows louder towards the end. It is the
*Hive Mind* , and it is horrific, sounding like a Reaper Horn on equine growth hormone. **roaring**
- Requiem for Dominique in it's 45 second entirety. Capable of sobering up an Inquisitor drunk from fermented Chaos out of sheer terror. It's unsettling to the point that numerous people wonder if it was some kind of message from
*Nurgle*.
- The Dark Eldar in their full glory!. Double Subversion doesn't even begin to describe it.
- The Fate of the Lamenters:
- This short gives us a brutal series of scenes depicting what is perhaps the most noble and kindest Space Marine Chapter in the setting - the Lamenters - suffering misfortune after misfortune only to be abandoned and brutalized by the very Imperium they fight for. The montage ends with a limbless Lamenters sergeant
*weeping in the stomach of a Tyranid*, begging the Emperor and Sanguinius to tell him why his Chapter deserves such a fate when all they try to do is save the Imperium's people. After learning about the Lamenters the Throne-bound Emperor breaks down sobbing and floods the Throne-room floor with his tears. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/IfTheEmperorHadATextToSpeechDevice |
I Know What You Did Last Summer / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
**As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.**
-
**I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER!**
- The hook killer was probably inspired by one of many urban legends surrounding the dangers of Lovers' Lane.
- Made worse in the third movie, since he becomes a ghost or zombie (it's not clear). So now there is virtually no stopping him.
- The accident comes completely out of nowhere. The four teens are enjoying their night, and the man just wanders out into the middle of the road. Ray was distracted for a moment and that's all it took. They first assume it was a deer, but Julie is already panicking - "if it was a deer then
*where* is it!" - and then they find the boot.
- Barry is pretty unnerving during the whole ordeal. He's drunk sure, but you wonder how violent would he have gotten to the others if they hadn't gone along with the plan? He looks like he's ready to strangle Julie when she initially refuses.
- Max's sudden death. At first you don't know what the deal with the note is. Seeing him getting hooked in the throat tells you that this is what awaits the teens.
- The killer easily snuck into Helen's house, past her father and sister and hid in her room without her even noticing. Helen waking up to find some of her hair on the pillow...she suddenly
*knows* that something must have happened.
- Julie finds Max's body in her trunk. And a more mundane fear - but the shock nearly makes her stumble into traffic. Then there's the body being moved before she got back to the car - Ben Willis was waiting for her the entire time!
- The entirety of Helen's chase, which goes on for a long time and tortures the poor girl several times before the killer finally gets to her. She has to escape from a police car and run all the way to the store, where Elsa is clearly apathetic to her screaming and takes her sweet time to open the door. Then she has to run through an alleyway but the marching band's noise prevents anyone from hearing her call for help.
- Elsa's death too. She turns around to see someone standing in front of her holding a hook. She knows what's about to happen to her and all she can do is scream as he raises the hook. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/IKnowWhatYouDidLastSummer |
Ice Fantasy / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
- Yue Shen and Li Luo meet a man who says he'll show them to a place where they'll be safe from a rat demon. They follow him to a cave... where he reveals that he is the rat demon, and he intends to eat them alive.
- Some of the dream weavers get so entangled in their dreams that they can't tell when they're awake or dreaming. Then Ka Suo and Li Luo go into Xing Jiu's dream, and it keeps changing around them until Ka Suo doesn't know if he's in the real world or still in the dream.
- Xing Jiu finds trees covered with butterflies. Then they all fly away... to reveal mummified corpses in the trees. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/IceFantasy |
I Know Who Killed Me / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
**WARNING: Spoilers Off applies to Nightmare Fuel pages.**
- Crossing over with Nausea Fuel: The torture scenes are pretty horrifying, but the dry ice scene is definitely the most frightening and nauseating, as the killer presses the block of dry ice against her hand and peels her flesh off.
- Followed by the killer drenching her rotted hand in blue oil made from blue roses that stings her exposed hand.
- Then the killer starts sadistically amputating her arm by cutting the fingers off first — while she's still breathing.
- The captured twin's screams and sobs during the torture scenes don't help either.
- One twin waking up to her arm and leg being spontaneously cut off from her body, without anyone being there doing the cutting.
- Due to their twin telepathy, what one twin feels, the other can go through to. And this is worst when on twin is sadistically tortured nearly to death with her arm and leg being cut off.
- The horror of not knowing where your missing daughter is or that she is alive and buried and the other is being pursued by a sadistic piano teacher.
- While everyone believes that Aubrey has been found, the real Aubrey is buried alive, and time is running out for her. If her look-alike had not been so persistent in finding her, no one but the killer would have ever known what happened to her. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/IKnowWhoKilledMe |
I Live in Your Basement / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
- A "girl" turns inside out, described in full detail.
- The main protagonist Marco caves Keith's skull in with a paper weight. Keith falls to the ground and lays there unconscious without breathing for a moment, which Marco is horrified by.
- Marco's head injury after he is smacked by a softball bat and the full detail of how he feels counts as well. Right after he is hit, the details of his injury are just unsettling to read through:
*the ground tilted, the pain exploded in Marco's head, everything turned bright red (which actually forced him to shut his eyes), and the ground swallowed him out of his consciousness.* It's not only scary, it's incredibly *PAINFUL!* Just imagine that pain! The fact that it's told in first-person gives the reader a vicarious experience of this kind of pain, which makes it even worse! Made even worse by the fact that Marco is only 12 years old, and as you would know, very few people around that age or younger have survived getting struck on the head by a bat, especially after the full-blown detail of the injury mentioned above.
- The boy, Keith, also elicits very strange and disturbing stalker vibes, especially considering how young the protagonist is. Then there's the fact that the show descends into a complete Mind Screw after Marco gets hit in the head with a baseball. While it can be interpreted as Marco suffering from his concussion, the end actually reveals that Keith was having a nightmare about being a human and living above the basement.
- The fact monsters live in basements and do not dare emerge elicits some likewise very disturbing vibes.
- The whole story is just a long series of contradictions; even the aforementioned Twist Ending makes very little sense, in context or otherwise.
- At one point after a bunch of bizarre happenings Marco's mom takes him to the doctor. After Marco explains what's going on, the doctor just calmly says that they need to remove Marco's brain and examine it under a microscope. Marco is absolutely terrified, but neither the doctor nor his mother act like there's anything weird about this. ||It turns out this part of the book is All Just a Dream, but it's still pretty weird and scary.|| | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/ILiveInYourBasement |
ICO / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
- The Shadow monsters. Good
*god*, the shadow monsters. They come out of nowhere, swarm you incessantly, and try with mind-numbing determination to take Yorda away from you. A single hit knocks you on your arse, and Ico just lays there for a few seconds, gasping in pain. Meanwhile, the shadow monsters grab Yorda and begin dragging her away to the portal. And if they do, its over for the both of you.
- The worst part of it is how damn smart they are. They come at you from multiple directions and dimensions, flying around to get a better shot or flattening to shadow to wait for an opening. They work together, smacking you in the back while you're focused on another target or blocking your way as you chase after Yorda. They use tactics, dragging Yorda to the farthest portal so you have to fight them all to get to her, or waiting until your back is turned to come at you. And they never, ever give up. They can also knock you over the edge if they get a good hit in.
- The shadows are the souls of horned people entombed alive in the castle. Including children.
- Ico's intended fate at the beginning of the game. He's not only condemned to a tomb but also
*shackled*. Alone and trapped in the dark, with only luck saving him from either suffocation or dehydration, whichever came first.
- The walls of the tomb room are packed full of identical pods, indicating that Ico's intended fate isn't exactly unique.
- The Queen herself. Just the idea of someone commiting such horrible actions with no remorse is quite frankly
*terrifying*
- Upon approaching the Queen's throne room in the endgame, everything seems quiet...too quiet. You can dance on the Queen's throne, wave around your sword, anything—and nothing happens. Then, you turn to leave, and suddenly the Queen's on her throne and calling after you.
*How long was she there for?* | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Ico |
Hidden Prophices / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
Hidden Prophecies gets a little scary at times... Lilypaw ||eating dead cats||. Lilypaw ||getting his eye clawed out||. In Chapter 16, when ||Gaysparkle rips the legs off of Sunsetshine's kits||. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/HiddenProphices |
Inanimate Insanity / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
A reality show featuring anthropomorphic inanimate objects may look innocent and lighthearted at first glance, but with moments like these...
**(Warning: As per Nightmare Fuel policy, all spoilers will be unmarked.)**
# Non-Canon
# Season 1
- Paper's Split Personality is generally played for laughs, but its pretty terrifying from Papers perspective since hes not in control of his screw-ups or the atrocities he commits.
- In The Great Escape, as the eliminated contestants travel back to the island, Lightbulb says she got a splinter. Were then treated to a lovely closeup of her making a disturbing-looking face with a large splinter in her arm, complete with
*pus*. Eww.
- In The Tile Divide, MePhone4S's death trap is played for laughs, but some may find Taco's tongue ripping in two pieces (with a paper tearing sound to boot!) quite disturbing.
- In Journey Through Memory Lane (Part 2), as Taco is about to cross the finish line, Bow suddenly attacks her out of nowhere. She is revealed to have gone insane after being isolated in a box, along with her appearance changing drastically and her voice becoming hellishly distorted.
- The fact that Bow was locked in a box against her will just to prevent her from coming back to the show.
*Inhuman* doesn't even begin to describe that. No one even seems to care she is locked in there, with Lightbulb even *scolding* Bow when she tries to escape.
# Season 2
- In "Breaking the Ice", as OJ questions what happened to his hotel, Salt assures OJ that it's going to be OK, as they now have time to spend cleaning the hotel together, and in a demonic voice, Salt finishes the sentence with "FOREVER". Salt then drags OJ to the hotel off screen with OJ screaming. It's played for comedy, but just what on earth did Salt really use this opportunity for?
- Trophy telling Tissues to
**die** when Tissues tries to form an alliance with him. It's not given too much attention in the actual show, but quite a lot of fans see this as *very* callous. It doesn't help that the official website would later give the strong implications that Tissues is terminally ill.
- A cut scene in "Tri Your Best" has Yang ripping Apple in half for not knowing what the word "joke" means.
- Let Er R.I.P.:
- Bow (as a ghost) jumpscaring Marshmallow from a music box when she enters a room in the mansion. The box itself plays an Ominous Music Box Tune before Bow jumps out.
- After that, Marshmallow sends Bow to scare off the other contestants roaming in the mansion after telling her about the challenge. Some of Bow's ways of doing this are horrifying:
- Bow possesses a Dora doll Knife tries talking to, turning it red and then ripping it apart. If that didn't scare you, the last words uttered from the doll surely will:
**ADIOS.**
- Bow yelling at Microphone. Because of how loud it is, it may make you jump the first time watching the episode.
- Test Tube shattering after she mentally breaks due to Bow's existence contradicting with her scientific views..
- And finally, Bow possessing Baseball and running Nickel out of the mansion while screaming at him. Even Nickel finds this impressive.
- "Everything's A-OJ" reveals that MePhone sent the eliminated contestants to a cramped closet in Hotel OJ, and they were locked in there for
*months.* For added fun, Tissues was constantly sneezing on them, and once they're finally let out they're all covered in snot. It makes being sent to Idiotic Island seem *tame* in comparison, and it really shows what a *sociopath* MePhone is at worst. In-Universe, his inmates in jail see this as more than a little inhumane.
- Suitcase's hallucinations in later episodes, especially when you consider just how close they are to real-world panic attacks.
- Her hallucination in "Mazed and Confused" is the maze walls
*closing in on her* while multiple voices speak to her, with it only being broken once Balloon tries to talk to her.
- The one in Kick the Bucket is
*even worse*, with an arm grabbing her as multiple tentacles **with skeletal arm-shaped light shining on them** look like they're about to attack her as the same voices play, before a final shot lasting only a split second of a shadow on a white background flashing, of a round character with no arms, presumably Nickel. After this, Suitcase seems entirely defeated, and when Balloon concernedly asks if they're okay, they say in an uncharacteristically deadpan, monotone voice, "never better." It gets even worse when you consider Balloon says that Suitcase was down there for quite awhile...
- "Alternate Reality Show":
- Something about Baseball's Death Glare directed towards Suitcase after she wins immunity by default is more than a little terrifying, especially since it starkly contrasts with his usual Nice Guy attitude and status as an older brother figure to her. Take a look for yourself.
- Lightbulb's knocking of Salt and Pepper creating the "Inanimate Insanity Infinity" reality is enough, but it's implied that the contestants other than Lightbulb and Apple have been thrown into Black Hole for elimination. Not to mention that Black Hole mentions millions have fell into him.
- Watching Pepper beat the snot out of Salt in Episode 12 is pretty disturbing - she hits her hard enough for her to
*crack and fall into Black Hole.* The worst part? The alternate dimension contestants find it absolutely hilarious. *Jesus Christ.*
- "Mine Your Own Business" reveals that Steve Cobs abused MePhone4 and pressured him to be perfect, and if his creations aren't the way he wants them to be, Cobs either destroys them or leaves them to rot in a closet. MePhone4 discovers his predecessor, MePhone3GS,
*begging for his life* before running out of battery, and it prompts him to run away with MePad.
- To make matters worse, most of MePhone's descendants were sent to kill him, meaning that Cobs believes he's outdated and imperfect and he wants him
*dead* as soon as possible.
-
: **Hatching The Plan**
- Fan's nightmare at the beginning of the episode.
- The Shimmers' backstory involving their planet being colonized by Cobs, including having their
*children stolen.* Fans have likened this to colonization in real life, a *very* relevant topic in the present day.
- Taco killing Test Tube and shooting Fan, because she comes
*right out of nowhere* after the two share a heartwarming moment together.
- How about the introduction of MePhoneX at the stinger? He makes horrifying alarm noises, and doesn't speak while marching towards Toilet, and the flashing red X (which is his face) getting redder. What makes this even better? It's unknown if he killed Toilet or not. After the Adamationz logo it precedes, unnerving piano music plays.
- Even worse, if that thing just so happens to find MePhone (which is probably why they exist) and the contestants, who knows what might happen...
# Season 3
-
**In general:**
- The very concept of Indefinite Island. Once a contestant is flung to the island by the Fist Thingy, they are greeted by a walkie-talkie strapped to a palm tree and an unknown voice talks to them welcoming them to the island and telling them that if they want a second chance, then they must stay on the island. Is it any wonder why Fan left to return to Hotel OJ? | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/InanimateInsanity |
Incarceron / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
The Prison's threat to Rix in *Sapphique*. *"You will tell me where the Glove is and then for your reward I will very slowly and very carefully destroy you, atom by atom, for centuries. You will scream like the prisoners in your patchbooks, like Prometheus eaten daily by the eagle, like Loki as poison drips on his face. When I have Escaped and everyone else is dead your struggles will still convulse the Prison."* | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Incarceron |
I Don't Run An Orphanage / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
**As is the case with all pages detailing Nightmare Fuel, Spoilers Off**
# General
- OPC (Overly Powerful Children) are children with powerful Quirk that are dangerous to both themselves and other people. Some of the kids Izuku adopts have injured people before. Two of them even (accidentally) kills their mother with their Quirk.
- Izuku's declining health to the point of Heroic RRoD is not pretty, with a lot of blood coughed out.
- Grimm (
**G**rotesque, **R**evolting, **I**nfernal, **M**isshapen **M**onstrosities) are Animalistic Abomination created by Yami's Quirk. Just like their *RWBY* counterpart, they are terrifying, strong, able to track people by detecting their fear, and (almost) unstoppable. And due to Yami's Quirk needing negative emotions to create them, there is no limit on how much he can create as long he has a steady supply of it. Glad He's On Our Side, indeed.
# Main Story
-
**Destiny Comes Knocking**
- Overhaul break-in into Midoriya's house to look for Eri. Izuku must pretend to sleep while the Yakuza boss was in his bedroom, while Eri is hiding inside the dirty laundry nearby. He almost got killed if one of Overhaul's goons did not mention how soundproof the headset he put on is.
-
**Set in Stone**
- Kei's first appearance. Midoriya bumped into a stone statue in a grocery store before a woman ran past her, turning to stone mid-run. As he peeks, he saw a robber carrying a tied young girl with snake hair in one hand while the other hand pointing a gun at her, forcing her to petrify the cashier. Izuku sees that she was no older than Eri.
-
**Double Trouble**
- Fu's first appearance is as a rotting child zombie that bites out of nowhere. The only reason nobody got injured was that the one he bites is Fat Gum.
-
**Oozing In**
-
**Something Afoot**
- Izuku's monologue about his family, including his biological daughter, Eri and Izumi.
- The new girl got labeled as OPC as soon as O.P.C.C.C apprehend her, due to how efficient, multitasking, and quick-working her Quirk is while her age is still in single digits.
**Namae:** She, a six-year-old, used her quirk to make her parents forget about her and inserted herself into a whole new family while altering several other things in people's memories, and one girl's entire life, all within the span of one night. Imagine what she could do with more experience or more time.
-
**Mistakes of the Past**
- Izuku learns more about some of O.P.C.C.C. operations offscreen. One of them is about a criminal who kidnaps people to force them to mate so they can sell the kids.
-
**Adopt One Get One Free**
-
**Mighty World**
- Fu's Quirk evokes You Can't Kill What's Already Dead, and he became a literal Empty Shell as result.
**Fu:**
It's not just that I can't feel things physically. My emotions are also muted
, Meaning feeling things is pretty hard too. When I'm by myself, it doesn't just feel like I'm alone, it feels like I don't even exist. I don't have a presence or a strong personality, so I just feel...nothing, when I'm by myself. (...) I can barely remember what it was like before I got it (his Quirk), But I still miss it. I wish I could feel the ground as I walked. I wish I could feel people's warmth when they hugged me. I wish I could taste food again. But I can't, and I never will
.
-
**Uravity's Cowl**
- Kiba throws Fu, who is bruised and bloody from being dragged underground alongside her to Ochako, almost like a Jump Scare to the Hero-in-training.
- Ochako's first attempt at increasing gravity causes Sansan to stuck immobilized as a puddle on the ground, screaming gibberish for help.
-
**Teachers Visit**
- If one did not know about Fu's Quirk, they would think they just saw a murder when Kiba's heavyweight fall onto him, which is what the three U.A. teachers thought when it happens.
- Nezu warns Kioku that his memories are similar to Eri's to prevent her from reading them. It works because the girl thought he was just the victim like Eri, which is not wrong, but not the whole truth.
-
**Hard Choices**
- The D.O.C has a secretive group that deals with "Level 2 OPC" whose Quirks are so uncontrollable they were condemned to spend their entire life in the Extra Normal Prison, until they see a solution: Eri. their representative is pressuring Izuku to have Eri donate her blood by preying on the teen's Chronic Hero Syndrome, saying that the fate of this children is in his hand.
-
**One Step Away From The Past**
-
**Shorts 9**
- The level of injuries Kiba and Netsu have after their sparring went too far, which includes a lungful of ashes and smokes. Izuku needs to call Recovery Girl, and even then the two need two weeks to recover, and if they were stopped too late, the injury would be permanent enough to force them to abandon their dreams to become Pro Heroes.
- Kyosei amplified the dopamine he gets from Fukunoko's cookies, causing Fu to go berserk, angrily demanding her to get him more before fainting from the sugar rush's crash. No wonder the poor girl faints as well.
-
**A Battle of Fire, Ice, and a Dragon**
- The Grimm Wyvern. not only it's massive, nothing from the students of Team B can damage it, and it can create more Grimms by itself.
- The number of collateral damages from Todoroki's ice bridge collapsing onto the street, which also almost crushed Tsuyu and Yaoyorozu. While the team passed the exercise, Nezu pointed out that they would fail if this is a real-life situation.
-
**Queen Of Eternal Darkness**
- Nuckelavee Grimm is a lanky, giant centaur with a demonic head. It is so disturbing that Mina questions if There Are No Therapists at the mansion.
- As adorable as Kiba is, the vampire girl pulls an amazing theatrical performance to be a menacing villain by punching Kirishima through several walls.
- When the other hero students found Kirishima after being Punched Across the Room, they see a fist-shaped
*dent* on his hardened body.
- The idea of "Quirk Removal" is this to class 1-A, as it is equivalent if amputating a perfectly fine limb. Izuku has to assure them that those who would receive it are children from Level 2 OPCs, who have Quirks that are too dangerous to be adopted, let alone be permitted to live in society, and only as an absolute last resort.
- We learn about one example of Level 2 OPC. A kid possesses a literal Superpower Russian Roulette Quirk that changes randomly every 24 hours, with some that can cause mass destruction. It's no wonder he needs a permanent De-power.
-
**An Overdue Talk**
- Izuku in Bakugo's eyes. His former bully victim is in front of him, not only developing "Not Afraid of You Anymore" attitude but can also destroy his life with just a word or a injection.
- We learn that there are parts of the government that keep persuading/lobbying Izuku to let them use the Quirk Removal method as a method of punishing criminals. The only reason Izuku didn't budge is that he knows how cruel the life of a Quirkless is, and he believes that no one deserves that.
- Fuku Steps Out: Just as things going well, Izuku started coughing blood.
- And Then There Were 10(x2):
- Izuku's declining health gets to the point that drinking Aspirin is considered one TOO Many medicines his body can take and that he passes out instead of sleeping. But his Chronic Hero Syndrome is so severe that he thinks he can delay making a doctor's appointment for himself until next month.
- Ghostfreak, Ken's Superpowered Evil Side that makes him count as an OPC. It amplifies his spite and anger, as well as being far more disposed to violence. Not helping that this form has Invisibility, Intangibility and can possess a person. It is so dangerous that D.O.C. decided to modify his Omnitrix to not display this form in its interface to ensure Ken won't turn into it intentionally.
- Fall:
- Nisei is a child assassin whose swift and brutal strikes are so relentless, she managed to drain Fu's Quirk to near empty, something no one manage to do (so far) in the story.
Internally, Fu had used up a little more than half his meat reserves, which was NOT good. To say the least.
To her, she was losing this fight and then some. But Fu knew this fight was far more even.
If he wasn't able to regenerate, then he would die pretty quickly.
Not to mention he would go into his rampage mode, meaning he wouldn't even be able to retreat. He'd turn into a mindless animal that would soon be slaughtered.
- Just the idea that someone sends a child assassin to kill him, but ended up almost killing one of his children is this to Izuku.
**Izuku:** * *Talking to Namae on the phone** Someone sent a child assassin here, probably to kill someone, probably me, and ended up fighting one of my children to the death! Almost killing Fu and themselves in the process!
- The Meta Liberation Army. Not only did they send Nise to kill Izuku, but they also send someone to pose as a reporter to kill Izuku mid-conference.
- Not to mention that Re-Destro took Izuku Midoriya and the Foundation's existence personally.
The quirkless were unevolved relics of a bygone age. They should be at the bottom rung of society, and it should be made certain that their genes could not be passed on, one way or another.
But yet here one was, not only massively wealthy and successful but also in charge of children who were inherently superior to him!
[...]
The fact that Izuku Midoriya could only survive these attacks by hiding behind the children's quirks only proved his genetic inferiority.
However, the M.L.A. still had higher priorities than this. Far higher.
But it was a matter of principle. Izuku Midoriya must die.
- The new Grimm variants can be considered overkill for merely part of security forces.
- Not a few days after Izuku's assassination attempt, an unknown catgirl trespasses The Midoriya Foundation's area and
*singlehandedly* beats all the Grimms used as the foundation's security. Izuku even told Ochako and the 1-A students to *not* engage this trespasser because the Cat Girl's prowess means she's capable of *killing* them all.
- Once again, Yami saves someone from being bullied by using his Nightmare Face, but this time he spills his Grimm Goo out of his mouth to amp up the scare factor. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/IDontRunAnOrphanage |
Identity V / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
For as horrifying and disturbing as the aforementioned examples are, what is perhaps most scary are the deductions that only raise more questions about the Dark and Troubled Past of several of the Survivors and Hunters, or what we didn't see in the Character Diaries. Examples include:
- Pursuit and Escape (Gardener)
The hunter and prey are liable to switch places, perhaps even completely out of the blue.
The reason I saved you was not to take you away, but to experience that feeling of despair once again.
Riches and treasures won't fall from the sky. You have to go out and create your own wealth.
**Orphan Diary:** Kreacher said that there was a new child who came here tonight. He's lucky, only lost the left side. Veronica said he needed some rest. I saw her holding the dirty sheets, covered in red stains. Hope he doesn't miss breakfast tomorrow.
See the light, shun the shadow. People often fail to see what's rotting beneath the shining surface.
**A photo:** In the orphanage, Kreacher Pierson and a priest in uniform are conducting a band of disabled children.
- Road-blocking "Dragons" (Explorer)
These giant, fanged... dragons! You can't stop an explorer!
Actually, I might have just made a mistake.
- Escape From Reality (Explorer)
Would you still be passionate after learning the truth of life?
**Journal entry:** I want to get out of here; anywhere but here. Just get me out of this school.
- Everyone Has A Reason (Mechanic)
Foxes often forget to hide their tails.
Debt statement for Mark Reznik.
- Dept Repayment (Mechanic)
Everyone has to pay the price of their past deeds.
**Newspaper clipping:** The local clock merchant has experienced recurring issues with their electricity. The hidden dangers of alternating currents should not be underestimated.
The laws of nature are hiding in the darkness.
I heard it; it's the apocalypse.
- Embarking (Female Dancer)
A journey full of hope beats arriving at one's destination.
At the time, I never expected the cost would be this great.
I believe it's for me, and she's just the messenger.
**A list of items:** A few items and an invitation letter. Fern wax from Oletus Manor.
- Keep An Appointment (Embalmer)
I can't refuse the invitation. There are too many lost people out there.
**Diary entry:** I can finally understand the joy he experiences every time he guides lost people from darkness. I also understand why he was so eager to keep his appointment.
- The end of Kaspar Hausar (Wildling)
People are always wondering amongst suspicion, who can be sure?
**Diary 5:** Maybe I should learn from Kaspar Hausar, figure out how to escape. Retreated like a prince, but I need assistance... Bernard won't let me go.
Watching a sad face can sometimes bring us some dark pleasure.
**Diary 3:** Bernard sent his regards to my beloved little ones. He thought the wounds on Joker's face looked more like "corrosions". His suspicions really hurt me! Of course, I did lose a bottle of strong acid. Maybe I'll have to get another bottle before Bernard finds out about this "mismanagement".
- Sacrifice (First Officer)
The costly price of bravery.
**Diary:** There were no pirates or storms; just our conscience and our companions. The nightmarish waters had swept them away, but it also awakened the demons flowing through the Badens blood.
- Cat and Mouse (Hell Ember)
Leo Beck has found joy in this dull position as a hunter.
People often say that there is nothing new if the old remains.
Thank you, this face is suitable.
Hey this looks fun. I don't think it'll cause any harm, will it?
I love watching them shiver. So cute.
- A Gift You Can't Refuse (Ripper)
There is only one way to deny the coming fate, and that is to die.
**Wooden gift box:** Contains a piece of dark red meat wrapped in a newspaper. The note says: Send!
Causing a bit of minor trouble is an easy way to destroy order.
Do you know the benefit of chaos? It can turn into peace. The bad half? Hold on, does he still exist?
Shock and terror are all a part of healing.
**Hydrotherapy:** Water can cleanse the most violent and extreme parts of life. Wash the heads of the patient repeatedly with cold water, and cool their insane heads. Be warned that this operation requires at the very least more than one medical staff.
Every person has a good heart in them.
What would you do if you learned that everyone's "good heart" varied from person to person? | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/IdentityV |
Please Don't Tell My Parents I'm a Supervillain / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
After Witch Hunter is caught breaking Spider's truce in Chinatown, Bull presents him to Spider wrapped up in Penelope's handcuff bundle. Spider's response is specifically noted to sound totally ordinary. **Bull:** Got something for you. **Spider:** I was watching on the cameras. Witch Hunter has broken a community truce and badly harmed a child, all while attempting to steal an artifact to which he had no personal claim. If Master Scorpion had issued a challenge there might be some excuse for mercy, but this case could not be more clear. I know you don't like this kind of thing, but it has to be done. Deposit him in the web. I'll wait until the children don't have to watch. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/IDidNotGiveThatSpiderSuperhumanIntelligence |
Inception / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
I see you met Mrs. Cobb.
- The implied horror of Cobb's alluded-to past with Mal; even explained, it is still quite creepy.
- The whole story of Mal and Cobb living for decades in a dreamscape together, to the point that they lose their sense of self in the real world and real life becomes hollow and kind of meaningless. Even before Cobb used inception on Mal to get her to "wake up", it was clear that dreaming for so long is not good for your mental state.
- The scene with the elevator that leads to Cobb's subconscious. Ariadne disobeys his orders and takes it... only to end up in the hotel suite, face to face with a pissed off projection of Mal who has every intent to kill her. Mal's Death Glare (picture) says it all.
- Mal's "real world" death. Cobb arrives at their anniversary hotel room, dressed up and with flowers. He comes in and sees the room trashed. As he comes to the balcony, he sees Mal clinging to the building across the street, ready to jump. Cobb tries to talk her down, but she mentions that she's told people she's fearful of him. He turns around, surveys the room, and realizes he's about to be framed for murdering his wife. Then she jumps.
- It is implied that the projections in Saito's dream ripped Nash apart in the opening dream sequence.
- The basement full of people in Yusuf's basement, implied to be dream addicts who come to dream for hours upon hours every day because they can't handle the real world any more.
- The ambiguous fate of Nash. While he's a cowardly worm, he is left at the mercy of a faceless, ruthless corporation apparently not above committing acts of espionage, violence and possibly even murder. Whatever fate he suffers, it most likely isn't pleasant. The last we see of him, he is being dragged away by two burly men and seems terrified.
- Dying while heavily sedated in the dream world and getting trapped there for enormous amounts of time is a rather terrifying concept. It's left ambiguous whether Saito and Cobb actually manage to wake up, potentially meaning they are trapped mentally in a world moving at a snail's pace forever while in reality they are simply comatose.
- Given how slow time moves deeper and deeper into the dream world, you could be trapped down there your whole "real" life if things went wrong. So say that's 60 years of being comatose in the real world, you would experience that as thousands or possibly even millions of years in the dream. As one character hints, that would be enough to turn anyone's mind into "mush". The main consolation is that it "depends on the dream" so better hope for a really good dream to spend time in rather than a Dark World.
- When Fischer realizes he's dreaming at the hotel bar, every single projection in the room immediately stops whatever they're doing and starts staring at him and Cobb in a robotically blank way. From previous evidence and experiences, we know they're all
*this* close to jumping Cobb and mauling him to death if he can't convince Fischer to trust him and trick him into believing he's a projection himself. Thankfully, he pulls it off.
- On that same note, the scene at the bridge when Ariadne is first learning to bend dreams the way she wants to. Cobb warns her not to use real world places as locations for dreams, and gets somewhat upset when Ariadne doesn't listen; as a result, the projections on the bridge all gang up on them and hold them in place while Mal suddenly steps out of the crowd with a knife in her hand, and, without missing a step, stabs Ariadne in the gut, all while the latter is screaming for Cobb to wake her up, and him begging Mal to stop. Elliot Page's performance really sells the sheer terror and panic Ariadne must be feeling as well. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Inception |
I'm the Grim Reaper / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
Being a story with demons, sinners, murderers, and pulling no punches when showing how depraved people can be, this series is chock full of nightmare fuel.
- The 9th Circle of Hell is definitely disturbing. It's a void empty of anything. No sights, sounds, nothing to touch,. Just pitch black and an overwhelming sense of loneliness. Little wonder Scarlet has no desire to go back there.
- The reveal that Jordan was a serial killer who had killed 10 women, and his accompanying facial expressions. He'd seemed like an ordinary guy. Finding out he enjoyed watching blood drain from women was nothing short of chilling.
- The robber that Scarlet and Chase corner at the end of season 1. Once he turns around, it's revealed blood is dripping from their eyes, nose, and mouth.
- Chase absolutely losing it on said robber after he shoots Scarlet in the head and Chase thinks she's died. We've seen Chase lose his temper before, but never to the extent of almost killing someone with his bare hands.
- Every time Scarlet loses control of her demon. The first time is when she starts to lose all faith in humanity and she brutally kills a purse snatcher by stabbing him with her scythe multiple times. The second, after Brook pushes her too far and she effortlessly rips his body to shreds and murders an entire alleyway of sinners and non sinners alike, and ultimately near fatally stabs Chase.
- The reveal that Satan is doing God's will. He was not charged with any crime whatsoever before Falling (in fact, he Fell
*seconds after he was born*), and nothing Satan has done has convinced God to tear him out of existence. All the misery that Satan and the powerful sinners have perpetuated? It's all according to plan.
- The world's population has plummeted to
*less than one billion*. Let that sink in for a bit.
- In the Ninth Circle of Hell, the only thing you have to do is torture yourself with your mind. Scarlet hallucinates a grotesque pile of organs with her face, then it turns into Chase, and at the last second it turns into Satan so she can lose control and smash Chase's head in. She is reduced to a sobbing wreck begging to be let out.
- In the Ninth Circle of
*Heaven*, whatever happens to the souls there causes them to perma-die. Apparently, since God is absent, any soul that is harvested by an archangel will be forced there for processing, hence the reason they haven't performed a Mercy Kill in centuries.
- (Biological) Immortality has been achieved. Which would normally be
*great*, except the shadow dictators of the world have hoarded this secret resource to themselves, allowing them to destroy the world and ascend to demi-godhood in the process, *and Heaven still isn't doing anything*.
- God's ultimate plan is to consume Heaven (And maybe Earth and Hell. Maybe.). This will, in theory, answer the Ultimate Question: "Who am I?"
- The horrifying implication is that, in a previous universe, God was
*a 9th-level sinner equivalent*, stuck in sensory isolation for a *quintillion* years, until the sheer amount of time that passed allowed them to subconsciously reach enlightenment and attain godhood. In short, it's possible that every person who is trapped in the 9th circle - every horrible, near-irredeemable monster - will eventually *become a god* and start their own Crapsack World just to find out who they were, completely unaware that even their past evil self would not go this far because it's insanely boring and a nihilistically pointless use of godhood.
- Scarlet and Bernadette go all-out in their duel to the death, mutating into hideous HumanoidAbominations. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/ImTheGrimReaper |
Horror And Thriller Films / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
Angst: The murder scenes in this 1983 Austrian film are very ugly and brutal. And then there's Erwin Leder's incredibly unsettling portrayal of the unnamedserial killer who narrates the film. All in all, it more than earns its reputation as one of the most disturbing films of the 1980s.
August Underground's Mordum: Like A Serbian Film, it's an almost nonstop assault of one unimaginably depraved act after another, up to and including rape with a severed penis, cannibalization of a headless and maggot-infested infant, a young child's rotten corpse being sexually abused, and a woman who is covered in blood and vomit being cut open and "gut fucked".
Barbarian: A woman named Tess finds out she's double-booked an AirBnB with a guy named Keith, played by Bill Skarsgård. She grows suspicious of Keith and is wary of his every move. She soon finds a hidden room and tunnel system in the basement, shot with claustrophobic cinematography and an unnverving sense of dread, she goes down to explore it. And it only gets worse from here.
Begotten: God disemboweling himself at the beginning, Man writhing helpless in the mud like a child in agony and as if it were badly disabled, the faceless robed figures, the lack of sound save for birdsong or the throaty gurgling of Man and the stark black and white coupled with the grainy footage all comes together to make one of the most uncomfortable and disturbing things once can ever experience. It's like every black metal album cover ever made into a movie directed by David Lynch.
Caltiki The Immortal Monster:
This 1959 Italian rip-off of The Blob (1958) had a couple good ones. A memorable one involves Max, who has become more deranged throughout the film, as he holds a gun on his girlfriend. Cue monster, which comes up behind him and does what Blob rip-offs do best. Now imagine his agonized face, blood oozing from his mouth as he's crushed, then his face disappears for a second, enveloped by monsta. Then his face, a freaking skull by now, reappears while his arm is still flailing wildly.
An earlier one involves a diver who comes face to face with Caltiki and ends up in a face-off. Specifically, the skin of his face is gone, including eyelids, but leaves the eyes and you can still see him breathing.
Dead End (2003): Thoughout the movie various phenomena happening to the family are pretty disturbing, mostly because they're just abnormal enough that things seem very wrong.
Death on Demand: Sean slices open Tammy's leg, then starts pulling her back using muscle tissue he rips out of the wound.
Devil Doll: Demonic Dummy Hugo is sitting motionless in his cage. After a long lingering shot in dead silence, his eyes make a slight movement, reminding us that he is indeed, alive, and the camera pans across the room.
Dying Breed. A group of cannibals grab a few hiker girls and rape them to get more children or else die from inbreeding, and eat the men.
Eli: The scene where Eli gets the files of the previous patients, Perry, Agnes, and Lucius. With their final pictures becoming increasingly more and more disturbing, Perry and Agnes look very realistic but Eli gets to Lucius' final photo, which is the most disturbing and sickening to look at.
Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals:
At the start of the film, we see a nurse who had her nipple bitten off, eaten by one of the patients at a psychiatric ward - a girl who was found in the Amazon, raised by a cannibal tribe. Although, it turns out the nurse has been raping the girl, so what happened to her was Laser-Guided Karma.
Sister Angela, a nun who was part of expedition to rejoin her covent, was captured by the cannibals. They ripped off her dress, exposing her breasts. They tie her up to a tree and dance wildly around her, leaving her absolutely terrified as she screams for help and begging for God. One of the natives cut off her right nipple and eats it, making her scream louder, and then they pierce her heart and opens her belly to eat her innards. When the group searches for her, all they found was her severed headon a pike, complete with a zoom-in and a sting. It looked almost mutilated, and covered with what looks like semen. She does rejoin her covent, since it turns out they were killed by the same cannibals.
Later two more people from the expedition have also been captured, Donald and Maggie Mackenzie. Maggie was tied between two poles and is killed when one of the savages repeatedly jams his knife at her vagina, and pull out her intestines from it. All while Donald is Forced to Watch. He too gets killed when the savages tie a string around his belly and pulls until his lower half is cut. It doesn't help as we see the agony on his face, and zoom-ins of skull trophies signifying his death.
The Entity: The idea of being repeatedly violated sexually is terrifying in itself, but it becomes especially terrifying when it's being carried out by an invisible entity. It's no surprise therefore that Martin Scorsese considers this film one of the scariest ever made.
Evilspeak. Pigs being possessed and eating people, including a scene where said pigs break into a woman's bathroom and eat her while she's in her bath, messy decapitations aplenty, and blood and gore all over the place with ominous chanting in the background. And as if that wasn't nightmarish enough already, ||the movie ends with the possessed computer flashing a message saying "I will return."||
Fallen: The song "Time is On My Side" due to context.
Food of the Gods 2. Although the movie is ostensibly about the giant rats, the deaths they cause are shown in quick cuts, whereas Elmond Delhurst's death by turning into a bubbling puddle of "super cancer" is drawn out to ludicrous lengths (almost a full two minutes) with many loving closeups of his swollen, pus-oozing, tumor-covered face. It's frankly a relief when he finally keels over and dies.
Frayed draws its nightmare fuel from several sources: slasher movies, birthday clowns, mental hospitals and ||child molestation.|| The worst is a prolonged and extremely graphic sequence near the beginning of the movie where a person gets their head beaten to a pulp. The sound effects alone ensure that the viewer will have a tough time getting to sleep that night.
Ghost Eyes, a 1974 film made by Shaw Brothers, revolves around a young woman who gains the ability to see spirits after a botched eye operation. She first discovered her new "powers" after seeing a bloodied body near a construction site, and assuming it to be an accident victim, runs over intending to help... only for a Reveal Shot showing the site to be filled with bloodied bodies. And the man she's trying to help is a corpse too. Cue the lady screaming until the bodies suddenly dissappears, she is now alone in an abandoned construction zone... which she later learns is the ruins of a great fire a decade ago with no survivors.
Ghost Ship: A crowd of partygoers ||are sliced in one fell swoop by a snapped wire||. The lack of reaction is especially eerie — there's a few moments of stunned silence, then everything begins to fall apart. See it here.
The cannibal scene gives the aforementioned scene a good run for it's money.
House on Haunted Hill (1959) has a fantastic Jump Scare. A woman is inspecting a wall for secrets? the camera close to her. Then she stands up and finds herself facing an old woman with a face twisted into an inhuman grin. It comes out of nowhere and can be terrifying if not expected.
It's Alive: A horror trilogy about an experimental fertility drug causing babies to be born as monsters that would kill when scared. A commercial for it in the early afternoon, the one where the camera revolves around an innocent-looking bassinet, and then suddenly you see the lizard arm hanging out of it and that awful whining scream sounds.
As the movie progresses, and mankind ||steadily dies off or vanishes||, the ghosts become much more visible, more obvious, and more common.
The Lady In Red in the sealed room, with her dreamlike, stumbling gait, creeps up on a hapless protagonist slowly, ever so relentlessly slowly...
||Death itself|| showing up in human form to claim ||the main male lead||, coming closer and closer to the screen, slowly, naturally, until his eyes fill the audience's field of vision.
The fate of those touched by the ghosts' nihilism. They don't die, they don't even scream or writhe in pain. They just fade, becoming a dark stain on the wall. All they leave behind is a faint "Help me... help me..." barely on the edge of hearing. It doesn't help that in the director's view, humanity is hopelessly isolated and every person is utterly alone, even in death.
Kill Theory: You and your friends are stuck out in the middle of nowhere and have three hours to kill each other, or a madman will kill all of you. Add in Paranoia Fuel in the question of which of your friends can you trust and who will betray you to save themselves?
Lake Mungo: The cell phone footage and the autopsy photos.
L: change the WorLd: The Death Note spinoff pulls this off with the symptoms of the killer virus at the centre of the plot. The various sores with the severe bleeding and the tears of blood make its victims look disturbing, not to ignore their moans and screams of pain. The named character who uses a syringe of infected blood to commit suicide and deny the villains use of him continues screaming even when the camera isn't focused on him, and when he is "neutralised" the last shot the audience (and his preteen daughter) gets of him is his wholly bloodshot eyes along with his severely charred face. L describes his impending death by heart attack as peaceful.
Lucker the Necrophagous: Unlike the victims in most other slasher films, the ones in this don't die immediately, instead writhing in agony for up to a minute in some cases. It's incredibly disturbing, as is the villain murdering a prostitute and leaving her body to rot for four weeks before having sex with it.
Mad Love: Peter Lorre. It came out in 1935, but that neckbrace/metal glove costume remains freaky, and Lorre was never freakier. "Yes, they cut off my head. But that Gogol, he put it back... HERE!"
Merlin's Shop of Mystical Wonders: It's a terrible film and not scary during the day, but disturbing enough—in part because it's so badly made—to be rather spooky at the time of night/morning when everything is spooky.
Crow: (as Merlin) Remember to believe in magic...or I'll kill you.
The Messengers: the scene with ||the little kid reaching for the corpse on the ceiling.||
Really, there's just something inherently frightening in the idea that not only is your family possibly cursed, but that some of them are actively trying to kill you.
Night Skies: Some distubing scenes of alien abduction. Oh and victims can't trust what they see at all.
The Russian movie Nochnoy dozor (2004) (aka Nightwatch). The freaky doll with the spider's legs and the sequence in the beginning with the frying pan.
No Telling: A doctor is experimenting on lab mice, but then moves onto bigger things. The film remains relatively calm until the last 15 minutes or so. As it turns out, the doctor ||stole a little girl's dog, sewed it's legs off, then bought a calf, cut it's legs off, and put the calf legs on the dog.|| The worst part? It moves. However, the movie does end on a bittersweet note. While ||the dog dies||, the doctor's wife leaves him, and he gets punched in the face by a farmer.
Pencil Face: A short film, where a girl finds magic pencil; the face is already scary on itself. But, the girl draws various things she wants and the girl ||gets sucked into black hole||
Phantoms, based on the book by Dean Koontz. ||All the people in the vaguely astronaut-like Hazmat suits appearing out of the shadows, their face-plates completely black; the single shot of the empty army command center with a few papers blowing in the wind; and the bit at the end where all the people who were the Phantom-creature's snack food are standing still assembled in the middle of town.||
The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945): The titular painting is scary as balls. First of all, it's in color, when the rest of the movie's black-and-white. Second of all, they always cut to it very suddenly and startlingly, with a piercing music sting to accompany it. And thirdly, it's just freaky-looking.
Piranha 3D: Every death scene. Maybe it was how good the effects were, maybe it was just how painful it looked.
A zombifying virus spread not through blood or air, but speech; you can be infected simply by listening to a term of endearment. The repeated madness mantras of the infected are some of the creepiest things ever committed to film, especially combined with their expressions. The movie taking place within a radio studio makes it sometimes almost unbearably claustrophobic. Then there's the Downer Ending....
"For your safety, please avoid contact with close family members and refrain from the following: all terms of endearment, such as "honey" or "sweetheart"; baby talk with young children; and rhetorical discourse. For greater safety, please avoid the English language... Do not translate this message."
Recorded Live, a student film by S.S. Wilson, the man behind the Tremors series. A man goes to a job interview, only to find there's nothing in the office but a film reel with "do not erase" written on it. Suddenly the film comes to life and advances on the man, who runs for his life. He discovers the film can be driven off with a magnet, but eventually it outsmarts him by moving under the carpet and springing up from beneath him, enveloping the poor bastard and leaving nothing behind when it moves away. Then it sends out another letter to a job applicant, and returns to its reel. And the film makes a "fast forwarding" noise every time it moves. You'll never hear that sound the same way again. And you can watch it here.
The Red Skulls: It's easy to forget it's supposed to be a "Gang War of the Quasi-Zombies" movie because even though the special effects are bottom-line cheesy, some of the actors actually seem to be demented in a way that's not fake...which either means they're better actors than this film deserved, or that they really are that messed-up in the mind.
Red State: The execution scene. ||Guy tied to a pole, they wrap him in clingwrap, including his head, and all the while he's screaming for help, before they put a revolver on top of his head and shoot him. And you can see the blood in the plastic wrap. Even more disturbing were the serene faces of the other sect members.||
Trust us, there is a very good reason why A Serbian Film is considered to be the most disturbing movie ever made period. It features tons of snuff and rape and what can only be called "rape squared," by which we mean ||being drugged and forced to rape a woman who you then kill, then rape her some more, and then forced to rape your son as your brother rapes your wife.|| There's also mention, though not shown, thank God, of "||newborn rape.||"... but only in the cut version. The UNCUT version, on the other hand, shows it in all its traumatizing glory.
Milos' rape face. It will haunt your nightmares.
Shivers is easily one of the most messed-up things ever put onto film. However, the part when ||one of the penis monsters comes out of the guy's mouth|| easily takes the cake as the squickiest part.
Smile (2022), between non-stop people flashing creepy smiles (many of which appear out of nowhere), and the paranoia of an entity that once it possesses you will make you lose your mind, force you to kill yourself in front of someone else to make the curse spread, ||and its true form as a monster made of malformed jaws and flesh.||
Spellbound: Dr. Murchison threatens to kill Dr. Peterson, but with a few choice words on Peterson's part her life is spared. The camera switches to Murchison's point of view as the aim of his gun follows her out of the room. She shuts the door, and the hand holding his gun turns, as though he's pondering his next action. Then, slowly, the hand turns some more: at himselfyou. That's right; you're experiencing a first-person suicide. It also doesn't help that the hand and the gun are highly detailed models, so their movement is highly unnatural.
The murders, especially due to the basic, almost nonchalant way they're filmed.
When Vance first dons his ski mask, it's slightly askew, giving this weirdly uncanny effect, plus there's Laurie's completely off the top of her head description of the afterlife, essentially an And I Must Scream scenario.
Turistas, a 2006 thriller about a group of American tourists in Brazil, after a mishap with a bus, decide to head to a local bar for some drinks. Only it goes downhill from there as ||they are drugged, have all their possessions stolen, and are lured into a house where a mad doctor guts them for organs to sell on the black market||. Brazil wasn't too happy about this movie.
The Unborn. The opening scene, where out jogging, you run into a stray glove in the road. You turn around and see the owner of the matching one standing right behind you, just staring. An odd cut, and you're suddenly faced with a pit bull wearing a papier-mâché human mask. He waddles off into the woods, and for no real reason, you decide to follow him. You come across the mask lying on the ground, and dig down into the dirt to find the strings attached to a disturbing-looking fetus in a jar. Zoom in slowly on its little swollen face, and the eyes burst open.
When a Stranger Calls Back, (The made-for-TV sequel to the original When a Stranger Calls.), has an innocent schoolgirl stalked by ||William Landis, a psychopathic ventriloquist who, in the film's climax, paints himself to look like the wall behind him, so if the lights are off, he's practically invisible.|| It sounds cartoony, but when you see him do it, and realize that it could actually be done in real life, it's utterly creepy.
The White Ribbon. Imagine this: you live in a small German village in the months leading up to World War I. Strange events begin to happen to citizens. Someone strings a wire to trip the doctor as he rides his horse, a worker falls through a weak floor and dies, two children go missing at separate times and are found severely beaten, one of them nearly blinded. What can you do about this? Absolutely nothing. You can't find out who is behind these crimes, and if you pursue suspicions, your reputation is likely to be ruined. That is what happens to the protagonist and narrator of this film. The cinematography and atmosphere of the film are so cold, it's like you are watching a serious version of Village of the Damned (1960), where the children don't have psychic powers, but are still creepy and are clearly hiding something, but there isn't a single thing you can do about it, so you better just leave.
The World of Kanako: This movie is extremely cynical and presents a world absolutely ugly and frightening with people that are so evil that even the protagonist (a violent, dysfunctional, abusive and alcoholic ex-cop) seems not so evil in comparison. In this movie the world is exclusively populated by complete assholes and scumbags who all have only the very worst things in mind and the few good people out there are either mercilessly corrupted, betrayed, bullied, manipulated or forced into isolation and there is no way to break out of this cycle and anybody (no matter how strong) is destroyed and every dream is crushed. The movie gives the impression that you could live in this world too! The most terrifying part of the movie is when he truth about Kanako is revealed and we learn about the prostitution ring and the child molesters. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/HorrorAndThrillerFilms |
Idiocracy / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
As funny as
*Idiocracy* can be, you just can't ignore the implied (and straightforward) horrors of a future populated by the dumbest people imaginable.
- Though the premise is ridiculous, there remains the simple fact that human stupidity destroying society is a believable, scary thought. Making things worse, many people, including the director, believe that this kind of future is slowly becoming more and more real.
- The guy at the hospital with a bloody gash around his left eye.
- The fact that there are slot machines with a prize being healthcare. Even by the year 2505, U.S. citizens still don't have socialized healthcare.
- Joe looks out the hospital window and sees buildings falling apart and leaning on each other while other ones are being
*held by rope*. What's gonna happen once they break?
- The prison scene, as funny as it is, has some brutal implications. Prisoners are treated like animals, crowded into small cells and fed through holes. Prisoners are allowed to hurt each other with no consequences. We see this with a fat prisoner sitting on the face (ass-naked too) of some poor bastard while the fat man's buddies step on one of his wrists. The prisoner hopelessly flails around audibly suffocating and whimpering while the fat prisoner laughs about it like it's nothing. The guy on the bottom is completely helpless until the fat man decides to get off, being humiliated and suffocated in the meantime. To make it worse, the fat man sees our protagonist, then points at him, then points at the ground, showing that this is routine in this prison.
- The commercial airliner nose-diving and crashing.
- "Monday Night Rehabilitation" - in a flashback, we see a prisoner dressed as an Easter bunny frantically hopping away from a giant lawnmower, which quickly turns him into orange shreds. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Idiocracy |
Indiana Jones / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
God
lets the Nazis know what He thinks of their murderous agenda for world-domination
*Indiana Jones* was advertised as, "The return of the great adventures!" And sometimes the awesome that comes with adventure comes along with trauma.
<!—index—><!—/index—> | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/IndianaJones |
Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
Another element that adds a layer to the creepiness factor: the skeletons themselves. Maybe it's just the graphics, but quite a few of them look as though they died screaming in agony. If you decide to examine the bones, you can *hear* the uneasiness in Indy's voice as he describes them.
Maybe they're animal bones.
No animal I know about has bones like these...
These bones are weirdly twisted.
Any human being with bones like
*this* had to have been diseased.
Some of the skulls bear half-grown horns.
- It becomes especially so when by the end of the game it becomes clear that what Kerner became is about the same as the skeletons on the ground. The skeletons are the failed experiments from the God machine. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/IndianaJonesAndTheFateOfAtlantis |
I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
## Per wiki policy, this page is Spoilers Off. Tread carefully.
By the end, you'll probably be screaming too.
Considering that the story and game are the Trope Namer for one of the most horrific tropes in fiction, it's obvious that Nightmare Fuel runs rampant here.
- The game and short story both
*start* with some of the most horrific imagery to ever grace an artistic medium, and it only gets worse from there. The entire human race has been wiped out, and the surface of the planet has been made completely uninhabitable. The only five survivors of the apocalypse are trapped in a living hell by an insane, rage-filled supercomputer that can alter reality at will. Said supercomputer has kept these five alive for 109 years, torturing them continuously and making horrific alterations to their minds and bodies while ensuring they can never put themselves out of their misery.
- While they doesn't have as much depth as the game, the characters in the original story still have some rather... unnerving personalities.
- In the game, Benny was a murderous military commander who murdered anyone in his unit who had the misfortune of showing compassion, helping his fellow man, or learning about his cruel ways and trying to report him.
- Ellen was raped by a man wearing a yellow maintenance outfit in an elevator,
*for hours*. As a result, she has extreme claustrophobia, panic attacks, and an aversion to the color yellow. So, of course, her entire scenario takes place in an Egyptian tomb that's almost filled with yellow objects.
- If she doesn't fight back against the yellow-clothed apparition created by AM, you can see her being forced to endure a re-enactment of her rape.
- Also there's the Fridge Horror of being the only woman in a group with four other men for 109 years, in a place with no other outlet for release. Yeah. Despite what you might expect, however, everyone involved acknowledges how Sick and Wrong it is.
- Normally, you would think AM would intervene to stop the group from having any sort of respite, no matter how temporary. However, according to the short story, AM lets them have sex because he finds the idea of sex amusing, and particularly thinks their discomfort about AM observing their sexual interludes is hilarious.
- Gorrister is constantly wracked with guilt over having to institutionalize his wife... so of course, Gorrister encounters a copy of her in his scenario
*hanging from a meat hook.*
- Gorrister's heart was physically removed from his chest by AM a long time ago, but he remains alive thanks to AM's influence. The spot in his chest where it was removed has never healed.
- He always hated his in-laws, but if Gorrister investigates properly in his scenario, he will discover ||that it was his mother-in-law, not him, who drove his wife insane, although she tried to pin the blame for it on Gorrister.||
- If Gorrister wishes, he can offer up the hearts of Edna, Harry or Glynis to the jackal in his scenario so he can get his heart back, potentially resulting in him becoming the cold-blooded murderer he always feared he was.
- The entirety of Nimdok's chapter, which is set in a
**Nazi concentration camp**.
- In the video game, Ted, no matter what moral decision he makes will discover that Earth has become a barren, uninhabitable wasteland thanks to AM, so even if he could escape, he wouldn't survive. If he sells Ellen's soul to the devil, it gets worse: he will see Ellen on that uninhabitable wasteland, meaning he will have damned not only himself, but Ellen.
- Several pieces of the game's soundtrack is frightening beyond words. For some highlights:
- The Main Menu's theme, which does sound like something you'd hear when looking at a pillar of hate while surrounded by hot coals.
- The Zepplin theme starts with just a bunch of random noises before these sounds are bound together by a mournful base string. It helps seal the atmosphere of isolation and despair that plagues Gorrister's scenario.
- The daunting, ominous Jungle theme.
- The Pyramid theme just sounds
off.
- The Concentration Camp theme, appropriately enough, is rather freaky.
- The Castle theme helps nail the Paranoia Fuel that embodies Ted's scenario.
- The terminally depressing Demo theme, which also counts as a Tear Jerker due to just how
*lifeless* it is. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/IHaveNoMouthAndIMustScream |
Immortal Hulk / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
*The Hulk in Hell*
This is a horror comic. Need we say more?
- Across the series the implications of Bruce Banner's mental state and his incredible power are discussed. Bruce is acknowledged to possess serious mental issues (having multiple split personalities, suicidal depression, explosive rage, etc.), and he's also the Marvel World's Strongest Man who has won the Superpower Lottery and has recently uncovered that he has Complete Immortality. The implications of just how much power is in a not sane person and just what that can lead to are talked about at times throughout the series and it's never pretty.
- On a similar note, when Devil Hulk and Samson get to talking, Devil Hulk explains/reveals why the Hulk appeared to be on Hydra's side during
*Secret Empire*. It's not because the Hulk was being mind-controlled, but because Bruce's mental health had hit rock bottom and he developed a new personality that came to the surface when Hydra poked him. Not the angry child Savage Hulk, not even the grudge-carrying Anti-Hero Devil Hulk, no, this new personality was just a "wordless ball of rage" that had no motive beyond attacking anyone and everyone with the full power of the Hulk - it couldn't speak, couldn't recognize that other people existed, and only Devil Hulk taking over locked it away. The implications of this terrify and shock Samson.
- The first issue starts off as a normal Hulk comic, with Bruce Banner on the run trying to stay to himself, keeping under the radar. While he's at a convenience store, a nervous robber accidentally kills a 12 year old girl, then kills Banner and the cashier. However, at night, while the robber is handing his takings to a biker gang, they are attacked by the Hulk, but there's something different about how he attacks them, playing off almost like a monster horror movie. Then he gets to the robber, who begs Hulk not to kill him, protesting he's not a bad person, only for Hulk to look at him with a smile that could only be described as
*sadistic*, and ask him what do you think?, before everything goes black. We pick up again in a hospital, where we find out Hulk didnt murder anyone... and then we see the robber, who was found in a small crater, like he'd been left there by a meteor, and who's so badly injured he'll never be able to walk again, might never even wake up again. The issue ends with a resurrected Banner in a motel looking in the mirror and asking the Hulk in the reflection - who has that sadistic smile again - his opinion on whether he's a bad person. In short, this is a Hulk that is way darker than we are used to.
- The second issue has The Hulk tearing off Dr. Frye's limbs and trapping him underground forever. Even though he deserved it, it's very, very brutal.
- A relatively subdued example: during the bartender's story in issue #3, he mentions how Bruce had come into the bar to use the restroom. Because he thought Bruce was "going to shoot up in there", he refused, prompting the two to get into an aggressive argument... and the bartender fully admits that he "dodged a bullet", since we see Bruce's eye briefly turn green. The reason why he didn't Hulk out was because he got distracted by a breaking news report concerning the siege at the local church. And upon seeing this, Bruce quickly grabs a nearby knife and, with no actual clarification as for his actions, he sprints out of the bar. This is the last time Bruce is mentioned in the issue.
- The priest's version of the story. Unlike the cop's (which was told in the style of a Silver Age comic), the bartender's (which was just indifferent to everything), and the old woman's (which was too hung up over how much Hotshot looked like James Dean), the priest's perspective is the one best fitting of this comic: that of a horror movie. Appropriately, it's
*his* narrative that showcases Hotshot **blowing a hole through the Hulk's chest**, and is the one that reveals that, before Hotshot showed up at the church, he had (apparently) **snapped Jess' neck**.
- It doesn't get better: prior to the Hulk's arrival, the priest had prayed to God for salvation, because he thought Hotshot would kill everyone in the church. The Hulk promptly smashes through a window. And it's because of the whole ordeal, from Hulk's appearance to his fight with Deadshot to discovering Jess' corpse, that the priest had
*lost his faith*.
- The fourth issue goes a little bit into Jackie's experience with the Hulk: when she was younger (the following issue clarifies she was 15), he rampaged through her home town. Her dad did his best to try and keep her calm, but one particular thing he kept stressing was that she should not look the Hulk in the eye... and she can't help but do so when the Hulk glances her way. That's all we get out of that flashback, but the event was clearly
*so* scarring that, when Bruce catches up with her at the hospital, she can't bring herself to look at him, keeping her eyes (at most) straight ahead.
- Bruce braves his way into the operating room to try and talk to Sasquatch, trying to reason with him through Walter. Sasquatch refuses to talk as Walter...
**Sasquatch**: ...I'm not Walter. And I'd rather talk to the *real* you. (slices through Bruce's throat)
- As Hulk fights Sasquatch, he gets him into a chokehold against a wall, demanding to know what is inside him. Sasquatch tells him to turn around... where Hulk sees their reflection. Except, instead of holding Sasquatch, he's holding
**Bruce's dad**.
- The Immortal Hulk vs the Avengers is as brutal a battle as can be imagined, both in terms of the physical action and the psychological warfare. This new Hulk knows precisely how to push each of the Avengers' buttons on top of being stronger than ever before, hammering them both physically and emotionally while embracing the notion of being a "Devil-Hulk". In the end, the Avengers are left with no choice but to exploit this current Hulk's only weakness, blasting him with a destructive laser that mimics the sun's radiation. Forcibly reverting the Hulk back to Bruce Banner and killing him at the same time.
- His brief standoff with Jennifer, his own cousin, is particularly frightening. At this point, Jennifer's She-Hulk transformation is more brutish and savage, like the Savage Hulk. And when the "Devil Hulk" goads her with the possibility that Jennifer is now just like him, it disturbs her to the point that she lowers her guard long enough for Devil Hulk to punch her hard enough to send her flying miles away. Even after the fight is over, Jennifer is still disturbed enough that she's unwilling to talk about what the Devil Hulk said.
- Hulk basically takes Thor down in one hit, cracking his skull and leaving him too groggy to continue the fight, barely able to stand on his own. It's stated afterwards he's going to need to return to Asgard for special healing. Hulk is strong, but handily defeating another massive powerhouse like Thor so quickly and decisively is rare even for him.
- At the end of the issue, the Avengers have been forced to surrender Bruce Banner's remains to the new group looking to replicate the Hulk's powers. And on the last page, we see how they've decided to imprison the Hulk so he can't break out; by cutting his body up into tiny pieces that are unable to do anything on their own. The Hulk is still alive and aware of what's happening.
- And as Dr. Clive learns the hard way in the next issue,
**the Hulk wanted this to happen**.
- Dr. Clive's fate: As the Hulk is regenerating, Dr. Clive finds himself surrounded by the body parts. They fuse back together around him, onto him, and back into the Hulk's body. The last you see of him are his eyes and hands as he is absorbed into the body.
- 4 words.
**THE ONE BELOW ALL**. In the Marvel universe, there is the One Above All who is the Top God and creator or the entire Marvel Multiverse. The One Above All's power is absolute and it is omnipresent and within everyone. Then the One Below All appears. A being who is implied to be the antithesis of the benevolent One Above All. A being locked away from the Multiverse yet is capable of seeing and being everywhere as well while manipulating and controlling the basest desires of every sentient creature who gains more control and power the more negativity is generated and exists. Mephisto, who is one of the most powerful hell lords stated that his power doesn't even come close to the One Below All. On top of all that, what does the One Below All want? To destroy everything. Every universe and dimension and leaving existence a hollow dead thing where it can exist alone. It's been around for probably as long as the One Above All and has loathed and despised everything and everyone for untold aeons planning its way to erase all things save for itself. No Marvel villain, no matter how powerful can compare to how dangerous and evil the One Below All is.
**The One Below All:** I howl through many mouths. I break with many hands. They are themselves but they are also me. I have all the power you give me and my weapon is hate. The mystery frightens and disgust me. I will kill it. Make all as hollow as I. Dead and dark as I. And I will be alone.
- When the Absorbing Man inadvertently absorbs Brian Banner from the Hulk - and the One Below All with him - the resulting transformation is
*not* pretty, with the top half of his body splitting in two to reveal his skull and spine.
- The Hulk, Jackie McGee, Puck and Absorbing Man end up in
**HELL** itself.
- The qlippoths of Rick Jones, McGee's dad, and General Ross. Empty-eyed shells of loved ones just repeating things they said in life.
- Hulk, pushed too far by Red Hulk's qlippoth, finally lapses into Hulk Speak. But he doesn't say "Hulk smash." Instead...
**Hulk:** Hulk **KILL.**
- Issue 17's second half is just full of horrifying displays of warped anatomy.
- Issue 18 gives a clearer image of Subject B. Its most notable trait is its head being a kind of Flower Mouth where the "petals" are made of hands and when they unfold they reveal two malformed faces of Rick Jones, individually pleading for either help or their death and to help the Hulk or his death.
- The next page cuts to Shadow Base watching from what appears to be Subject B's eyes as the Hulk gawks in shock at what they've created. The expression on Fortean's face as he observes the atrocity he's unleashed upon the Hulk can only be described as
*satisfaction.*
- While not anywhere near as horrific as Subject B, issue 18 also gives us a good look at Red Harpy. She's not exactly a pleasant sight.
- By issue 18, Bruce is communicating regularly with Hulk... and reveals that not only does the Immortal Hulk want to destroy the world, Bruce
*is fully cooperating with him*. Also, Bruce has grown a mustache, which mixed with the suit Joe acquired while he was in control, makes him far too much like Brian Banner for comfort.
- Issue #19:
- Fortean's plan to keep Subject B under wraps is revealed to be sending in mercenaries to murder anyone who sees it attacking the Hulk.
- When said mercenaries corner Jackie McGee and the Red Harpy, Betty simply rips them apart with her bare hands as they scream in horror and try desperately to ward her off with gunfire. The horrified Jackie points out that Betty could have simply taken and destroyed their guns, to which Red Harpy calmly retorts that this feat of wanton slaughter is "her nature".
- Subject B displays its trump card: spewing Hollywood Acid that can not only dissolve the Hulk's flesh, but
*nullify his Healing Factor*. Hulk visibly panics when Subject B melts off one of his arms and he realizes it's **not** growing back.
- The finale of the issue: Jackie McGee and Red Harpy come across Subject B and the Hulk; Subject B has temporarily exhausted its supply of acid, but not before melting off all four of Hulk's limbs and burning out his eyes. Despite his blindness, he senses Harpy's presence and begs her for help. And Red Harpy's response? She
*slowly rips Hulk's heart out of his chest* as he screams in confusion and pain, begging Betty to remember that she's his friend. Then she *eats it*.
- What makes the finale even worse? Hulk has apparently reverted to his Child Hulk persona. So he's speaking and acting like a scared, frightened child throughout.
- Issue #20 makes this moment even worse by revealing that she actually
*was* doing that to save him. Subject B hurt him so bad that the only way to save him was to *kill him* so he could come back through the Green Door.
- Issue #21 gives us a look at the mind and life of one Reggie Fortean, and surprise surprise, it turns out the man is completely
**insane**. In case digging up corpses to turn them into gamma-powered acid vomiting monsters wasn't a hint anyway, he now decides to go recover it... and merges with it.
- Issue #22 confirms what'd been previously hinted at some issues prior - Rick Jones wasn't dead when Gamma Base was experimenting on him. He just wasn't
*alive*. But he was very much *aware* of what was being done to him. He was aware of all of it.
- Fortean spits acid at the Hulk's face in a fight. The Hulk's face and chest skin peels off... and he just says "Hulk Snash". "Snash" because
*he has no lips to speak properly*.
- Issue 24: Joe Fixit reminds all that he is
*not* a nice person, by snapping Fortean's neck while the guy's distracted over being brought down to Hell.
- The end of issue 24. We go back to the end of existence from issue 20, where Bruce Banner and the corpse of Mr. Immortal are sitting on a rock, waiting for the end of everything. The living embodiment of the multiverse shows up and tells Bruce they're going to merge, and become the next multiverse's Galactus. Then Bruce, eyes glowing green, says he killed Mr. Immortal, who was filling in for Franklin Richards. Hulk killed
*him* two billion years ago. And Galactus. Then, turning into half-a-Hulk, he starts *eating* the Metatron, who screams repeatedly that this isn't supposed to be happening and that *something is wrong*.
- Calling it a half-a-Hulk doesn't do it justice. First off, Bruce is in full on Humanoid Abomination mode, emaciated with glowing green eyes and a wide Slasher Smile. Then, a Hulk bursts from his chest, not in a visceral broken body way but in a smooth shapeshifter kind. This form resembles how he looked when Joe Fixit rigged the sunlamps at the Shadow Base to release gamma radiation, comprised of various limbs and heads in different stages of transformation all mashed up on one body. He has a huge Hulk arm grasp the sentience of the multiverse while smaller arms growing out the side of his mouth spread his jaws wide, with a glowing green light at the back of his throat. This is not a partial Hulk, it's an outright Humanoid Abomination in its own right.
- Issue #25. The whole thing. We get to see what happens in the next multiverse - a giant, cosmically powered Hulk, rampaging across the universe, smashing every world and star it comes across. By the time the story begins, it's been at this for ten
years. There's barely any universe left. And then Par%l, the last being in existence, sees it smashing the last planet, and just for a moment, gets a glimpse into the Hulk's mind... there's no more Hulk. There's no more Bruce. The One Below All ate them from the inside out. And now the One Below All will be the only one there is. In a dark, broken, lightless universe. **billion** *Forever.*
- Worse, Par%l tries to Set Right What Once Went Wrong, to send a warning back into the past to someone who'll understand... except nothing changes. And after The Stinger, it turns out the warning's fallen into the Leader's hands. With the horrible implication that rather than correcting the timeline, they've only created a Stable Time Loop...
- The glimpse into the World-Breaker's mind also gives a good dose of Body Horror - a misshapen pile of green flesh and eyes which can only be called a "body" in a
*very* generous sense...
- On top of that, there's The One Below All's reaction to Par%l's immense grief at witnessing the destruction of hir world: it lowers itself to around eye level with Par%l's ship and just...
**smiles**, with the most unnerving Slasher Smile to ever grace the Hulk's face. The face of a truly evil God content with its work.
- There's also the state of the universe itself, even before The One Below All finishes the job. Aside from Par%l's home world, the single star that gives it life, the two ships used by Par%l and Farys, and the TOBA-possessed Hulk itself, there is no light or life left in the
*entire universe*. After leaving Farys's ship (which happens to lose power and die just as it leaves sight, which really presents the ominous tone of the setting), Par%l passes through a vast amount of space...that is **pure black**. No stars shining in the distance. No planets passing by the ship, though occasionally some *chunks* of rock and earth are illuminated by the lights. For all intents and purposes, this universe is , in a sense that would make Lovecraft himself uneasy. **dead**
- The Stinger. A mirrored epigraph like the ones that usually begin each issue. It's Bruce, pleading after Joe, because the Hulk's gone quiet. Bruce thinks something's eating him... and he thinks it killed the Hulk, which suddenly raises a chilling answer as to where the missing Professor Hulk and Green Scar have gotten to.
- The issue as a whole is peak Evil Only Has to Win Once. No matter how many times the multiverse is saved, all it takes is one victory by The One Below All for all of creation and hope to die.
- Issue #28. The way the Roxxon Security guard rationalizes shooting his daughter. Thankfully she's saved by the timely arrival of the Hulk.
- Usually Fond Memories That Could Have Been is used for making a person
*more* sympathetic, but the Roxxon Guard's use of it just serves to make him seem like *more* of a monster. He doesn't see his daughter as she is, but as just a bigger version of what she *was*. A pink dress, long blonde hair and unquestioningly happy with her life. It shows that he doesn't really see her as a *person* anymore because the imagined future life of a loving daughter who names her child after him that he imagined in his head *doesn't exist.* We don't see what Hulk does to the man after that, but given what happened to the last guy who shot at a kid the fact that his daughter is totally apathetic to it happening says more than any words could.
- Issue #31. Xemnu returns to save us all from that mean green monster! Remember? ...Wait, that's not right. Xemnu's the monster. A formerly silly villain turned terrifying now that he has access to Mass Media. And so far, only Hulk's childish brute persona seems to be immune, even Devil Hulk and Banner himself falling under Xemnu's control...
- Issue #32:
- Issue 33: Al Ewing wasn't kidding when he said he had "big plans" for the legacy 750th issue of the Hulk.
- "Bob" Banner starts us off with an imagine sequence of what might happen if he "let go"...and it ain't pretty, with Iron Man and Doc Samson ripped in half (Doc by being split in two with
*Captain America's Shield*, no less) Spider-Man decapitated, Red Harpy *somehow* dead, and what looks like a massive Gamma bomb going off in the distance. But the crown jewel of this vision would be the Hulk's latest screwed-up form resulting from Banner's complete lack of control - four legs, four arms, three faces sharing four eyes and *huge*. Thank god it's just theoretical...for now...
- Within Banner's psyche, Savage Hulk finally gets a chance to assume uncontested control and manifest in the real world. How? By quite literally
**ripping his way out of Banner**, turning him into a broken sack of meat, skin, and bones. Thankfully, this doesn't actually kill Bruce, but his comrades' reactions of "oh, that's new" rather than utter horror should tell you everything about how accustomed they are to this madness.
- Xemnu, full stop. If you thought what he did to Travers in the last issue was horrifying, now we get to see the end result: Xemnu doesn't eat people, he
*converts them* into disturbing amalgams of flesh and machinery that only barely resemble humans anymore, all with the same glowing red eyes of everyone's favorite childhood hero himself. When Dario finds out about this, he tries to claim that he would have known how far Xemnu had gone due to their deal of leaving his psyche out of the Mass Hypnosis...only to realize that this is simply *what he remembers*. Then, Xemnu caps it all off by dragging Dario himself into his innards: clearly, the process isn't meant for beings of non-humanoid builds, and when the Hulk finally finds Dario, the latter can best be described as - exposed flesh and muscle, half-finished robotics, melted skin, a completely broken jaw, and his organs trailing on the ground behind him. He can't walk, can't even **supremely fucked up** **speak**, and is clearly begging for death the whole time. No one's gonna say Dario didn't completely deserve it, but god *damn!* It says something about how horrific it is that *Hulk* looks horrified at what's become of the poor bastard.
- And at the end, Green Scar's killed Xemnu, the latter's hold on the world population is broken, and the big guy decides to go help his other friends while reaffirming that Rick is his good friend. Nice way to end such a terrifying issue, right? Then Rick ponders Hulk's description of him...and
*smiles* while noting "if only he knew, right?" Turns out, Rick's being impersonated from behind the Green Door by none other than the Leader himself - who has ALSO been impersonating *Brian Banner!* We won't know just how *long* he's been maintaining this charade until the next issue, but now it's clear what he's doing with the information he received from the universe where The One Below All won.
- The "Green Scar", if that is who readers are actually seeing, is not so subtly off during the issue. He claims that his absence up until now is because he has been working behind the scenes of Bruce's mind to repair its damaged state but Savage Hulk notices a strange smell just as the Green Scar says this which the Scar quickly brushes off, keep in mind Devil Hulk has manifested the ability to smell lies. Later the Green Scar more or less tortures a captive Devil Hulk over Savage Hulk's protest's, subtly exerts abnormal power to stop Savage Hulk from freeing the tormented Devil Hulk and generally comes across as manipulative and shifty by taking advantage of the Savage Hulk's childlike mentality. The fact Rick - The Leader seems to have some idea of what is going on and is encouraging it (lying to a shaken and confused Savage Hulk about what occurred after the Green Scar took control and understanding what was happening when the Scar emerged against Xemnu) implies bad, bad things.
- Issue 36:
- Absorbing Man is manipulated into absorbing Gamma again and proceeds to transmogrify into a towering, nightmarish Humanoid Abomination made of smoke, wind, and radiation that begins pummeling Hulk around like he's nothing.
- Del Frye suddenly reviving and using his radiation powers to
*melt* an unlucky scientist into goop. No detail is spared.
- Issue 0 gives us a look into what's been going on with Brian Banner. The Leader's making him relive the moment of his death over and over. While Brian does have it coming, unlike everything else he's doing, there's no real
*point* to the Leader's actions - he's not gaining any knowledge or benefit.
- Issue 37 brings a huge amount of Fridge Horror by revealing just how the Leader has been manipulating everything: The Green Door is not a singular object; every Gamma mutate has their own Green Door that they pass through when dying or reviving. The Leader is somehow able to
*steal* other peoples's Green Doors, allowing him to exit through said Doors and possess their bodies. He's done this to Rick Jones, Del Frye, Brian Banner, and *the Green Scar* (suggesting all of Bruce's personalities have personal Green Doors as well, which raises even more scary questions), using them as either tools or weapons to manipulate Bruce and his allies down the path Leader and the One Below All want them to go down. And on top of all that, Leader has also discovered the *Red* Door. It's just like the Green Door except it doesn't open both ways; if you go through it, you're dead for good, no chance of revival. And it's pretty clear just who exactly he intends to use it on...
- The beginning of the issue shows what's been happening to Del Frye. He's been reliving the moment of his death, over and over and over and
*over*... and then the Leader pops in to say "hello" as he steals Del's body, noting that Del just lacks the willpower necessary to get back to life like Rick or Len, so he'll be stuck in that endless loop.
- Tying into all this, in the
*Empyre: Immortal She-Hulk* one-shot, Jen has her own encounter with the Leader down below, and he tells her all about his plans, confident in the knowledge that Jen won't remember what's happened, but she still vows the other Gamma mutates will stop him, same as usual. At which point the Leader tells her if she happens to die again, he'll make *sure* it's permanent.
- Issue #39 begins with showing how the Leader took Brian Banner's place. His face
*splits open* and a sucker pops out, eating / absorbing / draining Brian into himself, while Brian's still conscious. Turns out the Body Horror of the series doesn't just apply to The Hulk.
- Given the nature of the Below Place it can also be assumed that
*he has that ability in the real world.* The Leader's been upgraded from just a guy with a big brain to a Body Horror infused *brain eating cannibal.*
- After the end of #38, you'd expect Devil Hulk to lay the beat-down on the Leader and save Bruce, right?
**Wrong.** The Leader turns into a... well, basically, he turns the Green Scar body into an Alien Queen. And Savage Hulk tries stopping the Devil when Sam turns himself into Brian, because at the end of the day, Hulk is still that hurt little kid who wants to be loved. And then the Leader uses that to tear the Devil to *shreds*, before dragging Bruce off to the Below Place.
- What the Leader does to Bruce once he's there. Remember the stinger from issue #25? We see Bruce saying it. Body Horror doesn't quite begin to cover it. His eyes are gone, his arms had been stretched out into what looks like a brain, and everything below his pelvis is gone.
- In #40, Joe Fixit chest-bursting from a restrained Hulk.
- After Joe Fixit escapes from Gamma Flight's space station by shooting out the windows, the Absorbing Man returns to Earth and refuses to come back until the station replaces them. Naturally, Gyrich starts throwing around his bureaucratic muscle, threatening to make the Absorbing Man and Titania criminals again, until Samson-Sasquatch slowly and deliberately starts scratching the room's window with his claws, all whilst rambling conversationally about how death would be the greatest mercy he could give them. After this scares Gyrich into dropping it, Puck congratulates Samson-Sasquatch on his bluff. Samson-Sasquatch simply replies he wasn't bluffing.
- In #43, Vapor transforms into tear gas to practice for the Hulk, in the process giving herself a Nightmare Face as her body distorts in shape.
- In Issue #44, the absolutely brutal beatdown that the U-Foes give Hulk, including Vapor suffocating him using tear gas and Vector
**tearing the flesh from his skull** using his inertia powers. The worst part by far, however, is when X-Ray gets his turn. The radioactive villain bombards Hulk with anti-gamma rays in order to force a transformation back into Banner, and the results are...not pleasant.◊
- Savage Hulk and Joe Fixit waking up in the Below-Place after said beatdown, only to be confronted by a One-Below-All-possessed Leader. Whatever happens next, it's going to be one hell of a fight.
- In Issue #50, it's revealed that The One Below All is not an opposing separate being to The One Above All, it's an
*aspect* of Him, His dark, destructive side that seeks to destroy everything, His Hulk so to speak. To see the entity who once gave hope and words of advice to Peter after Aunt May was shot have *this* side to Him is unnerving, to say the least. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/ImmortalHulk |
Indivisible / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
**As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.**
- In the first backer demo, Ajna and Roti are still doing their usual thing that they do in the prototype: i.e, Ajna approaches Roti, Roti runs away and Anna pursues, either calling for Roti to wait or expressing Frustration by groaning and saying Not again... Theres one time this whole routine is subverted. You enter a shrine full of eerie blue torches. Okay, a little spooky, but nothing too bad yet. After scaling a wall you see Roti and somehow something seems... off. But you approach anyway and suddenly
*Roti... wait...*! You hear an unnatural, ethereal voice fill the room instead of Ajnas usual pleas to the tapir. It wasnt Roti, but a boss in disguise. The sheer subversion and unexpectedness of it all can catch the player off guard pretty badly, especially if you were playing alone at night and werent prepared to have a spooky voice invade your eardrums. Somewhat eased when you hear the boss utter Not Again... after you beat him.
- The updated demo is even better!. As you stumble upon the area expecting to meet the wizard again, you notice the place has a lot more spider webs than before, and strangely enough, the wizard is gone... You notice there's a hole in the path that naturally you decide to jump into... Several more webs slow down you fall and then you reach a cave entrance where you see pretas running from, obviously scared for their lives. Ajna decides to head for the cave regardless and not long after entering, this thing just jumps on you. No cutscene or anything, it just attacks right away! Even worse, it is the boss that introduces having several life bars and once you manage to hurt it enough to empty one, the monster will just disengage and attack you from above, dropping acid on you, body-slam you again or straight up ram into you. Oh, and it screeches the whole time. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Indivisible |
I Love You, You Hate Me / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
While a Hatedom is nothing new,
*I Love You, You Hate Me* tackles the hatred of *Barney & Friends*. But it's not just the hatred, this two-part documentary showcases how a children's show about love became the target of a snarky joke in the 90s...
And then what happened after when that same snarky joke evolved into threats of violence, before finally escalating to a point where
*someone got hurt*.
## Pre-Release
- The poster. The background is a purple carpet texture, with a VHS on top of it. The VHS reads "Barney: The Untold Story" and shows Barney the Dinosaur facing the camera with a smile. But the tape is smashed with bits of film spilling out, and small pockets of
*fire* ignited on the surface. It's certainly a way to make a good first impression.
- The trailer.
**Everything about it**. In fact, it was so dark, some people thought it was advertising a horror movie instead of a documentary. It contains shots of Barney dolls and other toys being hanged from the ceiling, beheaded with shears, smashed with hammers and set on fire as the interviewees talk about the widespread hatred of *Barney & Friends* that arose as a response to the show's popularity, which became so virulent that the show's musical director Bob Singleton mentions death and dismemberment threats being made against him and his family. *Over a children's TV show.* The Moody Trailer Cover Song doesn't help.
## Episode 1: I Love You
## Episode 2: You Hate Me | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/ILoveYouYouHateMe |
inFAMOUS / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
Despite coming from the developers of *Sly Cooper*, the series can be pretty horrifying at times. **As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.**
- To be truthful, the entire game, ambiance to enemy types, are absolutely grim and disturbing. The city is being torn into thirds with one third ruled by gun-toting brainwashed junkies controlled by an insane Psycho Ex-Girlfriend Humanoid Abomination, another third controlled by an army of crazed and heavily armed homeless people run by a deranged old telekinetic, and a paramilitary superhuman group controlled by a mysterious superhuman terrorist controlling the final third. Caught in the middle are the average citizens who get slaughtered in droves by each of the three groups.
-
**Cole**. Especially Evil Cole. He is the most powerful being in the city, possibly even in the world, and he knows it and it's up to the player if he becomes a savior or a deranged maniac that shoots lightning and kills people for fun.
- The Blast. Press Start to Game Over, indeed. Worse is everyone blames you for the incident after the fact.
- The street gangsters, especially those with superpowers. Ranging from the faceless Reapers, to invisible shotgunners.
- Sasha. Not only does she look like a mask-less Deadpool with tendrils and a split-tentacled tongue, her upgrade to Ascended Extra provide enough creep without her aforementioned mooks. Especially her creepy Yandere dialogue as she telepathically speaks to Cole while turning the waters of the city black with her tar.
- The Dust Men are especially terrifying in that they're not brainwashed junkies or an elite secret group of killers, but an army of extremely pissed off and heavily armed homeless people who've decided to rise up and take over the city no matter how many they have to kill to do so. They even managed to have buses fitted with submachine guns to mow down people on the streets and have their own golems controlled by Conduits!
- Empire City in general. It seems that everybody has just given up and reached the Despair Event Horizon, due to the massive amount of crime and pollution, lack of food, and the criminals who have been given free reign to rape, murder, and pillage as much as they want. Not to mention many have already died from the Ray Sphere being activated and the US Government has locked down the entire city with firing squads being placed to kill anyone who tries to escape due to a plague going on in the city as well. Even worse is according to Agent Moya, the president already signed off an order to have the city nuked and everyone left alive in its borders killed if the situation there gets worse and time is running out.
- Kessler. He knows Cole's every move. And that's not exaggerating. He knows how to break anybody, especially with him shown torturing both of the previous antagonists. Worse is how he put Cole through a Sadistic Choice to save his girlfriend or six doctors who are pretty much rare and crucial for medical aid to the remaining people of the city. Gets even more twisted when it's revealed Kessler is actually an evil version of Cole from a Bad Future, meaning Cole had to watch a version of himself orchestrate the death of his own Love Interest.
- The suicide bombers used by the Reapers and the Dustmen. With their hellish high-pitched screams, coupled with the heavy damage they can inflict on you, they alone warrant frantic Button Mashing to climb up the nearest building. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/InFamous |
Incantation (2022) / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
Since this is a Nightmare Fuel page,
**ALL SPOILERS ARE UNMARKED.** **Don't you know it's rude to stare?**
- Mother Buddha's face. It looks nothing human but rather a tunnel with a bunch of holes.
- The true nature of the chant
*hou-ho-xiu-yi, si-sei-wu-ma*. Rather than being some sort of prayer or blessing, it is in fact a means to bind the chanter in sharing Mother Buddha's curse. For the sake of her daughter, Li Ronan condemned nearly thousands of innocent people into taking up a curse with no known cure, with the only saving grace being that the sheer number of people exposed has diluted it's effects to a negligible level.
- Dom's fate, as seen in the page picture. It was bad enough seeing Dom's body carried out earlier in the movie, with bandages covering his bloody face. The recovered camera footage shows that his face became a bleeding mass of holes, with no identifiable human features.
- The real event that inspired the story. The eldest daughter "started up" after receiving a phone call, claiming to be "Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva" and wanted to eliminate disasters and solve problems for others, and then she started beating herself. Surprised but useless, the other family members followed one by one with "Qi Jia", each of them was possessed by "Jade Emperor", "Queen Mother" and "Seven Fairies". They beat each other with crutches, burned each other with lit incense, sprinkled salt and rice, and even fed each other feces and urinated to exorcise each other. Some people think that this family is seriously evil, and some people think that they have suffered from mental illnesses one after another, but it is still a mystery why people who were normal before suddenly did this. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Incantation2022 |
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
Suddenly, I don't feel so guilty for stepping on ants.
note :
Fun fact: the JPG of this image is called
*Bad Picnic.* **Unmarked spoilers below!**
- The killer Siafu ants that
*eat people alive*. Oh yes, and they're coordinated enough to form a tower to reach you if you're out of reach.
- Know what's scarier? There really
*are* ants like this in South America, tropical Asia, and Africa, that move in waves. This is NOT science fiction. While real life Siafu and Army Ants aren't as large as the ones shown in the film and don't deliberately go after humans, they *are* extremely aggressive, and will swarm smaller animals and suffocate or sting them to death.
- That moment when the ants use their own bodies to build a tower and reach higher? Also real.
- When Dovchenko is dragged into the anthill, you can hear him yelling "Pomogi mne". It's Russian for "Help me!"
- Spalko's death from too much knowledge is pretty horrifying. Even more so in the adult novelization. As the alien beings leave this world, Spalko actually feels her skull painfully transform into quartz as the aliens flood her mental consciousness with all the knowledge in existence. It gets worse, and just before she dies Spalko gets a terrifying glimpse at the Eldritch Abominations.
- The Greys have always been creepy, but to have one looking super pissed like the resurrected alien was at Spalko at the end?
*Terrifying.*
- A 1950s-esque suburban neighborhood populated by eerily smiling plastic dummies, complete with "Howdy Doody" playing on a TV set. The creepiness isn't reduced by the fact that it's a nuclear bomb test site.
- The moment when the warning siren flares up — followed by an instructional message that lets you know
*exactly* what's about to happen. **Indy:**
[in response to siren] That can't be good.
**Announcer:** *All personel, it is now * to zero time. Put on goggles now, or **one minute** **turn away**
.
*Do not remove goggles or face burst until * after first light. **ten seconds** **Indy:**
[slowly dawning horror] Oh, that can't be good
*at all*
.
- The actual bomb going off is just as nightmarish, as the bomb burns and melts the plastic dummies before destroying the
**ENTIRE TOWN**. It's so destructive that it ends up also killing the Russians who were trying to escape by car.
- It's all the more horrifying when you see those mannequins incinerate and realize that this is what would have happened to countless innocents—men, women, children, infants, pets—if this had ever gone down for real. As if to emphasize this, the camera keeps pointing out child-mannequins.
- Though it probably doesn't need to be said, this
*also* isn't science fiction. The U.S. Army actually did create artificial towns like this to test the effects of nuclear weapons. They were known as "Doom Towns".
- Irina Spalko's plan for the Crystal Skull, i.e. using its power to brainwash large numbers of people into mindless followers of communism is downright terrifying, and the psychological nature of this attack is what makes it so bad. As Spalko herself puts it, you won't
*feel* the brainwashing as it's happening to you.
- If you're ophidiophobic, the sequence where Indy has to grab the snake to get out of the drysand pit will likely make your skin crawl. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/IndianaJonesAndTheKingdomOfTheCrystalSkull |
Incidence / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
Just like the game it's based on,
*Incidence* can get quite scary as well...sometimes getting darker, yet darker than the source material itself.
- Kris gains the power to reset while in the Dark World, with two ways to do so: either get killed by someone or something, or take their own life. Not exactly the greatest ways to do something like that, even if the death is temporary.
- Just like in the game, there's a Knight going around, meddling with the Dark Worlds and seeking to start the Roaring...except here, there's more than one Knight, and not only do they get directly involved far earlier compared to their game counterpart, it's established early on
*why* they want to cause the Roaring in the first place: to banish the Angel's Heaven. The Prophecy isn't about the Delta Warriors, but *them*.
- The mechanics of LV
note : **L**evel of **V**iolence are expanded upon in the fic, with one side-effect of having it means that any monster in the proximity of someone with LV slowly but surely starts *turning to dust*, even if said person with LV isn't actually doing anything to harm them. On top of that, a person with high LV can instantly reduce monsters to dust with as little as a **glare**. LV doing this not only makes the stakes far higher for the heroes, especially for Noelle, Susie and Berdly, as any of the Knights could kill them with a look or a threatening gesture if they wanted to, but it makes it so that Kris has to be *very* careful to not gain LV and then touch a save point afterward, as it means that they wouldn't be able to be around their loved ones without slowly killing them.
- The monsters who are mentioned to have passed on in the world of Deltarune haven't quite received such a fate here. Through means unknown, the Knights have trapped the Souls of the deceased monsters, forcing them to aid the Knights in bringing about the Roaring. It's implied that, despite being dead, the trapped monsters are cognizant enough to know what's happened to them, but can't do a thing to save themselves.
- Upon entering King's throne room, Kris is ambushed by someone before they can reach the Fountain. Ambushed, as in shot and kicked into a point of power, meaning that they have no chance to reset. As for who their assailant is? They're the Knight, a human who casually reveals that she knows that Kris can reset and that they're not going to let them get any information out of her, before proceeding to
**shoot Kris in the head**. Kris is given precisely *zero* time to gain an understanding of what's going on before they have a bullet put through their skull. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Incidence |
Inferno (1980) / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
- The first big scare of the movie occurs while Rose is searching for her keys underwater. Out of nowhere, her search is interrupted when a decomposing corpse floats into view. Said corpse's eyes are bugging out and its mouth is hanging open. It makes for a rather effective Jump Scare.
- Kazanian beating a cat and throwing it into a sack with several other cats he's likely abused in various ways. He then proceeds to take the sack outside and throw it in the river. As if that wasn't sick enough, he makes sure to push it with his crutch to ensure it goes under.
- His death shortly thereafter, while well-deserved, is gruesome nonetheless. After slipping and falling down in the water, he is attacked by a swarm of hungry rats. It initially seems as though this is how we will end, but a chef in a nearby restaurant sees what is happening and comes sprinting out toward him. Just when it looks he's saved, the chef proceeds to chop at the back of his neck with a butcher knife. *Ouch.*
- The creepy girl in Mark's class who gives him a rather intense stare while he reads Rose's letter and is unsurprisingly none other than Mater Lacrymarum herself.
- Sarah coming across a strange man at work in his lab. Just when she is about to leave, he notices her book and removes his gloves, revealing a monstrous pair of hands that end in claw-like nails. He then forces her to give the book to him, while pushing her head closer and closer to a pot full of some boiling slop.
- The scene in the apartment with Carlo and Sarah. The way the soundtrack cuts out every time the power does results in some rather off-putting silence. Additionally, Carlo emerging with a knife sticking out of his neck was... unpleasant.
- Rose being attacked. Her death by an improvised guillotine is especially brutal, as it takes several tries for the blade to kill her, and even then it only gets about halfway through her neck. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Inferno1980 |
Inazuma Eleven / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
Fubuki. As if his Battle in the Center of the Mind with Atsuya isn't creepy enough, *Fubuki *. It escalates and climaxed after he was beaten up with Hiroto/Gran's Ryuusei Blade, the mirror scene with Atsuya is downright terrifying; bordering on Silent Hill's level of Psychological Horror. There's a good reason he's the original poster boy for this page.◊ starts to talking to himself **actually**
**Fubuki:** Entertain me more!
*beat*
**Touko:** He's way different from that delicate guy earlier | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/InazumaEleven |
Infinite Crisis / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
The universe of DC will never be the same again...Considering this is the comic story that took the DC Universe past the point of Darker and Edgier and irreparably changed the DC Comicverse forever, you can be certain it's got some prolific nightmare fuel in its content. Especially when it comes to Superboy-Prime.
- Your reality and universe are under attack by three men that think "You're not good enough. You don't deserve to exist." And two of them have set events into motion that make an already unstable situation, even worse. And now they're starting to attempt to wipe out everything you have known, and replace it with a so-called 'perfect' reality. It's an astounding miracle that we didn't see more heroes and civilians desperately seeking out the red couch after each of these events, that's for certain.
- Even worse is while reality is tearing apart, the villains are breaking loose and having a free-for-all on Metropolis to destroy the heroes once and for all with Doomsday leading the charge.
- Superboy-Prime. At first he comes off as a teenager with entitlement issues, and then you slowly begin to realize that he's a teenager with entitlement issues and enough power to destroy a planet. The world cannot possibly come up with anything scarier than that. Not to mention the way he murders people is exactly what you'd expect from a Silver Age Superman if he stopped holding back.
- Superboy-Prime later has more than one moment that would qualify as Nightmare Fuel. But perhaps his defining moment is in
*Infinite Crisis* #4, when ||Superboy-Prime has a complete psychotic breakdown, and starts brutally murdering Teen Titans left and right, with tears running down his face, moaning about how the heroes were corrupting him into a homicidal maniac. "You're RUINING ME!!!!"||
- Thinking about it further, Prime was basically a perfect storm of issues that coalesced in the worst way. Not only was he bullied for most of his life for his name, but the people he loved died horribly as the Anti-Monitor destroyed his world, all the while being granted powered that rivaled the Silver Age Superman at his peak but without any sort of practice or training. He's literally isekai'd into a world he thought was just fiction, then spent years either watching what he formerly saw as comic characters live out their lives (and making messes of them), and desperately rewatching the few fleeting moments of happiness from his former life. To say that he had untreated PTSD is an understatement, coupled with him being manipulated by a sociopath who went from infancy to a adulthood in weeks and barely had any maturity himself. Especially when that sociopath, Luthor, intentionally goaded Prime into envying Conner Kent for having a better life but "wasting it". So when he does bad things, he tries to write them off as "not meaning to" and being condemned by his former childhood heroes, and then just snaps and becomes a villain that only sees them as no more than flawed comic characters; he doesn't get any help or empathy, and he turns it around into rage and anger, unable accept blame. ||This karma later bites him in the ass when he's able to return to his world with his family, but his loved ones are so disgusted by his actions as seen in the comics, he can't even get back what he lost. It wouldn't be until Wonder Woman actually tried
*speaking to him* in *Dark Knights: Death Metal*, that Prime would get any therapy or asked to look inward. And despite the scorn he still had from hero and villains alike who remembered him, he was still able to do the right thing and die to save what was left of the ones he once admired... and only then did he get his true second chance||.
- Alexander Luthor Jr. is a nightmarish Knight Templar who literally wants to kill off trillions of lives just to make a world he deems to be perfect enough. What's jarring is how he originally started off as a heroic figure but his nature as a prematurely grown infant to a teenager combined with having no background than being raised by a cold alien and being around nothing but an older Superman and Lois and a whiny Superboy while watching the darker events of the New Earth drove him nuts!
- The Body Horror that occurs when Luthor tries to fuse Earths together to make a perfect one. He callously distorts and fuses billions with such callous disregard you'd think he was experimenting in the kitchen and then tossing out the bad results.
- In a disturbing example of Breaking the Fourth Wall, Alexander Luthor starts taking the "best" Earths and mixing them all together. This includes Earth Prime, our Earth, which he has trouble finding. "Where... are... you!" He says, staring directly out at the reader as his hands reach out from the page, ready to snatch the reader's own world...
- At the end, he glumly skulks in Gotham, preparing for his next attempt at making the perfect world. Cue the Joker, who's actually
*ungodly pissed* at having been specifically excluded from the Secret Society of Supervillains. First a squirt of acid, and as Alex recoils, the electric joybuzzer comes down into the exposed wound. And then, as he's writhing in pain in the filthy alley, Joker pulls a shotgun...
- One panel shows the sky filled with parallel Earths like stars and some of which are actually shown to be exploding and cracking apart. Never has a scene been so apocalyptic for the DC viewer.
- Superboy carving an Superman "S" Symbol into his chest with his fingernail while swearing to escape his prison. Worse is he's drooling like a crazed animal with glowing red eyes while he's doing it. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/InfiniteCrisis |
I=MGCM / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
Fellow Executors, beware. Don't let the colorful visuals and fanservices fool you. Tons of unexpectedly dark and graphically disturbing moments are present in the game, making *I=MGCM* one of the darkest fanservice-laden RPG games. While the regular version is already dark, the DX version makes it *much* worse. **Keep it SFW and no pornographic examples please. If you want to insert the descriptions which are DX version-exclusive, please describe it in general references, and don't include the pictures and raunchy details.** **ALL SPOILERS ARE UNMARKED AS PER THE RULES OF TVTROPES!** **YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!**
- The first few seconds in the first opening animation that begins with Iroha, in black and white color, becomes oddly insane and then she grins and black paint bursts out from her body. That scene is really unsettling and made many people shocked and curious about the relation between that scene with the story of the game. Apparently, that Iroha is Zombie Iroha (which appears in Demon's Tower dungeon and the wedding-themed zombie invasion event on June 2020 in Japanese version), as the black liquid start to drip from her eyes, implying the zombification in the game.
- The 2021 version is no less disturbing/different as above with a sharp contrast between "cutesy" and "dark" or "creepy". But instead it's Lilly who gets insane with her eyes dripping black tear/blood and acts in an unsettling way, with a creative shift to a picture of an Arachne demon, who has same hairstyle with Iroha.
- The scene of the very beginning of the game is quite unsettling and ambiguous. As Isana seems to have offscreen incestuous sex with Tobio and then, in a naked condition, she gets reduced to paint for unknown reason. Some fans argue that the scene could be real (as its later foreshadowed by Kamisaman that the first attempt of universe-merging technology failed), some fans says that its just a R-rated Dream Intro or a scene that takes place in Alternate Universe, and dont consider it canon.
- The enemy demons themselves are total nightmare fuel, as they enter the universes through fluxes to devour normal humans' existences, and everyone who is devoured by demons gets Ret-Gone. However, only girls with potentials to become magical girls are still able to remember the devoured victims. Fortunately the victims can be rescued as long as the demons in those fluxes are banished by magical girls. The demons also have a terrifying ability: Everytime they kill the magical girls, it has 50% chance that slain magical girls will be subsequently corrupted into demons, sometimes the corruption takes place
*before* dying.
- Legion class demons such as Arachne, Ligeia, Drake and any kinds of large demons are sexy humanoid abominations with lots of Body Horror in the design, such as: human legs, buttocks and even breasts as monstrous body parts. The Gerte demons are even worse, they much more resemble Eldritch abominations than "humanoid", as theyre covered by lots of demon world plants and fungi, and they don't have faces at all! (pictured above)
- Zombified Selves/Zombified Magical Girls have Black Eyes of Crazy appearances and creepy moaning noises. Not to mention Zombie Bride Kaoris Namanari form, which also has a Slasher Smile and black blood (or tears?) splattered on her dress, and Zombie Iroha's noises when she's damaged. According to Kamisaman, they are parasite zombies which are created when Earworms, a type of parasitic mushroom from Demon Realm, invades the living hosts' brains through their ears, and gradually corrupt their minds and cells into zombies. However,
**how** magical girls can be infected by Earworms...?
- Since the setting of the game is The Multiverse, which consists of infinite numbers of universes with infinite possibillities are co-exist. Which means even evil doppelgangers of Tobio and his heroines might have existed also, even they're not slain and corrupted into demons, they're Evil All Along or have become fallen heroes. This is later proven to be true in Chapter 12 Episode 4. The Ultimate Magica Nemesis self of Iroha is originated from the universe who is firstly recruited as a Magical Girl Warrior member in the multiverse, until her Executor disappears into another universe (its heavily implied that Vivian is responsible for her Executor's teleportation). Without her Executor's avatar's power, the remaining heroines are stuck in the flux and eventually they're blipped out of existence. (Ultimate Magica) Iroha is the one left, she becomes a raging Fallen Hero, finding a way to another universe after the Demon Twins show up, and she manages to kill the main universe Omnis for abandoning them, and the main universe's heroines. Let's just hope
*that* Iroha isn't the one in "Ultimate Magica Iroha" dress episode.
- The Gut Punch begins in Chapter 4 Episode 5 The End of The Daily Life or "How Normal Ends" onwards when Kaori dies from blood loss after being ambushed by a demon from behind and is corrupted into a Honeybug demon in a battle. Then somehow, "Groundhog Day" Loop ensues. However, during the first time-loop, Seira dies after she's killed by an Arachne demon and is corrupted into a Taurus demon instead of Kaori. The next loop, Lilly merely dies after being ambushed by a demon in a form of Shadow Discretion Shot (however, she doesn't get corrupted into a demon, but only in the regular version). The next loop, everyone except Omnis merely dies. Poor Tobio, he suffers a Heroic BSoD.
note : At that time, the incidents occur when **only** 6 out of 12 playable heroines are scouted as magical girls.
Bonus points for CGs of their brutal deaths in each time-loop, and the last one (Chapter 6 Episode 5) is the worst: They died onscreen with opened eyes with pink blood dripping from their dead bodies. If you pay close attention, Kaori and Seira actually got one of their limbs dismembered as you see Kaori dead body leaning on one side hiding the fact her arm got sliced off and one of Seira's legs as well. And the fact that Lily isn't there, probably hints she was so badly maimed they couldn't show her dead body...
- In Chapter 7 onwards, they successfully escape from that unwinnable battle in that flux. It turns out that previous incidents arent Groundhog Day loops at all (although it has a time-loop element in those episodes), but its actually Omnis possibility realization ability as Kamisaman explains
note : Apparently, Kamisaman doesnt want to tell him before due to her forgetting to tell him, until the incident, which Kamisaman didnt expect, where White Omnis shows up out of nowhere and tells about something that's related to things that Kamisaman doesnt want to tell.. Omnis' ability is explained like this: He doesnt just awaken the chosen girls' abilities and potentials into magical girls, he can also create a new reality from choices or possibilities he has (unwillingly) made and then merges the previously screwed-up universe, where he used to live, with the universe he recently created. The heroines from previous universes, both alive and dead, are also merged with ones from those newly created universes. The heroines' deaths get undone after being merged with living ones, but they wont remember that they have died or witnessing someone dies and gets corrupted into a demon before.
Unfortunately, however, this ability has a risk: The demons have certain immunity against his reality merging ability. Instead, the number of demons increases in numbers as his ability also adds the remaining demons into the new reality he created and being merged with the old one, and the ones who are slain and corrupted into demons cannot be purified or resurrected by his ability. Instead, theyre replaced by their copies from new universes he recently created. Which also means there's
**nothing** he can do with deceased magical girls who are corrupted into demons besides killing them for good unless Tobio wins the Sabbath battle and becomes the next Kamisaman. On the bright side, Tobio is aware of this risk after the incidents, he never uses it again and he wont have to see his heroines (in the main universe, at least) die again, as long he's more be careful. Otherwise the players wont probably care about the protagonists as the heroines would be treated as expendable clones, especially when theyre slain and corrupted into demons.
- At Chapter 9 Episode 6, after White Omnis' Ligeia demon gets Killed Off for Real, he goes berserk and shows his Nightmare Face in a CG shot, quite creepy since his berserk face has
**lots** of face wrinkles.
- It's revealed that
*a few* ( **not** all) demons are actually heroines' alternate selves, from other alternate universes, who are slain and corrupted by demons and their demonized selves from other alternate universes, including ones from the protagonist's party. Which also means every time Tobio lets just **one** heroine slain by a demon, he will create more demons due to his ability as mentioned above. So Tobio and the current heroines have to be careful and kill those demons and demonized selves effectively before they could kill and possibly corrupt them. Since alternate universes are countless, there must be millions, or even trillions of their alternate selves who are slain and corrupted by demons.
- Reaches enormous heights in the beginning of 2nd arc onwards. Omnis (except his heroines) gets suddenly teleported and trapped into a battle royal-esque Deadly Game (its implied that is caused by Vivian in later chapters) in the hellish crapsack Dark World where the alternate selves of magical heroines must
**kill** each other individually and only one surviving magical girl will get a wish (while Tobio ends up in another White Room for that Dark World). Even worse, lots of demons are in that universe, and kill a number of heroines in that universe. This ends in a final battle between the survivors of Takeraho and St.Charles when Aka, Ao and Iko meet their ends against the Drake (Ao's death scene is the worst as it shows the Drake evolving from devouring Ao and you can see her dismembered body's silhoutte, while her other half transforms into another Drake demon), leaving only Lily and Hanabi as the survivors as Hanabi sacrifices her own life to help Lilly gain the ability to wish the world back to normal. However in spite of defeating the Drake, Lily perishes and causes the destruction of the dimension as there are no more magical girls protecting it as uses her wish to give the Prime Dimension Lily a new power. Despite it's not his universe and his heroines, and Lilly's Magica 2020 Evo and World B Winter (based on her alternate self from Chapter 13) dress stories and a side story in *MGCM Visual Fun Book* heavily imply that Lilly's Eeyore counterpart and others are either resurrected after the deadly game by an Executor from that universe or the copy of themselves are alive in another reality besides in the Chapter 13 as Lilly uses the wish given to her to restore the reality as she would had wanted it. Tobio still feels a great deal of remorse for that reality's Lilly, being forced into such a harsh and cruel world for someone normally upbeat and gregarious.
- After clearing Chapter 1-2, youll get a new loading screen information from Kamisaman regarding the Dark World:
**Kamisaman:**
The world of losers, covered with brilliant red crystals. This is what it means to lose to demons. If you don't want to do this, fight to die
. Eh, what's with the crystals? Huh, of course...
- In Chapter 2, there's a CG of Omnis Nightmare Face when he goes berserk, just like White Omnis.
- In Chapter 12, theres a graphic CG image the prime world/main universe Iroha gets gruesomely impaled (while Omnis gets disintegrated into black liquid) by her Ultimate Magica Nemesis ver. self, who has become a vengeful Fallen Hero (you can see Omnis' black liquid and her blood splattered in that CG). Kaori witnesses her best friend is killed, and of course, she goes berserk, while Omnis' black liquid transforms her into "Beast Kaori" after she's splattered by it.
- Before that, the setup for the arrival of Nemesis shows that she descended down to the Prime Reality/main universe where Iroha is, emerging from an Abalone with blood spattering out as she goes out to find and kill Omnis for abandoning her and annihilates Shibuya, the change is even reflected in the lobby screen where instead of the cheery Karaoke hangout it has become a destroyed version where the girls are more focused on survival than having fun (though, this homepage change is temporary obviously).
- In Kaori's Wine Girl/Kellnerin Maiden dress story, Kaori, Ao, and Iroha in the alternate universe are having fun growing grape trees, and Prof. To Bio comes to see it, and then he does something really bad to Kaori (the NSFW version is even worse).
- In Seira's Anubis dress story, Iroha gets tricked by Anubis Seira to become a subject for Anubis Seira to mummify her thinking it's just play mummification but it turns out that Anubis Seira was serious with the mummification and actually kills her to turn her to a mummy.
- When it comes to nightmares, Aka doesn't catch a break in her Dress substories.
- The Gal Army substory takes place in the dark reality where there are only few human survivors left, including Aka. Tobio serves as the narrator of the story. The survivors are trying to find another town with survivors and supplies, and Aka guides them, only for more and more of them to be killed one by one until Tobio is the last survivor. He realizes that a demon has killed Aka and is impersonating her, just as his head is lopped off.
- DX version exclusive scenes. In the Tokyo Miko Miko 2021 Event and Dress Story, Aka suffers not once but twice. She first recalls a dream that she had after getting the Miko Dress where she's getting the same nightmarish visions over and over and ends up being sacrificed by a mysterious priest for a ritual, only to wake up. The following day, after defeating the demon at the temple, she has another nightmare where she gives "birth" to a Body Horror twin of herself that leaves Aka frozen in terror as it absorbs her. At that point she wakes up, unable to grasp if what happened to her was real or not.
- In Ao's SR Leucosia dress story, Ao, Kaori, Akisa and Marianne are finished fighting zombified alternate selves in Demon's Tower. They're discussing how they've been corrupted into parasite zombies, then suddenly zombified Lilly bites Marianne from behind before they managed to kill her. Marianne's speech deteriorates into high speed gibberish in an unsettling way and she gets corrupted into a zombie, then Ao decides to Mercy Kill her. When they attempt to find a Fool's Abalone, which is the way back to Earth, they find that Kaori has been corrupted into a zombie. Then Akisa gets bitten by another zombified alternate self and is also corrupted into a zombie, leaving Ao as the sole survivor. Fortunately, it turns out to be Ao's nightmare. However, one thing is sure: the infection isn't caused by the zombified selves' bites, but by Earworm, a type of parasitic fungi from Demon World, which can infect humans through their ears into their brains.
- The dress story of Xenos Magica Marianne is an Apocalyptic Log contained in a certain magical girl's smartphone and is (unfortunately) only witnessed by the demon twins Hakuri and Kokuri when they find it in the already-doomed Alternate Universe, which isn't a canon universe.
note : It's not clear whether the Apocalyptic Log is stored in the Dynamisphere app inside the smartphone or the demon twins use their power to see what happens in the past of victims' items. The Apocalyptic Log ends with Marianne dying after being defeated by a demon. A second before she dies, she lets out a long maniacal laugh as the demonic curse brainwashes and transforms her into a large demon. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/IMGCM |
Infinity Crisis / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
In *Distant Cousins*, Lex Luthor intends to unleash Doomsday even after Astra makes it clear that even *General Zod* thought that would have been a bad idea.
- Steel is from a world where his Superman apparently went bad, and is planning to kill Earth-38's Superman out of paranoia that he
*could* turn evil as well.
- Yelena slowly realizes there's a very good reason the Avengers haven't been fighting the Ten Rings, the Scriers, the Hellfire Club, the Thief and Assassin Guilds tearing up New Orleans or Dracula: they don't know
*any of these threats exist*. **Yelena**: There's a damn war going on and you don't even know the sides exist.
- The idea of a Council of Lex Luthors is whose goal is kill every Superman in the Multiverse is a terrifying idea.
- What's worse than Doomsday in the Phantom Zone meeting Zod, Darkseid and Thanos? The idea that somehow these three turn the monster to join them.
- The TVA is no longer able to "prune" timelines, but they've still been trying, with at least one timeline having escaped that fate over a
*hundred times* already. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/InfinityCrisis |
Infinity Train: Blossoming Trail / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
Between the protagonist's own love for the spooky stuff, and one part of the crossover (the
*Infinity Train* bit) already being host to examples of both external and psychological terror, *Blossoming Trail* manages to deliver its own share of frights; be it Chloe's dark fantasy tales or the dangers she and others face while making their way through the train itself.
Basically, we're talking
*Silent Hill* but on a train, and with the occasional penguin.
Fun, fun, fun!
## In General
- The sheer scope of fear that is in this story, with the B-plot heavily focused on Chloe's parents and Goh worrying about Chloe's whereabouts, and several characters bringing up the worst-case scenarios in response. Even once they do catch up with the reader and learn about the train, this only serves to make them
*more* worried about her chances of survival. It's hard to sleep at night when you learn a train with a murderous cult on it kidnapped your daughter and won't let her go until she's learned some random lesson about herself. Even worse is that many of them blame themselves for this predicament: it's one thing of Chloe being taken by the train but even more when you're one of the sole causes for it.
- Later chapters reveal that Trip and even
*Tokio* were also taken. While Trip had some protection on him, Tokio **didn't**. Even worse, they're the only ones who managed to *escape* the Train. We have **three** Trainers stuck in what is essentially *Silent Hill* in Part 2.
- Chloe has a love for
*demons*. Most of her stories involve a demon having their way with a child and she's not afraid to have them suffer horrible fates. Her father is correct to wonder where Chloe's been getting her ideas from.
- The Apex is considered The Dreaded throughout most of the Train; many denizens have been hurt by them (Lexi) or learn that someone they loved could've been killed (Nico) and they traumatized various denizens (Calligraphy Car) and passengers who didn't follow their ways (Trip, Tokio). This proves that Humans Are the Real Monsters, worse than anything One-One or the Train can create because they don't seem to recognize nor accept that their ideals are in the wrong. Even worse, knowing
*why* they think this way, is that Grace doesn't seem to accept that she's totally responsible for everything that she's doing, continuing as it were because she's too proud to accept the possibility that she's wrong.
- The summary of this being influenced by
*Silent Hill* wasn't kidding. There's always this dread of something creeping up at you, lingering in the back of your head as you dread what is going to come next. Arc 3, which is **the** Silent Hill influenced arc already has a lot of terrors that make you question who is going to leave with their sanity intact.
## Short Stories
- The fic's version of Chloe is depicted as an avid horror lover and a Nightmare Fetishist who writes her own stories. Naturally, said stories can be a bit disturbing:
- Chapter 5's tale has the protagonist — after killing his best friend — forever cursed to chase after the wish-granting creature. Mind you that this story is a blatant parallel regarding Chloe's feelings on her (former) best friend Goh, with later chapters only emphasizing how much she wants him to suffer and disappear from her life altogether.
- Chloe's story in Chapter 6 has children being raised by sentient trees, which ends with a man (George Gore) about to be sacrificed to one of them. What doesn't help is that the children are essentially the main cast of
*Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS* so trying to see Playmaker, Soulburner, and Revolver raised by malevolent trees wanting to see someone murdered doesn't paint a pretty picture at all.
- Chapter 9's story has a boy unknowingly becoming friends with a demon (specifically stated to be Vine), and details how he slowly wastes away as the being takes advantage of him, ending with his family finding the child's dead body floating in the sea after drowning. Worse is that the boy's uncle
*knew* all about what happened but was threatened by Zagan to not interfere.
- In Chapter 10, Parker reads the story about how the Moon God transformed into a wolf and began to eat the innards of a man who killed his own wife and was willing to offer up his newborn child. There's a reason why Professor Cerise asked his son to stop before it got to the gory part.
- Chapter 12 reveals a few tidbits of the story she submitted for that writing contest: it involves a mother/dollmaker who couldn't handle her children growing up which really doesn't leave much to the imagination as to what she did to them...
- Parker has his own story in Chapter 13, reimagining
*The Little Match Girl* so that she bonds with a demon that burns down the home of her abusive father and older sisters. At one point she feeds one of her sisters *burning coals*, and has Marchosias claw the eyes out of the other one as an act of mercy.
## Arc 1: Nothing and Nowhere
- Chapter 6 shows how cruel Grace and Simon could be. Lexi was granted permission to join them on their journey across the Train... only for them to promptly tear him apart, ripping out his pages, electrocuting him, and then burying him alive. They never even left the car — something Simon gleefully notes the Dramatic Irony of.
- Chapter 8 starts with a graphic Flashback of Trip being assaulted and beaten half to death by Grace and Simon, which includes taking a sledgehammer to the eye and forcibly tattooed with the Apex's symbol on his wrist. It goes to show that even being from a land filled with supernatural creatures won't save you.
- Chapter 11 ramps up the horror and takes it to near disturbing levels that
*really* makes you wonder about Chloe's sanity.
- When Chloe sees Goh's attempts for apology on her phone, she wishes deep down that she could just be like the episode of
*The Haunting Hour* "Wrong Number" in which the victim gets back at her bully by *deleting them out of existence*.
- While rowing across the lake, there is a flashback to a school talent show where, after her classmates step up their bullying of her and get her younger brother Parker involved, Chloe finally
*snaps* and savagely beats one of them with a paint can backstage while emotionally tearing them down as well, before turning her attention to everyone else and threatening to outright murder them if they ever try to mess with her or her brother again. All while looking like she's covered in blood (and considering how long she was hitting Sara with that can, some of the red stuff probably *is* blood...). **Chloe:** *(while covered in red paint)* If any of you *freaks* hurt my brother, call me a "Monster Lover" or dump paint on me again, I am going to do even worse than what I did to Sara. I am going to find you, bind you, and then I am going to *KILL EVERY LAST ONE OF YOU!* AND I PROMISE YOU WHEN I SAY THAT I SWEAR THAT IM GONNA KILL YOU **ALL KINDS OF DEAD!!!**
- Chapter 12 reveals that Tokio went into the Calligraphy Car just like Trip did...but instead of cute swans and goslings making calligraphy art, they stripped him down and forcibly
*drew a tattoo* onto his shoulder because they became paranoid about passengers thanks to the Apex's cruelty. This begs the question how many other cars have become xenophobic thanks to them. Moreover, considering how *big* that tattoo is, given that the narration said Tokio tried to ignore the numerous pots of ink, he must've been in trapped in there for hours and probably suffered pain long *after* the denizens were done with him.
- He also encountered the Apex with one member attacking him with a guitar. After that, he attacked them with woodwind instruments, raced out to another car that was a river of ink with
*caskets floating on the surface* and he had to hide in one to escape the Apex before he was found by rabbit-masked strangers who did *something* to him...
- The final part of the chapter has Spencer Hale deliver a box to the Cerise Lab, with Chryssa wondering what could be inside the box that could be so troublesome? Everyone who watched
*Spell of the Unown* will **immediately** realize what's inside there.
- The sheer amount of
*glee* Sara, Yeardley, and the rest of Chloe's classmates take bragging to Parker about all the ways they tormented his sister, culminating in her Breaking Speech where she declares that nobody would ever love a girl with such weird tastes and that she should just stay gone for good.
- There's also the fact that they think absolutely nothing of the fact that they're saying all of this in front of
*Ash*, somebody they supposedly admire. Just what kind of person do they think *HE* is, that they see absolutely nothing wrong with any of this?
- We also see Parker pushed to the brink, ready to start bashing faces in with his sister's silver bat. The only thing that stops him from smashing Yeardley's head is Ash and Gengar's intervention. It's made clear that Parker can - and very likely
*will* - do something horrible in his fury in the future...and Ash might not be able to stop him this time.
## Pre-Cyan Desert Car
## The Cyan Desert Car
## Post-Cyan Desert Car | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/InfinityTrainBlossomingTrail |
Infinity Train: Seeker of Crocus / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
*Seeker of Crocus* is at glance a story about a Professor wishing to bring hope onto the Train and things seem to be looking up...
But then you remember that this is also a story in the
*Blossomverse*, meaning that it also has its own share of twisted nightmares.
The Skill Crane Car
- The Skill Crane Car in and of itself isn't terrifying, it's the last part of the chapter that ramps up the horror when Sycamore gets in contact with
*Walter Sullivan*...
- We learn more about how the Soul Jar works; Alex has to place it near Alain's comatose body to let him speak, and we can see that Alain is absolutely
*not* in a good state of mind, especially when he decides to quotes parts of Mary's letter as an invitation to get Sycamore into Silent Hill.
- And then we find out that just by having that Honor of Kalos medal, Alain takes over Alex and is babbling why Sycamore is even on the Train before Alex takes over.
- How bad is this reveal? Yuri is
*terrified* at hearing the name of the city.
- The end of the chapter changes the status quo by revealing that Ogami, the Big Bad of
*Voyage of Wisteria* is rendered Deader than Dead. That's right, Ogami's own soul was destroyed and given how bad he is — going as far slaughtering a *child* for his schemes — what type of Big Bad awaits Sycamore and the Red Lotus Trio in *this* timeline?
The Twisted Lab Car
- And just like in
*Knight of the Orange Lily*, we're not even spared the *fourth* focus car of the story to have, as London calls it, "Technological horror Silent Hill". How bad is it? London and Easter recall a passenger who had to high-tail it out. Said passenger? *Rick*. A scientist who has seen so much crazy shit in his life is so terrified of this car! And even worse, the entire car is based off of *Silent Hill 2*, so those who know how terrifying that game is will know just what's going to happen. And did we mention that Green Phantom Queen is also helping out?
- The group sees a desolate wasteland and the only intact building a lab which plays the poem "There Will Come Soft Rains" in Sycamore's voice and is later reflecting the Sycamore Institute. Lovely.
- The speakers continue to praise how the world will be beautiful once humanity is destroyed and this is all done with Sycamore's own voice. And continues to taunt Sycamore about his failures while he does.
- Yuri's ordeal can be summed up in two words:
*Nightmare Therapy*. It also seems to be a combination of the memory tapes Tulip and Grace had seen except he *can't* alter his memories; he has to see numerous people in his life — his teacher, his older sister, his parents — as blank slates with muffled voices. In fact the boy nearly breaks from it all and would've ended up like Blossoming Trail Goh did if Vaillant didn't step in.
- And of course, we have Lain, the Maria expy who switches from playful to terrified to brainwashed without changing a beat, the fact that only Augustine can see him and the fact that he also is working for Shadow Sycamore to brainwash Augustine does not help.
- Yuri and Vaillant's encounter with Shadow Sycamore...or rather
*Sycamore* brainwashed to believe he is Shadow Sycamore and in which it goes all *Higurashi* and *Perfect Blue* with the insanity.
- Shadow Sycamore shows how sadistic he is by commanding Sycamore to
*murder Yuri and Vaillant*. Need we remind you that Yuri is 11? He also doesn't care that Lain was murdered by Sycamore and states that he'll just make a new friend for the professor.
- Speaking of which, Lain being murdered as Sycamore starts laughing at how much fun he is having at making this construct squirm...but in the eyes of everyone else they just see Sycamore stabbing the air and laughing at nothing.
- When Vaillant throws Garchomp's Poké ball at Sycamore , he momentarily stares at it before trying to shatter it with his bare hands with a deranged look on his face.
- Shadow Sycamore's monster form is a burnt corpse of Sycamore hanging on an inverted cross with glowing eyes.
The Ninjala Car
- Vaillant tried to boast that Lexi couldn't scare him. He was wrong, oh so wrong.
- Lexi as a Creepy Child that looks like a little vampire with his cheerful smile and weaving tales that can cause a lycan to look in fear. And then his attack on Vaillant looks like he
*murdered the wolf*. The narration describes Lexi appearing and the audience watching it as a horror movie where the main character doesn't know he's about to be attacked by the monster.
- Professor Yung is just as sociopathic as canon, if not
*worse*. His attack of Mirage Pokemon is likened to a zombie apocalypse, and he has no compunctions whatsoever about commanding his horde to *rip Chloe apart*.
The Chocolate Car
- Gladion's meltdown in class, culminating in him grabbing a pen with intent to do harm...though to who is unclear. And that is
*nothing* compared to what Easter's letter shows him going through and Tokio going through massive Sanity Slippage.
—
**'EVERYTHING IS FINE**'
Routine
- Elipzo is started to make it's move, and it gets more and more threatening...from kidnapping and brainwashing Tiffany to having agents in the
*Pokemon World* talking with Tokio, before finally revealing that they can manipulate souls much like Ogami could - by trapping Queen's soul in a Fate Worse than Death.
- And things keep getting worse...they almost abduct Mairin by preying on her guilt and worry, and subject Kisaragi to a particularly nasty Mind Rape that all but
*breaks* the proud rabbit. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/InfinityTrainSeekerOfCrocus |
Infinity Train: Blossomverse / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
If there's one constant thing in the
*Infinity Train: Blossomverse* aside from the catharsis, the deconstruction, the adventure and the friends that were made along the way, is that there is horror lurking within every car.
Lots and LOTS of horror.
<!—index—>
## Main Trilogy<!—/index—>
## Spin-offs<!—index—><!—/index—>
## In General
- The Fog Car aka
*Silent Hill* on the Infinity Train. Just like the game it's based on, the Fog Car is home to a darkness that prays on your soul. And you don't conquer it, you *survive* it in order to get your number to drop to zero. It's explored *twice* in the original trilogy.
##
*Chrysanthemum Shepherd*
- Alex Shepherd's transformation into the denizen he is now is horrifying. He was once a normal
*human* sucked in, and One-One (rather **One**) coldly tells him that he was prophesized into becoming the Bogeyman. ripping out Alex's heart all by stating that he has to do all he can to stop a future threat (the Apex) **Alex:**
I'd rather die than go with your fucked up prophecy!
**One:**
It is very interesting you mention death. Because
*(One's tendrils swiftly ran into Alex's chest.)* **One:**
The prophecy requires your
**demise**
.
*(Cue One ripping Alex's heart out of his chest)*
- The ending of the story reveals that he's remembering this
*while Specter is being tortured* and his only thought while he's making tea and brownies is to give his captive something good if he promises to never hurt a denizen ever again...but the question is did Specter *really* attack Easter or is it just him losing his mind and Alex is actually attacking a schizophrenic *for no good reason*?
- The nonchalant way Alex remembers and then brushes off how he was turned into a puppet for One to enact vengeance. It's like he's recalling a distant memory and shrugging it off.
- And then there's the Exact Words about what happened: passengers who die on the Train get reincarnated. So One
*forced* Alex to enter the Train and then killed him to ensure he got the Bogeyman.
- One-One hasn't lost all of his ruthlessness from his days as One - it turns out he's not above manipulating Chloe's journey and outright
*lying* about what happened to Bede in order to ensure Chloe grows the way he needs her to.
- One that crosses with Fridge Horror, just
*how many* passengers have tried killing themselves while on the Train, having given up on going home or understanding what their numbers mean? Especially since this was during a time that Amelia decided "Okay everyone, you're on your own. Don't mind me."
- Boscha Urodela is
*more terrifying* here than she was in *Infinity Train: Boiling Point* as she has no qualms destroying Chloe in a challenge, having access to more magic and tearing through Chloe's demons like wet tissue.
- The fact that Chloe's monsters include one that summons floods, one that summons artillery covered fortresses, one that sets anything ablaze and a Sea Monster. If Chloe really wanted to inflict damage, she has no shortage of demons at her disposal.
- Looper-Satoko was behind the deletion if the Infinigram posts and, while it's good thing that Eua isn't there to muck things up, Chloe defeats her by using Ose to put her in a Lotus-Eater Machine, keeping her in a world where she's with Rika forever. Chloe did note that she put a loophole that Satoko can change if she wakes up, but given how stubborn and in denial Looper-Satoko is, she'll sleep forever and never wake up and thus will become reincarnated as a denizen.
**Good-One:** *Good for her!* | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/InfinityTrainBlossomverse |
Inglourious Basterds / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
**As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.**
- The very first scene of the movie is full of this underneath the surface. The French farmer LaPadite is chopping wood outside his home when one of his daughters notices a squad of Nazis approaching. SS Colonel Hans Landa rolls up and invites himself inside for a "chat" about the whereabouts of the the last Jewish family unaccounted for in the area, the Dreyfuses. LaPadite attempts to feed him misinformation, and for one small Hope Spot, Landa seems to buy it, but then he reveals that he has been playing mind games the entire time: he knows that LaPadite is sheltering the Dreyfus family and forces him to take part in betraying them. As LaPadite watches tearfully, Landa announces his departure to "LaPadite's daughters" while directing the soldiers into the farmhouse. And then they open fire on the Dreyfus family, including 10-year-old Amos, huddled beneath the floorboards.
- As an added layer of horror, Landa starts the conversation in French, but eventually switches to English. Initially, this seems to be for the audience's benefit, but it soon becomes apparent he is aware the Jews are present and he has LaPadite sell out the refugees while they are oblivious as to their impending fate thanks to the language barrier.
- Shosanna manages to escape out the cellar window, covered in dirt and sobbing in anguish and terror. Landa elects not to pursue her but sadistically calls out "
*Au revoir*, Shosanna!" as she runs for her life.
- The Ominous Knocking as Donowitz emerges from the a tunnel with the baseball bat he uses as a bludgeon, and whenever Raine scalps the Nazis and carves swastikas onto the foreheads of the survivors, in full graphic detail, well-deserved as it may be. His best one goes to his "masterpiece", Hans Landa.
- Shosanna, under her Gentile alias "Emmanuelle Mimieux", is forced into a car by a German official and driven to a meeting full of high-ranking Nazis, including the one responsible for her family's death. It turns out that her Stalker with a Crush has just pulled some strings to get the premiere of his movie screened at her cinema, but she doesn't know that, and she's terrified that she's been discovered.
- Just before she's taken away, she looks toward the entrance of the theater where Marcel has just gone. Not only is she realizing that she's alone, but also that she may never see Marcel again and that he may never know what happened to her.
- There's also the moment during the meeting, where Landa arrives off-screen, so without any warning Goebbels greets Landa right as the camera reveals the man that had her family killed is standing right behind Shosanna. The subsequent one-on-one meeting is even more tense as Landa drops ambiguous lines and actions (like ordering a glass of milk for her) that may or may not indicate he knows who she is.
- Hicox realizing that no one is leaving the bar in Nadine alive.
- Raine has no issue with hurrying von Hammersmark's interrogation along by sticking a finger into the bullet wound in her leg.
- They're less scared than disturbed, but Donny and Omar, two Jewish men, are horrified to walk into a theater packed with Nazis. Including
*Hitler*.
- Landa killing Bridget von Hammersmark. He maintains his Faux Affably Evil facade right up until he lunges across the room to choke the life out of her. There's no Discretion Shot either. We're treated to close-ups of her face as she's strangled to death. (Even more disturbing, that's
*Tarantino himself* choking her in the close-up!) To add insult to injury, Landa then takes credit for her actions as an Allied mole. Those who worked with her will remember that she was the true mastermind behind Operation Kino, but history will reward the Nazi war criminal who murdered her for her deeds. That is, if Landa manages to get away with it. Raine seems to have other ideas
- The Cinema Massacre. Yes, it happens to Nazis, but it's still horrific: you're in a film theater, when suddenly the movie changes to a woman declaring you are going to die. You rush out of your chair, but the doors are locked, so you either get shot from above, suffocate/burn thanks to the fire, or perish in the explosion, amongst hundreds of your peers.
- Shosanna's cackling face projected on to the smoke is a striking image and perfectly fits with the cacophony of screaming.
- Some of the audience members are children in the Hitler Youth (HJ)/League of German Girls (BDM). You can see one of the girls getting shot twice in the pile up.
- For the Nazis themselves, the Basterds are very much living nightmares. A group of Jewish-American soldiers, one who is built like a golem or a bear and wields a big club, and a German traitor, wreaking havoc across the countryside and killing, torturing, maiming, mutilating, and disfiguring any and every Nazi soldier they come across. The lucky ones are simply killed, the less fortunate are tortured to death, and the truly unfortunate are left to live with the memory of the horrors they've witnessed, and a permanent reminder of it carved into their forehead. Honestly, if Raine and his Basterds were going after someone other than Nazis, then they would be considered the villains of the movie. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/InglouriousBasterds |
Indiana Jones Adventure / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
"Fools! You've looked into my eyes! Your path now lies beyond the Gates of Doom!"
*Indiana Jones and the Temple of the Forbidden Eye* has its fair share of creepy moments.
- In the beginning you are told not to look into the eyes of the idol and when the tourists inevitably do, he will condemn you to the Gates of Doom as the ride is being dragged towards it. Luckily, Indy himself blocks the way to let the riders drive off.
- When you enter the chamber with the bridge, you would see a second statue of Mara, although this one now looks like half of the flesh around its face has somehow decayed. The hellish atmosphere within the chamber does not help as well.
- In one area, you enter a room full of screaming skeletons and some will pop out towards the tourists.
- The mere notion that those skeletons are likely the remains of countless tourists and treasure hunters who got lost in the temple or faced Mara's wrath.
- Immediately following the skeletons is the "Bug Room" filled with tarantulas, scorpions, cockroaches, centipedes and all kinds of creepy crawlers swarming all over the wall. Ick!
- It's also the home of a giant cobra that lunges out at the vehicle. Many guests who are ophidiophobic and know the ride very well are too scared to sit on the far right seat of the vehicle because of this! You even hear Indy comment on it:
- Apparently, Mara's idol wasn't scary enough, so they did some changes to his face. After complaints, they also brought back his old voice.
- In the room of skulls, Mara's ghost is hovering above you.
- It doesn't just hover above you. It screams loudly.
- The
*Temple of the Crystal Skull* in Tokyo Disneysea doesn't disappoint either, being considerably darker than the original to the point that the scares start even *before* you enter the ride. In the main queue area, there's a large altar to the skull, with skeletons freely hanging off it and littering the ground below it, suggesting that *human sacrifices* were common in this temple. Then as you get closer to the loading dock, you enter caverns that feature carvings of skulls and horrifying demonic visages lit up in red light, plus ominous busts of Aztec warriors, made worse that they're practically the only lights in some rooms. As for the giant serpent, you get to face what is implied to be *Quezalcoatl himself*. Finally, while you see Mara at the beginning, you only meet the deity near the end, who takes the form of a giant skull face. Before you get a chance to explain, he screams at you in bloodthirst and launches a fireball at you. While Mara only got angry if you looked into his eyes, the skull was malevolent *from the start* and just wants you dead for merely entering his temple. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/IndianaJonesAdventure |
The Incredible Hulk / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
- On those occasions when the Hulk gets seriously angry and destructive and unable to differentiate between friend and foe, it can get a little unsettling. And on the flip side, stories where someone is actually able to beat the crap out of the Hulk himself is a frightening visual when you consider his power level. Then you have the cases where someone's trying to take down an especially powerful Hulk, as in
*World War Hulk* and *Immortal Hulk*, and part of the horror is how far they're willing to go in order to do so.
- Bruce Banner himself. Just a mild-mannered scientist, right? Well... the Hulk had to come from somewhere, you know. And the more time goes on, the more splintered Bruce's mindset gets.
- During the "Crossroads of Eternity" story, one of our first explorations of Bruce's life and childhood, it's suggested that the Hulk was always in the back of Bruce's mind, long before the Gamma Bomb, just waiting. All that the bomb did was give it a form, and the chance to
*smash*.
- One of Mister Hyde's creepiest appearances was in
*The Incredible Hulk* #368, where he cornered Bruce Banner on a train, stabbed him, slammed him into a wall, and taunted him over their Jekyll and Hyde duality, explaining that he decided to kill the Hulk to prove he's superior, as there's no room for two Edward Hydes. Hyde eventually declares he's won, as while the Hulk cares for others, Hyde has no such weakness, and laughs as he falls off the train and down a cliff. The whole thing is made worse by the comic's use of shadows, giving the train scenes an eerie, nightmarish feel. Even Bruce admits that Hyde knew how to push his buttons.
- Issue #377. Doc Samson hypnotizes Bruce to try and reconcile the Hulk and Joe Fixit, as their war for control is turning Bruce into a wreck. While inside Bruce's head they find that he is haunted by a horrifying monster (the "Guilt Hulk") that effortlessly defeats both the Hulk and Joe. We see the monster beating young Bruce on Christmas morning and murdering Bruce's mother, and it's made clear that the monster is Brian Banner.
- Speaking of which: Brian Banner. Brian freaking Banner. None of Marvel's other characters have a father this awful, not even most of their
*villains*. Raised in an abusive household himself, Brian met Bruce's mother, and fell in love. So far so good. Then, Rebecca tells Brian one day she's pregnant. Brian doesn't take this very well, not least when the baby has to be c-sectioned out of Rebecca, nearly killing her in the process. Brian starts to get paranoid about how this baby is "stealing" Rebecca's love for him, and even more alarmed by just how smart little Bruce seems to be. *Too smart*, thinks Brian. He gets sloppy at work, and gets fired after causing a disaster. He starts drinking. He starts *really* drinking, and every time Brian gets drunk, who is the target of his anger? Yup, little Bruce. And one night, Rebecca finally tries standing up to Brian. He hits her, too. Which is somehow *also* Bruce's fault, in Brian's pickled brain. Eventually, Rebecca has enough and tries to leave, taking Bruce with her. Brian catches them... and smashes Rebecca's head in, right in front of Bruce's eyes. Bruce is just *six* at this point. And then Brian tells Bruce not to tell anyone about this, or he'll go to Hell. Just to make him all the more despicable, Brian gets sent to the loony bin, having been caught because he went to a bar and *bragged* about murdering his wife!
- To give you an idea as to
*just* how badly Brian Banner screwed up his son; one of the Hulk's less-known powers is that he's able to see ghosts, spirits and other astral entities such as Dr Strange's astral form. It's been theorized In-Universe that Hulk developed this "ghost sight" power to be able to see if Brian's ghost was haunting him. Banner is **that scared** of his father.
-
*Incredible Hulk* issue -0 changes the previously given fate of Brian, which was that the asshole had been murdered by random muggers. Hulk wanders into a spooky graveyard, where a gravedigger who looks an awful lot like Smilin' Stan Lee shows up, and puts on a weird pantomime of Bruce's life story, including his and Brian's last days together. See, after his time locked up, Brian was deemed cured. Then one night Bruce finds him at the door holding a knife for... no particular reason. A few days later, Bruce and Brian meet over Rebecca's grave. And Brian tries to kill Bruce. This is the part long-time readers remember, but then it turns out Bruce killed Brian, and was so horrified he forced himself to forget.
- The gravedigger, whatever he is, which the story feels no need to elaborate on, but it's pretty clear that beneath that cheerful smile, there's something very nasty lurking. After all, he's not showing Hulk these happy memories for his health. He may well be the Devil... or given what devils are like in the Marvel Universe, something far, far worse.
-
*Hulk: The End*: Bruce Banner is the last living human after two nuclear wars which wiped out everybody else on the planet. When the story picks up Banner has spent years (possibly *decades*) wandering the radioactive wastelands, completely alone except for an alien recorder bot and the Hulk berating and raging at him inside his head. During that time Bruce has aged into an extremely old and frail man who thinks he may be over *200 years old* (and looks every day of it). He wants desperately to die, but the Hulk refuses to let that happen. Bruce even tries to kill himself by jumping off a cliff but it's the Hulk who lands. At one point Bruce is chased by a swarm of giant evolved cockroaches, which are too much even for the Hulk to handle all at once; they overwhelm him and *eat most of his flesh and internal organs, including both eyes and his tongue*, which Hulk of course regenerates (and this is said to happen *regularly*). Bruce later has a heart attack and pleads with the Hulk to let them both go, but Hulk refuses and transforms as Bruce is on the point of death. The end of the story leaves the Hulk's fate in doubt but one awful possibility that suggests itself that Bruce is buried deep within the Hulk's psyche and that if the Hulk chooses not to change back, that they are both still stuck together on the dead Earth. *Forever*. The only difference being that Hulk can't hear Bruce inside his head anymore and as far as he knows, "Hulk is strongest one there is. Hulk is... only one... there is. Hulk feels... cold."
- The Maestro. As mentioned above, Hulk can be as terrifying as you'd expect from one of the most powerful beings on Earth who just so happens to suffer from mental instability and "breath-taking anger management issues". Now, take the Hulk, remove all his positive qualities, and turn all his negative qualities up to eleven, and what do you have? The Maestro. Also from above, the sheer scale of the atrocities the Maestro is responsible for, and the depth of his depravity. It's truly terrifying to think that one of the most tragic and pitiable protagonists in fiction could become so utterly
*broken* that he comes out the other side as such an absolute monster.
- Fresh off Onslaught, the Hulk, literally half the monster he used to be due to being separated from Banner again, starts giving off an unusual and deadly amount of radiation. He was also brain-damaged during this time, and given his usual temperaments, this was a recipe for disaster. One attempt from the army to contain him had him
*melt* the lead containment shield designed to capture him, and the Hulk *tearing half his face off*. A soldier in a special radiation-resistant suit felt nauseated seeing that and attempted to take his helmet off to throw up, but himself received a horrifying death where his eyes *melted* as his skin burned from the radiation the Hulk gave off.
- The Hulk during that time period is disturbing. Both Hulks in 616 and Heroes Reborn were constantly under pain due their mind and body being ravaged by the flux of universal energies through their bodies, leading them to lash out and be more capricious than usual, enhancing their strength while reducing their durability. And then the Reset Button hit, and Banner and Hulk re-merging was used as the focus point as the merging of universes. Needless to say, this
**supremely fucked up** Hulk's body and mind, leading to his death. Status Quo Is God seems a mercy in those conditions.
- The villain Mercy is essentially the personification of Driven to Suicide, believing that she is doing despairing people a favor by killing them or leading others to kill them. Her powers include energy manipulation, strength, teleportation, flight, shapeshifting, and telepathy, and she can suppress consciousnesses to make it easier for people to die.
- Mindless Hulk's rampage. Nightmare torments Hulk/Bruce in dreams to get revenge on Dr. Strange as the Sorcerer Supreme is too powerful to hurt directly. This goes to the extent that Bruce and Hulk are both driven nearly mad and Hulk rampages through the country till he reaches New York, in the hope that Strange can help him. But given the kind of horrors Hulk Rampages cause, SHIELD teams are pursuing him...
- Worse, Strange is unable to save Bruce/Hulk. The sorcerer is able to unmask Nightmare's plans, but he couldn't have predicted how close to the edge Bruce was. With the effect that Bruce, tormented by the impossibility of escaping from the Hulk, commits psychic suicide, leaving the Hulk a mindless rage monster. Strange is horrified by what happened, and is taken off guard for a moment - enough time for Hulk to attack and knock him out, leaving the monster free to rampage.
- Mindless Hulk goes on a rampage through the city, resulting in all the heroes teaming up to try and stop him - and nothing works. Several almost die at his hand. The disaster is stopped only when Strange recovers and arrives to banish Hulk into the Crossroads dimension.
-
*The Immortal Hulk* saga takes the story into the dark side of the Hulk, featuring Banner not just grappling with his dark side but the Hulk going on a trip to Hell itself. It works so well it has its own dedicated Nightmare Fuel page.
- Issue #151
*"When Monsters Meet!"* can be summed up as "The Hulk vs. The Blob". It revolves around a US Senator, Morton Clegstead, who has been supporting General Ross' Hulkbuster program only because he's dying of cancer, and a doctor in his employ has a theory that the Hulk's Healing Factor could be exploited as a cure. But when Clegstead injects himself with a sample of the Hulk's blood, it supercharges and mutates his cancer, turning him into a Blob Monster made of living tumorous flesh, a mindless *thing* that exists only to eat all other flesh it can find and which grows bigger and bigger as it consumes. Except there's just enough of Clegstead's mind left aware in the "Crawling Thing" to recognize individuals — and to blame the Hulk for its current state. The result is one of the most desperate fights of Hulk's career to that point, with the narration noting that the Hulk is actually feeling the closest his brutish mind can get to panic, and even Hulk commenting that the Crawling Thing is the first foe to *ever* make the Hulk run. With a corrosive touch able to consume even the Hulk's Nigh-Invulnerable flesh, only a Deus ex Machina of the Crawling Thing being struck by lightning thanks to a sheer luck and a flagpole used as a makeshift spear saves our hero from being consumed. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/IncredibleHulk |
Incredibles 2 / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
**Evelyn:**
I would resist the temptation to stretch. The temperature around you is
*well*
below freezing. Try to stretch, and... you'll
*break*
.
**Elastigirl:**
So
*you're*
the Screenslaver.
**Evelyn:**
Yes... and no. Let's say I created the character and... prerecorded the messages.
**Elastigirl:**
Does Winston know?
**Evelyn:** *(scoffs)*
That I'm the Screenslaver? Of
*course*
not! Can you imagine what Mr. Free Enterprise would do with my hypnosis technology?
**Elastigirl:**
Worse than what you're doing?
**Evelyn:**
Hey, I'm using our technology to destroy people's belief in it... like I'm using superheroes!
**Elastigirl:** *Who*
did I put in jail?
**Evelyn:**
Pizza delivery guy. Seemed the right height and build. He gave you a pretty good fight!
I should say,
*I*
gave you a good fight
*through*
him!
**Elastigirl:**
But it doesn't bother you that an innocent man is in jail?
**Evelyn:** Ah, he was surly... and the pizza was cold. **Elastigirl:** *I counted on you!* **Evelyn:** *That's*
why you failed.
**Elastigirl:**
What?
**Evelyn**
: Why would you count on
*me?*
Because I built you a bike? Because my brother knows the words to your theme song?
*We don't * **know** each other! **Elastigirl**
: But you can count on me anyway!
**Evelyn**
: I'm supposed to, aren't I? Because you have some strange abilities and a shiny costume, the rest of us are supposed to put our lives into your
*gloved * **hands**.
That's what my father believed! When our home was broken into, my mother wanted to hide.
*Begged*
my father to use the safe room, but Father
*insisted*
they call his "superhero friends." He diedpointlessly,
*stupidly*
waiting for heroes to save the day.
**Elastigirl**
: But why would... your brother—
**Evelyn**
: IS A
*CHILD!*
He remembers the time when we had parents
**and**
superheroes! So, like a child, Winston conflates the two. Mommy and Daddy went away
*because*
supers went away! Our sweet parents were
*fools*
to put their lives in anybody else's hands! SUPERHEROES KEEP US
*WEAK!* **Elastigirl**
: Are you gonna kill me?
**Evelyn**
: Nah.
*(sits cross-legged on the floor)* *Using*
you is better. You're gonna help
*me*
make supers illegal...
**forever**
.
*(Evelyn presses a button on her remote, activating the goggles around Elastigirl's eyes and putting her under a blank hypnotic trance.)* | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Incredibles2 |
Independence Day / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
"Releeeeeeeeeease... meeeeeeeeee..."
A movie based on the concept of massive alien spaceships appearing out of nowhere and then proceeding to systematically destroy humanity's cities? Of course there's a lot of nightmare fuel to be found here.
- The destruction of NYC, Washington D.C., and Los Angeles, which ends the first act. Imagine being on the ground, watching those hovering spaceships open up at the center, bathing the entire area in soothing greenish-blue light and shoot a beam down, believing it to be a welcome message from the aliens. Then the building the ship is under disintegrates inhumanly fast (mere
*seconds*), becoming a shower of debris and a wall of fire starts moving outwards in every direction, destroying everything in its path and hurling cars away. It is a fireball you can't outrun. Critics at the time praised this scene for its haunting realism, which became even more hauntingly real on 9/11 five years later. Marketing for *Independence Day: Resurgence* reveals this happened in 33 other cities worldwide *at the same time*; imagine being in London, Moscow, Berlin or Paris, watching a famous, iconic landmark just disintegrate before your eyes and a wall of fire advance, destroying *every single thing* in its path. A later shot after the destruction shows an aerial view of Los Angeles after its destroyer has fired its initial beam. *There is nothing left of Downtown* or the surrounding areas, just slag and the blast wave is still moving outwards.
- An LA office building is shown with the blast wave approaching it. Inside, a man attempts to gather files into a briefcase when the wave approaches, the wind buffeting everything inside the building (even through the windows), and finally killing him as the building's interior and facade are ripped apart, leaving only the cement skeleton behind.
- The ship's opening is hauntingly beautiful, but serves a much more sinister purpose. The moment they start to open, everyone immediately stops to see what's happening. No one is panicking anymore and they're standing still. It's effectively like a giant bug zapper: mesmerize the primitive creatures with a bright light, then vaporize them.
- It's difficult to translate the visuals to the written page, but the novelization effectively describes the devastation as "a hurricane, a flood, and an atomic bomb all rolled into one."
- Not to mention the War of 1996 website shows the course of the alien invasion. Every twelve hours, the ships move to their next targets and destroy them. Then they do it again. Like clockwork.
**General Grey**: If you calculate the time it takes them to destroy a city and move on, we're looking at the worldwide destruction of *every* major city... in the next 36 hours. **President Whitmore**: We're being exterminated.
- Humanity's first counterattack. The Black Knights along with thousands possibly tens of thousands of pilots around the world all end up the same way, finding out their missiles are useless against the Alien shields and coming craft to craft with smaller and faster attack fighters that pour out of the destroyers in swarms. Enough are deployed that the attackers easily outnumber the human aircraft
*200:1*, also have shields of their own (rendering any missiles that impact basically useless) and proceed to slaughter the human air forces with plasma-based weaponry (which completely annihilates any aircraft hit in a single shot even with a glancing blow, ensuring no possibility of ejection). Whitmore realizes he made a mistake the moment the first missile hits the shield.
**Crewman**: Squadron Leader! Do you read?! Abort mission! **President Whitmore**: This isn't happening fast enough. *GET THEM OUT OF THERE!*
- Immediately after this, we cut to a random pilot still alive over Los Angeles. He looks around for any help, but all his wingmen have been shot out of the sky.
- "Reports indicate that this battle has
*repeated* itself all over the world with the *exact* same results."
- At the same time that the Americans were engaging the New York, Washington, San Francisco and Los Angeles destroyers, the rest of the world was doing the same. The RAF was engaging the London destroyer, the French Air Force was flying at the Paris destroyer, the Luftwaffe was assaulting the Berlin destroyer, the Japanese Air Self-Defense Force was attempting revenge for Tokyo, the Russian Air Force was trying to get payback for Moscow's and Vladivostok's destruction, the Royal Canadian Air Force was fighting the Toronto destroyer, the Israeli Defense Forces were attempting to avenge Jerusalem, the Indian Air Force was combating the New Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata destroyers, the VPAF was attempting to destroy Ho Chi Minh City's destroyer, the People's Liberation Army Air Force was fighting over the ruins of Beijing and Shanghai, the Iranian Air Force was fighting over Tehran, the RSAF fighting over the remains of Singapore, the list goes on from Mexico City to Havana to Rio to Dakar to Lagos to Jakarta to Manila to Hong Kong to Seoul to Karachi to Kiev to Istanbul to Athens to Rome to Warsaw to Amsterdam.
*Not one counterattack was victorious*. Hiller is the only known survivor of the LA attack force, a squadron of likely hundreds of aircraft and even then he got extremely lucky.
- The departure of Air Force One from Washington. Whitmore and the others rush on board while he gives the order for takeoff. Half of his staff hasn't even left the White House yet, but there's no more time. Just as he takes a seat, David checks the countdown and it's over. The plane's engines roar to full power as it launches down the runway, when the fireball reaches Andrews AFB. Inside, the lights flicker and Whitmore cradles his daughter while everyone sits tense, unsure of whether they can escape. It takes a few seconds before you can exhale at the sight of Air Force One being the last plane to leave D.C.
- The destruction of El Toro in the wake of the failed L.A. counterattack is pure Nightmare Fuel. The CO gets a report from one of his staff that unidentified craft are fast approaching. The officer asks a nearby sergeant if they're friendly; the man can only reply grimly "I don't think so." At this point, air raid sirens start wailing, the CO turns around... and can only stare in slack-jawed horror as an armada of alien fighters descend on the air base like locusts, presumably having tracked the Black Knights Squadron back to their point of origin, intent on ensuring there won't be another attack from the airbase. On the tarmac, pilots, flight crews and MPs can do little more than run for their lives and try to take cover as the aliens strafe the ground without mercy, intent on leaving neither the base standing or anything within its walls alive.
- The visual of the enemy fighters swooping in and strafing the base shows them having generally poor aim, but it doesn't matter. They never stop coming and by the time Jasmine and her fellow refugees arrive the entire base is a smoking ruin, strewn with the smoldering wreckage of buildings and aircraft.
- We only get to the events following the battle above the Los Angeles city destroyer, but judging from the broadcast heard in the RV convoy, once the jet-fighter squadrons that went up against the destroyers above their cities, from New York City, to Washington D.C., Tokyo, Berlin, etc. were massacred, the Invaders sent swarm after swarm of defender craft to strafe whatever base they took off from to prevent the possibility of another counterattack.
- At the same time as this, the aliens deploy attackers to destroy any surviving military command centers. NORAD in Colorado, NATO headquarters in Brussels, all are destroyed.
- While human aircraft are limited in how much weaponry they can carry, the alien attackers have no such restriction; an individual attacker could easily destroy entire bases and squadrons due to being shielded and using plasma-based weaponry but the invaders unleash
*swarms* of them as a show of force.
- The city destroyers arriving over their target cities is terrifying by itself from the perspective of the people on the ground. Imagine being in Los Angeles on a normal July morning, when suddenly a shadow falls across the entire city and the sun is blocked out. Then a gigantic city-sized craft rumbles in incredibly low, emitting an inhuman noise and comes to a stop over the U.S. Bank Tower in Downtown. The entire sky as far as the eye can see is all of a sudden taken up by the underside of this massive craft and the city is now shrouded in darkness almost as if it's nighttime, and the ship just... floats there, idling meters above the roof of the tower. Nothing happens, no signals come from it, only the sounds of its engines. Helicopters flit around it like flies, trying to communicate with it but it does nothing but hover there for the entire day, slowly rotating on a horizontal axis. Until night falls and the countdown finishes...
- The Alien Autopsy scene.
- The point inside the mothership where Hiller and Levinson fly over a staging ground with thousands, if not millions, of alien soldiers assembled, waiting to board transport ships. Hiller speculates that they're likely the ground invasion force meant to wipe out any last vestiges of resistance on Earth, and given the numbers of the invaders, it really drives home the point of what will happen if they fail their mission.
- The novelization goes into a lot more detail about nightmarish elements:
- Russell has a flashback to his abduction. One night, he's out working on an airplane engine in a hangar. Then suddenly his body is paralyzed. He obviously thinks it's a stroke, but then he begins hearing the aliens say "You will not be harmed." Then they break out the probes, all while Russell is looking out a viewport at Earth from the lower atmosphere...
- We also are treated to a flashback of the Roswell crash. Even though the aliens are utter assholes, their crash is still terrifying to read. Their carrier ship jumps away, as they were on the verge of being discovered, and because of that, their power systems quickly died. One of the pilots was killed in the crash, and another tried to crawl away from the site, but was attacked by coyotes.
- More details about the aliens' history, as witnessed by Whitmore during his Mind Rape: countless battles across countless worlds, numerous species slaughtered, whole civilizations scorched, and then the invaders land and establish their own settlements, consume the planet's resources until there's nothing left but a lifeless sterile rock and then go back to the mothership to move on to the next world and do it all over again.
- The post-war world. The invaders have been resoundingly defeated, but the damage has been done. Imagine 1945 Europe on a
*global scale*. One hundred and eight cities, from New York to Shanghai, Berlin to Moscow, Riyadh to Pyongyang have been obliterated. Nations and their military forces are in ruins. Billions are dead and millions more are now displaced. Critical infrastructure is also badly damaged and destroyed. The cost of rebuilding and the sheer scale of restoring what has been lost is incalculable. Factor in how long it took to rebuild Ground Zero and the surrounding area of Manhattan after 9/11, then scale that up to all of New York and *multiply* it by 108. It will likely take *decades* before every city is rebuilt (if every city will even be rebuilt; it is entirely possible many nations will not be able to restore every lost city) and trillions upon trillions of dollars. Not to mention the *incalculable* economic and cultural ruin that the world has suffered; major centers of finance and trade (London, Paris, Tokyo and New York among many others) were the first destroyed, taking with them banking centers, stock exchanges and critical financial institutions. Not to mention the massive wreckages of 34 City Destroyers littering the planet, many of which have likely fallen on the cities they were about to destroy.
- The alien city ships are pretty terrifying. There's no beauty to them; they're giant work barges built to do one job. They just hang over cities ominously with no broadcast of their intentions. Then they open, bathing the city below in greenish light, fire their weapon and utterly annihilate the city, close, and move on their next target.
- The ungodly
*horrible* noises the City Destroyers make when they enter our cities. When NYC gets shadowed by the ship, the engines give out a horrible loud moan. The moment the ship exits from the fireball it gives out the most stomach churning noise ever given off from a spacecraft in film. It sounds like something you'll hear in a HP Lovecraft story.
- The giant fireballs in the sky that form from the ships entering Earth's atmosphere. "Harbingers of doom" describes them perfectly.
- Speaking of the fireballs, the AWACS scene. They're trying to identify the disturbance off of California with zero visibility. They reach a clearing... and suddenly the sky is entirely on fire. They try to pull up, but get engulfed...
- Not to mention the attackers. Those nimble little things just dart out of their parent ship like hornets, hundreds at a time and proceed to annihilate their assailants. They can also easily move at speeds that are the limits for human aircraft, and like the motherships, are armed with individual deflector shields that are just as invulnerable to attacks. The Black Knights and other U.S. military forces (and other forces around the world) mustered hundreds of fighter aircraft for the first counterstrike; the Destroyer over Los Angeles deployed
*hundreds*, if not thousands of attackers, completely outnumbering and decimating the attacking human forces.
- When we finally get a full view of it, the mothership is extremely unsettling. It's over 500km in diameter, tar-black with no external lights, and looks as though a moon had been sawed in half and given fangs. If you look at it with the right filters, you can see dozens of City Destroyers still attached to it.
- Steve and David's flight through the mothership. Their expressions completely sell how they're not just witnessing an alien ship, but a self-contained alien
*world*.
- This shot◊ of David looking at the New York City Destroyer. It's still not showing us the whole ship to scale, but it still reinforces what David is about to realize: he is the ant, and the ship is a magnifying glass.
- The scene where Hiller goes to pick up the paper. There's very little music as he slowly looks around him, seeing all the neighbors are packing to flee the city, and are staring at something in the distance. Then he looks up, sees a helicopter flying overhead... and then a massive ship hovering over downtown Los Angeles. In addition, this is the first shot that both shows a majority of the ship
*and* something appropriate to give its scale. The ship is so wide, it can't entirely fit within the frame. The entire Los Angeles basin is dwarfed by the behemoth, compared to an ant hill underneath a car. Downtown L.A. itself is barely visible in the distance under the center of the craft and helicopters flit around it like gnats around an elephant, a testament to its staggering size.
- The aftermath of the first wave. As the morning of July 3 opens, we see the New York City Destroyer still hovering over the smoking ruins of the Big Apple. There's no sounds, not from people, not from anything except the saucer. 24 hours before, the city was a bustling hub of activity; now, it is as silent as a graveyard. The Statue of Liberty is toppled over and half submerged in the harbor, the tops of both World Trade Center buildings are sheared clean off, scorched black and fires rage inside the badly damaged structures; there's no sign of any living human within twenty miles of ground zero (the Empire State Building). All of Battery Park is in flames and most of the skyscrapers that once defined the Manhattan skyline are nothing more than burning, skeletal remains. Then, as silently as it opened, the City Destroyer closes its main cannon; it's getting ready to move to its next target (in that particular destroyer's case, Philadelphia) just like the 35 other City Destroyers throughout the world.
- A lot of the in-universe news broadcasts, which can be found on the 20th Anniversary Blu-Ray, show a darker side of first contact. For instance, there's one segment that mentions the UN effectively disbanding due to disagreement about how to proceed with meeting the aliens. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/IndependenceDay |
Infinity Train / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
Yes, that's a denizen.Infinite possibilities on the
*Infinity Train* can also mean infinite scares.
General
The Grid Car
- The first episode gives us some idea of how far this show is willing to go as Tulip, in her attempt to escape the train, finds herself the target of vicious, relentless, giant lifeforce-draining cockroach monsters. No punches are pulled; Tulip's face is shown visibly aging as her vitality is drained from her.
- Tulip catches a glimpse of someone getting
*dragged off the train and reduced to particles by some kind of vortex*. It scares her so much that she wants to leave immediately.
- This gets lightened up a bit in the last episodes, as the vortex is the way home.
- One which only becomes obvious in retrospect: look
*very* closely at the trees in the background as Tulip wakes up in the snow car. Notice anyone familiar?◊ Yeah, turns out the Conductor was *right there* the entire time.
The Cat's Car
- The trip through Tulip's memories is a degenerating cavalcade that initially ranges from funny, harmless changes to subtle, eerie differences, and quickly drops from there.
- One memory involves Tulip going downstairs late at night and kneeling by the couch, staring and smiling at seemingly nothing. As Tulip looks at her past self, she realizes there's some weird, muffled talking coming from seemingly nowhere, before the memory suddenly "glitches." It's revealed later that this was simply an altered memory of Tulip speaking with her dad, but without context it's very unsettling, especially for the brief moment where past Tulip is replaced with something under a blanket lying on the couch.
- The memory at Tulip's birthday party suddenly cuts to a close up of Tulip's mother with a
*terrifying* Slasher Smile, before turning to her with the Steward's face, her father lunging at her while stretching into terrifying, Cronenbergian proportions, and Tulip is consumed by static at the end.
- The next particularly distorted memory has Tulip's warped memory of her parents' divorce, as the entire room bursts aflame and Tulip's parents converge on a crying Tulip while changing into horrible, demonic creatures, chanting "
*DIVORCE! DIVORCE!*"
- The ending, where it turns out The Cat is being threatened into trying to capture Tulip by the Steward and a shadowy figure implied to be the mysterious "Conductor". Whoever it is, all we see of the Steward's master is a monitor with an ominous line on it that moves in time with the bizarre mechanical "voice" it uses to give orders to the Steward.
- When the Cat confesses Tulip already left the car, she
*begs for her life* as the Steward is about to crush her in its tentacles.
The Unfinished Car
The Chrome Car
- We learn that
*reflections are intelligent beings*, distinct from the person that they mirror, and if they step out of line they get *ground into dust*.
- The reflection authorities seem totally affable at first - and then reveal their intent to
*kill* Tulip's reflection for acting out of line. Suddenly the pair of Good Cop/Bad Cop buddies put some seriously creepy masks on, and pull out an arm-mounted sander that might as well be a chainsaw by reflection standards. The worst part is that they imply this has happened before, likely with previous passengers, and one of the officers is The Unfettered in getting the job done.
The Ball Pit Car
- Watching the episode closely, you can see the Steward is lurking in the background from the moment the gang stepped into the car.
- The entire scene with the Steward hunting for Tulip; since it couldn't find her just by looking around the car due to the tube maze, it starts sending it's tentacles out to
*feel* for her instead. The group tries to get to the door without toughing any of the tentacles, which becomes much harder when we see that the tunnels are completely *filled* with the things just laying there, like traps set to spring at the slightest disturbance. Tulip's sheer terror during the whole thing just makes it worse, her actually gulping in fear when a claw twitches in front of her.
- You know a situation is pretty terrifying if One-One looks like he's so scared he can barely move without Tulip yelling at him to run away.
- Though it failed to kill her, the Conductor intimidates The Cat into chasing after One-One - before signaling the order for the Steward to fire on the tube The Cat should've been inside. Just before this, the Steward was also violently firing upon Tulip, demonstrating that the Conductor has no qualms about receiving her dead rather than alive.
- We finally get a full glimpse of The Conductor, and she proves just how ruthless she can be by threatening Tulip and her friends (in the process giving Tulip a Breaking Speech about how her friends were imperiled by her stubborn insistence on investigating the train), and
*turning Atticus into a Ghom*. This implies that all the Ghoms in the wilderness we saw in "The Grid Car" were former denizens who got on the Conductor's bad side.
- The creator revealed that not
*all* Ghoms were created this way. Still, makes you wonder...
- Atticuss transformation is nothing to sneeze at either. First he launches himself out of Tulips arms with a snarl, sprouts the antennae while his paws grow and turn black. We then get to see a shilouette of Atticus, and he has
* the carapace of an Ghom growing on his face which quickly engulfs him.* No wonder Tulip was broken!
The Past Car
- We find that in the tape, Amelia was running towards her college and was on the highest part building wearing a dark hood. Given that we find out her husband Aldrick had passed away, she was avoiding going to his funeral, too distraught to live in a world without her husband. The train appearing right in front of her at this moment could have been an Interrupted Suicide.
The Engine
- While we know there are obviously more humans on board, the fact that they range from children
*much* younger than Tulip to the elderly is kind of horrifying, especially with some of these passengers having numbers that stretch beyond the tens of thousands.
- Amelia's spent
*so* long trying to recreate her old life instead of overcoming her issues that her number *stretches off of her hand, around her arm, and wraps around her * creating a number with a **neck** *lot* of digits! Considering that the only way to leave the train is to get the number to zero... yeah, even she acknowledges that her ever returning to Earth is an impossibility at this point.
- To give a comparison, Tulip only started off at 115. Some passengers on the train have numbers past five digits, which the computer doesn't bother counting. It appears that Amelia's repeated failures to recreate her life with Aldrick have caused her mental state to spiral so far that she may never recover.
- How long Tulip has been on the train. Time doesn't run differently there and the Conductor says that she had been on there for months thwarting her plans, with the flash forward at the end revealing that Tulip was there for at least five months. Her parents were most likely devastated and worried sick over her sudden disappearance. Meanwhile, Amelia has been on the train for
*decades* and will likely grow old there and die, and thats not even getting into the stays of other passengers (past, present, and future)...
- Even though Tulip's returned to the real world, she no longer has a reflection which is likely to remind her of the events she went through when on the train forever.
The Black Market Car
- Mirror Tulip, who now goes by MT, is still not safe from Mirror Police, who are chasing after her with the intent to kill her. And they can travel through
*any* reflective surface (except MT herself). It's gotten to the point where she carries a spray paint can around with her to spray anything reflective to try to stop them from reaching her.
The Map Car
- Marcel the wind spirit goes from friendly to threatening really quick when MT discovers his ruse. And the way he goes out is kinda creepy, dissolving into ordinary gusts of wind and effectively ceasing to exist.
The Parasite Car
The Lucky Cat Car
- While Khaki Bottoms is shown to have survived the events of "The Ball Pit Car", he lost an ear.
- Grace. She spends the episode dressed in a creepy mask and cloak (though her almost tribal attire underneath is almost as concerning), and when she reveals herself, she lets a horde of younger passengers into the car, who then proceed to ransack it, using the justification that they're passengers and need to do what they can to survive (and that Grace wanted a corn-dog) when M.T. points out the way that they're treating the inhabitants of the car. And when Grace has one of the kids take the trio to their base, after doing an odd routine with them (specifically moving her fingers to imitate the facial markings on the boy's face), she takes off her long glove to reveal that, like Amelia's, her number goes off her hand, extending at up her arm at least to her
*elbow*. Even worse, she acts like Jesse's number going down (which is at 4, meaning he's super close to leaving) is a *bad* thing!
- Did you notice something off about the kid's right hand?
*There's no number on it* which leaves the question whether the kid is real, Grace did something to take the number off of him or perhaps that the kid's not even a real human at all. Or maybe he's the child of two train passengers.
- Possibly an animation error. There's at least one scene in season 3 when Simon's number inexplicably disappears as well.
- Grace is quite young, appearing to be in her mid-to-late teens. Yet her number is at least in the trillions.
*What atrocities has this girl committed?*
- It's heavily implied the workers at The Cat's carnival are all in debt to her somehow, as there's mention of a "debtor's prison" for those who fail to predict who will win passage out of the car.
The Mall Car
- The situation of the group of passengers who call themselves Apex is absolutely dire. They consist mostly of young children, and under their leader, Grace (who says she has the highest number), they have a cult-like adoration of the previous conductor, believing One-One to be the false one. As such, they do everything they can to NOT get their number down to zero under the false belief that it's a bad thing. They even have tattoos of Amelia's wavelength.
- They also don't view the inhabitants of the cars as equal, with Grace having no qualms in letting MT be taken by the Mirror Police so she can be killed.
- While the Apex believe the Train is theirs, they're all still human kids. When Grace is showing off the harpoon pack, she mentions "poor Lucy." Thankfully Book 3 shows her alive, but she has to wear an eyepatch.
The Wasteland
The Tape Car
- Easily the most intense and creepiest episode, where we find out how everybody comes to the train and how their memories are extracted. Which includes unconscious passengers being planted into a mushy white ground while their memories are
*pulled from their heads* by little nanorobots. They are then sucked into the ground into a tube of water, and then float in a river until they come to a pool of water while their tape is reviewed by giant bird-looking robots. Their number is then burned onto their hand and are sent off to a designated car via a pod.
- We also learn in a one-off line from One-One that the Tape Car projections are on the outside of the car, not the inside. This means the outside barren wasteland that the train travels through is just like the inside of the other cars: a projection. What is the train... and where does it actually exist....
- While more lowkey, its probably a scary situation for the guy MT tossed out of his pod before he reached his destination. He was forcibly woken up on a speeding train, in an unfamiliar and unsafe place as he was not in the train proper, and with no instruction video of what he had to do. No telling what may happen to him after.
The Number Car
- Sieve is so distraught by Mace's death that he drops any reasonable qualities that he has and just tries to outright
*murder* MT in Revenge.
- Alan Dracula shoots Sieve with his Eye Beams, causing Sieve to
*explode* into metallic goo.
- Sieve throwing Jesse like a ragdoll into the memory-watching machine to get to MT. Fortunely, Jesse doesn't seem to be too hurt outside of a few bruises.
General
Trailer
- Simon's Sanity Slippage. Whereas Grace goes through a HeelFace Turn as the book progresses, Simon goes off the deep end and doubles down on his existing vices after being reminded of his trauma, starts murdering any Nulls he sees and comes to believe everyone is plotting against him.
- Grace "being sympathetic" and having Hazel join the Apex while also making her distrustful of Tuba. There's even the idea of her and Simon trying to
*kill* the kind and gentle gorilla. This won't end well.
- Grace and Simon paralyzed as Tuba walks towards them and Hazel proclaiming that trespassers are to be sacrificed to her. Of course it's revealed that they are being tickled but still...
- Not only is Hazel's number rather high (377), but it
*doesn't* glow. Just why is Hazel on the train, and what's wrong with her number?
- One scene has Grace and Simon fighting off turtles in a car. The
*Unfinished Car*...
- In said car, Simon is struck with a lot of heavy debris on his back. Let's hope that it doesn't paralyze him...
Le Chat Chalet Car
- Simon having a Panic Attack upon being stuck in the cabin with the cat, who abandoned him all those years ago leaving him with severe paranoia and difficulty trusting others, especially nulls. Made worse for him as Grace, basically the closest thing to a therapist in his life, is too busy worrying about her number to help him deal with his emotional turmoil. As Simon breathes heavier and heavier as the reality of the situation sets in, the drums of the soundtrack get louder and louder.
- A scene of Simon exploring the storage room, starts out with him getting nostalgic upon finding one of his old toys, but then seeing a stuffed ghom and having a meltdown.
- Simon's clear discomfort at seeing the cat with Hazel and Tuba with Hazel are clear Foreshadowing, especially when the episode is rewatched, for him murdering Tuba in a delusional attempt to "protect" Hazel from future abandonment and vent his anger at being abandoned by a denizen.
The Color Clock Car
- Tuba's death at Simon's hands is an extremely bleak, terrifying scene that begins with a tense Hope Spot and ends with a starkly-depicted cold-blooded murder as Tuba is kicked directly into the path of the train's wheels. The scene uses a discretion shot, but the final haunting shots of Tuba plunging to her doom and Simon's terrifying glare leave nothing to the imagination (particularly with Mace's death in the same fashion having been completely onscreen in the last book).
- Hazel
*transforming into a turtle humanoid* at the end of the episode. Just what *is* she?!
The Campfire Car
The Canyon of the Golden Winged Snakes Car
- Simon's mental state is slipping like mad when he states how Grace isn't acting like "she should be", showing off how he's so co-dependent on her. He forcefully gets into her space, grabbing her arm so he could see her number and acts like a controlling boyfriend in some matters.
The Hey Ho Whoa Car
- Simon's Villainous Breakdown when Amelia gives him the Awful Truth about the train's true purpose and taunts him for being a brat who needs to face reality.
- It turns out that everything Amelia made is being "quarantined", as well as any car that Hazel happens to be in at the time it gets scanned. This also means that regardless of Simon murdering Tuba or not, Tuba was going to be quarantined either way. Moreover, there were all those corgis in the Unfinished Car too, so
*they're* also being sent off (although given how One-One personally knows Atticus, perhaps he'll let them go).
The Origami Car
- The Kubrick Stare Simon gives Hazel at the start of the episode at an angle looks like he's glaring at the audience as well.
- Simon continues to go further and further into paranoia, even attacking Grace with the tape player and trapping her under the delusion that her lying to Hazel meant she was going to abandon him just like the cat did.
- The end of the episode has Simon make Grace stuck in that memory of her promising Hazel "not to tell Simon"... while in the real world, Grace is stuck in a trance and is left in a coma as the tape keeps repeating that same phrase over and over and over again.
- By the end of the episode, Simon's number is up to his neck.
- The Conductor in Grace's idealized memory is presented as a towering presence, caked in shadows, a mouth that opens to reveal a human hand covered in numbers, with a booming voice and demonic beeps that control the Steward like a mighty God commanding a dragon like a plaything. It's small wonder Grace came to worship the Conductor as an all powerful monster.
The New Apex
- Grace having to see Hazel chew her out for all that she did.
- When Grace snaps out of it, she finds the memory tape and tries to pull it out. She starts gagging when she pulls out the end to reveal something that looks like
*part of her brain*.
- It isn't stated how long Grace spent trapped in the tape or how long it took her to get back to the Mall Car. But look at Simon's hair when we see him again. It's gone from a short ponytail to
*below his shoulders*. Hair grows at a rate of about 1/2 an inch per month. At minimum, it was several months since the last time they were together. We don't know if the tape 'preserves' those it traps or if they would need care similar to a coma patient, so we can't say Grace spent all that time in the tape rather than traveling back to the Apex (especially since she didn't have a harpoon pack to speed up the trip), but we also can't say she *didn't*.
- Speaking of the time between Simon trapping her and them fighting, Simon would've spent at least a few months ruling the Apex. It isn't clear what exactly he did other than tell them Grace was a 'void', but judging by how...despondent they seem carrying his throne, it likely wasn't anything good.
- Think about this whole ordeal from the perspective of Grace & Simon's followers; their leaders are taken from them in what they would likely assume to be an attack by One-One. They don't know if they're alive or ever coming back. Over the next who-knows-how-long (looking at the scene, Grand and Simon went
*much* further than 47 cars away), they manage to survive, constantly afraid the False Conductor will attack them again. Then Simon returns, but without Grace. He doesn't tell them anything about what happened other than that Grace is a 'void', assuming he ever told them what she did to warrant that title. Then he spends several months ruling with an iron first until Grace miraculously returns. And then the two people who cared for them and protected them and became their new family fight to the death, with the winner telling them that everything they've believed this whole time was a *lie*.
- Simon's villainy really reaches its apex here (pun intended). Not only is he the villain, going as far as to make the Apex wheel Grace (calling her "Void", which in Simon's terms, is a leader unfit to lead and must be terminated) but he gets a number so big that it
**covers his face** when he throws her off even after she just saved him. A scarily impressive feat considering that it took Amelia 33 **years** of misdeeds to let her number reach her neck. Simon surpassed Amelia's number in a tiny fraction of the time!
- Also, compare the Apex kids' demeanor serving under Simon compared to when they served under Grace. Note how uncomfortable they seem to be. It seems quite clear that while Grace used charisma to command her followers, Simon rules them through fear.
- Once Grace shows kindness to Simon, saving him from falling to the ground below... Simon kicks her off the train to let her die the same way as Tuba before her. Worse still is the way he switches from mad laughter to crying and then doing both at the same time, presumably upon having realized he just pushed away his Only Friend and questioning whether it was worth it. Not that he has much time left anyhow.
- Simon learns the hard way what happens when a Ghom gets a person. They slowly melt their flesh, sucking in every bit until the person is reduced to bones and then to ash. Makes you realize just how much more lucky Tulip was to avoid having this happen to her not only once, but
*twice* back in Book 1.
- Then the ghom in question
*explodes*. Whether this was a consequence of Simon's number being so big or what normally happens is unclear...
The Twin Tapes
- The unified One is very eerie, with his voice reminiscent of Satan from the Mysterious Stranger clip linked at the top of this page.
**One:** And once these two arrive at their seat, it is up to them to sort things out.
**Amelia:** And if they don't?
The Art Gallery Car
- The art gallery is seemingly devoid of denizens and unnaturally cold. The source of this cold reveals itself as shadowy hands that emerge from the artwork and remain constantly unseen, which chill Min-Gi and Ryan with a touch and coerce them to reveal their innermost negative feelings, the hands getting more 'aggressive' as time goes on.
- Once Ryan leaves the art gallery, he realizes he can't go back in right as the hands converge into a huge shadow before emerging from the painting to reveal its true form: a three-legged monster made entirely of twisted arms, one of which
*even has a very long unlit passenger's Number on it.* Had Min-Gi not found the door by chance, he'd have likely joined that passenger.
The Castle Car
## The Train Documentaries
- "The Movie Theater Car" starts out pretty light, with a bunch of Anthropomorphic Food singing a "Let's All Go to the Lobby"-type song. But then their song takes a dark twist ("Let's add one to our number / To sate his endless hunger"), which One-One picks up on almost too late, as the Concession Stand itself turns out to be a horrible monster that tries to eat unwary passengers ("MY TUMMY NEEDS A TREAT!") | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/InfinityTrain |
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
There's several good reasons why this movie, along with
*Gremlins*, inspired the creation of the PG-13 rating.
- Ripping people's hearts out, enslaving children, crocodiles and chilled monkey brains feature, although the most terrifying thing of all is that
*they brainwashed Indiana freakin' Jones*. It's not easy to see your hero attempt to kill his love interest. ||It takes heavy pain to snap him out of it, luckily.||
- The sacrifice scene was originally meant to be far more graphic. When the sacrifice victim was lowered in the lava, his body would disintegrate and only his hollowed face would remain intact floating on the surface of the lava. To prevent the film from getting slapped with an R-rating, the scene was cut from the film.
- The Temple Of Doom itself is pretty much made of nightmare fuel. In particular, the lava pits, combined with the kids being enslaved and all the other horrible stuff that goes on there makes it seem like a part of Hell, rather than some place in India.
- When Short Round and Indy are exploring the secret passageway in the palace, Short Round tries to open a door which collapses revealing two rotting corpses.
- The Brainwashed Maharaja torturing Indy with the use of a Voodoo Doll, during the first time when we see him using it, he places it near a fire and Indy starts screaming in agony. What's even more disturbing is the Maharaja's Slasher Smile when torturing him.
- The spike room trap, which could only be deactivated by a lever that was
*covered with bugs.*
- The statues of Kali outside Pankot Palace are decorated with necklaces of human fingers.
*Freshly severed* human fingers, as Indy discovers when one of them drips blood on his hand.
- The bugs are themselves a gallon of nightmare fuel. Heck, don't even get us started on when the centipede crawls into Willie's hair...
- When Mola Ram pulls out the sacrifice victim's heart, it is more terrifying when we find the heart is still beating. In fact, not only is it still beating, but it starts beating faster - out of fear - as the guy gets closer to the lava. Not only
*that*, but the thing starts *smoking* even before the guy bursts into flames. The poor sacrifice victim's screaming as his body is consumed by fire **crosscut** with Mola Ram laughing maniacally holding the guy's heart as it bursts into flames at the same time. Then we see the victim's torched body dissipate in the lava. The sadistic grin on the face of the guy lowering the cage into the pit doesn't help.
- When one of the slave drivers Indy is fighting gets his sash caught in a rock crusher and then gets dragged, feet-first, into it
*slowly screaming in panic* and begging Indy to help him by calling out "Sahib!" over and over. Indy even tries to save the guy, but to no avail. Then the film cuts to above the crusher and we see *a smear of blood* on it. At this point, no one could blame Willie for looking away. Even INDY turns away in disgust.
- The Mooks who fell down into the canyon at the end of the movie, only to be devoured by crocodiles. Even worse, Mola Ram
*pushed* several of them off the bridge to this fate.
- Right after Indiana got the Sankara stones from the giant skull, he hears the sound of whipping and children screaming in pain. And each scream seems to get distorted into a monstrous roar. After the second scream, he looks at what appears to be human skin tied up above the wall on his right. Then after the third scream (which is much deeper), he looks at the giant statue of Kali, which looks like its staring back.
- In the same scene, Indy at one point looks at a snake statue, which then appears to move as if to watch him.
- A villain like Mola Ram should come off as almost Narmy, but the way he acts and fits right into the nightmarish setting of the Thuggee temple just makes him terrifying. Ram isn't a twisted bastard hiding beneath a veil of civility like the main villains of the first and third films; he's an out and out monster.
**Mola Ram:**
Drop them [the Sankara stones], Dr. Jones! They will be found!
**YOU WON'T!** Hahahahaaa! *GE-NA!!!* note :
Get him!
- In the novelization, it is revealed that Mola Ram is just another brainwashing victim too. ANYONE could turn into a monster like him, and all it takes is a sip of the right blood, through no fault of their own. Though kudos on making someone like him into a Tragic Monster.
- The Thuggee assassin hiding among the murals in Indiana's room, who then steps out of the shadows and starts to choke him. Though it might be Nightmare Retardant when you realize he's hiding while Indy complains about Willie.
- Indiana translates what the village leader said about what happened after the Sankara Stone was stolen from the village:
"He said when the stone was taken, the wells dried up and the river turned to sand. The crops were swallowed by the earth. The animals lay down and turned to dust. Then one night there was a fire in the fields. The men went out to put out the fire. When they came back, the women were crying in the dark... Children. He said they stole their children."
- The bit where Willie is almost sacrificed is pretty terrifying, from when she tearfully begs Indy to help her, not understanding why he won't, to her hysterically and repeatedly screaming "No!" as she's lowered into the pit, to sobbing as she resigns herself to her fate. The quick shots of the worshippers chanting and cheering all this on doesn't help.
- The Real Life subtext adds another layer of horror to the movie. The Thuggee were supposedly a real death cult dedicated to Kali that preyed on travelers and other isolated victims, with the killers disappearing back into normal Indian society when the monsoon season started and travel slowed to a crawl (the original accounts of the cult is the source for the word "thug"). The British exterminated the cult during the colonial era, but it's entirely believable that many of its members simply disappeared into the shadows, waiting for the time to rise again...
- Consider this: the Ark of Covenant and the Crystal Skulls were too powerful and uncontrollable, and in fact it is they — and not Indy — that destroyed the villains who meddled with them. And the Grail was useless outside its temple. But the Sankara Stones? Mola Ram knew how to control them and make full use of their unearthly powers. When he explains to Indy about the terrible things he plans to unleash (massacring the British and Muslims from India, toppling the Abrahamic faiths by force, and taking over the world in Kali's name) once he finds all five stones, it was
**not** an empty boast, but a legitimate threat to the entire planet. **Mola Ram:** You don't believe me? You will, Doctor Jones. You will become a true believer. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/IndianaJonesAndTheTempleOfDoom |
Injustice / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
Injustice: Gods Among Us Injustice 2 | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/Injustice |
inFAMOUS 2 / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
Infamous 2 is arguably Darker and Edgier than the first, with Cole having failed to save his home from the Beast and been effectively driven down to the horror-filled swamps of New Marais, where a whole mess of horrors now reside. **As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.**
- The Beast. Its Establishing Character Moment consists of it creating a black hole that pulls in and
*vaporizes* scores of people. Afterwards, it utterly curbstomps Cole and proceeds to destroy Empire City before moving down the East Coast. When a player looks at the saved progress map on the pause screen, it literally shows the Beast moving straight to Cole's position in Louisiana, with Beast leaving a path of destruction and death through most of the East Coast before the end of inFAMOUS 2, with his exact position glowing like a fiery eye all the while. Looking at the map shows his path has cut an ugly scar into North America that makes the Grand Canyon look like a paper cut. Even using a nuclear missile can only temporarily slow him down.
- The Downer Beginning of Empire City is complete in-verse nightmare fuel. Despite all the effort from the first game by Cole to save and protect the people of the city from the Beast and all his training and sacrifices, he gets utterly demolished by the Beast and is forced to flee as the Beast wipes Empire City off the map and kills all of its inhabitants. An utter failure and the worst All for Nothing outcome as possible.
- Any Corrupted. Especially the ones that eat people. They're an army of monstrous mutated humans that appear as a cross between crustaceans and Necromorphs from the
*Dead Space* series. Worse is the infection that created them cannot be removed as long as the source still lives...the source being Bertrand!
- Bertrand's true Conduit form is nothing short of an Eldritch Abomination, being a nearly indestructible bug-creature that destroys and infects anything in its path while constantly spewing new creatures and toxic ooze.
- The Militia and their Moral Guardian fanaticism is pretty awful. They've put the entire town of New Marais in lockdown and imprison and kill anyone perceived as deviants in the town when they're not mugging and beating anyone they please while cruising the streets. They've even contained the town with machine gun border patrols to stop any outside government interference, turning a once hedonistic Wretched Hive into a literal Right-Wing Militia Fanatic nightmare...and even then, they top it off by
*feeding some of their citizens to the Corrupted* to appease them!
- The fates of the Vermaak 88 soldiers are pretty grotesque in that their bodies break down and their sanity decreases as their powers mutate. By the the time they've reached the Titan stage, any sanity they had left is gone, leaving only dangerous Ice golems remaining. Even if they used to be good-natured beforehand.
- Kuo's torture at the hands of the militia is pretty grisly. She gets all her blood drained and replaced with a special Conduit liquid and undergoes Body Horror as a result; according to Zeke, her skin is now cold as ice and she has such a slow pulse that she could be mistaken for dead if not for her still visibly breathing.
- The plague is pretty nasty - inflicted by exposure to Ray Sphere radiation, the plague delivers a slow and painful death over just a few weeks' time, with no way of curing or even significantly slowing it down. Conduits can survive the plague, but only when their powers activate; everyone not lucky enough to have that or even the Conduit gene dies, and with the Beast's rampage down the East Coast,
*tens of millions* are infected over the course of the game, with the situation becoming so dire by the time of the final mission that even the USTV anchor decides that it's better to spend her remaining days with her family because she's *that certain* everyone's about to die of this disease. A heartwarming moment as well, to be sure, but it just shows you how fatalistic *everyone* is about the plague by that point.
- The true effect of the RFI: instead of just weakening the Beast in a targeted usage, it can destroy him AND wipe out the plague, instantly curing everyone afflicted with it, by removing all Ray Sphere radiation from the world...but this will also
*kill all Conduits*, , regardless of whether or not their powers have even activated. When Cole attempts to use it at the beginning of the final mission, the simple act of **everywhere** *charging it up* starts DRAINING the lifeforce from himself, Kuo, and Nix, leaving them barely able to stand and screaming in agony until Zeke steps in and forcibly removes the RFI from Cole's hands with the Amp. Cole's realization afterward says it all:
- The fate of Cole in the Evil Karma ending as shown in the page image. Cole effectively murders most of his allies, including Nix and later Zeke slowly, before being given new powers by a remorsefully suicidal Beast and destroying New Marais with an explosion. The explosion kills every non-Conduit in the city, cures the newly powered Conduits of their plague, and gives Cole a new army of superhumans as he leads them as the New Beast on a crusade to create new Conduits while killing millions in the process. A worst-case scenario if there ever was one. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/InFamous2 |
Inkopolis Chaos / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
**WARNING: MAJOR UNMARKED SPOILERS AHEAD:**
- Scarlett originally seemed like a run of a mill bully in the first part, however, she quickly goes off the deep end as time goes on, being completely psychotic and straight up vile. We can see this with her actions such as beating an inkling into a coma, however the pure nightmare fuel is shown in Scarletts Wrath, in which she tortures Natalie by spraying her with water, burning her and cutting her with metal in sadistic glee, with the effects still on Natalie even after Scarletts defeat, and it was so bad even the author had to make a trigger warning.
- She doesnt get better in the last part of the trilogy, where, after being freed by Obsdian, decides to go on a killing spree and slash the throats and decapitated many people she wants, which included a 9 year old girl.
- The Octobusters, including Cyalux himself, while usually hammy and much more comedic, he does have their moments of unnerving. Mostly due to how cheerfully ok he is with Murdering an Octoling.
- The third arc hits it up to 11 with how dark it can get, with the main villain herself, Lieutenant Obsidian, who is shown to be ruthless and genocidal dictator of the Octarians who makes Octavio look like a saint in comparison, and is quick to kill her own kind when it benefits her. Her full goals borders on harbinger of rebirth in trying to destroy the entire surface of any Inkling life.
- Her right hand man Blakeson doesnt fair much better, as well see down below and the fact he murdered Sylvias parents, a fact which he doesnt remember at all.
- Melody, Sylvia, Katelin and Dylan being sent into the Octarian Camps, in which the prisoners are overworked and abused. And it shown Obsidian will send anyone there for the pettiest of reasons, including being related to deserters, which makes things worst.
- Blakeson torturing Sylvia is something that while is graciously offscreen, it is shown to be quite harrowing even without the details, and in fact, the lack of details make it worst since its clear that
*whatever* Blakeson did to the poor girl was not good, and the fact it turned Sylvia into the plucky comic relief into a broken mess for a bit makes it even worst.
- Obsidian decides to scrap concentration camps and decides to just start mass executing people, having them dunked into water until they all are dissolved and was even willing to have them all mass tortured, leading to show just how heartless and evil she can be.
- One of the One shots of the stories revealing Summers abusing parents, in which we show a flashback of a disturbing scene of her mother and father beating on her so bad to the point of unconsciousness. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/InkopolisChaos |
inFAMOUS: Second Son / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
All is not well in the world after the events of Infamous 2. Especially since a whole new aftermath of suffering is shown for the life of Conduits.
**As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.**
- The life of a Conduit is nightmarish in itself. Manifesting powers at random and being possibly betrayed by your own families (i.e. the case with Fetch and her parents) to be hunted down and locked away like an animal while being experimented on by a legalized ruthless government agency. Even Augustine's flashbacks about seeing how normal people treated Conduits in Empire City are suitably horrifying as Conduits are swarmed on masse and lynched over street lamps by angry mobs.
- The DUP in general. You think our government is scary? Imagine a government agency who is basically given a carte blanche to torture a small town of people for information, can quarantine an entire city for three escaped criminals, and who can arrest and kill anyone without due process to be taken away for experiments that The Third Reich would be envious of. Combine that with the added horror of them having superpowers that they are perfectly willing to use against innocent people. And the best part is, thanks to the first game and the comics, they are not the only government agency that committed these crimes against humanity and have been so effective at subjugating their targets over the years that the government is considering shutting down the D.U.P. because it's done too good a job.
- Then there's the horrifying revelation that The Extremist Was Right or at least the fact the US military had kill on sight orders for all Conduits. The DUP may actually be the lesser evil—that's still evil.
- Evil Delsin. He might not be as powerful as Cole, but his power copying ability has practically unlimited potential, and his attacks can vaporize people, something that Cole's attacks never did.
- Evil Delsin's Smoke powers kill people by essentially incinerating them from the inside out, leaving only ash and smoke, while Evil Delsin's Neon powers kill people by sending energy
*into* them, causing them to *boil* internally until they pop like water balloons.
- Delsin's Conduit allies are pretty terrifying in their own right. One, Abigail Walker, is an emotionally damaged Serial Killer who Delsin first encounters after she leaves a body shrine of one of her victims as a warning and she's a dangerous Lightning Bruiser who can fire powerful laser blasts that can blow up whole convoys and incinerate human flesh. The fact she's voiced by Laura Bailey only adds to the Cute and Psycho vibe she gives off and she only gets worse if she is corrupted by the player choosing the Evil Route. On the other you have a bullied nerd who verges on being a Reality Warper and can summon pixelated angels and demons to kidnap and reign down destruction from the skies at will. If they go through the evil route, they become the very Beware the Superman symbols of Bioterrorist fear that the DUP were warning Conduits happen to be.
- The aftermath of Augustine's visit. People having concrete going through them, their organs, and even
**skulls**. They will die unless somebody gets the stuff out. Something that cannot be done with surgery. And even if it was removed, the long-term damage is still horrifying. Even worse when it's all but stated she has been at this kind of torture for seven years already.
- Augustine's rampant sadism is absolutely
*chilling.* Especially in that she has no filter as to who she will target.
- It goes right into Lack of Empathy... she doesn't really seem to comprehend or care about how many people she's hurting in her mad quest to keep everyone safe.
- And don't forget the grossly unequal power dynamic of a military leader torturing an entire tribe of Native Americans on their own reservation, which is supposed to be sovereign territory. Whatever she is allowed to do normally, Augustine shouldn't be able to exercise the same powers on Indian land.
- The idea of having concrete growing inside of you is bad enough, but the concrete piercing organs and the flesh containing them? Plus, you can't even remove it. Simply put, you are doomed to have an anomalous, cold object perpetually stabbed in your body. Turns out the only way it can come out is the same way it came in, so it was definitely fortunate Delsin had the ability to copy other Conduit's powers. So as you could probably tell, the Akomish do get better.
- Try watching the beginning of the game again but in Reggie's POV. Imagine what's going on in his mind while he watches his brother go head over heels over his power, slowly changing bit by bit...
- Or how's about before that when he first sees his brother is a Conduit, himself? Although he doesn't fully show it, he's probably terrified that his brother has suddenly gotten powers and Delsin, himself, is not only scared but, at first, doesn't have control over it.
- Delsin's laugh of joy from the newfound power doesn't help, evil karma or not. Another creepy laugh of joy occurs after he got shot by a Drug Dealer (which sounds a lot like Troy Baker's Joker laugh) and finds out he has a fast regenerating power.
- The tribe relies on two people, one of them they're suffering to protect, to find the cure to their ailment, that they have
*concrete* growing inside them. And if they fail or get captured, they're going to suffer a slow, agonising death.
- Consider the encounter that Delsin had in the tunnel on the way to Seattle. There are non-Conduits who are so paranoid about "Bio-Terrorists" that the slightest hint that somebody might be one that they'd shoot to kill immediately. Yes, Delsin's arms were smoking, and yes, he was a Conduit, but imagine if circumstances had been different. What if a normal person with a partially burnt piece of clothing (or something else vaguely implying powers) ran into the same people, only to trigger the same reaction? The poor soul would have been gunned down out of sheer paranoia.
- The Evil Ending. Delsin quite literally dives headfirst over the Moral Event Horizon when he's disowned by the Akomish, performing an Orbital Drop on them and killing them all.
- Most of the Evil Karma stencil pieces are mean-spirited in nature, but some verge on outright disturbing:
- A raven bursting out of a human skull.
- A red popsicle with a revolver as the stick.
- An old man about to mow over the heads of buried D.U.P. troops, reminiscent of the head-chopping machine from the film
*Caligula*.
- A bear feasting on the bones of a slain D.U.P. trooper.
- A little boy and little girl preparing to light a tied-up D.U.P. soldier on fire.
- A guy in red overalls and a happy face for a head taking a chainsaw to a D.U.P. soldier suspended from the ceiling.
- For Hero players, during the fight with Augustine on the island, when some D.U.P. soldiers storm the field after Augustine briefly flees. Almost no matter what you do, Delsin's attacks will dust whoever he hits with them in much the same way the Evil versions of his Smoke attacks would. It's a good, if horrifying, look at exactly how much Delsin is holding back under normal circumstances. Furthermore, if you somehow manage to knock down some of the soldiers and try to simply incapacitate them? Non-Standard Game Over - Mission Failed. That's right - you aren't even ALLOWED to be a good guy for this one. Mr. Rowe is pissed, and when Mr. Rowe is pissed,
*no-one gets out alive.*
- For that matter, take a good look at Delsin's face when performing the Orbital Drop during this battle. Normally, he has a cocky smirk. But in this battle only, Delsin is
*utterly furious* just before he dives down.
- The Paper Trail DLC
*definitely* has its moments - including one video you find on an extremist website that shows a man being tied inside a garbage bag and beaten to death as he pleads for his life. Oh, and that's done with real actors, not video game characters made of pixels. *Jesus.*
- The website itself is horrific, detailing how the site's users have murdered at least eight (suspected) Conduits that way and left their bodies in garbage bags like "trash ready to be burned".
- Celia's creepy behavior in general. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/InFamousSecondSon |
Inland Empire / Nightmare Fuel - TV Tropes
*"They all called him the Phantom."*
- After the first hour, most of the film potentially falls into this territory because of how it much resembles an actual nightmare through the usage of unusual scene transitions, borderline Non Sequitur events, Jump Scares, and Nightmare Faces. The strange lighting and the prevalence of drones in the soundtrack do not help. As mentioned under Dream Sequence, the film is quite possibly the closest a film will ever come to emulating a dream, and much of the horror comes from the realistic and striking resemblance of a terrifying dream that you can't escape.
- One of the "Rabbits" sequences has the lighting become red for no apparent reason. A match is struck and fire burns. Then, one of the rabbits comes into the room holding two glowing lights in her hands as if in a ritual. The scene quickly transitions, but the film never explains what exactly was happening.
- In one scene, a flashlight is pointed at Nikki, who then proceeds to run up to the camera with a Slasher Smile.
- The Phantom is The Dreaded antagonist of the movie. As seen above, he has the most notorious Nightmare Face in the film. | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/InlandEmpire |
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